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.
A copy of Wyrmspan was provided by Stonemaier Games for review purposes.
Introduction
Wyrmspan is an odd game to describe. On the one hand, it’s clearly the spiritual sibling of Wingspan, the bird-collecting blockbuster that has brought countless people into our hobby. On the other hand, it trades the gentle avian charm for fire-breathing dragons and cavern excavation. I know I prefer dragons, but I’m not sure if my wife will agree.
I’ll admit, I was sitting on a bus at 7 in the morning shortly after my son was born when I first heard about Wyrmspan, and I let out an audible “pfft”. What I expected at that point was just a full art reskin of Wingspan, perhaps as a collectors item. What designer Connie Vogelmann has done, however, was create something that feels familiar enough to have the “-Span” name, yet is distinct enough to stand proudly on its own.
How to Play
At its core, Wyrmspan keeps the same rhythm as Wingspan. You collect and play dragons to your tableau, hopefully craft an engine, and watch as your combos grow more satisfying every round. But instead of happy little ecosystems, your tableau is a mountain cavern, and your first job is to excavate chambers and then entice dragons to come live in them.
On your turn, you’ll spend dragon coins (a new form of action economy) to do one of three main actions:
Excavate – carve out a new cave, opening up space for dragons and gaining a small bonus.
Entice – pay resources (meat, gold, milk, crystals) to bring a dragon into one of your caves.
Explore – send your pawn through one of your three caverns, triggering resources from your dragons and the spaces between them, effectively activating your engine.
Along the way, you’ll lay eggs, care for hatchlings, and advance on the Dragon Guild track for extra perks. Like in Wingspan, you’re aiming to balance resource management, end-of-round goals, and long-term scoring opportunities, but while the gameplay beats are all familiar, the finished product feels fresh.
Review
The production is everything you’d expect from a Stonemaier Games production. Thick cards, gorgeous speckled dragon eggs, and beautiful artwork that gives each dragon personality. I particularly appreciate that the dragon lore isn’t crammed onto 5 point text on the bottom of the cards themselves, but instead presented in a separate booklet, something that I spent a surprising amount of time flipping through between turns. It’s a nice nod to the theme, and if I can’t use an app to hear each birdsong in my tableau, this is probably the next best thing.
I really have to comment how Wyrmspan improves on some of Wingspan’s rough edges. In Wingspan, early turns could feel painfully slow as you scraped for food and cards, before really opening up in the second and third rounds. Here, the excavation system gives you immediate bonuses, and the Dragon Guild provides a trickle of resources to easily keep things moving. The action economy with dragon coins also gives players more direct control over how and when the round comes to an end. It feels less restrictive, less at the mercy of a bad food dice roll or stagnant card row. I also appreciate that you have a bit of control on when your round ends, in the form of the silver coins. Instead of a set number of rounds, you can choose to keep playing, although it gets crushingly expensive as you choose to do so. I enjoyed managing my silver, choosing to have a lean round so that my next one could be bombastic.
What hasn’t changed, is that like Wingspan, Wyrmspan is still largely multiplayer solitaire. You’ll compete for end-of-round goals, but the bulk of your attention will be mostly focused on nurturing your own cavern of dragons. Personally, I wish there was a bit more friction between players, but the payoff is that Wyrmspan remains friendly and approachable, even with these added layers of complexity.
And speaking of layers, I love the cavern exploration action. Getting bonuses from excavating caves, and bonuses from attracting dragons, turning those bonuses into playing cards, and then moving your pawn through chambers and triggering each dragon as you go is incredibly satisfying. In one game, I had a dragon that cached meat to gain a resource, the next dragon cached meat to gain crystals, and the next dragon paid a crystal to lay 2 eggs, who fed into another dragon who ate eggs for Dragon Guild points. Each dragon fed into each other wonderfully, and made running through that cavern exciting. Discovering those combos is what brings me back to a game time and time again.
Final Thoughts
Is Wyrmspan better than Wingspan? Not necessarily. Wingspan is simpler, cleaner, and more universally appealing. It’s still the game I’d pull out with new players, and it’s the one that has some expansions that improve on the base game quite a bit. Wyrmspan is the heavier sibling, offering more control and more opportunities to shape your engine in clever ways, but overall does require more commitment from its players.
For my collection, the two can happily coexist. My wife still prefers Wingspan for its comfort and accessibility, but I find myself much more drawn to the richer systems of Wyrmspan. And honestly, having dragons to look at instead of backyard sparrows doesn’t hurt.
If Wingspan invited us into the hobby with open wings, Wyrmspan pulls us deeper into the mountain, and rewards us with fire-breathing companions once we get there. I guess the only question remains, is how does Finspan compare?
Being from the northern Canadian prairies means I was culturally isolated for most of my youth. It didn’t even cross my mind that some people go their whole lives without seeing the northern lights (or, aurora borealis) on an almost nightly basis. That trees could stand taller than 12 feet tall, and had trunks with a diameter wider than both my hands put together. I also just assumed that everyone’s uncle had a Crokinole board in their basement, even if the rules for the game were hotly contested from house to house. Turns out, my lived experience is not universal, and not everyone has experienced the enduring excellence that is Crokinole.
How to Play
A Crokinole board is a large, waxed circle broken into 4 quadrants, with 3 circular scoring zones of decreasing size, but increasing point value, and a recessed centre pocket. Surrounding that smallest scoring circle are 8 pegs, that will become the bane of your existence.
Crokinole is played between two players, or four players in two teams. Each team has 12 discs of their colour, and alternate taking turns flicking their discs, putting them into play. If there are no opposing discs on the board, you must ‘play to centre’, which means your disc needs to be touching the line of, or within the smallest scoring zone when movement ceases. If there are opposing discs on the board, you must strike an opposing disc instead, either with the disc you’re flicking onto the board, or, by ricocheting off one of your discs remaining from a previous turn.
If your shot isn’t valid (either you failed to play to centre, or strike an opponent’s disc), then the disc you flicked into action this turn is removed, and if you happened to hit one of your own discs, that disc is removed as well. Once each team has shot their 12 discs, the scores are tallied. 5 points for each disc remaining in the largest circle, 10 for the next circle, 15 for the centre circle, and 20 points per disc that made its way into the recessed centre. The team with the higher total earns the difference as points. First to 100 wins.
On last rule that is just fun to stress. Once you sit in your chair, your chair cannot move and at least one “buttock” must be touching the chair at all times. That said, I play at such a beginner level, and not all of our tables are created equal, that this is a rule we often choose to omit.
Review
Nothing elicits strong emotions quite like sport. The team spirit, the joyous highs and crushing lows, the satisfaction of a game well played, and the tension of those critical plays that turn the tide, allowing you to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. It’s not something that shows up in my board game hobby very often, but I feel it in dexterity games.
There’s a running joke in my game group that we’re a bunch of guys whose hobby is to sit around a table with our heads in our hands for 2 hours in silence, then when the game ends, we look up, nod, and say “Oh I’ve won. Jolly good”. Many modern board games lack excitement, as games get more deterministic, the opportunities for true surprise get fewer and further between. There are dozens of great dexterity games available, from flicking wobbly penguins in Ice Cool to dexterously threading popsicle sticks over and under each other in Tokyo Highway, but Crokinole is the king of them all.
Normally I’d commend on the component quality of the game I’m reviewing, but the truth is that there are hundreds of ways to get a Crokinole board. The type of wood and finish will affect how the discs sail across the board. Some boards feature the classic wood grain, while others are painted to the 9’s, emblazoned with a favourite hockey team, or super hero logo. Searching the image archives on BGG will reveal as many different boards as there are personalities, and a custom Crokinole board is one of the few places where a board gamer gets to showcase their uniqueness, and because of it’s size, it’s not uncommon to see it mounted on the wall, where it becomes a family artifact or a work of art.
Crokinole is a simple pleasure, and the rule requiring that if your opponents have a disc anywhere on the board, you have to strike their disc forces interaction. This elevates the experience from just a pair of players shooting for the centre into a tit-for-tat battle. Discs that hit at an angle to hide behind a peg, the seemingly impossible shots that cause players to pump their fists when they hit it, or bemoan when they whiff a seemingly simple shot, there’s adrenaline in the air. When your opponents have 5 or 6 discs on the board, and you manage a shot that knocks out two discs AND lands in the 20 point pocket, you’re left with a moment that you’ll be talking about all night long.
Playing Crokinole is a delightful break for modern board gamers. There’s no randomness, no 40-page rulebook or hours spent punching cardboard tokens from their sprues, no sorting cards or explaining how to play. Crokinole is simply charming. You place the board on your table, divy up the pucks, and just start flicking. It’s so dead simple that anyone watching can intuit many of the rules. New players can find great fun in just firing off their pucks as hard as they can, but there’s also a high skill ceiling if players choose to invest the time in honing their skills. And yet the simplicity doesn’t mean the game is boring, quite the opposite. Every player can see what they should do on their turn, the only question that remains is if they can do it.
And answering that question, over and over again, is what makes Crokinole thrilling. It’s the simplicity of the task, the elegance of the challenge, and the visceral satisfaction of success that makes this game an enduring classic.
I generally don’t like bluffing games. They’re hard to start, as it usually requires everyone at the table to have such a firm grasp on the rules and potential outcomes, that I don’t think they’re worth overcoming that barrier to entry. Also, I just don’t like lying to people. Trying to keep a poker face, or convince someone else that I’m telling the truth or lying, just does not bring me joy. So let me tell you about Cockroach Poker.
Cockroach Poker is a deck of 64 cards. 8 different insects have 8 cards each. At the start of the game, the whole deck is dealt out to all players. Sometimes players won’t have the same number of cards in their hand, and that’s okay. Someone will argue that having an extra card gives that player a modicum more information, and therefore the games balance is totally thrown off, but I’m not that person.
In Cockroach Poker, the active player has to pick a card from their hand, put it face down on the table, and slide it to someone else. They make a declaration of which critter is on the other side, and the chosen player has to make a choice. They can either engage with the active player, can say that the active player is telling the truth, or lying about what card they presented. Once they’ve made their declaration, they reveal the card, and if the chosen player was correct, that card lives face up in front of the active player. If the chosen player was incorrect about the active players assertion, then the revealed card lives face up in front of the chosen player. The other thing the chosen player can do, is choose not to engage the active player, and instead look at the card. At this point, they become the active player, they then must put that card face down on the table, and slide it to someone else, and make an assertion about what critter is on that card. It can be the same assertion as the previous player, or it can be different.
Cockroach Poker ends when one player has 4 of the same critter face up in front of them. They are the closer of the game, and must buy the next round. At least, that’s what I tell my friends the consequence for losing is, no matter what context we’re playing this game in.
It can feel like players have no control over their fate in cockroach poker. When a card gets slid towards you, and your parter says “bat”. You either say true or false with no further information, and reveal your choice. Of course, there’s always the chance that there are already 5 bats on the table, and you happen to be holding 3 in your hand, in which case you can catch them in their bold faced lie, but that situation happens so rarely it’s almost not worth mentioning.
Players at the table can gang up on a specific player, sliding them every card, trying to dump all manner of critters onto their lap. It can feel unfair, and pointless. But Cockroach Poker excels at providing players genuinely exciting moments. The glee you have when you catch someone in a lie makes the whole table oooooh and ahhh. The tension builds like a pot of water coming to a boil. At first, nothing happens, but when two players have two of the same critter in their lap, and someone slides them a card that would give them a third, is it a gambit? If you look at it and slide it to the other unfortunate soul, someone is going to walk away with another face up card, potentially bringing them one step closer to utter ruin.
Or consider the audacity of someone with 3 face up spiders, and then sliding a card to someone, claiming it’s a spider. Did they just hand you the key to their own defeat? Would they be so bold? They’re usually so reserved and careful, it seems completely out of character for them to do something so daring. But maybe that’s what they want you to think. Clearly, you can’t choose the wine in front of you, and clearly you can’t choose the wine in front of them!
-ahem- Sorry. I slipped into Vizzini Mode for a second there.
Cockroach Poker excels at building tension, and when that tension snaps and someone is left holding the bag, it’s utter joy. Every game of Cockroach Poker I’ve played has ended with someone shouting with glee. It’s a raucous good time, a perfect pub game, and one that is especially good when you have a guilt-tripping aunty over for dinner. Highly recommend.
I’m never quite sure whether I prefer reviewing light games or heavy ones. Light games get to the table more often. They’re easier to teach, quicker to reset, and rarely leave your brain excited. But sometimes I wonder what is there to really say about them? Then I play something like Juicy Fruits, and I’m reminded that simplicity doesn’t always mean shallowness.
Juicy Fruits, designed by Christian Stöhr and published by Capstone Games in 2021 under their Family Game line, at first glance looks to be a simple, childish game, with its bright art, the fruity theme, and chunky wooden pieces. But what lies beneath the friendly exterior is a satisfying tactical puzzle that the whole family can enjoy.
Each player starts with their own little island grid, blocked in by boats and populated with five fruit-crate tiles. The core mechanic is basically a slide puzzle: move a crate in any direction a number of spaces equal to how far it slides, then collect that many fruits of that type. Use those fruits to either fulfill shipping contracts (by sending those pesky boats away) or build shop tiles that grant points, bonuses, or the ability to deliver ice cream for mega-points!
At first, you’ll feel accomplished when you manage to squeeze just 2 or 3 goods in a single turn. but as you send those pesky boats on their way, earning 4 or 5 goods every turn will seem trivial. What really makes Juicy Fruits feel satisfying is that every turn feels like you’re building towards something; that sense of incremental progress. You’ll send a boat away, giving up two of your bananas, and you’ll combine your extra banana on your next turn with the grapes you just picked up to send another boat away, all the while opening up your board to chain into your next tile slide to earn more fruit to earn more points. The action chain is what gives Juicy Fruits it’s bite.
As you spend resources to send boats away, your island gradually begins to open up. What started as a 3 x 3 grid now has some 4 or 5 square rows and columns, giving you the opportunity to make some real big slides. I tend to focus on sending those boats away as I like having an open playing field, but the big points lie in either delivering ice cream, or refilling your island board with large, point scoring attractions.
The only interaction between players comes in the form of a race. The first player to deliver ice cream or milkshakes will earn the most points. In one of my games, a player manged to deliver 5 of the most valuable ice cream in a single turn. It took him most of the game to set up for that turn, and that represented most of his points at the end of the game, but he managed to come in second overall. In some games, I’ve won by clearing out the island, while in other games that strategy leaves me in the dust as the other players rush building contracts and force the game to end early.
While it might look friendly, Juicy Fruits has a special kind of tension. It starts mellow and chill, turns fly by, but there’s an undercurrent of pressure that builds steadily. Players achieve more with every passing turn, and suddenly you can feel when the pace is about to snap. That moment when someone suddenly starts clearing boats or spamming shops and you realize: “Oh no. I’ve got, like, three turns left, and I have so much left to accomplish!”
The player scaling can feel a bit off. At two players, that race-to-the-end vibe is very palpable. More than once I’ve found myself able to rush the game’s conclusion with minimal resistance, and win, not because I was really the better player, but because I saw the machine my opponent was building, and decided to crash the game before their plans came to fruition.
And while I’m being honest, the game does show most of itself in just a handful of plays. That core loop, while satisfying, is really all there is to Juicy Fruits. It doesn’t have a ton of replay variability, especially once you’ve tried the solo mode and the played with the Juice Factory mini-expansion. It’s not a dealbreaker, not every game needs to be eminently replayable, but if your shelves are already crowded with gateway titles, Juicy Fruits might not elbow its way into regular rotation.
Juicy Fruits features simple, satisfying turns. The actions are easy to understand, and the ramifications of your decisions are obvious and apparent. Once players are in the flow of the game, it manages to move along at a decent clip so you aren’t feeling bored in-between your turns. There’s enough tactics and strategy for avid gamers to dig into, but it’s also accessible enough for kids to play alongside the adults. Juicy Fruits won’t change your life, but a game only takes 30 minutes, making it a perfect choice to wind down with after something more complex, or as the starting experience during family game night.
