Board gamers are allergic to anime.

At least, that's the impression I've gotten after reviewing board games for the better part of a decade. I've covered plenty of games from across the ocean that barely made a stir in the West, including the card-based boss battler Testament, the calculating superhero co-operative game Tokyo Sidekick, and WizKids' reprint of the time-traveling one-vs-all game Tragedy Looper: New Tragedies. Search for reviews of any of them, and you’ll only encounter a handful that give these games a fair shake.

Jisogi: Anime Studio appears to have broken free from those chains of tradition. Well-known YouTube channels are talking about, praising it, and gushing over its artwork. I won’t lie, I’m about to do the same. I’ve played this ridiculous number of times despite the short timeframe I’ve had with it. I love this game.

Lights, Camera, Debt

Jisogi’s story is a somewhat familiar one in the animation industry. A massive animation studio lays off its employees, and the government decides to intervene. It will fund the next great small studio, provided someone can prove they have what it takes to run one. That someone is you. You take control of one of these struggling studios and have four rounds to…

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Green Goblin Crashes the Party

When AMG first announced their foray into the world of board games with the Alliances line as a spinoff from Marvel: Crisis Protocol, I was… skeptical. After all, could they really take a game I love like MCP and spin it off into a team-based co-op experience? Could they capture what makes MCP work? I was dubious. While it’s not a perfect experience, I was completely pleasantly surprised by just how fun the game turned out to be. It’s just an absolute blast.

The quick idea is that each Alliances game brings together a team of four heroes, all with varying superpowers, to take down an iconic villain and their army of goons. Here, we get both Spider-Men (Peter Parker and Miles Morales) along with Black Cat and Ghost-Spider, teaming up to take down the Green Goblin. Together, they’ll fight him across three different chapters (two objective-based chapters and a final boss fight), each lasting roughly 90 minutes each. 

Getting started is simple - each player picks the character they want to be and picks a level 1 upgrade, and then you’re off. It’s worth noting that if you’re a solo player, this game is very easily playable in solo mode with you controlling all four characters, though I can’t speak to that experience…

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