“...and the playtime clocks in at about three, maybe four hours.”

I snapped out of my dream-like state as I listened to the overview of Guilty: Houston 2015 (2024, IELLO) while standing with other media members at the IELLO presentation at SPIEL 2023. One look at the box and the format—a one-shot, cooperative card-driven murder mystery game which can be fully reset and aligns with many of the games I have reviewed over the last four years—and I was pre-sold on IELLO’s approach.

But, “three, maybe four hours?”

That timing felt too long. Most of the game series I have covered for Meeple Mountain that fit the one-shot/escape room/mystery games, such as Suspects, Cold Case, Unsolved Case Files, Alibi: 3 Intricate Mysteries, echoes, and so many other properties, play in anywhere from an hour to maybe two hours in duration. Guilty: Houston 2015 was threatening to double that.

I immediately thought about how to sell this to my fellow lead investigator at home—my wife—given that the game would definitely be a Friday night date activity that we couldn’t start until 9 PM, after the kids go to bed.

Ultimately, she stepped up to the plate because she knows that you, dear reader, need to know if Guilty: Houston 2015 is a trip worth…

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“It sounded like you guys were having a LOT of fun last night,” my wife began. “What game were you playing when you were laughing so hard?”

Funny you should ask.

Belratti (2024, KOSMOS) is a reprint of a 2018 game designed by Michael Loth, where players work together to score as many points as possible before a dastardly forgery artist known as Belratti gets enough of their paintings into the local museum. Playing as either Painter Owl (representing a pool of legitimate painters) or as Dr. Cat, a team meant to simulate the efforts of the museum director, players will submit works of art (cards) that align with one of the two theme cards being used for a given round. When added to four random cards drawn from a massive deck of nearly 200 cards, the curators have to figure out which pictures are “real” (submitted by players) or fakes (the randomly drawn cards).

In essence, that is the entire game. Play ends when Belratti is able to sneak six fakes into the museum, then players use a tiered high-score chart to figure out how well they did.

Here’s why I know Belratti works—we finished our first game in about 20 minutes and got absolutely demolished, scoring eight points and finishing in the lowest scoring tier. As soon…

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I am not really sure, most of the time, what it is that draws me in and makes me want to get and play a new game. Sure, in my youth, the idea of someone suggesting a game and introducing it to me certainly was a factor. But now that I am seeking out games (both board and role-playing), it is the oddest things that grab my attention. Back in 2022, I was immediately hooked on the game Hidden Leaders when I saw this image online:

[caption id="attachment_306969" align="aligncenter" width="450"] Be honest: what is not to love about this guy?[/caption]

I mean, look at this guy! He is a confident and self assured individual. There are a few meanings for the word ‘queer’ but none of the definitions that fall outside of ‘gay’ seem to apply. As an ally, and someone with many friends and family in the LGBTQIA+ community, this is the sort of character I can get behind! I got a copy for me, and one for one of my old Navy buddies (who happens to be gay). I have never regretted this purchase, because beyond the wonderful artistic style of the game comes great game play as well.

Overview

Hidden Leaders is a card-driven board game where two…

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I don’t know what they put in the water at PostCurious, but it’s working. Rita Orlov and her cohort have made a name for themselves over the last few years by publishing a remarkable series of escape rooms, including 2022’s startling The Light in the Mist and this year’s masterful The Morrison Game Factory. In a market dominated by the long-past-their-prime Exit games and the under-appreciated Unlock series, PostCurious distinguishes itself by offering games that push the boundaries of escape room narrative. These are games that stick with you not only as a series of clever and satisfying puzzles, but as stories.

The scope of PostCurious’s narrative ambitions is generally matched by the scale of their games. The Light in the Mist takes 4-5 hours. The Emerald Flame hit around 7-8. I haven’t cracked open my copy of Threads of Fate yet, but the box promises 10+ hours of work. Those are not rookie numbers. The idea of sitting down—over a series of sessions, mind—for that much puzzle can be overwhelming.

It is with that in mind that PostCurious has started Ministry of Lost Things, a series of more modest offerings. Designed with a less-seasoned audience in mind, Case 1: Lint Condition takes about two hours when all is said and done, spread out over five chapters,…

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As a board game reviewer, I frequently venture into the unexplored realms of tabletop gaming. While the masses hunt for the latest offerings from first-rate publishers, I find a unique excitement in unearthing games yet to grace store shelves or Kickstarter campaigns. Sometimes this leads to interesting gems, while others remind me why not every game is published.

Runner Tactics is a game where these two perceptions are engaged in endless combat. While its core concept is undeniably intriguing, certain aspects of its product design and gameplay raise questions about its readiness for the spotlight. Of course, for you to understand where I’m coming from, we need to delve into this game’s mechanisms.

In a few words, Runner Tactics is a strategic, grid-based, two-player programming game where the players will draft a team of three members for a 3 vs 3 match. Instead of abilities, each member has their own movement range and attack pattern. On the field itself, there are two lines, similar to a North American Football field. The objective is easy: Eliminate your opponent’s team or, at the end of any round, have more members on the other side of the line than your opponent.

Gridiron Hussle

Turns are as simple as the objective. You put a big wooden player shield in front of you and…

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“How was it for you?”

I looked up from behind my small player screen; my buddy Rex had asked the question. I was still processing, as I had just served as the AI player during a recent set of three back-to-back plays of AI Space Puzzle (2024, Portal Games).

AI Space Puzzle is a cooperative deduction game. The theme is loose enough to be nearly non-existent: one player is the damaged AI of a spaceship bound for trouble unless the astronauts of the ship can decipher the cryptic clues provided by the AI to ensure that each room of the ship is correctly unlocked using the proper security keys. (Abstract? Yep.)

AI Space Puzzle is really two games in one. The AI player is playing the first game and will have plenty to do in order to get the right astronauts in the right rooms in just the right number of turns, usually eight turns or less. With a small pile of communication tokens, the AI can hint at the best ways to solve each scenario, hoping that the mix of clever clues and a sprinkle of luck will win the day.

The astronauts are playing a different game, a game that sometimes has a good amount of downtime. The AI’s processing power is the speed at which…

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Concept is a game that seems simple enough. You draw a card. On this card are nine items to choose from. Select one, then start giving clues until someone figures out what you are describing. You and that person get one point. Next turn. Once you have had 12 turns with a successful guess, the game is over.

The problem enters into the equation when you realize that your clues are limited to the images on the main game board.

[caption id="attachment_301978" align="aligncenter" width="600"] The board has many ideas pictured. But this is what you are limited to.[/caption]

There are 118 images on the board. Each time you put a token on this board, you are telling the players a little bit about the thing you want them to guess. But these images have to do a lot of heavy lifting! The game suggests meanings for each of them, but if you are going to get someone to guess the right thing, both they and you need to expand your thoughts and allow these things to be more than the obvious.

Here is an example of three cards within the game:

[caption id="attachment_301979" align="aligncenter" width="600"] The top (blue) section is easy; the middle…

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[caption id="attachment_301989" align="aligncenter" width="600"] The Box Cover[/caption]

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Emperor's New Clothes is an art project that claims to be a game. It is not a game, it is a collection of blank, stark-white game pieces that could be used to create a game, I suppose. But that is not really the point. The point is the joke.

If you do not get the joke, then I highly recommend…

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Spectral is a competitive deduction game, and an unusual one at that. The haunted house you and your fellow players explore, represented by a 4 x 4 grid of semi-randomized facedown cards, is full of gems and curses. You want the gems. Not so much the curses. You figure out where they are by placing any quantity of your explorer pieces in the space between any two rooms and then looking at the contents of one of them.

“The contents” is somewhat misleading. The rooms in this house don’t tell you what they have inside. They tell you about the contents of other rooms. On the face side, each card shows either a curse or, more likely, a gem, and one of four symbols. The symbols tell you where the shown item is located.

This card, for example, tells me that a gem is located on the opposite side of the grid:

This card tells me that a curse is in whichever room is a two-space move diagonally:

You spend most of the game placing pieces around the grid and gathering information, taking notes in the provided notebooks all the while.

Information is not the only purpose for those…

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Sequels and reboots don't always pan out, but sometimes they are necessary to right the wrongs of the past and move forward in a positive way. The original Mysterium remains one of my top deduction games, but Mysterium Park has, by and large, replaced it thanks to simplified mechanics and a better ending. Let's check out my review.

Mysterium Park Overview

In Mysterium Park, players assume the roles of Psychics who are investigating the tragic disappearance of the former director of a mysterious funfair, while one player takes on the guise of the Ghost of the late director. Over the course of three rounds, the Ghost guides the Psychics to identify the innocent bystanders and potential scenes of the crime while whittling these down to determine the culprit. If the Psychics and Ghost are on the same page, the director will finally have peace.

It's no easy feat, however, as the Ghost can only communicate through the use of Vision cards. These cards are fanciful, filled with abstract imagery and compositions that are reminiscent of a fever dream. They are miraculously expected to give these cards to the Psychics to guide them towards specific cards in the tableau. And, somehow, it works!

This is a cooperative game in…

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I have a special place in my heart for the Unsolved Case Files series of one-shot, partially app-driven, crime-solving mystery productions distributed by Goliath Games. I’ve solved the murders of Jamie Banks and Harmony Ashcroft. Avery and Zoey Gardner needed my help, so I helped solve that crime, too. I took a detour to help resolve the mystery of a missing bunny rabbit at a local school in the case of Honey the Bunny.

My crime-fighting skills were needed once again by the fine people of a fictional location not far from a place you’ve probably heard of, so I tapped the shoulders of my wife and my 10-year-old to help solve the brutal murder of…Jane Doe. Yes—THAT Jane Doe. The one who doesn’t have a name. She had a bright future until it was all dashed away when she was burned to a crisp in an apparent murder/arson situation more than 20 years ago.

Unsolved Case Files: Jane Doe offers a twist to the normal series elements we’ve come across over the previous four games in the series. (UCF: Jane Doe was actually released in 2020, so while this is my fifth game, Jane Doe was released a bit earlier than some of the other ones I’ve covered.)

Yes, the local police force has…

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On my second play of the new party game Mind Map (2024, Funnyfox and Sorry We Are French), two of the three players sitting at the table voted to stop.

We had just finished the second round…of a 15-minute game.

One player at the table, a game designer with multiple published credits to his name, really struggled because he knows how challenging it is to even get a game to the market. “This one’s tough, because I don’t want to be negative…but this just isn’t any fun. We can finish it if you want, but there’s a lot of flaws here.”

If you can believe this, the first group I showed this too, my Monday night review crew, thought Mind Map was even worse.

Mind Map is a word association game for 4-7 individual players, which can scale up to 8-14 players if using the team variant. I don’t get 8+ gamers together more than a couple times a year, so I did two four-player games of Mind Map for this review. Even if I wanted to do more plays, I couldn’t, because the two groups that tried it won’t try it again.

The problems with Mind Map begin with the rulebook. Mind Map is a party…

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The cooperative games that I come back to time and again are consistently those with heavy communication restrictions. When done right, encumbrance leads to moments of discovery, as the players discover the sorts of creativity that only exist in the presence of narrow parameters. Much as Japanese poets find remarkable beauty in seventeen syllables, so the arc of an entire round of The Crew can be indicated with a single card. Restrictions breed innovation, exploration, and discovery. Without walls to bind us in, we have nothing to push against.

The restrictions placed on you by Ritual, a cooperative game from designer Tomás Tarragón and publisher Strohmann Games, are near-total. It is meant to be played in complete silence. Your only means of communicating is indirect, implied in the action you choose to perform each turn.

Each player begins the game with four random gems and a card. The cards show some combination of gems: five in a single color, three each in two different colors, or two each in three different colors. In order to progress through the round, players have to help one another collect their sets by making smart use of the actions available: Take a gem from your left; Pass a gem to anyone else; Place a gem on the placard that indicates you would like…

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