The Opinionated Gamers

• Designer: Nicholas Cravotta and Rebecca Bleau
• Publisher: ThinkFun
• Players: 1-4
• Ages: 13+
• Time: about 90 minutes
• Times played: 1, with review copy provided by ThinkFun
• Affiliate Link: https://amzn.to/3fRoOoK

The “Escape Room” genre is one of the most prolific areas of growth in 2020 for our hobby (at least in my opinion).  There seem to be plenty of new games coming out in this area, as well as a huge growth in physical escape rooms as well.  In 2020, due to safety concerns, I really haven’t been able to do too many actual escape rooms, but I have been able to get some of that experience via these board games.

This particular series was amongst the first that we ever played and reviewed:  Escape the Room – Dr Gravely’s Retreat and Escape the Room – Stargazer’s Manor were both well received by our group.  The Cursed Dollhouse is the third installation in this series, and it immediately seemed to be a more involved matter.

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• Designers: David Yahos, Nicholas Cravotta, Rebecca Bleau
• Publisher: Play Monster
• Ages: 10+
• Time: 2hrs on box, 64 minutes in reality for our group
• Players: 1-6
• Times played: 1, with review copy provided by Play Monster
• Affiliate link: https://amzn.to/3i4f9gj

To be clear – there are no spoilers in my review – but there are a number of strong cautions (EASILY FOUND IN SHOUTY CAPS) included below to help you avoid possible spoilers!

Break In: Alcatraz is part of a new series of escape room games – but this one has a slightly different take on the usual story.  Instead of trying to break out or escape, in these games, you’re trying to break in!  The box and components here are a huge part of the game.  The box is a slanted hexagon that contains a 3D diorama of what you’re trying to break into… in this case, the island prison of Alcatraz.

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I always swore that I’d never design a board game.  Whenever I told people about my strategy board gaming hobby, I would almost inevitably get a question about when I would make my own game.  It’s not that simple of course.  There are so many strategy board games these days.  There seemed like a ton when I started down this rabbit hole in the late 1990s, but now the volume is truly mind-boggling.  And yet, the idea for First Monday in October just would not let me be.

The concept took root many, many years ago.  After moving to Washington, DC in 2009 for work, I joined a new game group, which happened to be hosted at Jason Matthews’ house.  I was already a fan of his work, but I had no inkling at the time of wanting to design a game inspired by Twilight Struggle.  Then one fateful evening a couple years later, Jason made an off-hand remark about never having figured out how to make a historical card-driven game about the Supreme Court.  We were in the midst of playtesting 1989: Dawn of Freedom and discussing the various historical themes that could be interesting to explore.  Jason mentioned his concern with who or what the players would reasonably represent in an overarching Supreme Court game, and I made a joke about loving the bizarreness of the parrot fish and shrimp in Reef Encounter.  I promptly moved on with my life, but my subconscious had other plans.

In the past few decades we’ve seen the power of cats. Take a popular item and stick a cat on it, and its popularity grows. Examples include Garfield (whose creator took a look and decided a cat-comic would sell well) and an extremely popular cat-based card game. (A cat game who must not be named – I fail to see the attraction of its randomness.) Today I want to take a look at a few cat-themed games that I’ve encountered in the past year or so. Cat Lady has players drafting cards off of a 3×3 grid to score points at the end of the game. Kibble Scuffle has players playing cats around feeding bowls in order to trigger a feeding phase. The Lady and the Tiger is a slight outlier, as only half of its richly illustrated cards show a tiger. It is also more than one game in a box as it contains five different games that can be played using the cards and glass tokens in the box. The three games span a wide variety of play styles, so read on to see if one (or more) fit for your gaming needs.

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