In The Palm of Your Hand

• Designer: Timothee Decroix
• Publisher: La Boite de Jeu
• Players: 2-8
• Age: 10+
• Time: 30 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by distributor, Hachette Boardgames US

La Boite de Jeu is a French outfit which has been making varied and interesting games over the past few years – It’s a Wonderful World, Huns, and Ilos are some of their titles that I have enjoyed over the past few years.

In The Palm of Your Hand is a different sort of game; where players try to “mime” the identity of an art card to someone else; only using objects on the palm of that person’s hand.  The game comes with a deck of 100 cards which tell the lifestory of the Grandfather character in the game.  (It’s actually kind of a fascinating thing to put the cards in order from 1-100 and then try to reconstruct the events of the life through the images on the cards).  

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We wind down boardgame coverage with the longest name of the show and what I believe is my longest single-game commentary. It is on the upcoming Return to Dark Tower expansion by Restoration Games. (Go ahead and jump down to it, you won’t offend me.) Each year I miss plenty of publishers, perhaps more this time around since I brought along my boys for the first time. Feel free to admonish me in the comments for overlooking your favorite one. Know that I will sit at my computer and feel appropriately contrite.

As we move through the alphabet (no, not Alphabet the megacorporation) of publishers, today will be quite a mix of light and heavy, light and dark themes, read it with the light on or off, or if you’re tired of run-on sentences, just skip it entirely and wait for tomorrow. Just know that you’re skipping over a game of psychotic killers and another about rainbow ponies… no, they’re not both in the same game. On with the games!!!

Another day, another report.  Some exciting stuff announced and hinted at, which as is traditional, I buried near the end of the report.  Lots of good games here, and while parenting continues to put a bit of a crimp on my boardgaming time, I think this crop has a number of titles that will make me put in some extra effort to get them to the table soon. Still going with this year’s slogan, “cover less, enjoy more.”  On with the games!!!

The International Gamers Awards (IGA) just announced their nominated games for 2022.  The IGA jury gives awards for the following three categories:  Best Multiplayer Experience, Best 2-Player Experience, and Best Solo Experience.  Here are this year’s nominees, together with each game’s designer and publisher.

Best Multiplayer Experience

• Ark Nova  (Feuerland Spiele) – Mathias Wigge
• Boonlake  (dlp games) – Alexander Pfister
• Carnegie  (Quined Games) – Xavier Georges
• Dice Realms  (Rio Grande Games) – Tom Lehmann
• Golem  (Cranio Creations) – Simone Luciani, Flaminia Brasini, Virginio Gigli

Best 2-Player Experience

• Ark Nova  (Feuerland Spiele) – Mathias Wigge
• Boonlake  (dlp games) – Alexander Pfister
• Golem  (Cranio Creations) – Simone Luciani, Flaminia Brasini, Virginio Gigli
• It’s a Wonderful Kingdom  (La Boite de Jeu) – Frederic Guerard
• MicroMacro: Crime City – Full House  (Edition Spielwiese) – Johannes Sich

Best Solo Experience

• Ark Nova  (Feuerland Spiele) – Mathias Wigge
• Batman: The Dark Knight Returns  (Cryptozoic Entertainment) – Daryl Andrews, Morgan Dontanville
• Cascadia  (Flatout Games) – Randy Flynn
• Eila and Something Shiny  (ICE Makes) – Jeffrey CCH
• Final Girl  (Van Ryder Games) – Evan Derrick, A.J. Porfirio
• MicroMacro: Crime City – Full House  (Edition Spielwiese) – Johannes Sich
• Soldiers in Postmen’s Uniforms  (Dan Verssen Games) – David Thompson

Finally, the jury recommends the following games, which just missed being nominated in one of the categories:

• Ankh: Gods of Egypt [Multiplayer, 2-player]  (CMON) – Eric Lang
• Dinosaur Island Rawr ‘n Write [Solo]  (Pandasaurus Games) – Brian Lewis, David McGregor, Marissa Misura
• Imperial Steam [Multiplayer]  (Capstone Games) – Alexander Huemer
• Scout [Multiplayer]  (One More Game!/Oink Games) – Kel Kajino
• The Crew: Mission Deep Sea [Multiplayer]  (Kosmos) – Thomas Sing