My wife and I recently had the opportunity to check out a new board game café that opened near our house. I love going to new board game stores and seeing what weird or unique games they have on their shelves. I generally assume the majority of the games come from the owner’s personal collections, or at least the ones that aren’t the owner’s absolute favourites. I suspect that’s how IOTA, designed by Gene Mackles and published by Gamewright in 2012 made it onto this shelf. The sole reason my wife picked it off the shelf was because it was JUST SO SMALL!
IOTA contains a deck of 66 cards. 64 of the cards are unique, displaying a symbol, colour, and number. Each player takes 4 cards into their hand, and on your turn, you play cards onto the shared play area to create lots, which are rows or columns where every aspect of the cards in a particular row and column are either completely the same, or completely different. A row can contain cards that all have the same colour, but different shape and number, or they can be the same number, and colour, but have different shapes, you get the picture.
Each time you play cards, you score all the lines you create or extend by the value of the cards. If you happen to complete a set of 4, it doubles your score for the round. There are 2 wild cards that will assist, but other than that, every card will appear only once. So if you’re holding out hope for that blue sqaure with a 3, and you notice it’s on the table somewhere else, well. You’ll be waiting for a long time.
The game that immediately sprung to mind when playing IOTA was Qwirkle. The similarities are immediately obvious, playing lines of shapes and colours that either all match or don’t match to score points. IOTA adds a 3rd dimension for players to consider with the value on the cards as well. It creates some depth, especially when it comes to scoring. Playing two cards next to a 4 is better than playing three cards next to a series of 1’s. IOTA pares down the symbols from Qwirkle‘s 6 shapes to 4, which is both a blessing and a curse. There are less shapes to keep in your head, but now all the lots are stubby. You’ll likely end up creating tiny staircases that sprawl all over your table.
The whole reason IOTA even made it onto my radar was because of it’s comically small tin. The tiny square cards don’t feel great to hold, and more than once we had to awkwardly slide the entire shared play area so that the game didn’t run off the table. For a game that comes in such a tiny tin, I did not expect it to be such a table hog. Furthermore, the shorter rows and columns made it surprisingly difficult to expand the play area at times, if you just so happened to not be able to play off anything. If you and your opponent have been competitive and pairing cards off well, not being able to strike off into a different direction is frustrating.
While my wife was a pro right from the start, I had a strange amount of trouble figuring out how to play my cards. I kept trying to play a series of cards that were not completely the same or different in all aspects. Adding that third element really seemed to throw me off my game. A lot of “I’m going to put these down right here, except I can’t do that!” “How about over here? Nope, can’t go here either!”. It’s no fun having the wind constantly taken out of your sails.
As more cards got played and the number of lots grew, the analysis paralysis grew in turn. There were more and more places to play cards that were worth almost the same amount of points each. I kept checking over and over for which lots needed that fourth card to get a double score turn, only to realize that a lot of the necessary cards were already on the table. It slowed the game down to a crawl, and I’m sure if we were playing more than 2 players, the wait between turns would have been atrocious.
At the end of the day, IOTA offers a more cerebral experience than Qwirkle. The potential for huge turns is much higher, if you manage to play 3 cards in a turn, and complete a lot, doubling your score for the whole round. But it’s less satisfying to play. Tiny cards are annoying to hold and likely to slide around, versus wooden blocks that are a joy to touch and click together are obviously the superior component. IOTA was more frustrating, as so frequently the cards in my hand just didn’t fit anywhere because one of the three elements were wrong. The scoring was much more mathy, which slowed the game down when players are trying to puzzle out which placement will earn them the absolute most points. These points of frustration all prevent me from really ever recommending IOTA. It should be said that I would like IOTA quite a bit more if Qwirkle didn’t exist. IOTA tries to build on the foundation that Qwirkle built, but misses the simple joy and charm that made Qwirkle such a hit to begin with.
A copy of Wingspan: Oceania was provided by Stonemaier Games for review purposes.
Wingspan has become a titan in the board game world. It’s by far Stonemaier Games’ most well-known and widely played title, earning recognition even from people outside the hobby, though many still refer to just as “that bird game.”
The base game of Wingspan focused on birds from North America, but the expansions have gradually introduced avian species from other corners of the globe. Wingspan: Oceania brings us the birds of Australia and New Zealand, with nearly 100 new bird cards, fresh player boards, new dice, and most impactfully, introducing a brand-new resource: nectar.
Nectar is the biggest change in Oceania, and it fundamentally changes how you play. Acting as a wild resource, nectar gives players far more flexibility in paying for bird cards and activating abilities. It’s incredibly useful. So useful, in fact, that it comes with a small catch: nectar spoils between rounds if unused. That said, it’s rarely a hindrance. Most players quickly learn to burn nectar before any other resource. Its wild versatility more than makes up for the spoilage.
What’s more, many of the bird powers in Oceania are designed to share the love. Many abilities now provide resources or cards or some other benefit to all players, with the acting player getting slightly more of the reward. This small shift encourages more positive player interaction, a rising tide lifts all ships kind of situation, perfectly in keeping with Wingspan’s gentle and inclusive tone.
The new player boards offer subtle but impactful improvements. In the forest row, you can now spend a resource to reroll the birdfeeder. In the wetlands, you can spend a resource to refresh the bird tray. These changes directly address my long-standing complaints about stagnation in the base game, especially when unhelpful cards or dice sit unused for entire rounds. These tweaks breathe new life into familiar systems.
I reviewed Wingspan over three years ago. While I admired its beauty and accessibility, I also noted some personal gripes: a very slow opening round, a hefty dose of luck, and minimal player interaction that sometimes made it hard to stay engaged when it wasn’t my turn. But here’s the thing: even with those reservations, Wingspan kept returning to our table. It’s one of my partner’s all-time favorite games, and whenever we have friends over, especially people new to the hobby, it’s the game that gets suggested. Again and again. And the fact that it continues to hit the table, speaks volumes to its quality.
As a reviewer, I rarely revisit games after I’ve covered them. The constant influx of new titles pulls my attention elsewhere. But Wingspan: Oceania brought me back. And more than that, it made Wingspan feel fresh again.
Wingspan: Oceania is an expansion that doesn’t just add more, it adds better. The new bird cards are lively and fun, their powers promote inclusive interaction, the nectar system smooths out some early-game struggles, and the updated player boards address longstanding pain points. It enhances the base game in every meaningful way.
In fact, I doubt I’ll ever play Wingspan without it again.
An essential expansion that transforms a good game into a great one. If you own Wingspan, Oceania is a must.
I’ve talked about a couple different word games on this blog. Mostly in the context Paperback and Paperback Adventures. Word games hold a special place in my heart, as my wife and I played a lot of Scrabble online when we were in a long distance relationship. My partner adores other word games, like Wordle and Crosswords, so it should come as no surprise that when we visited a board game café together, and she saw A Little Wordy on the “Staff Picks” shelf, it was the first game she grabbed.
A Little Wordy was designed by Ian Clayman and Matthew Inman, and published by Exploding Kittens in 2021. This is a two player, or two team game, where each player is given 4 vowels and 7 constants to create a secret word, then players go back and forth using clues to help them guess the word their opponent picked.
The clue cards vary in ability and cost, the cost being berries that you have to give your opponent when you use them, as well as give more berries when you make an unsuccessful guess at your opponent’s secret word. Once both players have correctly guessed the word, whichever player has the most berries is the winner.
The clue cards offer you a myriad of ways to help you deduce what your opponent’s word actually is. From eliminating letters to confirming the first letter, to deducing the length of the word, each clue card is a tool in your arsenal to help you in your quest to figuring out your opponent’s word.
A Little Wordy is a bit of a race, in the sense that the longer you take to guess your opponent’s word, the more berries you’ll be forking over to them. Some of the most powerful clue cards have you handing over 4 or 5 berries at a time, which is the equivalent of 2 incorrect guesses. With 11 letters to pick from, is it more valuable to just guess willy-nilly, or do you use those powerful clues in the hopes that you’ll only need one guess to pin your opponent’s word to the wall?
I imagine the real answer is somewhere in the middle, but A Little Wordy does offer some fun tension that you don’t usually find in word games. Where most word games feel like a vocabulary test, A Little Wordy makes you feel more like a detective. As you use the clue cards and cut down the list of possibilities, you get a feeling like you’re circling your prey. At the same time, you can feel your opponent getting closer and closer. You need to weigh the benefit of using a powerful clue card against just guessing a word and hoping for the best.
There is some significant luck involved with the initial tile draw. Sometimes you’ll pull a Q with no U, effectively just giving you fewer letters to use. Another challenge is that dreaded S, which exponentially increases the number of potential words by pluralizing everything. In that case, hopefully there’s a clue card that will help you pin down where in the word that S is sitting.
A Little Wordy does manage to be exciting and interactive, which is more than most word games can boast. Yes, having a good vocabulary is going to be a boon, and the luck of the letter draw can tilt the scales one way or the other. But it’s exciting when you start to see the shape of the word you’re chasing start to take shape. When your opponent is idly sliding tiles around and getting closer to your word before moving the letters around again. I felt genuine excitement when I got the word right, and it’s even clever in that just because I guessed the word right first, doesn’t mean that victory is surely mine. If I overspent in berries, my opponent has the chance to keep playing and if they guess my word before the berry supply is tilted in my favour, they can steal the victory from my grasp.
If you like Boggle or Bananagrams, A Little Wordy offers a more interactive experience than either of those two games. It’s less competitive than Scrabble, and is adorned with the characterful art that adorns all the Exploding Kittens games. A Little Wordy doesn’t really work as a party game, though, you’ll want to stick to So Clover and Codenames for that situation. But if you do have a single partner who really enjoys word games and puzzles, the deduction element of A Little Wordy fills a little niche that I didn’t even know I wanted until I played it.
I really respect the mission of Restoration Games. They take old games, refresh them for modern gaming sensibilities, a fresh coat of paint, and give the games a second chance. Games like Whosit turning into Dinosaur Tea Party, Star Wars: Epic Duels into Unmatched, and Top Race into Downforce. I love seeing how they manage to retain the core of the game, but breath so much life and character into these dated games.
Thunder Road: Vendetta is designed by Dave Chalker, Brett Myers, Noah Cohen, Rob Daviau, Justin D. Jacobson, Jim Keifer, and Brian Neff, and published by Restoration games in 2023. Ostensibly, this is a racing game, but more realistically, it’s a death run game. Each player has 3 cars, and are tasked with either being the first to cross a finish line, or be the last one standing. Basically at the start of a round, everyone rolls 4 dice, and on a turn you assign a die to one of your three cars, moving it that number of spaces. There are also some special actions that you can do once per round by assigning a specific die to do that special action.
If during your move you land on a spot that another car is in, you bump them, rolling two die to determine which car gets moved, and where. This can cause chain reaction bumps too. Now your three cars come in different sizes, large, medium, and small. Large cars get shot more easily, but they have the option to reroll when a bump occurs.
Now, the board that you’re moving on, has a side scrolling element. When someone reaches the end of the last board, you take off the earliest board and put a new board on the end of the track. I think the game ends after 6 boards, but we’ve never gotten to the end of a race. The board has road segments, dirt, oil slicks, and a bunch of face down hazards that might cause chaos. Also, impassible spaces that, if you’re forced onto those spaces, blam, that car is dead.
When cars take two damage, they’re incapacitated, and when a player has all 3 of their cars destroyed or incapacitated, they’re out of the game. At that point, the current final tile gets the finish line added to it, and the first player to get a car to that finish line is the winner, or, if there’s only one player left with operable cars, they’re the victor.
So, my game group is usually really boring. We like predictability, deterministic outcomes, economic simulations, you know, boring euro game stuff. But for some reason, the chaos that is Thunder Road: Vendetta gets us all cackling with laughter every time. In the game we played last night, one player put his car in between two impassible spots, and three people came and bumped him from behind. All three cars were thrown backwards into the impassible spot and were destroyed, on like, the second round of the game! Other things inject chaos too, like the damage tiles can make you blast off in a specific direction, or have you wobble around randomly, sometimes someone will damage you, then a piece of shrapnel will fly off and incapacitate their car in return. It just good fun to see everything go wrong.
The slams are a really fun and integral aspect to the game, but it’s also really flow breaking. You’re moving your car, then slam, then you have to stop and roll two dice, take a second to orient the direction die so you can see who is going where, decide if you want to reroll or not, and if that triggers a chain, then you do it over, and over, and over again. We’ve had a few slam sessions that chain 4 or 5 cars together, shuffling and reorienting a cluster of cars into something unrecognizable. It’s pretty fun, but it does feel like the game grinds to a halt during these segments.
Sometimes I feel like complaining about the dice rolls. In my last game, one round I rolled three 1’s, and one 4, so two of my cars just crawling along the back of the pack. Meanwhile, the other players all rolled a pair of 6’s, leaving me in the dust. It doesn’t feel very fun to move a single space, but on the other hand, there is a tactical advantage to being in the back. If no one is rushing the last tile and putting your cars in jeopardy of getting shunted off the board, then on the next round, it’s very likely all the obstacle have been cleared and you can just rush up and start shooting your opponents in the bum.
I’ve only played the retail version of Thunder Road: Vendetta, and as that product stands, it’s an excellent game. That said, I’ve found myself more than once looking over the plethora of expansions and salivating at the potential chaos that all these modules would add. From a big rig that is 3 big car pieces linked together to 5 little motorcycles, jumps, player powers and a demolition derby style arena that changes how the game is played altogether. I love the base game, but I’m so excited to explore all these expansions.
Thunder Road: Vendetta is a game about violence and player elimination. Sometimes you’ll roll poorly, and that’s just how it’s going to be. If you crave control, you aren’t going to find it here. Having a good time in this game is about embracing the chaos. Not always picking the safe, smart option, but the one that would make for a great story. Yes, you’ll more often than not crash into a ball of flames, but at least you’ll have a story to tell.
A copy of Bark Avenue was provided by Good Games Publishingfor review purposes
The life of a dog walker seems like an envious one. Picking up playful pooches, giving them a job around the block in the sunshine, throwing a ball or a Frisbee at the park, then depositing them back at their home and collecting a paycheque. That said, I also know the struggle of starting and building a business, which is a ton of effort and stress. So instead of building a business for real, let’s talk about Bark Avenue, designed by Mackenzie Jungck and Jonathan Jungck, with art by April Borchelt and Chris Martinetti.
In Bark Avenue, you are an intrepid dog walker, ready to earn your day’s wage. Each turn, you’ll roll the dice, move the number of steps as your slowest dog, then preform an action. To end your turn, you’ll advance all the timers for your dogs, then the next dog walker takes their turn. After everyone has taken their turn, the game timer advances down the track and triggers an event.
The crux of the game is in the actions. You’ll pick up new pups, engage with their favourite activities, take their pictures, perhaps buy a coffee or a treat, then drop off dogs back at their home, once their walk timer has been satisfied. There’s plenty to do on every turn, but you’re restricted to only doing one action per round. Unless you cheat and drink a coffee, which gives you a boost and lets you take a second action during your turn.
When you drop off dogs, you have the opportunity to earn tips. Each dog has 3 criteria that can be accomplished during their walk, which is pooping, taking their picture, and engaging with their favourite activity. For each one of those criteria you accomplish, you earn an extra $2 tip. There’s also a subset of requirements along the left side of the board that will let you place out review stars, which will unlock more abilities for you during the game, and in the last 3 rounds, if you have no dogs to walk, you can take a review star from the left side of the board and place it on a coffee shop for some extra points.
The game plays over 16 rounds, at which time the scores are tallied and the person with the most cash is the winner!
Watching the how-to play video on Terradice’s website reveals that Bark Avenue was inspired by MacKenzie’s experiences as a dog walker in New York City, The reverence to the theme is obvious and unmistakable. If you like dogs, and Upper Manhattan, then I’m sure the theme will carry a lot of enjoyment for you. For the rest of us, there’s not much to write home about.
Bark Avenue is described as ‘gateway plus’, meaning it’s a hobby board game that’s approachable. It’s meant to be the next step from being relatively inexperienced, into the world of board games. And in that vein, I can appreciate Bark Avenue. One of the easiest ways to get non-boardgamers to sit down at my table, is to find a game with a theme that appeals directly to them. For someone who has an ‘I love doggos’ bumper sticker on their car, all the doggie portraits should be enough to engage their interest for an hour.
As a pickup and deliver game, I felt it was an exercise in tedium. Perhaps it’s unfair of me to say that, but hear me out. Bark Avenue is about as complex as Wingspan, but doesn’t offer any of the exciting combo building from that game. Instead, Bark Avenue is a game about optimization and efficiencies. Yes, it feels good to be walking three dogs at the same time, roll that golden poop to accomplish that task for all dogs, and align all of their favourite activities in one fell swoop. But all the dogs are functionally identical. Nothing really separates Beasley from Pixel aside from their home location and the amount of cash you’ll earn from their job.
Each game of Bark Avenue feels identical, even with the event cards shaking things up every round. The map is massive, with dozens of spaces to go, but nothing really differentiating them from each other. You won’t have a different experience playing east side vs. west side, other than the portraits of the dogs will change. Mechanically, there’s nothing really pulling you back for multiple plays. Once you’ve played a handful of rounds of the game, you’ve functionally experienced everything that Bark Avenue has to offer. There’s a sprinkling of set collection and other goals for you to chase, so your actions aren’t entirely rote, but it doesn’t have any real tension or excitement.
At the end of the day, Bark Avenue is a product for dog lovers. If your main joy is looking at portraits of happy doggies and imagining yourself at the helm of a dog walking venture, then Bark Avenue will provide you with entertainment for an evening. It’s not a game that I feel compelled to play again, nor would I recommend that anyone rush out and buy it. I actually think the cover does a pretty good job of signalling who this game is for. If your first thought at the sight of the cover and title was “Awe, cute!”, you’ll certainly dig this game. If you had any other thoughts or feelings than that, well, nothing I said above was going to change your mind.
