I continue my ongoing online games of Innovation with younger daughter Chen Rui, who is now away from home. We have moved on to playing with the expansion Cities of Destiny. I'm sure later we will cycle back to the others. Although the latest rules for Innovation have been implemented on both Yucata.de and BoardGameArena.com (available if you participate in early testing), we are still

Shackleton Base is a heavy eurogame about developing and operating a moon base. This is a worker placement game in which you build domes, attract employees, mine resources and make money. Every game there will be three corporations out of seven in play, and they determine the human enterprises happening on the moon. Working on projects for these corporations is how you

Blood on the Clocktower is a social deduction game with the same concept and structure as Werewolf. It is an improved, more complex and more strategic version of Werewolf. In Werewolf you don't really have much basis for discussion or deduction. You rely on observing the facial expressions and reactions of your friends. In Blood on the Clocktower every town resident has a unique

Steam Power is Martin Wallace’s magnum opus Age of Steam simplified to become a family game. Well, not exactly. Indeed much is simplified, but some elements in Steam Power are just different. Some are a little like Brass.  In Steam Power, you build your own rail network. You also build factories. Every city allows one specific factory type.

The biggest change at my boardgame blog in 2025 was the quantity. Since starting this blog in 2007, I have never written this many blog posts. The number of posts is more than double of the next highest year. This is mainly because of the many new-to-me games I played on BoardGameArena.com. Together with my long-time gaming buddies Han and Allen, we started playing asynchronous games

Catan: New Energies is a variant and a standalone game in the Catan universe. 95% of the original The Settlers of Catan is still here. Some elements have been added. The additions are a social commentary. This game explores the concept of sustainable development. In order to do well, you must develop your cities and towns in an environmentally-friendly way. Otherwise you will be

Fishing is a deck-building trick-taking game from mad scientist designer Friedemann Friese. The game is played over eight rounds. Every round you score points based on the cards you win. These cards are shuffled, and they go to the bottom of your personal draw deck. In the next round, you draw cards from your personal draw deck. Your draw deck starts empty. In the first round, if you don’t

Little Fighters 2 was a hit digital indie game released in Hong Kong in 2000. It was remastered and re-released in 2025, its 25th anniversary. Together with the re-release, a novel was published, and the deluxe version of the novel comes with a small box card game. This is that small box card game.  This is a game for 2 to 4 players. You play one of four characters in the digital

The first thing 5 Towers reminds me of is Lost Cities. You have five suits, and you must play your cards in a specific order, with no turning back. However there are several important differences, so 5 Towers delivers a different play experience. You can build up to five different towers, each a different colour, and you most likely will. Building a tower means playing cards of the same suit

The Gang turns Texas Hold 'em Poker into a cooperative game. It's a great idea. Most of the cards in the game are just standard poker cards. Unknowing passers by will probably think you are just playing regular poker.  Your goal as a team is to guess the order of your hands based on strength. You need to guess who has the strongest hand, then the second strongest, and so on. You

This is Han's game, and it has a ton of miniatures. This box you see is just for the basic components, including the game board, the player boards and the player markers. However you cannot fit the miniatures into this box. There are at least two other huge boxes needed for all the miniatures in the game. When you need to bring this game to game night, you'll be carrying several bags like

The Rich and the Good is the English version of Hab & Gut. I’m going to refer to the game as Hab & Gut, not because I’m being pretentious, but because I’ve always heard of it being referred to in the original German name. Also it’s a much shorter name to type. This is a game of commodity price manipulation, insider information and making donations. You are an investor (well, to be totally

 

Wine Cellar is a very pretty game. It is about collecting bottles of wine. Throughout the game you will collect a stack of 8 bottles, and at the end of the game you score points to see who wins.  You start the game with a hand of 8 cards. You use them for simultaneous bidding, and the number in the top left corner is the strength of your card. Every round there will be a number of

Diamonds is a trick-taking game for 2 to 6 players. The basic rules are the same as standard trick-taking games. You must follow suit if you can, and the highest card in the lead suit wins the trick. There is no trump suit. What's special about this game is the suit powers. There are four suits in the game, and the cards are numbered 1 to 15. The theme is jewellers. Each player has his

Burst is a light card game that can be described as group Black Jack. That’s just like my game Pinocchio, but in Pinocchio the cards are hidden. In Burst you can see all the cards played.  On your turn you either draw a card or play a card to the centre of the table. You have a hand size of three, so if you have three cards, you must play one. Cards in hand are your points. They are

I would like to hear your opinion. Since 2022, Cili Padi Games has been publishing one game per year. My idea is to do this once a year to gradually build up my product line and my brand. However I also remind myself that my goal is to focus on being a designer, not a publisher. If I am able to pitch a to a publisher successfully, I would happily play the role of designer only. So far

Super Fantasy Brawl is a 2-player game in which you control a team of three fighters and you go head to head against the opponent team in a grand arena decorated with three statues.  You don’t fight to the death. Instead you race to score points. Fighters don’t die. They respawn at the deployment zone. You score points by knocking out enemy fighters and by completing challenges, which

The Flatiron building is a famous landmark in New York, well-known for its triangular shape. When I first saw the name, I thought it was rather weird because I thought it was pronounced as "fla-tee-ron". Only after I saw the Chinese name I realised this name was "flat" and "iron" combined. I feel dumb now. This is a 2-player game about constructing the Flatiron building. You are builders

Moonshine is a game about running a speakeasy in the prohibition era. You roll dice to generate resources. You have some casual customers who can help you generate resources or roll more dice. You will spend resources to recruit your casual customers to become loyal customers. Some of these give permanent benefits. Some give points. When you reach 12 points, the game ends and you win.