I was first introduced to the design sensibilities of Pete McPherson after playing Tiny Towns, a pattern-matching game about building structures for woodland creatures. Because I enjoyed Tiny Towns so much I also reviewed his game Wormholes (a route building and resource collection game set in outer space), and Fit to Print (a realtime tile laying game in which you’re building the front page of a small town newspaper). We’ve also interviewed Pete twice (Feb 2019 and Jan 2022).

So when Pickpocket Games told me about an upcoming Pete McPherson title called Lodge, I reached out and requested a review copy without any knowledge of the game other than the cover (which is gorgeous). And now that I’ve played it several times, I realize that it fits right into Pete’s catalog like it was born there.

Take a walk in the snow with me to the front door of Lodge.

“With luck, it might even snow for us.”

In Lodge, players run competing ski lodges, set high in the mountains. Over the course of the game, players add rooms and amenities to their lodges, then entice guests to stay in those rooms. Ah, but the guests are picky, and as guests do, have their…

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Allplay’s small box line has gotten lots of love from the Meeple Mountain team. Dandelions, Big Top, Mori, Things in Rings, Waddle, and most recently Ruins, and Oddland. They’re a high-value, low-cost way to game in style. And I do mean style. While they might use simple components, the quality is top-notch; and Mountain Goats is no exception.

Join me on the mountaintop with Mountain Goats.

Being at the top is marvelous!

Mountain Goats is a dice and set collection game with a simple premise. Roll 4 dice, then group them into any configuration you like. The total value of all the pips in each group allows you to move one of your goats up the slopes of one of six different mountain ranges. A group with a value of 5 allows you to move forward on the “5” range, while a group with a value of 10 allows you to move forward on the “10” range. When you make it to the top of one of the stacks, you’ll take a chip with that stack's value on it. The 5 stack gets you 5 points; the 10 stack earns you 10 points.

Simple so far, right?

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Yogi - Justin Bell

I picked up a pile of party games from our friends at Gigamic at SPIEL Essen 2025. One of those was Yogi, a new release with 60 cards, a simple set of rules, and an interesting note: the rules indicate that the cards are waterproof.

Why should that matter? Yogi is a ridiculous time at the table that asks players to simply draw a card and follow all the rules on that card. That might mean ongoing rules for the rest of the game, like “each time you draw a card, sing the words printed on that card” or “compliment another player at the table before you take your next turn.” Many more are physical, like holding your elbow above your shoulders while tucking a card underneath your chin before drawing a card, but only with a certain hand.

If a player can’t keep up, they immediately lose the game, and remaining players keep going until only one remains. Is Yogi a game? I think so, but it’s a game that is a little hard to monitor, judge, rule, etc. because the conditions stack in crazy ways. When my son won our first family game, even he wasn’t sure if he should have been named the winner. “I…

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