RSS Parrot

Cumulostratic Cruise

https://spacebiff.com/2026/10/12/braided-skies/

Published: October 13, 2026 05:30

On not-so-rare occasions, I get to play board games before they’re fully polished. There’s something about seeing a game struggle through its growing pains, watching its knobbly limbs grow lithe and athletic, its protrusions smooth and frictionless, that…

A Place for All My Fussy Guests

https://spacebiff.com/2026/10/09/enchanted-ivy/

Published: October 9, 2026 18:06

It’s almost too obvious to state aloud, but there’s a lot to be said for the games we actually play. Case in point, Enchanted Ivy, the solitaire game by Sarah Joshua. When I sat down this morning to begin writing this review, I went through the usual…

Tantrums in the Sandbox

https://spacebiff.com/2026/10/07/pax-playground/

Published: October 7, 2026 19:57

Of the handful of things I appreciate about Pax Playground, the most significant is the way it reminds me of recess. Its very existence is playful — this is, after all, a Pax game that lasts twenty minutes and bucks tradition by refusing to touch history…

Again, Opium War, Again

https://spacebiff.com/2026/10/05/an-infamous-traffic-2/

Published: October 5, 2026 20:40

When Cole Wehrle first unveiled An Infamous Traffic way back in 2016, it was a scrappy little devil. Not only was it Wehrle’s second design, it was also the earliest releases from Hollandspiele. As such, its constraints were stark: a handful of counters…

Satchel of Holding

https://spacebiff.com/2026/09/30/satchel-quest/

Published: September 30, 2026 20:11

There’s undoubted utility to a bag of holding, but I always imagine everything jumbling together like loose chicken parts. Magical tomes next to tavern dinners next to razor implements, sloshing around to produce a pulpy slurry. Designed by Molly Johnson,…

Grabble Grabble

https://spacebiff.com/2026/09/29/grabble/

Published: September 29, 2026 19:09

CMYK is on a hot streak. Get it? Hot streak? Fine, I’ll just tell you about this other board game. Grabble is a remake of Naoki Fukuda’s Nuts a GoGo!, which probably doesn’t tell you much. Imagine a bunch of people scrambling around a box for mismatched…

Sharts of Creation

https://spacebiff.com/2026/09/28/shards-of-creation/

Published: September 28, 2026 23:13

All I play anymore is trick-taking games. At times, that feels like an invitation to make me regret what little time I have left on this Earth. Shards of Creation is the latest unfortunate example. Designed by Hayden Dillard, it fails to utilize the past…

Trench & Trough

https://spacebiff.com/2026/09/23/upland-and-prairie/

Published: September 24, 2026 01:56

Upland & Prairie is troublesome. Designed by the peerless Peer Sylvester, gorgeously illustrated and produced, and conceptually adjacent to certain Knizian disc- and tile-laying games, it has the makings of something wonderful. The problem is that it…

Space-Cast! #60. Baba Is Bluebeard

https://spacebiff.com/2026/09/22/sbsc-60/

Published: September 22, 2026 22:57

BABA IS YOU is one of the most mind-bending puzzle video games of recent memory. Now, thanks to Peter C. Hayward, it’s also a board game. On today’s Space-Cast!, we discuss the peculiar adaptation of Arvi Teikari’s video game, from its inception in That…

Fort, Thine Name Is Brute

https://spacebiff.com/2026/09/21/brute-fort/

Published: September 21, 2026 23:52

For its size, I would classify Brute Fort as maximalist. Which perhaps sounds contradictory, given it’s a microgame that runs on only 18 cards and comes in a plastic cassette case. But each of those details unfurls into something more. The cassette case is…

Goop vs. Goop

https://spacebiff.com/2026/09/17/organism/

Published: September 17, 2026 22:51

Board games aren’t always very good at themes. Actual themes, as in underlying messages, not “themes,” the settings that appear in a game’s artwork. One of the hobby’s essential exceptions was Sol: Last Days of a Star. Set in some distant future, players…