If you ask “What is the best Final Fantasy game?”, or read any Final Fantasy games tier-list or top list, you’ll find Final Fantasy VI and Final Fantasy VII most often cited as the best Final Fantasy games every. Alongside those two, manywill cite Final Fantasy Tactics as their favourite game of all time, let alone of the Final Fantasy franchise. The cult following that adores Final Fantasy Tactics is strong and pervasive.
I originally played Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions on the PSP back in 2009. At that time, I was already a pretty big fan of Final Fantasy Tactics: Advance, the Gameboy Advance follow-up, so I figured I was in for a good time. Unbeknownst to me, is there are a couple point in the game where you are required to do a couple of battles back to back, with no opportunity to respec your team between those battles. One of those fights has the main character fighting all on his own. I stupidly only had one save file throughout the game, and soft locked my progress, as I had set Ramza into a weaker job temporarily so I could unlock a better job in a few fights. At that point I put the game down, and never came back.
Until now! Final Fantasy Tactics recently got a new remaster in the form of the Ivalice Chronicles, with an updated UI, voice acting, auto save, multiple difficulty levels, fast-forward, better camera control, enhanced, smoothed out graphics, and the ability to return to the world map at any point (thank goodness). Unfortunately, I’m too cheap to buy new games, so I decided to load up my PSP emulator and start a play through of the 2007 remaster, The War of the Lions
Gameplay
If you’ve played an SRPG or “tactics” game before, things should be familiar to you. Final Fantasy Tactics puts you in control of a small squad of 4 – 5 units. These units face off against other squads of similiar size on a grid based battlefield, and through any tactical advantage you can muster (or via sheer overwhelming force), you hope to be the one left standing at the end of the day.
Each unit has a job, giving them special abilities to use during combat. Starting as a Squire or Chemist, most characters will just walk around the map and bop enemies on their heads. As you do that, that character will earn EXP to level up and get stronger, and JP, or Job Points, which they can use to learn new skills. As you level up a job, you’ll unlock new jobs. Some make sense, like getting to a level 2 Squire unlocks the Knight job. Knights can equip swords, shields, and heavy armor for beefy HP bonuses, and their abilities all focus around breaking your opponent’s equipment or skills. Chemists, on the other hand, level up to White and Black mages, which in turn unlock Summoners, Time Mages, Mystics, and the powerful Arithmetician.
When a character changes job, they gain the inherent abilities of the job they’re currently using, like the Knight being able to equip heavy armor, or the Archer being able to use bows. As you spend JP to learn skills, you can apply them to your character, even after their job has changed. Further to that, every character has two action ability slots. One is automatically used by the job you have, like Black Magic for a Black Mage. But that second action slot can be filled by any job that character has previously dabbled in. In my case, my Black Mage also has extensive experience as a white mage, giving them great offensive and defensive versatility.
Menus over menus
This system is wonderfully open, allowing you to mix and match jobs and skills to create units that feel truely unique and distinct from one another. You’ll mourn when a character goes down, suddenly feeling the loss of the abilities they were offering your team. You’ll struggle to decide if you should keep an extra character with items so they can use a phoenix down when your main healer falls, or, if you are willing to let go of the skill that increases your chance to hit in favour of being able to hold two swords at once. These trade-offs will have buried in the menus inbetween every battle, constantly tweaking your units to shore up and weaknesses that were discovered in the last battle.
The core gameplay loop of engaging in battles, earning JP, spending JP on skills, tweaking jobs and abilities, and then using those new skills in another battle, is utterly addicting. Final Fantasy Tactics: The War of the Lions has stolen a few hours of sleep from me as I push my bedtime into the wee hours of the morning, saying “Just one more battle. I’ve almost unlocked the Ninja, then I’ll go to sleep…”
The downsides of the battles, however, is that they can be long and unfair. More than once I’ve had my whole party wiped out by a random battle, only to reload a save, try again, and steam roll the competition. A well-timed block, the opponents choosing to pile onto your healer, or any number of other factors can cause a snowball effect that makes a map nearly impossible. One time my white mage missed reviving Ramza 4 times in a row (it had a 64% chance to hit), then he disappeared from the battlefield, triggering a game over.
Pictured above: Tactical Advantage
Reloading and bashing your head against a brick wall seems to be a core feature of Final Fantasy Tactics. There are a couple of battles near the end of chapter 3 that, even after grinding, took several attempts and a string of good luck to complete. There was one mission where you had to protect an AI controlled character, and literally before any of my characters had a chance to move, she was KO’d by the 3 opposing assassins. I ended up re-speccing my team to be thieves with high speed so they’d be able to move sooner, then just threw them into the line of fire and hoped the opposing AI opponents would take the bait.
In these situations, you’re almost railroaded into having a specific team composition or loadout. This feels like the anthesis of the open-ended team building that the entire game is built around. If you wanted Ramza to be a support character or a spell caster, there’s a boss battle that forces him into a one on one duel. Even if you’re prepared for the fight, the opponent will KO you in 2 hits, forcing you to change your character into one that is specifically built to counter that fight.
Some of these fights will teach you an imporant lesson in having multiple save slots, as there are several battles in the second half off the game that take place right after the other, and if you find yourself unable to progress, without having a backup save, you’ll be softlocked within that battle screen, as a failure will kick you back out to the title screen to either continue from a save, or, start a whole new game.
Story
The story of Final Fantasy Tactics is one of intrigue, plots, villainy, and backstabbing. Ramza is the youngest of a prestigious house, and after a series of unfortunate decisions by those in power, he is thrust into a world embroiled in war. The Black and White lions fight for power and control over the crown, while the church manipulates both sides from the shadows, hoping to capitalize on the chaos. There are dozens of characters, allegiances are ever shifting, and there’s an undercurrent of class struggle that’s particularly present in the first quarter of the game. Ramza, after seeing the callousness of the ruling class, takes a step back and instead fights for justice and peace.
I’m going to start folding in Delita’s insults into my everyday vocabulary
The last act of the game devolves into a supernatural mystery of characters fighting over the Zodiac stones, which transform the holder into monsters of terrible power, which Ramza is quick to put down, and gets labelled as a heritc in the process. The story culminates with the kidnapping of Ramza’s sister to be the host for the resurrection of Ultima, which, again, Ramza is tasked with preventing the coming of the other worldly horror.
What’s interesting about the story of Final Fantasy Tactics, is that Ramza doesn’t come out a hero in the end. He does manage to save is sister and prevent the demons from ruling the world, but very few even know of their existence, and even less know of Ramza’s involvement with stopping the plot. Instead, after the credits, he and Alma take to the road to live out the rest of their lives in quiet peace.
Presentation
I played the PSP War of the Lions remake, which includes a number of upgrades from the original. The animated cutscenes are beautiful and have good voice acting. The localization mostly makes sense, with some really great dialogue that sets the tone for the game. The curses and insults mixed in with the complex political intrigue remind me of reading some really good fantasy novels, instead of the simple childlike dialogue that most JRPGs treat their players to.
Samantha is my mage, Turstin is my knight, but is my archer Alison or Ayleth?
The user interface, on the other hand, could use some work. In Final Fantasy Tactics, the order in which the units will take their next turn is vitally important. But to see the order of your turn, you need to back out of your action menu, press triangle, and select order list, where you’re given a list of names. Hopefully you’ve memorized the names of your units, but the opposing team is basically a guessing game. You can click on each of the names in red and see which one is going to move next, but it’s a pain to do. The character portraits do have a little indicator when you move the cursor over them, giving a rough indication of what order that character is going to go it, but it’s a right pain when you’re trying to figure out which spell to cast and if the charging time will run out before your target takes their next move.
While I generally really enjoy the isometric view of most Tactics games, the camera in Final Fantasy Tactics was constantly giving me trouble. Some maps play with elevation and will have your units fighting in a narrow alleyway. But this makes it impossible to see all the units. More than once I found myself spinning the map around and around, only catching glimpses of units hiding in the corners, and I had to hunt with the cursor to find them. Even worse would be when an enemy mage would start to cast a spell behind a wall that I couldn’t see who or where they were casting. I do like the 3D environments, they do create some interesting battlefields, but the implementation of them leaves much to be desired.
There’s a lot of action going on behind those walls
I spoke before about being buried in menus, and I wasn’t kidding. Every time you want to check on the equipment or abilities of your units, you’ll be going 4 menus deep. While I really loved the job system and customizing my characters, the menu system was clunky and unintuitive. Swapping between characters wasn’t always possible, sometimes you need to back out to the second layer of menus so you could drill down deeper on the next character. Even in the middle of combat, you’ll be selecting which of your action skills to use, then which action, then which target, and if you want to target the unit or the tile, filling the whole screen with cascading menus. This was less onerous, but it is ugly.
I will say that I’ve been looking at screenshots of The Ivalice Chronicles remake with some significant envy. The newest remaster looks pretty great, has full voice acting, the graphics and UI is cleaned up, and actually looks like they address all of my issues from War of the Lions
Final Thoughts
As with most of the Final Fantasy games I’ve been playing for the first time, I asked myself, “Is this worth playing in 2025?” For Final Fantasy Tactics, the answer is a resounding yes. The job system remains endlessly satisfying, so much so that I’d happily start a new run right now if Final Fantasy VIII weren’t already looming on my backlog. The War of the Lions remaster still holds up beautifully, thanks to its excellent writing and deep, rewarding mechanics. And if you have access to The Ivalice Chronicles remake, it looks to be the definitive way to experience this classic.
That said, Final Fantasy Tactics isn’t flawless. The clunky menus, uneven difficulty, and occasional cheap battles can test your patience. But even with its rough edges, it’s an easy game to recommend. I’m glad I finally returned to it after all these years, older, more patient, and better able to appreciate its ambition. If I’d played this as a teenager, I probably would have been obsessed. As it stands now, I can at least recognize Final Fantasy Tactics for what it is: a landmark in tactical RPG design that commands respect, even decades later.
A copy of Super Dice Battle was provided by the designer for the purposes of review
Super Smash Bros is a pretty integral part of my teenage years. Many hours were consumed duking it among my friends, be it on the N64, GameCube, or Wii. So when Super Battle Dice was pitched as an homage to Super Smash Bros, I was instantly intrigued. For what it’s worth, I’ve always been a Link main, and I’ve never been a “Final Destination, no items” type of player. I revel in the chaos the items bring.
If I’m being honest, 90% of the reason I keep the items on is specifically for the Home Run Bat. Hearing that sound when the bat cracks the opposing players, it makes my toes curl with joy.
-AHEM-, I’ve gotten off-topic. In Super Dice Battle, players take control of one of the four asymmetric characters, and engage in real time combo building. Using D8’s, you roll your dice, then you can commit one of those die results to one of your combos. Then, keep rolling your dice! When someone completes an attack combo, they shout out “COMBO!” to stop everyone else from rolling. They designate a target, roll the Combo dice to determine damage, the target has a chance to resolve a defense combo, if they have one queued up, then, play continues.
Super Dice Battle offers two victory conditions. Either, the first player to KO 3 other players, wins the duel. Or, in a stock battle, the last player standing, is the overall winner. And for those of you who abhor real time games (I don’t get it, but you do you), there is a slow mode where instead of rolling all your dice as fast as you can, players roll once, all commit together, then roll again once everyone is ready.
With games taking 5 to 10 minutes per brawl, Super Dice Battle is an easy game to play back to back. The frantic dice rolling has all players constantly engaged, and the tension grows with each passing second as the dice clatter over and over. You’ll see your opponent’s dice pools getting smaller and smaller as they assign the dice to their combos, until they’re rolling one die over and over again, trying to get a specific result.
Which is perhaps one of the main frustrations with Super Dice Battle. Your dice pool is limited to 4 dice. Most of the light combos only require two dice, with a third being used to augment the combo a little. Heavy combos require 3 dice, while the support and defense combos need 1 or 2 dice each. You can work towards building multiple combos at once, or socking away one of your dice on your defense skill, but you’ll find yourself stuck rolling one die over and over, trying to get a specific result.
But you don’t have to live so cautiously. Neglect your defenses and focus all your attention on the heavy attack combo to really sock it to your opponents. After all, no risk no reward, right?
However you choose to fight, the first person to complete an offensive combo shouts “COMBO!” and grabs the combo die, a large white die with a bunch of pips. Everyone has a moment to breathe while they commit their final roll, and then the attacking player designates their target, and rolls the combo die to determine how much damage they’re dishing out to their opponent. If your target has a defensive combo, they can trigger that, but once damage has been dealt, you make sure the target hasn’t exceeded its damage threshold, and the game continues.
The combo dice can range anywhere from devastating to ineffectual, depending on the result you roll and the combo you chose. Some combos will add damage for the spiked pips, while others, won’t.
Super dice battle seeks to emulate a real time fighting game using dice, but it feels like it’s running up against the limitations of the medium. It’s not uncommon for multiple players to have a defensive combo, then just take pot shots at each other until something changes. Sometimes in a larger player count game, there would be a cascade effect. One player would attack another, then before that player could reset their defensive combo, the other two would pile on, as it was the most efficient use of their dice. The restrictive dice pool ensures players can’t have all their combos filled at the same time, but it also results in players rolling a single die over and over and over, trying to hit a specific result.
I always recommend playing the real-time mode, as the turn based mode feels wrong for a game seeking to emulate a frantic brawl. On the subject of the frantic brawl, the COMBO call, which initiates the damage step, feels like a jarring halt. You go from rolling and evaluating as quickly as possible, to a still moment where you evaluate all your opponents situations, and then select your target based on a carefully calculated decision. The frantic feeling is lost at this moment, but thankfully everyone is back to rolling again soon enough. The asymmetric player abilities are both a boon and a bane. I love changing my characters and how different each one feels to pilot. But having wildly different abilities slows down that damage step as players squint to read what each other player can do, or how they can react or counter the incoming attack. The rulebook does tease more characters coming in the future, so look forward to that!
Part of me wishes there was more to Super Dice Battle. For a game seeking to emulate Smash Bros, I’d love it if there were some environmental obstacles to overcome, or items to give specific combos a bit of extra punch. But for every element you try to add, the bloat and complexity increases exponentially, and I’m not sure if it would result in a better game at the end of the day.
Super Dice Battle does manage to capture some of that chaotic, competitive energy that made late-night Smash sessions so memorable. But it also occasionally manages to get in its own way. The small dice pools and abrupt pauses can undercut the momentum it’s trying to build. Still, for a quick, rowdy filler that thrives on tension, Super Dice Battle manages to deliver plenty of rambunctious fun, provided you don’t mind a bit of die-rolling repetition in your game.
Those first 6 words of the rulebook set the stage for Last Will, designed by Vladamir Suchy and published by CGE in 2011. Taking the plot of 1985’s Bewsters Millions, your uncle, who has amassed a great fortune, realized on his deathbed that he never got to enjoy the fruits of his effort. So he’s provided each of his descendants a small sum, and challenged each one to live lavishly, as whomever is the best at spending money will inherit the rest of his fortune, and win the game.
All players start with the same amount of money, and each round, take turns choosing which initiative they want to claim. The earlier in turn order you want to go, the less cards, errand boys, and actions you’ll have to spend. But in a game about being the most efficient at blowing your cash, going first and getting the perfect card can be worth having less actions.
The cards you draw can be anything from companions and staff, whom you’ll want to accompany you on your events so you can rack up a bigger bill, to real estate that costs a fortune to maintain, or, can fall into disrepair forcing you to sell it at a loss, to one time events, to persistent events that you’ll be able to use round after round to drain your bank account.
The errands to choose from mostly consist of cards, including the more powerful event cards that are not in the regular decks, but also allows you to put your thumb on the scale of the real estate market, making some types of real estate more expensive to buy in a round, while making others less desirable, so they’ll sell for even less than their already bottoming price.
Beyond the errand boys, your player board and cards have will have a bunch of scarlet badges market with an A, to indicate that doing something costs you an action. Buying and selling houses, activating events, and hiring staff all take time, and therefore, cost an action. Again, the winner is the player who runs out of money first and declares bankruptcy. An important aspect to Last Will is that you cannot declare bankruptcy if you own an asset. While maintaining those houses may have been a great way to drain your cash reserves, you’ll need to sell the house and drain the proceeds from the sale if you want to claim victory here.
Last Will has a sense of levity that permeates the entire production. The art on the cards is whimsical and absurd. How much extra do you think you’d have to spend to bring your horse to the theatre? Well, in Last Will, the answer is £3. That sense of levity can fool players into a false sense of security, there are plenty of difficult decisions you’ll need to make in respect to timing and giving up actions to go earlier in the round.
The reverse scoring method also sounds simple, but it surprisingly breaks your brain in different ways. After hundreds of euro games, I’m conditioned to try and achieve the most amount of actions for the least amount of money. This was most confusing in the real estate market, when I couldn’t figure out if I wanted Farms to be more or less valuable for the round in which I wanted to offload my real estate investments.
There’s a fascinating pivot point in Last Will. The best way to lose money is via real estate, either by letting it depreciate round after round, or just by paying the obscene upkeep. But the houses that drain the most of your money also retain their value, and when you run out of cash, but still have a house, you can find yourself in a weird pinch. You don’t have the money to do anything, but you’re still a ways away from being bankrupt, and selling that house may mean dismantling your cash reduction engine, giving players who haven’t invested in real estate a chance to catch up.
Last Will‘s action selection mechanism looks fairly simple, considering the games that Vladimir Suchy has designed, but it’s finely tuned and considered. Every space on the row is a trade-off in some way. It’s finely balanced and a tight decision at the start of each round. Suchy is flexing his design muscle here and it shows.
I struggle to find criticisms for Last Will. The production is modest, I suppose. There’s no fancy components or action selection wheels with cubes falling through holes like in Shipyardor Praga Caput Regni, but those things aren’t needed here. The charm of Last Will is in the premise, the tight action economy and the inversion of everything I’ve been taught to expect from a Euro game over the last 10 years. It’s funny, clever, and surprisingly thinky, and just a joy to play. For me, it’s an easy recommendation.
I suppose I should state my experience with the extended Dorfromantik universe upfront. I’ve played the video game for about 2 hours, but I have not played the first board game. Dorfromantik: The Duel is the two player competitive follow-up to the 2023 Spiel des Jahres winning board game. Designed by Michael Palm and Lukas Zach with art by Paul Riebe, and published by Pegasus Spiele in 2023, this version of the game was perhaps the game that most people were expecting when sitting down to play Dorfromantik.
You see, in the original game, players cooperatively build a single landscape, discussing tile placements to try and earn the most points while satisfying various tasks spread out across the land. In Dorfromantik: The Duel, each player is building their own landscape, and competing against the other one to earn the most points.
The game starts with one player laying all of their landscape and task tiles face up on the table where both players can see them. The other player shuffles their tiles, and is the drawer. Before every tile is drawn, players need to assess how many tasks they both have on the go. If either landscape has less than 3 tasks, then a task tile must be drawn. The drawer draws a tile, and the other player needs to find the matching tile, then both players build out their landscapes. The task tiles also have the drawing player revealing a random task number, which the players need to match a certain number of terrain tiles together to complete the task.
The tiles can contain plain pastures, yellow fields, green forests, and townships. Matching the terrain types is not necessary for general placement, but the tasks do require a certain number of each terrain type to be adjacent. Some tiles also contain flags, which will earn you 1 point per tile of the matching terrain, assuming you manage to close it off before the end of the game. There are also river and train tracks, which cannot just end against a terrain type, but can be placed in such a way that you could have multiple train or streams dotting your landscape.
Players continue flipping tiles in Dorfromantik: The Duel, until the landscape tiles run out. The score is the sum of the tasks you completed, plus the length of your longest train and river, and the points each of your flags earns you. The player who has the most points at the end of the game is crowned the winner.
I’m starting to really rebel against the trend of “cozy games”. These are games that endeavour to make you feel cozy and unchallenged throughout the play time. There is absolutely no grit in Dorfromantik: The Duel, nothing to really make you care about the landscape you’re building. The tasks are there, but they’re easy to complete. Without restrictions on non-matching landscapes, a la CarcassonneorIsle of Skye, every tile placement feels pretty arbitrary.
My biggest gripe with the game has to do with how much of a table hog it is. With one player displaying their 80 tiles, it takes up half my table. Then both players need to slowly build up their landscape, each one sprawling in each direction, eventually either running off the table, or into the other player’s village (and sometimes both).
Another annoyance I had come up, was trying to find the tile that the drawer had picked. It’s annoying enough that I’m sifting through my tiles, trying to find the one tile that has two field spots and one forest spot amongst all the tiles that have fields and forests, but it’s another that the villages have different coloured roofs between the two players, making it surprisingly tricky to always find the matching tile. I realize that last part is a minor thing to complain about, but it still made me feel frustrated. I personally believe the tiles should be numbered, like in Karuba, that would at the very least assist the non-drawing player in finding their tile quickly.
Those gripes aside, Dorfromantik: The Duel is undeniably pleasant. The art is charming, the turns are breezy, and there’s never a sense of pressure. You won’t agonize over a tile placement, and for some players, that’s exactly the appeal. It’s a game that asks very little of you, other than to sit back, relax, and build a countryside for half an hour.
But for me, that’s where it falls flat. I want games that push me, that reward clever planning and punish sloppy mistakes. I want tension in my decisions, a sense that the landscape I’m building matters. Dorfromantik: The Duel offers almost none of that. It’s easygoing to the point of being forgettable. It’s a cozy diversion rather than a compelling contest. And while I can see its value as a low-stakes, charming board game, I’ll be looking elsewhere when I want a duel worth remembering.
This review is based on the Board Game Arena implementation.
If I had a nickel for every time a board game about making board games came out, I’d have 2 nickels. Which isn’t a lot, but it’s odd that it happened twice in such a short time frame. The first to hit crowdfunding was Tabletop Incin March of 2024. That game was originally called Meeple Inc, but had to change their name after receiving a cease and desist letter from Hans Im Gluck claiming they own the rights to the term Meeple. I’m not sure how that case ever really shook out, but it felt like a pretty ridiculous claim to make.
But this post is about The Game Makers. Unlike Tabletop Inc, The Game Makers reached out to hundreds of board game publishers and secured the rights to use their games assets in their own game about making games. The theme here is that you are a board game publisher, and you spend your actions sending forklifts all over your warehouse collecting the resources needed to make these games. Wood, plastics, cardboard, dice, you name it. But what makes The Game Makers feel magical for the hobbyist board gamer is that every card is a real life game. Almost certainly your favourite game is included (although a healthy amount are being locked behind a Kickstarter Exclusive paywall), and the love you feel for your favourite game is certainly going to give you good vibes towards this one, as well.
There is no denying there’s a thrill when you flip over a card and recognize the box art. Perhaps for even just a moment you’ll be transported to some of your favourite gaming moments, playing that game with your loved ones 10 years ago. Maybe you’ll see games you haven’t thought of in years, the games that brought you into the hobby! The Game Makers is billing itself as a celebration of the industry itself. A homage stitched together from hundreds of real, licensed games whose box covers show up on the cards you draw and manufacture.
And that effort, the hundreds of contracts that publisher Bezier games had to draft and get signed, is the magic that sets The Game Makers apart from any other mid-weight economic Euro game. You’re not just collecting cubes of different colours to complete recipes. You’re not sifting through abstract icons and terms, you’re cataloguing and building your own collection, offering flashes of nostalgia at every turn.
The game mechanics itself, designed by Ben Rosset, who also designed Fromage and Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig, features a massive rondel, ringed with resources and opportunities. Your workers are miniature forklifts that you’ll shuttle around the wheel. Wherever you choose to land them, they’ll scoop up resources: wood, cardboard, plastic, dice, or cards. Every resource pulls double duty, they’re all used to build the cards that will ultimately earn you points to win the game, but they can all also be used to improve your factory, or increase your marketing. The cards can be either the game you’re trying to build, or a resource to pay to build a different game.
This is where The Game Makers shines. Every turn brings a little agony. Do I try to complete this beloved game and put it on my shelf, or break it down for parts to chase something else? You need to make that choice for every resource, each time you take something, you’re pulled in two directions.
Not only do you have to decide how to use each of the resources, but each resource has 3 levels to it. Obtaining the higher level resources requires you to send your forklifts further around the rondel, meaning it’ll take more turns until you get to use that worker again. It’s a great puzzle that kept me engaged for the entire play.
All that said, some decisions beg to be questioned. The production looks enormous, plastic forklifts, oversized plastic rondel, piles of manufactured wood and plastic bits, the Kickstarter itself boasts “over 700 premium components”, and the irony is hard to ignore when the game itself includes a “Go Green” scoring path of planting trees to make your factory more environmentally conscious. It sure looks spectacular in the advertising photos, but it also feels like a game that could have done more with less.
And commenting on the epic scale of the production swings me around to the price. I don’t usually comment on the cost of a game unless it’s particularly noteworthy. A copy of The Game Makers will set you back $208CAD ($150USD). The complete edition costs an eye watering $277CAD ($199USD). I know I won’t pony up that kind of cash for any game, no matter how charming the theme may be.
I guess the theme brings up another question. The diary of its creation reveals a story of passion: hundreds of publishers collaborating, big and small, to make this tribute to the hobby possible. But at the table, it doesn’t always feel like a love letter to board gaming. Instead, it comes across more of a love letter to board game manufacturing. The model of a game as “components in a box plus a shelf-scoring bonus” is satisfying when you can get synergies, and I can’t think of a better way to incorporate all these different games, but it reduces all of these games to abstractions of their raw components. If you think of Carcassonne as Sunday afternoons with family, reducing it to “level 3 tiles and level 2 wooden bits” feels flat. The abstraction works mechanically, but emotionally, it doesn’t land.
As a simulation as a board game producer, it’s quite flat. There’s no currency, so all the resources are free, You don’t need to grapple with the questions of how many of each game to print, or faff about with distribution, find prototypes, liaise with designers, respond to community feed back, nothing. I’m not saying that I need an event that says “you massively underestimated how many copies of Wingspanyou’ll need, now the public is accusing you of artificially keeping supply low to drive hype and demand”, but considering this is called “a love letter to board games”, it is a bit disappointing that no other aspect of the board gaming hobby is represented here.
Gameplay-wise, Ben Rosset pedigree has already proven himself to be a competent designer, and The Game Makers is another star on his hat. Deceptively simple turns, resource gathering that makes you struggle with your decisions, and simultaneous play that keeps the flow moving, it all works really well. The Game Makers is approachable, despite its table presence, it’s a pretty great design! But I do suspect that the core gameplay loop will feel repetitive after the initial wonder seeing your favourite games on the cards wears off.
And for me, that was the main draw of The Game Makers. The first thrill of drawing a card and seeing your favourite games. I’ll confess that in my plays I’ve been swayed more by wanting to build my favourite games, than by building the games that would score me the post points. The Game Makers is a great design, it’s clever and playful. But with that price tag, it’s obvious it’s not for me.
The more I played The Game Makers, the more I felt the theme was less a love-letter, and more a self indulgent testament to unchecked consumerism. This is a game for that board game fan who has hundreds of games, dozens of which are still in their shrinkwrap and are unplayed. For that enthusiast who goes to board game conventions and buys the 30 hottest games, because they can’t stomach the FOMO of waiting a few months for wider distribution. It’s a game for those who are willing to drop $300 on a Kickstarter, even while they have 8 projects outstanding. And that’s not the kind of board gamer that I am.
I do think The Game Makers will be an exciting toy for hobbyists who want to see their shelves reflected back at them in cardboard form. I can’t deny that every card flip is a dopamine hit, nor will I deny that the core gameplay loop is pretty solid. Just don’t expect The Game Makers to be truly representative of the hobby that you’ve put so much time and money into, nor does it tell the personal story of why these games matter. I do enjoy the game, I’ll happily play it again, and will probably rope my friends into playing it on BGA in the future. But I cannot in good conscience recommend anyone pony up that much cash for any board game, let alone this one.
My only experience with Richard Osman comes from watching him compete in Taskmaster Season 2, where I thought he was quite funny. So when my wife pulled The Thursday Murder Club out of a Little Free Library in our neighbourhood, I was intrigued to see just what the tall funny man wanted to write about.
The Thursday Murder Club takes place at a retirement facility named Coopers Chase, and consists of 4 retirees who meet every Thursday to review cold cases to see if they can solve murders by noticing details that the police of the day overlooked. Much of the story is told from Joyce’s diary, as she is the newest member of the Thursday Murder Club, now that Penny (who was a former police detective) has had to quit due to dementia.
What follows is a story about a new development being planned at Coopers Chase (the retirement community), and the sudden murder of the lead builder (Tony), and shortly after, the landowner (Ian). The Thursday Murder Club is excited at the idea of a fresh case that just landed in their laps, and take it upon themselves to solve the crime before the police do.
The characters in The Thursday Murder Club are delightful. From the mysterious Elizabeth, who seems to have been everywhere and still holds a valid tank operator’s license, to surly and argumentative Ron, to tech-savvy and meticulous Ibrahim. Each character has lived a long life, and they use their experiences and connections to uncover mysteries. That said, there are a LOT of characters. Outside of the 4 main characters, there’s another 70 characters to juggle in your brain as they all pop in and out of the story.
The Thursday Murder Club is a stellar book from first time author Richard Osman. It should come as no surprise that he can write well, considering he’s been writing and entertaining on TV for decades. But still, I wasn’t quite ready for just how much I enjoyed this book.
At least part of my enjoyment comes from the protagonists being septuagenarians. They’re immediately disarming and overlooked, which kind of makes them the best people to manipulate the cops and follow-up leads with potential murderers. There are a couple of twists in the book, right from the start, as Tony is planning to kill Ian after Ian cuts him out of a deal, but then gets wacked off instead. Then a couple of days later, Ian is murdered regardless, snuffing the prime suspect in the Tony murder case. And in between all this, a 3rd body is discovered. These murders all seem obviously related, but watching each thread unravel is a delightful journey.
A criticism, I do have, is the idea of a few of the older characters so quickly committing suicide after a brief conversation with the authorities. Sure, they could have been living with their guilt for decades, but it felt a little icky when multiple characters had their past sins revealed, only for them to immediately off themselves, even if only to alleviate them from suspicion of the main murders.
I do think I would characterize The Thursday Murder Club as a comedy book with a mystery, rather than a mystery book with humour. It may seem like an odd distinction, but armchair Sherlocks will probably find themselves at least a little disappointed by the conclusion. The Thursday Murder Club is not for diehards of the murder mystery genre or for the true crime aficionados, but instead more for fans of Only Murders in the Building, and those who want a delightfully dramatic journey with some quirky old people.
Oh, it’s also very English. A bunch of old English people prattling on, using their specific slang and terms, such as using stones as measurement for a person’s weight. Personally, I found it charming, but I can see others taking umbrage with the distinctly English voice.
While the mystery itself didn’t fully grip me, the characters absolutely did. I fell in love with each of them, and I’m already itching to dive into book two. If you’re looking for a cozy, character-driven whodunit with heart and humour, this one is worth the read.
