That’s the cover to DungeonQuest, a game that came out in 1985. I bought it probably around 1987 or 1988, and it’s a game I really like.
In it, you are exploring a castle with all sorts of rooms and passages. At the center is a Dragon’s lair, where you can find treasure aplenty. Problem is making it there. See, not only are you building the rooms as you go along (by drawing tiles randomly, which means often going in the wrong direction) but you’re encountering all kinds of traps and …

I have two regular boardgame groups, one that meets on Sundays and one that meets on Tuesdays. This past Tuesday Mike, Jim, Kyle, Chris, and I met and played Jim’s new acquisition, Cyclades. This was good because I figured hey, I can review it for Analog Gaming!

Cyclades is by Bruno Cathala and Ludovic Maublanc, who’ve done a number of games together, including the delightful Dice Town, which I love. Cyclades is set in the ancient Greek isles, and the goal is to establish two metropolises (metropoles?) in the isles. To …

When one thinks of boardgames — assuming one ever does — one thinks of them as primarily mental challenges. They are known for employing the brain through strategy, tactics, negotiation, memory, or even factual knowledge. Yet there is an entire subgenre of games that, while it can involve these things, focuses primarily on physical interaction with the pieces. They’re called dexterity games.

As soon as any new computer hardware or software becomes commercially available, most niche groups try to find ways to apply it to their area of interest, especially if those groups are already somewhat nerdy. This is why porn and Star Trek are always the first two third-party applications of any new tech. Boardgamers are no exception.
While boardgames are often presented (in the title of this column, for example) as an alternative to videogames, there’s no reality to this. Boardgames have always coexisted peacefully with computer games (just ask Deep …

Once you’ve been gaming for a while, you’ll notice that, even if you have a constantly rotating palette of opponents, you’re still pretty much always playing with the same people. Sure, some of the similarities will be obvious; if you want to do some boardgaming, make sure you know a bunch of white guys who usually have beards and aren’t too proud to still be quoting Monty Python and All Your Base. But beyond that there are some definite categories that every player falls into at least one of, if …

The planets have aligned again and Rockstar Games, the video game studio behind the groundbreaking, trend-setting Grand Theft Auto series, has given us Red Dead Redemption, a new entry in their Red Dead Western series and another prime demonstration of the “sandbox” style of game setting they pioneered.

I read a lot of stuff on the Internet.
In fact, with the exception of the free daily tab I get every morning on the way to work and books, nearly everything I read is online. Along with the day-to-day news, some opinion pieces from people I like and weird stuff my friends send me through links, I read a whole bunch of sites that deal in, for lack of a better term, nerd news: coverage of stuff like video games, comics, TV shows like Doctor Who and LOST, movie and …

Boardgaming is a social hobby, and for that reason most games are intended for several players (4 to 5 seems to be the sweet spot, usually.) However, there are plenty of fine games that are intended for only two players. If you don’t have a group of people handy, or you just want something that you and your significant other can enjoy over a bottle of wine in the evening, here are some games you might consider looking at.

Hobby boardgamers are geeks, and that means it’s important for them to try to get everyone around them interested in whatever they themselves are interested in. There are a special subset of games referred to as “gateway games” because of their alleged success in “converting” non-boardgamers into boardgamers. We’ve already discussed those games here.
Today I’d like to talk about the opposite of these games, games that are not at all friendly to “newbies.” After playing (probably more like “enduring”) one of these games, the target is not likely to say, …

Interaction is a concept that isn’t discussed much with regards to American games, since they seem to take it for granted. In most American games, the players interact with each other as well as the game. That is, in Monopoly, if I land on your property, I pay you money. You can upgrade that property to hurt me even more when I land on it. In Sorry!, landing on my piece sends it back to start. In Risk, your armies are directly attacking mine. These are pretty basic methods of …