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Dale Yu: Review of Ohanami
Ohanami
- Designer: Steffen Benndorf
- Publisher: Pandasaurus
- Players: 2-4
- Age: 8+
- Time: 20 mins
- Times played: >6 total, 2 with review copy provided by Pandasaurus
Ohanami was a game that I was introduced to years ago. Let’s say that I have a friend, and for pretendsies, lets call him Luke. This friend is a complete fanboy of Herr Benndorf. To the point that Ohanami was the only game in his oeuvre that Luke didn’t have. So what did he do? Contact said designer directly and ask for any info on how to get a copy… and when a way couldn’t be found, managed to talk the designer into giving/selling one from his own game collection! With a backstory like that, how could you not be excited about playing the game?
Posted in Essen 2020, Reviews
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Talia Rosen: Kickstarter Curmudgeon?
I’ve always thought of myself as a Kickstarter curmudgeon, but then I woke up one morning recently and realized that I was awaiting about a dozen games from recent Kickstarter campaigns. It seems that I’ve changed my tune in just the past year without even realizing it!Â
My Kickstarter journey started way back in 2011 when Gryphon Games launched a campaign to bring 1973 classic Montage back into print. It was an exciting campaign for a long unavailable and unique game, and it caused me to bite the bullet and finally sign up for this new-fangled Kickstarter thing. This was before Kickstarter dominated the industry and the BGG rankings, but well after many others had seemingly taken the plunge.
After that pleasant experience and receiving that fascinating game, I actually waited over two years before backing another project. Despite that long gap, 2013 turned into quite a banner year for my Kickstarter engagement. Both Coup and One Night Ultimate Werewolf came to the platform, and I jumped in headfirst for some quick social deduction fillers. Keyflower brought a mini-expansion to Kickstarter, and Tim Fowers brought crowd favorite Wok Star back into print. I’ve ended up enjoying all of those, and I was glad to have helped each of them see the light of day. In 2014, there was the clever Coup Reformation expansion, followed by One Night Resistance and the One Night Ultimate Werewolf Daybreak expansion in 2015. Here’s where I started to get into territory of backing things that didn’t end up hitting the table that much. My completionist tendencies with respect to backing expansions and sequels does not align well with my practical tendency to usually just play the base game or move on to different games entirely. I’m so often teaching games to new players that expansions don’t see table time much despite my aspirational buying habits. Read on to see where my crowdfunding journey has taken me in the past few years and how my curmudgeonly attitude has seemingly shifted…
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Posted in Reviews
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Feed the Kraken (Game Preview by Chris Wray)
- Designer: Maikel Cheney, Dr. Hans Höh, Tobias Immich
- Publisher:Â Funtails
- Artists: Hendrik Noack, James Churchill
- Players:Â 5-11
- Ages: Â 12 and Up
- Time: Â 45-90 Minutes
Feed the Kraken is a big box social deduction game that is launching on Kickstarter tomorrow. I collect games with a hidden traitor mechanic — games like Shadows Over Camelot, or Battlestar Galactica — so I was excited to play Feed the Kraken this past spring. And it didn’t disappoint: my group enjoyed it so much we asked to have another game (via Zoom) for a friend’s birthday.
Feed the Kraken is an addicting hidden traitor game. It has plenty of those tense, who-is-telling-the-truth moments, along with some refreshing new gameplay elements. The components are beautiful. This is certainly one of the best social deduction games I’ve played, and I think it is going to be a hit.
Continue readingMark’s Bundle of 2020 Essen Game Thoughts
Unless otherwise noted, these are FIRST impressions… I only had the opportunity to play each game one time with a physical copy and three of my mask-wearing Opinionated Gamer friends. I’ve left out the older (read: non-2020) games we played to keep this Essen-focused.
If you’re interested in my Essen (well, post-Essen) impressions from 2018 and 2019, you can find them at the following links.
For those of you who haven’t read a lot of my reviews, they may give you a better insight into my board game tastes and what I’m likely to enjoy. (Which, of course, may or may not line up with your choices.
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Posted in Convention Report, Essen 2020, First Impressions
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Joe’s Bookshelf – How to Host a Game Night
Written by Erik Arneson and published by Tiller Press
ISBN 978-1-9821-5047-1 (ebook ISBN 978-1-9821-5048-8)
Review based upon a review copy provided by the publisher
Erik is, of course, one of the Opinionated Gamers writers (if possibly one even less prolific here than I am), however unlike most of us, Erik is also a published author. And he has a new book out, available today, focused on how to create a successful game event.
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