rid

im not a tv person but my partner and i successfully binged the first season of abbott elementary. pretty good stuff.

honestly, i'm surprised there hasn't been pokemon pinball mobile or something

in my office of seven co-workers, two ppl bought switch 2s for pokopia. by that sample, pokopia should sell a couple billion

i love the gba pokemon pinball and pocket card jockey, both so underrated

For me, I want people who haven't played to be able to "get in" to the review, but I think people overestimate how much rules explanation is required. Every "review" comes with five paragraphs of How To Play, so there's expectations that you have to buck.

getting back to my computer and realizing i set something up *incorrectly* in a dozen photos

3x3 grid videogames oldschool runescape, enter the gungeon, warioware mega microgames pokemon black 2, fallout new vegas, inside burnout paradise, super mario strikers, mirror's edge

i see ppl posting their top 9 videogames so i made a list. don't hold me to any of this i'd probably make an entirely different list if you asked me tmrw

i still play a run or two of gunfire reborn every month, so good

First Class Letters Review: Who Ordered the Letter Q? ★★★☆☆ — By my count, First Class Letters is about two things: words with lots of Js in them and knowing your alphabet. Surprisingly, the alphabet part is what trips people up.

By my count, First Class Letters is about two things: words with lots of Js in them and knowing your alphabet. A fine game for the wordgame enjoyers among us.

my review: manaworm.com/2026/03/05/f...

#boardgames

i love reading and watching board game reviews. even a negative or mild review of something can be all it takes to break me out of my boardgame burnout.

i just like people thinking about games. it gets me excited to play.

i know it's probably trite to mention concord in relation to highguard, doubly so now that they've met the same fate, but i remember thinking: "the game looks fine, why is the popular sentiment that it must fail and we must be happy it will?" how did we get here?

anyway, great piece brendon.

late to this but: so refreshing to see a mario sports game discussed like sport instead of merely as a piece of content taking x many hours to complete

got a hold on a library copy of fever now!

does the term "cycle" in the card game sense (cycling through your deck, cycling a card, etc.) come from the mtg keyword? or does it predate that mechanic, and the keyword is named after it?

the idea of a micro game *without* multi-use cards is scratching a part of my brain

your coverage in general, but especially of last year's run, has been one of the best parts of pacers fandom

this is the kind of niche stuff i need more of. good luck and can't wait to read more!

Tag Team Review: Corner Combo in Cardboard ★★★★☆ — I had resigned to not reviewing Tag Team after my initial plays, but something remote and hidden in a pretty bad SNES title got me back into playing.

Tag Team is a critical darling, but not one that I immediately clicked with. Strangely enough, it was a jaunt through SNES flop Shaq Fu that got me back on Tag Team's side. I get it now.

my review: manaworm.com/2026/02/23/t...

#boardgames

i think ppl love the feeling of finding and exploiting synergies and ball x pit (more than others) realizes the "broken synergies" can be explicit and not-hidden-at-all to keep you hooked.

the internet is worth it for me because of ugly community-managed websites that are nearly 100% complete repositories of knowledge for their niche

been playing a lot of brotato, astral ascent, and gunfire reborn lately. my little brother is getting really into balatro.

we are heading backwards to peak roguelike.

new way to tank just dropped

i only play with my family, and only with decks that cost like fifty bucks or less bc that's what we have. i've never even seen a rhystic study or a smothering tithe. the online commander discussion is completely alien to my experience.

really odd stuff. he's backtracking and claiming AI can't actually do anything. but half this article is still him insisting that he has a moral obligation to evangelize AI as far and wide as possible because he knows too much about it.

Thinking Big Thoughts and Solving Problems Creatively

the new LinkedIn title is what got me

A piece of paper showing a 4x4 grid mostly filled with drawings of buildings. Next to the grid are building names next to polyomino shapes with squares of different colors.

I make games because I love every step of the process—the initial idea, the scrappy first prototype, the first playtest filled with glee and failure and hope.

Here’s my scrappy first prototype of Tiny Towns. [1/6]

more than just thinking AI could replace them, he thinks that his job as COO is the actually important one. selecting the right games and committing the capital to them, that's all games are. "art" never even enters the picture.

this thread starts with "the AI sucks ass but I spend my day querying it riddles" and ends with "yeah it could replace all of my designers because their job is that easy."

screenshot from the boardgame arena adaptation of Carnuta. a snakey witch is posed over a vat of potion wrapped in vines. the player has several moon runes as well as a tableau of different ingredients.

my newest bga obsession is Carnuta. reminds me slightly of splendor with it's tight choices and trying to efficiently use a small handful of resources.

also i think the art is sick.

halfway through c. thi nguyen's the score and i have to say: it's nice reading nonfiction that isn't informing me of the horrors of the world. i mean, there's a little bit of that, but there's also board games and the delight of play

mewgenics build diversity is crazy. day one run where one of my cats would teamkill my other cats and proceed to one shot every encounter