Disclaimer: A copy of Perch was provided by Inside Up Games for review
Hey, do you want to play that bird game? No, not Wingspan, the other one! The area control game! No, not Root, the one with just birds!
Right off the bat, the cover art of Perch sets a tone. At first glance, it looks like it will be a peaceful game. A twilight scene featuring a menagerie of birds milling about on branches amongst the green shrubs. But looking closer, you’ll notice that all these birds have angry eyebrows. There are more birds than branches, and control of those branches is the only thing that really matters to them. They’re willing to claw and peck their way to control here.
Perch is an area control game for 2 to 5 players, designed by Douglas Hettrick, with art by Ari Oliver, and published by Inside Up games in 2025. Perch casts players as a colour of bird and tasks them with earning the most points possible over 5 rounds. Each round players will take two birds of their colour, and pull two more birds out from a bag as their options for the round. Then, turn by turn, players will place one of the birds they control onto the various tiles on the table. Once everyone is done placing their birds, each tile is evaluated for majority. Whoever has the most birds on a tile will earn the top billing of points, but there’s a small catch. Players who have tied amounts of birds will cancel each other out, denying each other from scoring any points at all.
In addition to placing your birds, if you happen to have control of an animal, you can activate an animal you control once per round. The timing of animal activation can be critical, as a late activation gives players precious little time to react to your moves. But you can only do one free action per turn, meaning if you control multiple animals you’ll need to figure out which one you want to use and when. The animal element adds layers to the territory control aspect, as most of them will allow you to move, remove, or even swap anyone’s birds between tiles, something that is impossible to do without the aid of an animal companion. That being said, the animals themselves aren’t worth very many points, so you need to ensure you use their powers effectively if you want to claim dominance.
That’s the core of Perch, slowly spreading out your flock to capture points and manipulate the table state to deny your opponents points. Beyond points, most of the tiles in the game also offer some benefit or twist. Some will give you control of an animal, which you can use as a free action in the next round to cause just a little bit of chaos by moving some birds, while other tiles will allow you to put extra birds into the migration bag, or will modify the first player position. Things of that nature.
There’s a lot of variability in the tiles themselves, with 24 tiles included in the game and only 8 to 13 being used per game (depending on player count), each game of Perch will feel different. Whether it’s because of the specific mix of animals available, or even just the fact that having specific tiles next to each other may influence some of the decisions you make on a game to game basis (like how the animals move). Further influencing your decisions is a secret end of game objective card that may tip the scales one way or another when you’re placing your birds.
On the subject of player count, I was initially dismayed when I saw the two player mode of the game included a neutral third player, which the rulebook deems a “Bird-brained player”. What this actually amounts to is a third colour going into the bag, which may work its way into both players hands, to be used by both to deny each other the sweet, sweet majorites.
Perch is not a strategic game, not really. So much of Perch is reacting to what the other players have done, because the other players presence in each of the tiles is so wildly important. Each round you’re only guaranteed two of your own birds to place, but just because draw other players birds out of the bag, doesn’t mean you have less control. Absolutely not, as I said before, the real dynamism of Perch’s system is the fact that ties are so punishingly cruel. If two players are just one bird off from each other on a juicy 6 point tile, you could be holding the difference between their victory and defeat. Sometimes, you plopping an extra bird onto your opponents stack gives them a majority on a tile where being 2nd is the most points, or perhaps you bump them up into a tied position, denying two opponents points.
Perhaps it should go without saying, that they could be holding your fate in their hands, also. While I do think it’s generally more advantageous to have more birds out on the field, a clever player will be able to gerrymander their way to victory. While I enjoyed the freedom of having control over other players birds and using their own tokens against them, or having the ability to use my birdhouse on my opponents to lock down one of their sacks, I couldn’t help but feel frustrated when I pulled two of my opponents birds, and my opponent pulled two of their own birds too. 6 of their birds to 2 of mine in one rounds felt like a violent swing. That’s only really present in the 2 player game though, at higher player counts there’s usually the same number of birds going into the bag than are coming out.
The system of tied players cancelling each other out reminds me a lot of Las Vegas by Rüdiger Dorn. But what Perch lacks in comparison to Las Vegas is the levity introduced by the push-your-luck randomness of rolling a fistful of dice. Perch instead revels in its deterministic cruelty. There is no randomness in Perch, everything you can do right in the open. This means there won’t be any surprise backstab moments. You’ll watch as your opponents push their knife into your plans, and you’re powerless to stop it.
The first two rounds in Perch feel inconsequential. You’ll plop out the 4 birds that have been allocated to you, not really being able to control or effect the game state too drastically. But by the time the 3rd round hits, suddenly everything is contested. Strongholds have been established, and dramatic upsets are starting to take place. The animals have been deployed, shaking up the stability of the flock. Every tile at the end of the game balances on a knifes edge, as you have many options to affect everything, but so do your opponents. It’s deterministic, making it hard to really surprise people. Instead, it’s more of a game of forking your opponents. Putting everyone into a disadvantageous position, no matter what they choose. It’s gratifying watching someone give up one battlefield to concentrate their energies somewhere else.
I think my favourite rule in Perch is that the player with the least amount of points each round is the last player in the next round. In curling terms, this is called ‘having the hammer’. The last player to make a move means no one will be able to undercut or thwart their plans. This is a pleasant bit of power that allows the player in last place catch up, even if just a little bit. But if someone had a commanding lead over the highest scoring tile, it can be nearly impossible to catch them, considering you’re only guaranteed 2 of your own birds each round. But when you do manage to orchestrate an upset, oh boy is it ever satisfying.
If you’re already a fan of area majority games like El Grande, there’s a lot to love in Perch. It offers new twists and some exciting variability to the gameplay. I appreciate that it only takes 10 minutes to teach, and plays about an hour. Also, the production is pretty great too. The insert has a removable well for the birds to live in, the birds themselves stack so you can easily see who is winning on each tile, and the non-bird animals are acrylic standees, each one featuring their own lovely artwork.
Perch is a game of sharp elbows hidden by soft feathers. It’s artwork and presentation creates a deceptively calm table presence, but its gameplay reveals constant, low-grade tension as every placement threatens every other player at the table. It thrives not on long-term planning, but on reading the table, seizing small opportunities, and knowing exactly when to ruin someone else’s perfect setup. It won’t scratch the itch for players looking for deep strategic arcs or satisfy players who delight in executing carefully laid plans, but for those who enjoy reactive, tactical games, Perch is a compelling game. By the end, the branches are crowded, the margins are razor-thin, and every point feels contested and well-earned.
That’s probably how the seagulls feel when they steal my french fries, now that I think about it.
The expansion to Perch, Perch: Birds of Play is on Kickstarter now
Disclaimer – A copy of 3 Witches was provided by the designer
One of the things I love about trick-taking games is how effortlessly they get to the table. You generally get a deck of cards and deal most if not all the cards out. The teach is usually something along the lines of “It’s a trick-taking game, but here’s the twist…” and you’re off. The bones of trick-taking games are familiar: follow suit, win tricks, claim victory. Sure, each game brings its own little wrinkles that make each one unique and interesting, but the foundations of the games are usually comforting and intuitive.
3 Witches is not that game.
Or rather, it eventually is. But before you can enjoy the clever little mind games, you need to wrap your head around a teach that feels less like “here’s the twist” and more like “Let me read to you this complex spell from a potion making textbook”
To begin a round of 3 Witches, shuffle the 18-card deck and deal all the cards evenly to three players. Everyone checks their hand and whomever is holding the Elixir card declares that fact. That player doesn’t automatically control the round, though. In fact, they’re now the last player to bid.
Starting with the player to the left of the Elixir holder, they have the option to bid or pass. When it comes to bidding, a player can bid to win either 3 or 4 tricks. If they bid 3 tricks, the subsequent players have an opportunity to bid 4 and take control of the lead position, or pass. Any player who bids 4 tricks automatically ends the bidding round.
Whoever wins the bid becomes the Lead Witch for the round. The other two players form a temporary alliance as the Lesser Witches. The Lead Witch places the bid card in front of them to signify their role. And then the wyrdness begins.
Each trick in 3 Witches is played in a very particular order:
The Lead Witch plays two cards:
One face up (this establishes the lead suit)
One face down (kept secret for now)
The first Lesser Witch must follow suit if able.
If they cannot follow suit, they pass for the moment.
The second Lesser Witch plays a card (following suit if possible).
If the first Lesser Witch had to pass earlier, they now play a card.
The Lead Witch reveals their face-down card.
Now the trick is resolved, but not quite in the usual way. Winning the trick isn’t simply about playing the highest card of the lead suit. 3 Witches uses a small value formula involving the combination of cards played. For example, if two cards of the same suit are involved, they combine their values. The same happens if the two cards played are the same value. If the two cards played are different suits and different numbers, then only the highest value of those cards counts toward determining the winner. Compare the final values, and whoever is higher wins the trick. Also the Lead Witch always wins ties.
It’s clever. It’s quite unintuitive. And the first time you play, everyone will be absolutely glued to their player aids.
After a trick is resolved, the winner gets a bit of control over the tempo of the round.
If the Lesser Witches win the trick, they return one of the Lead Witch’s cards to the Lead Witch’s hand.
If the Lead Witch wins, they secretly choose one of the two cards they played and return it to their hand face down.
That’s right, the Lead Witches cards cycle back. This mechanism gives 3 Witches its delicious tension. Every trick is not only about winning or losing; it’s about which card you want to reclaim and how that will influence the remaining tricks.
Each round lasts for exactly five tricks, then scoring happens. If the Lead Witch makes their bid exactly (the three or four tricks they called, absolutely no more and no less), then they score 2 points. If the Lead Witch misses their bid, each of the lesser witches score 1 point each.
Then, shuffle, redeal, and start the bidding phase again. The game continues until one player hits 5 points, at which point the coven crowns its leader.
3 Witches is a game of temporary alliances and working together to control the narrative. Because each round is only 5 tricks, and the Lead Witch needs to win 3 or 4 of those tricks, the lesser witches need to work together to force the Lead Witch into losing, or, winning too hard.
I know some people find the phrase “knife fight in a phone booth” to be a cliché and overused way to describe close quarters conflict. So instead, I’ll say that 3 Witches is a fistfight in an elevator. At 18 cards, it’s much easier to count cards and deduce information based on what the other two players have already played. More than once during my plays I was able to path out exactly how I could win a round as a Lead Witch, if, and only if, two specific cards were in the same hand.
There’s a ton of smart design in 3 Witches. From the minute 18 card deck that really encourages players to count cards, to having 5 suits with 3 to 4 cards each, to the player with the elixir being the last one to bid, so much of the game design and rules shows that there has been a lot of thought put into every aspect of this small card game. Everything is so finite, so considered, it’s really an impressive showcase of design work by Corey Young.
Contributing to that “wrestling match in a broom closet” feeling is the fact that each round is only five tricks long. The moment the first trick hits the table and cards start revealing themselves, you can feel the decision space tighten. Your options constrict. Unsettling certainty creeps in. As the Lead Witch, you might struggle to lose even a single trick. At the start of a round you might feel chuffed holding two 5s, but the moment you accidentally scoop a trick you were trying to duck, the panic sets in. Suddenly you’re not trying to win, you’re trying to win precisely.
And that’s where 3 Witches feels most exciting.
The 18-card deck means information moves fast. With so few cards in circulation, you can count, deduce, and sometimes even map out the exact path to victory. More than once I’ve sat there as the Lead Witch thinking, This works… but only if those two specific cards are in the same hand. It becomes much less about hoping and more about calculating.
There’s a ton of smart design packed into this tiny box. Five suits with only three or four cards each. The Elixir holder bidding last. The cycling card mechanism that prevents clean attrition. Everything feels deliberate. Considered. Tight. It’s an impressive showcase of design work by Corey Young. The production by AllPlay is svelte too. A tiny box of cards and 12 cardboard chits makes 3 Witches a game that feels far bigger than its footprint.
I also love how dynamic the table politics feel. The Lead Witch changes every round, which keeps the semi-cooperative tension fresh. Winning as a Lesser Witch feels easier, but in doing so you’re handing a point to a rival. Taking the Lead Witch role is thrilling because you can leap ahead with two points. But if you fail, both of your opponents inch closer to their victory. Every bid feels loaded. Every trick feels consequential.
I really appreciate 3 Witches. I love how sharp it feels, how finite and intentional every decision is. It’s not an effortless teach, and I suspect that the strict three-player count will keep it from ever becoming a universal classic. But in the right setting, with those who enjoy kickboxing in a cardboard box, that is to say, counting cards, weaving in and out of tight margins, and that delicious feeling of trying to thread a needle under pressure, 3 Witches absolutely sings.
In the fall of 2019, my wife and I started climbing at our local gym. We fell in love immediately. It was a cathartic challenge—physical, yes, but also deeply mental. There’s something uniquely satisfying about staring at a wall of coloured holds, mapping out a route, failing, adjusting, and finally sticking that move that felt impossible ten minutes earlier. And because I am obsessed with maximizing my value of something, we both bought our own harnesses and shoes, paid into the monthly membership plan and started going three times a week. For months!
Then, spring of 2020 happened. The gym shut down. We moved, had a baby. The membership lapsed. We’ve never made it back, even though it’s one of those activities we both agree we genuinely loved. Fast-forward to January 2026. My five-year-old daughter has just started bouldering. We sign her up for a climbing class, and suddenly I’m spending three days a week back in that chalk-dusted environment, watching people try a problem over and over again. And just like that, the itch is back. I miss that carnal feeling of accomplishment, that feeling of strength of pushing my body past previous limits.
So imagine my surprise when I boot up my Steam Deck and saw that someone in my Steam Family has purchased Cairn. I’d heard nothing about it, but I saw it had strong reviews (I’m pretty good at dodging video game media).
A climbing game? Sure. Why not. What have I got to lose?
Cairn casts you as expert mountaineer Aava attempting to summit Mount Kami, the most dangerous mountain in the world. If you take the time to explore the posters in the tutorial area, you’ll learn that around 30 people attempt the climb each year. Few ever return. None have ever reached the summit.
Past the tutorial area, the game begins simply. You’re on the mountain, starting your ascent. Better get climbing.
The climbing system initially defaults to an automatic limb-selection mechanic. You move hands and feet individually with the left thumb stick. Up, sideways, diagonally, everywhere you’d think your limbs can go. While the game automatically suggests which limb should move next, it’s tactile, deliberate, and slow. You don’t just “hold forward to climb.” You’re supposed to think through every placement. Just planting your foot against a smooth rock and counting on your smear to hold is going to result in a bad time.
Also, Aava is absurdly flexible. At one point I had her hooking a foot somewhere near her own ear to gain leverage. As I often tell my daughter, video games are not real.
But this system is also where my first major frustration surfaced. Sometimes the “obvious” move like adjusting the bottom-left foot as I’m moving to the left, wasn’t the move the game wanted. Instead, it would shift the bottom-right foot, which then I couldn’t even see behind Aava’s back. Suddenly her leg is dragging across her body, toes reaching where her hands should be, and she’s clinging to the wall by fingertips, and I’m scrambling to fix a problem I didn’t mean to create.
More than one fall happened that way.
On most difficulty levels, you can place pitons into the rock to act as checkpoints. If you fall, you’re hauled back up to your last placed piton. They’re limited, though. If you misuse them or fall too often, you’ll need to collect scraps to forge new ones. and Falling in Cairn stings. Not just because you failed, but because of the time and resources that arelost.
Cairn is a slow game. A tricky problem can take 5–10 minutes to work through. Sometimes 20. One time, 25. And inevitably, you’ll be right at the end of a brutal stretch, one final foothold between you and a cave or hidden discovery… and then Aava’s foot slips. You scramble. You panic. You fall.
Aava’s voice actress has a couple of great screams and curses that I feel in my soul when this happens. If you haven’t placed a piton recently, then you’re falling the way down until your rag-doll body stops rolling. If you’re lucky, you’ll just die and restart from the last save. Otherwise, you now need to climb out of whatever crevice Aava’s body just fell into. And when you get back to solid ground and look up at that climb that you just failed at, you have to ask yourself if you really want to try it again. Spend another 20 minutes scampering up that wall and face the risk of falling again. And when you’re low on food, low on water, freezing, and exhausted, that lost time also means lost resources.
I don’t think Cairn intentionally wastes your time, not like other games that make you backtrack unnecessarily or have runs ruined by randomness. Cairn demands time through the slow, methodical, and purposeful gameplay. It’s the kind of game that every step is slow, but you’re always progressing. You focus on only the next hand or foot hold, and after a few minutes, you’ll pan your camera around and be a little breathless at how far you’ve gone.
That being said, when you finally conquer that tricky section? When you stick the move that previously sent you plummeting? It’s absolutely euphoric. The dopamine rush is so real. It mirrors real-world climbing in a way I did not expect from a video game.
Cairn isn’t just a game about limb placement. It’s also about survival. You’ll need to manage your hunger, thirst, warmth, and stamina. You’ll need to shake your pack to cram as many supplies as possible in, as you scavenge abandoned backpacks, derelict cable cars, and broken vending machines. The real treat is when you come cross a delicious egg in a nest during a climb. The survival mechanics and lack of a firm restocking point creates a tension that triggers my hoarding psychology.
I have “Final Fantasy Elixir Syndrome.” I never use the rare, powerful items because what if I need them later? So I end most games with a stack of elixirs and a pile of regret. Cairn pokes that exact nerve. You don’t want to use your good food. What if there’s something worse ahead? What if there’s no food beyond this point? But if you don’t use your best foods and benefit from the stat boosts they give you, you might fail the next section
And that brings me back to the fall. If you fall and have to climb again, all that food and water you consumed is just… gone. You’re no further up the mountain than when you started, but you have less resources to get you to the next checkpoint.
It’s brutal. It’s effective. It feels bad. But that bad feeling is clearly intentional design.
The HUD (heads up display) is wonderfully immersive. Your survival meters fade away unless they demand attention. Most of the time, it’s just you and the mountain. As you climb higher, you’ll discover remnants of those who came before you. Abandoned infrastructure, old campsites, backpacks from climbers who never returned, and most interestingly, artifacts and stories from the troglodytes, a group of people who once lived on Mount Kami.
Your only consistent companion is a small robot called a Climbot, a boxy robot on four spider-esque legs that skitter along the rocks, carrying your ropes and retrieving your pitons. Occasionally, Climbot will receive voicemail messages from her manager gently asking how her progress is going, or her partnerchecking in, seeing if she’s okay on her death hike. Aava’s responses to those messages can vary from indifferent to abrasive or dismissive. She resents the distraction. How dare they interrupt her focus while she attempts something this monumental?
Early on, you meet Marco, another mountaineer. He climbs for the love of climbing. He doesn’t believe he’ll reach the summit, but he’s just here for the good times. Aava tears into Marco for that mindset. Calls him defeated. Weak. It’s one of the first times she really speaks, and it’s not flattering. Aava does soften slightly over time, but so much of her characterization left a sour taste in my mouth. I understand she’s undertaking something life-threatening. I understand obsession. But her abrasiveness made it hard for me to enjoy her company.
Near the summit, you encounter another climber who has lived on the mountain for twelve years. He’s too close to the summit to turn back, but he’s unable to reach the top. He shows you dozens upon dozens of backpacks from those who tried and failed. a graveyard. Here, Marco decides he’s done. He’s going back down. Then the game asks you to choose. Do you descend with Marco? Or do you continue your ascent, despite every warning?
On my first play through, I went down. The reward for choosing that is a quiet montage of descent. Marco gives Aava a ride home in his van. The final scene shows her sitting on her bed, staring into space. Disappointed, but alive. Her partner calls out that friends are coming over. Marco is on his way.
This ending felt human. Bittersweet. Real.
On my second play through, I chose to go up. Shortly after that decision, An avalanche crashed on your head, and reduces your survival meters to a third of what they once were. You claw your way through the final ascent, which, surprisingly, isn’t dramatically harder than what came before. On the final wall, Climbot succumbs to the elements. For his mechanical failure, Aava beats it with her climbing picks, berating it for failing her. You can choose to drag it along anyway, or cut it loose. The choice here, doesn’t matter.
Then, Aava reaches her summit. She trudges through the snow cap, to the highest point of mount Kami. There is nowhere else to climb. She screams, a visceral, guttural howl. Then, she sits down in the snow, quiet. Finally, she reaches toward the stars, grabs them, and climbs into the sky.
Some players will find transcendence there. The culmination of obsession. The ultimate accomplishment. But for me, it felt unsatisfying. There is no joy in the accomplishment, no one to share your victory with. Just a tired woman sitting quietly on all she’s conquered. Maybe she dies there, and maybe she heads back down. The ending is poetically ambiguous, to me, it felt like descending with Marco was the good ending, and reaching the summit was the bad one.
Cairn will not win my Game of the Year.
But it was a cathartic, memorable experience, especially given where I am in life right now. It gave me an echo of the real-world climbing rush I’ve been missing since 2020.
The first ascent in Cairn is magical because of the discovery. Peaking your head into a cave to find an indestructible piton, or an angry bear gave me such rushes of excitement. Subsequent climbs lose some of that magic. Now, you know where the food is. You know the shortcuts. You know which caves you should explore, and which you can skip. The mystery fades.
Still, finishing Cairn felt like a real accomplishment.
I wouldn’t want every game to use this limb-by-limb climbing system. I cannot imagine playing Breath of the Wild or Assassin’s Creed, and having to individually manage my feet every time I try to scale a hill.
But for a game wholly committed to simulating mountaineering, Cairn does something special. It captured the frustration. It captured the obsession. It captured the fall.
But most importantly, It captured the feeling that climbing gives you. It reminded me why I got obsessed with it in the first place in 2019. And any game that manages to evoke strong feelings, is a special one indeed.
A copy of Maul Peak was provided by the publisher for review purposes.
The 2 player game field is a crowded one. From all the excellent Duel games (7 Wonders Duel, Splendor Duel, Dorfromantik: The Duel, and so many more) to the excellent 2 player games not based on multiplayer games (Lost Cities, boop, Santorini, Hive, Fox in the Forest, and so much more). And this isn’t even getting into multiplayer games that simply play excellently with only 2 players, it makes any 2 player only game have some stiff competition when vying for shelf and table space.
Maul Peak is the stand-alone sequel to Skulk Hollow, both designed by Eduardo Baraf and Keith Matejka. with art by Dustin Foust, Sebastian Koziner, and Helen Zhu, and published by Pencil First Games. In Maul Peak, one player takes on the role of the Grizzars, a tribe of bears with various abilities, while the other player takes on the role of a titan. A towering behemoth, emerging from its lair to lay waste to the land. Feeding into the asymmetry, Maul Peak features 4 different titans to play as, each one having their own abilities, victory conditions, and maps for the Grizzars to climb on. Not to mention an excellently sculpted giant wooden token, unique to each titan.
A druid and its spirit companion face off against Sabaso
The gameplay is simple. One player takes actions (usually by playing a card) until they’ve reached their action limit. They draw new cards and the other player does pretty much the same. Most of the actions each player can do is based on the cards they have in their hand. For the Grizzars, the cards will have you moving on the 3×3 map, leaping from the ground onto the monster (moving your meeple from the ground map onto the titan map), preforming melee attacks to damage the beast, and gaining rage tokens, which can be used in a myriad of ways, but perhaps most importantly, for summoning more Grizzars to the battlefield.
The titans, on the other hand, are much more varied. Saboso freezes characters, and can imprision them within his chest. The giant spider Veblyn lays webs, forcing the Grizzars to discard cards to escape her sticky traps. Quagra is a four-headed hydra who turns the Grizzars against themselves. Each of these titans have their own, unique decks of cards, and force the Grizzar player to adapt their strategy based on the monster they’re facing.
The goal for both players is to defeat the other, by either fully damaging every appendage of the titan, or wiping the map of all Grizzar tokens, although the titans do have an extra win condition, unique to the titan that you’re playing as. The variability is impressive, as the four titans all feel like different challenges to overcome, and you can and should swap sides to experience each titan from both sides of the conflict. If you happen to own Skulk Hollow too, then it’s exponentailly more variable, as the Grizzars can take on the titans from Skulk Hollow, and these beasts can challenge the Foxen too.
I personally found the rulebook a little hard to get through. There were these helpful little boxes all over the pages letting you know how Maul Peak differs from Skulk Hollow, which I imagine would have been incredibly useful, if I were at all familiar with that game. But i wasn’t so I kept on stumbling over the boxes and ended up with several rule questions as I sat down to my first game. There was enough ambiguity to cause confusion, which is a shame for a game as rules-light as this. I will say that once we got through that initial learning curve, the gameplay was pretty smooth. Take your actions, pass to the other player. They take their actions, play passes back to you.
Maul Peak is much more tactical than strategic. What you can do is heavily limited by the cards you have in your hand. There are moments where you have a window of opportunity to further your objective, but if you aren’t holding the right card, you might just be up the creek without a paddle. The titan player starts off intimidatingly powerful, but once a Grizzar starts putting a dent into some of its abilities, as once you fill a titan appendage with blue hearts, they can no longer use the associated ability, suddenly the titan’s deck is full of dead cards.
There are lots of moments in Maul Peak that feel like a war of attrition. Saboso deals one damage to the bears. The bears leap, leap, and do a melee action for one damage. Saboso wacks the bear off, dealing one more damage. The bears summon a new character with a full health bar, leap up and damage Saboso for 2, disabling its whack ability. Saboso mends the whack ability and then whacks the bear off, dealing one more damage. Again, it’s tactical, if you have the cards you need, you can slowly progress your goals, as can the other player. I rarely felt like there were a ton of choices to be had, though, as the optimal option was often very apparent. After a couple of rounds like the one above, the turn to turn gameplay can feel very repetitive.
It is exciting, as the game comes to a close, however. If you’re down to one bear token left, and the titan has a mere two hearts remaining. Who will draw the correct cards first? Did you make the right call to destroy the grey bear earlier in the game, or should you have smote the green one from the map instead? The decision you made 15 minutes ago has suddenly come back to bite you in the butt.
If he can’t whack me, I’m safe on his body!
Maul Peak is a good game, even if it doesn’t quite muscle its way to the front of an already crowded two-player shelf. Its production is excellent: the titan meeples are striking table presences, the artwork sells both menace and personality, and the Grizzars’ Brother Bear meets fantasy adventuring party vibe is oddly charming. The asymmetry is the real hook here, and the four titans do a lot of heavy lifting in keeping the experience fresh, especially if you’re willing to swap sides and see how differently each matchup plays out.
That said, Maul Peak is a fairly simple, highly tactical affair. Your options are often wholly dictated by the cards in your hand, and while the push and pull of attrition can be tense at times, it can also drift into repetition once you’ve seen the core loop a few times. Still, at around 45 minutes, it rarely overstays its welcome, and its straightforward rules makes it an approachable entry point into asymmetric conflict games. If you’re looking for a beautifully produced, head-to-head duel that emphasizes short term adaptation over long-term planning, Maul Peak is well worth the climb.
Every so often, a game comes along that defies expectation. Upon first encounter, you’ll think, “that’s it? What’s even the point?”. You’ll try to hide your skepticism, as some people call it genius. The Mind is one of those games. It’s a cooperative card game, but it feels more like a social experiment. It’s part telepathy, part tension, part collective panic attack. And somehow, it’s wonderful.
I remember hearing about The Mind after it’s first debut at Essen. All the reviewers and podcasts I listened to were raving about this game. I looked up the rules and thought I must have the wrong game. The rules could fit on a bar napkin. Everyone gets a few cards numbered 1–100, and you all need to play them in ascending order. The catch? No talking. No hints, no gestures, no eyebrow wiggles (at least not intentionally). You just… feel when it’s your turn. It sounds laughably thin. In the abstract, you’re silently sorting cards. It sure doesn’t sound engaging.
But then when you do engage with the game, some magic builds. After that first awkward round of silent hesitation, people start to tune in to each other. A rhythm emerges. The tension builds. Someone slowly reaches for their card, and everyone collectively holds their breath. The player moves slowly, thinking, “There’s an 18 on the table and I have a 38. Surely someone else has to have something in between?”. But when it’s right, the entire table exhales in relief. When it’s wrong by one number, the groans are primal.
We recently brought The Mind to my brother-in-law’s place for Christmas, where it became an instant hit. Within minutes, the quiet kitchen table was full of screams. Joy, frustration, triumph, defeat, all wrapped together. We’d cheer like we’d won the Stanley Cup if we managed a perfect round, and howl when we lost by just two cards one point apart. There was one holdout, however. My brother-in-law had wandered by, scoffed, and dismissed the idea out of hand. His wife tried to explain the rules, and he waved it off: “Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? Just think high and count backwards until you play your card.” “If it’s so easy, join in!” we challenged.
Two hands later, he was laughing harder than the rest of us. The Mind has that power, it turns skeptics into believers.
It’s also one of the funniest unintentional comedy games I’ve ever played. Once, we were playing with someone who was a little too stoned. Everyone sat in perfect concentration, waiting for their moment to strike. The inebriated person played their 30. A pause. Then, they played the 36. Another pause, eye contact. Then they played the 40. Then they looked at the last card in their hand and said, “Oh no. I have the 38 in my hand.” We completely fell apart laughing. It killed the round, but nobody cared, moments like that are the whole point of playing games.
For me, that’s why The Mind works where so many bigger games don’t. It’s not about the cards, or the rules, or proving your mental superiority. It’s about the people. It’s about reading micro-reactions, guessing intentions, and celebrating failure as much as success. Somehow, sorting a 100 card deck creates pure drama. You don’t play The Mind for strategy. You play it for the shared silence, the tension, and the explosion of laughter when someone ruins everything.
Not everyone will love it. We tried to introduce it to one player, and he just absolutely did not get it. Didn’t get the concept, didn’t get the rules, completely fumbled at the lack of structure. It turns out that some people will hate the vagueness or feel silly “concentrating” at the start of each round. That’s fine. The Mind only truly sings when everyone at the table buys in. But when it clicks, it’s magic.
