I have a lot of games. A lot of games that are on my shelves, or on my table being played, that I have told myself that I want to review at some point. For one reason or another, this doesn’t always happen. My goal here on The Opinionated Gamers is that I want to get about one review out per week, but I’d like to write about more games. So I’m taking a page out of Patrick Brennan’s playbook, and we’re going to start writing about games in threes, in snapshot form. This should be a good way for readers to get to know me and my gaming tastes a bit better, and also another way for me to talk about games that I maybe don’t really want to dedicate two thousand words to. Welcome to Three Games.
I think I missed a month or two in here, I’ll have to go back and look. That’s pretty fitting for 2020 though as I feel as if we all missed a lot of things thanks to the Pandemic. But with November over, changes hopefully happening here in the States in the coming month and a vaccine being rolled out, ever so slowly, things have to start to feel like they are going back to normal, right? November was skipped by me due to the fact that we just didn’t play anything new that I felt like talking about. Only fifteen total plays in November of eleven different games. Variety, yes, but just not much quantity. One of those games though, Calico, turned out to be one of my favorites of the year, and that review should be out next week. December was a bit better, my youngest daughter and I played a lot of Sugar Blast and online gaming kept me afloat otherwise. We started our My City campaign with the first three episodes and didn’t get to the next three until just a couple days ago. Thirty four plays of seventeen different games and for the first time in ages, I had more plays online than I did at a table. Holidays seem to suck the life out of gaming around here. But enough of that, let’s talk about Three Games!
*Spoiler-Free, all examples are made up while writing the review.
In Adventure Games: The Volcanic Island, players are students that are exploring a…you guessed it… Volcanic Island! There have been some strange going-ons on this island and, like Mystery Inc. without the talking dog, you’re here to figure out what’s going on.
BABYLONIA: AN EXEMPLARY KNIZIAN DESIGN By Mitchell Thomashow
Great game designers, writers, artists, and musicians generally develop multiple key insights, often early in their careers, and then rework, reiterate, combine, and revitalize them as they gain more experience, skill, and wisdom. Sometimes those insights are inspired by imaginative leaps. Often, they are synthesized in culminating projects. Prolific creators who develop a decades-long body of work generate insights in different ways. They experiment with their best ideas, and sometimes their most important works are overlooked. The core of their greatness is their ability to constantly learn, innovate, and experiment, while honing their skills, and using their cumulative experience to generate evocative works.
Without question, in my view, Reiner Knizia is the most prolific, and perhaps exemplary game designer of the modern board game era. His games span an extraordinary range of ideas and styles, but the hallmark is typically accessible rule sets, high player interaction, and multiple paths to victory. That doesn’t mean that all of his games are always great or even good, or that some aren’t repetitious of previous designs. However, when you look at the body of his work, stretching now through four decades, the number of his innovative designs is truly extraordinary. It would take a very long essay, indeed, to compile a thorough critical evaluation of his work, and to cover the spread and depth of his innovations, as well as to trace his influence and assess his legacy.
Well, thankfully, 2020 is in the rearview mirror by now (heck, by more than 2 days already in Kiribati – which I just learned yesterday is actually GMT +14!) – though like in my car, “objects in the rear view mirror may be closer than they appear”…
I have been blessed to have this close group of friends here at the Opinionated Gamers – to provide a forum to chat about games, to collaborate on game reviews and other articles, and to heckle me from all angles about anything and everything! Though 2020 wasn’t maybe the best year for playing games, most of us managed to adapt to the times and still find ways to participate in the hobby that we love.
I’m not good at talking about my emotions and have never gotten the hang of meditating. That’s why I bought this game and why I’m sharing it with you on January One.
I’m reminded of one of my first visits to my therapist a few years ago. I had one remaining grandparent, and we’d just come back from visiting her, a few hours away. She was…getting on in years, in her early 90s I think, and had lived a full life. But as happens, her memory and other faculties were not what they once were.
As we went to leave this particular visit, and I wish I could recall her exact words, but she asked something like “Are you leaving already?” or “Are you leaving me?” or “Do you have to go?” or “Are you coming back tomorrow?” or something that just breaks your heart. The despair in her voice.
So I was relating it to my therapist and he asked how it made me feel and I said something like ‘you know, what do you do? We had to get home for-‘ and he cut me off. But how did it make you feel? See, I had heard, or at least interpreted, his question as “So what happened?” but that wasn’t the question. And at 36 or 37 or however old I was, it felt like the first time anyone had pointed out the importance of talking about your emotions.
I struggled that day to label how I felt and I do today, at almost 39.5. (You celebrate “half” birthdays, right?)
New Year’s and its resolutions fall into a category with Halloween for me, of “fun” holidays that inexplicably…I was going to say “don’t work for me” or “don’t click for me”, but no. We’re going with emotions. I think they inexplicably make me sad. I can’t put my finger on why (but that’s probably related to my fear of being “wrong” as to things that don’t have right and wrong answers.)
I typically write about a game because I want to spread whimsy and have some words to get out. Since I stopped pottery many years ago, and baking a few years after that (and have never really taken up the ukelele that sits on the piano in my living room), I don’t have much of a creative outlet, and, for me, these are more of a public diary. I acknowledge that many of the games I choose to talk about are problematically niche and unavailable, but I’m not…I’m here not for, or especially interested in, followers or review copies or networking. It’s a personal creative outlet for me, and if even one of you finds something I share useful, I’ll sleep fine (I don’t, but that’s a different topic.)
For once though, I’m writing this review for you.
We’re going to talk about emotions and I’m going to couch it in the trappings of it being January One because I’m a full convert to the importance of talking about your emotions in the full sun and while it may not be a holiday that holds a lot of sway in my life, it could in yours. Maybe you have resolutions to make.
One of the joys of this time of year for me is reflecting back, in unnecessary detail, about the events of the last year. I’ve only sent out Christmas cards for maybe 4 of the last 17 years or so, but each year I write one of those “Christmas letters” recapping what happened, though I just stick it in a drawer (or more recently, save it to a cloud.)
I was first introduced to the concept of these “Christmas letters” from a friend I met at a high school summer camp about programming in Pascal. She had green sparkly shoes. My parents (and grandparents and siblings) sent me letters, but her mom sent her a fax. Anyway, years later, I was on her Christmas card list and hers was the first such letter I received. Later, an uncle-in-law would too.
It turns out there is a name for them “round-robin letters”, and, to my surprise, many people don’t like them for being too detailed, overlooking some of the lower lights, and indulging in some sort of braggadocios narcissist fest. Goodness! Well, if that’s you, we’ll have a new post tomorrow. Otherwise, I’ll ramble about my year below (I’ve also made you a playlist of some of my favorite tracks and albums from the year to listen to as your read.)
Brandon Kempf – Three Games of December
I have a lot of games. A lot of games that are on my shelves, or on my table being played, that I have told myself that I want to review at some point. For one reason or another, this doesn’t always happen. My goal here on The Opinionated Gamers is that I want to get about one review out per week, but I’d like to write about more games. So I’m taking a page out of Patrick Brennan’s playbook, and we’re going to start writing about games in threes, in snapshot form. This should be a good way for readers to get to know me and my gaming tastes a bit better, and also another way for me to talk about games that I maybe don’t really want to dedicate two thousand words to. Welcome to Three Games.
I think I missed a month or two in here, I’ll have to go back and look. That’s pretty fitting for 2020 though as I feel as if we all missed a lot of things thanks to the Pandemic. But with November over, changes hopefully happening here in the States in the coming month and a vaccine being rolled out, ever so slowly, things have to start to feel like they are going back to normal, right? November was skipped by me due to the fact that we just didn’t play anything new that I felt like talking about. Only fifteen total plays in November of eleven different games. Variety, yes, but just not much quantity. One of those games though, Calico, turned out to be one of my favorites of the year, and that review should be out next week. December was a bit better, my youngest daughter and I played a lot of Sugar Blast and online gaming kept me afloat otherwise. We started our My City campaign with the first three episodes and didn’t get to the next three until just a couple days ago. Thirty four plays of seventeen different games and for the first time in ages, I had more plays online than I did at a table. Holidays seem to suck the life out of gaming around here. But enough of that, let’s talk about Three Games!
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