In which MetalJim reviews the boardgame that took Atlanta by storm…

In which MetalJim plays awesome board games for three whole days…

Microsoft’s XNA framework, which is enabling game developers to target the PC and the Xbox 360 together, will soon allow the Zune to be targeted as well. What does this mean? Why do we care?

In theory, the XNA initiative is supposed to open the doors of game development (and really more importantly – distribution) to [...]

Chalk my household up as one of the latest additions to the Wii Nation. The very first game you get to play is the one where you try to locate a unit for sale and actually buy it. It’s not too hard if you’re persistent: you choose a close retailer like Wal-Mart and call them [...]

In which MetalJim reviews a newish board game…

Once upon a time I subscribed to a magazine called Computer Games (it actually started with a free subscription bundled with Europa Universalis II!), and as its name implied, it was all about gaming on the PC. Content was sterling, but readership wasn’t. They stooped so low as to start filling the back pages with [...]

In which MetalJim discusses whether the boardgaming universe is shrinking or expanding…

For Christmas this year I got the King in Yellow expansion for Arkham Horror and I was lucky enough to get 4 friends to play it with me last weekend. Yay! Here’s what I thought of it…

Picking up the thread from two weeks ago, here’s the rundown on the 11–20 spots of the BGG rankings. Given the season, you can take even use this as a pretty good shopping list for that game in your family. But do be clever and first ask what games he or she is playing a [...]

Let’s take a look at what are currently considered the best of the best games at Board Game Geek. What I would really love (does it exist? can it be done?) to see would be some sort of historical tool that could collect snapshots of the BGG rankings over time and let you see how [...]

Today’s post is about Skip-bo. Sort of. Maybe it’s about the madness of crowds as it pertains to the game table. Your call.

Skip-bo, dating all the back to 1967, is more of a “family” game in the vein of Uno than it is a strategy game, the main distinction here is that it’s very “light” [...]

I guess the sentiment expressed in today’s title should come as a surprise to exactly no one here: game design is hard! Like any creative art, it’s easier to criticize what someone else has done than to create something yourself. And being a consummate connoisseur may not, in fact, give credential to create. True confessions [...]

In last week’s post I used Gabriel Rocklin’s freeware version of Ra as a strawman to make some points about classic trouble spots in AI’s for computerized board games. Gabriel was kind enough to comment in and point to a newer test version of the game with some ongoing AI tweaks. Thanks for the response, Gabriel, [...]

On occasion I play around with the freeware (ahem, unlicensed) computer version of Ra that MetalJim referenced in his August post on digital cardboard. Random and I have debated whether getting good at this version helps in real live face-to-face play. I think it’s a mixed bag – it’s been good to get a lot [...]

I was thinking about what a friend had said; I was hoping it wasn’t a lie…

Big things are coming in the world of computer games, especially as far as paper and cardboard gamers are concerned. I’ve been following Microsoft’s XNA initiative so closely that it’s easy to forget that it’s been public for less than a year, [...]

This is the third and final installment in my astoundingly unpopular (it’s no wild boast – I read the site statistics!) series on rules, algorithms, and interfaces for computer versions of board games. See parts one and two here.

What’s left to talk about today is AI modularity. As a way of getting there, I want to start with [...]

MetalJim’s brain has been melting in all those 100+ degree Nashville days, and he’s been covering d21 posts like a madman. I’m back from vacation now to pick up my regular slot, so MJ can get on to more pressing tasks, such as removing the Sony rootkit that came with his PC version of BioShock…

While [...]

Last week MetalJim highlighted some freeware digital cardboard that’s out there in his post. Since this is near and dear to me both as a hobby and now as a profession, I checked some of these games out. Well, I checked one game out: Ra, a game I know fairly well.

It turns out that in [...]

In which MetalJim tells you to stop reading and go play some cool games already…

As promised last week, here are my first-draft rules for the leadoff boardgame-like computer game that I aim to produce under the Victory Hearts banner. I’ve include the rationale for my thinking where I thought it might be of interest. d21 readers are invited to weigh in with their thoughts, critiques. commentaries, suggestions, pleas to abandon, etc. [...]