RSS Parrot

The Old King’s Annulment

https://spacebiff.com/2026/03/03/annulet/

Published: March 3, 2026 19:10

No need to bury the lede: as of this morning, The Old King’s Crown is now in funding for its second printing. If you haven’t read my review, the short version is that Pablo Clark’s debut design was a stunning achievement on every level. Except, ambush!,…

Re;MATCH One, Two, or Four

https://spacebiff.com/2026/03/02/rematch/

Published: March 2, 2026 23:50

It hasn’t been all that long since we took a look at Re;ACT: The Arts of War, an intriguing but imperfect game about various artists manifesting their crafts into the physical world in order to determine which medium is the most artsy of them all. It’s…

Flip-and-Curse-That-Stupid-Dragon

https://spacebiff.com/2026/02/26/flip-pick-towers/

Published: February 27, 2026 05:40

Remember when every other game was a roll-and-write? That was living proof that even golden ages come with cloudy linings. Flip Pick Towers, designed by Rob Fisher and Adam Porter, benefits from its release a few years after the slew of samey writing…

Walletbiters

https://spacebiff.com/2026/02/24/laspalmas-phantasmic-dustbiters/

Published: February 24, 2026 23:21

It’s in my nature to appreciate wallets. I own a couple dozen of the things. One for carrying money and eleven-year-old gift cards to defunct smoothie chains, the rest for microgames from Button Shy. This latest batch includes something experimental,…

Triple-Triple Omelette Burger w/o Cheese

https://spacebiff.com/2026/02/23/flip-stack-burger-shack/

Published: February 23, 2026 23:11

Sold initially at the Indie Games Night Market, Joseph Z. Chen’s Flip Stack Burger Shack has all the markings of an indie darling: its not-quite-smooth discs look great on the table, the gameplay is tactile and amusing, and it even comes in a bag. (All the…

Fickle Little Guys

https://spacebiff.com/2026/02/18/imps/

Published: February 19, 2026 05:14

Whenever a new fad mechanism comes around — deck-building, trick-taking, now it seems maybe dominoes might be having a moment — I’m disappointed to discover it isn’t mancala. Because mancala is great. Speaking of which, here’s your annual reminder that…

Yer All Sheeps

https://spacebiff.com/2026/02/17/herd/

Published: February 17, 2026 21:40

For my money — or, all right, for my attention — Blaž Gracar is one of the finest puzzle-makers of this generation. Between All Is Bomb and LOK, I’ve spent countless hours fiddling my way through some conundrum or another, thinking the madman must have…

Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Board Games

https://spacebiff.com/2026/02/12/shasn-azadi/

Published: February 12, 2026 23:40

Shasn. Oh, Shasn. Zain Memon’s 2021 board game occupies a strange place in my memory as a vibrant, unsettling, funny, and tonally inconsistent game, and I mean that in the most complimentary sense. At the time, its message seemed to be that politicians are…

Back to the Burgle

https://spacebiff.com/2026/02/11/burgle-bros-3/

Published: February 12, 2026 01:40

Have these bros had enough burgling? Apparently not. After two full Burgle Bros, not to mention at least three other wacky stealth games, I think it’s fair to confess to some fatigue. Burgle Bros 3: Future Flip moves the action into the not-too-distant…

God Games

https://spacebiff.com/2026/02/10/almighty/

Published: February 10, 2026 21:09

Between the old-world deities, satirical tone, and bean-sized mortals begging to be smited (or blessed), the forthcoming game Almighty feels like it was tailor-made with me in mind. This is the third title we’ve seen from Malachi Ray Rempen, following Roll…

Broken Clocks

https://spacebiff.com/2026/02/06/take-time/

Published: February 6, 2026 20:18

The consensus on Take Time, the abstract teamwork game by Alexi Piovesan and Julien Prothière, seems to be that it’s Wolfgang Warsch’s The Mind but Even More, which means, mercifully, that it’s marginally less likely to spur tedious arguments over the…

Hot Cross4 Buns

https://spacebiff.com/2026/02/05/cross4/

Published: February 5, 2026 23:25

Back when I was in the dating pool — the late Pleistocene, oh ho ho — I would sometimes tell women that my only qualification for a life partner was somebody I could “play boggle in bed” with. This was, of course, a euphemism for playing Bill Cooke and…

Space-Cast! #53. Scratch & Listen

https://spacebiff.com/2026/02/04/sbsc-53/

Published: February 4, 2026 23:08

Most people know Zach Barth as the founder of Zachtronics, purveyor of digital playthings such as SpaceChem, Opus Magnum, and EXAPUNKS. But we are not most people. Instead, we’re here to speak with Zach about his analog games: The Lucky Seven (with the…

DoS That LLM Till It’s 404

https://spacebiff.com/2026/02/03/deckers/

Published: February 3, 2026 18:58

There’s history to Deckers. Pedigree. Richard Wilkins — better known by the epithet Ricky Royal, the name under which he’s created a bunch of incredible solitaire modes for games that wouldn’t otherwise suit solo play in the slightest — designed a ditty…

One-Hit Wonder

https://spacebiff.com/2026/02/02/one-hit-heroes/

Published: February 3, 2026 03:50

Whether in video games or board games, there’s a certain zen — is it okay to call it zen? — that washes over you when you only have one hit-point left. Now it’s just you and your skills. How smartly you can dodge. How precisely you can block. You become an…

All Gold Country

https://spacebiff.com/2026/01/27/gold-country/

Published: January 28, 2026 02:04

Another day, another cube-rails-adjacent title — although Gold Country, being designed by Reiner Knizia, is decidedly crisper and more rules-light than yesterday’s Stellar Ventures. This one is based on Spectaculum, a game about traveling circuses. I’ve…