There’s quite a bit about Castle Nightingale to catch the attention of the discerning gamer. That box, with its palette of dark blue and warm orange, stands out on a shelf. As you get closer, the colors organize into three mangy cat ninjas and a game red panda samurai, all charmingly rendered by Vincent Dutrait. That one cat making eye contact more or less dares you not to be interested. As you pick up the box, which you inevitably will, you might notice the “B. Cathala” listed alongside co-designers Eliette and Jérémy Fraile. Only then might you notice the logo in the lower left corner.

You don’t often get to say, “Sand Castle Games has a new game out.” Prior to Castle Nightingale, you’d have said it twice. There was the 2019 release of Res Arcana, and the 2022 release of First Empires. Three games in eight or so years—I’m including production work on Res—is a slow, considered pace. And to think that people used to marvel at Days of Wonder’s approach of only one title a year.

Even if they only have a 50% hit rate, Sand Castle’s pace suggests that they only release the games they really want to release. It’s clear from their production choices that they pour all of their attention into each…

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I have more than once mentioned puzzle-maker extraordinaire Blaž Gracar's work in the same breath as releases from Rush Hour purveyor Thinkfun. I have rarely mentioned them together as a matter of direct comparison. These are different products for different audiences. Gracar makes pencil-and-paper puzzle books that are only for the sweatiest adults, while Thinkfun cranks out charming toyetic brain teasers that keep children well-and-truly occupied. The connection comes from Gracar’s gift for imbuing his puzzles with a sense of discovery that brings me back to my childhood, when I had a massive collection of Thinkfun games under my bed. With the release of Herd, Gracar’s publisher Letibus and Thinkfun now warrant direct comparison.

Rather than drawing lines or shading in boxes, Herd has you shifting Shepherds around a grid. These delightful, hollow black cones have wonderful neutral facial expressions and a pronounced indifference to your failures. It’s a good thing, because in trying to get them from a designated Point A to a designated Point B, you will fail often. And fail. And fail again.

Herd is a patient exercise, though I wouldn’t necessarily call it meditative. There is a flow state to be found in moving the pieces about,…

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I enjoyed my time with Corps of Discovery Duo, Joy Cormier and Sen-Foong Lim’s two-player version of Corps of Discovery. Or, at least, I would have told you I enjoyed it. I certainly had a nice time playing this cooperative deduction game for two. But when it came time to write this review, I found I didn’t have much positive to say at all.

It feels unfair, but it also feels right. Prior to writing about Corps, I had been having an excellent day, so I know I wasn’t moody. I even re-read this draft after taking a nice walk. I gave myself a little treat. I hydrated. I took a nap. When I returned, I found that I couldn’t argue with anything I’d written. Corps of Discovery Duo did not work for me in any meaningful sense.

As Lewis, Clark, Sacagawea, or York, two players have to work together to map their way west. In practical terms, this is done by playing cards with one of ten different items on them out onto the table, following both public and hidden rules for each item while doing so.

Here we hit our first bump. Why are we arranging items? Why aren’t…

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For the most part, the team at Mighty Boards has never done me wrong.

After a middling experience with their recent release Red North, I didn’t rush their other SPIEL Essen 2025 release, Pinched!, to the table until recently. But after doing plays at three, four, and five-player counts, I’m excited to share that Pinched! was a blast. Save for my thoughts on how the game’s random card draw can affect scoring and notes on a specific player count, I highly recommend giving Pinched! a look.

“I’ll Take That”

Pinched! is a hand management and set collection game of bluffing and thievery for 2-5 players. Over a series of turns, each player (taking on the role of a thief in a gang of them) will serve as the Mastermind for a given turn. Using a hand of location cards, the Mastermind will select a heist location from amongst the 3-5 locations available in that game.

The Mastermind plays this card face-down into the center of the table, then each other thief will play a card from their own hand of location cards in the hopes of matching the location selected by the Mastermind. During the reveal, two things could happen. If the Mastermind picks a location that…

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I’ll admit it: my wife and I got a little too comfy.

After some of the best experiences in the one-shot, mystery gaming arena with the KOSMOS series Masters of Crime, I expected my fourth run to be another blowout. Masters of Crime: Vendetta, Masters of Crime: Rapture and Masters of Crime: Shadows are the height of the category; one of those titles was on my top 10 games of 2025, but all of them could have been, if I had just sprinkled the titles across the entire list.

What those games got right is why I recommend them to everyone I know. The scenarios are fantastic, you’re always placed in the shoes of the villains, not the cops, the puzzles are tough but fair, and the endings always made logistical sense after working through all the bread crumbs dropped during the investigation.

Masters of Crime: Incognito was the next game on my list. I created a draft for this review and had a 5.0/5.0 placeholder ready to go before I played the game. I was sure Incognito would be another banger; why wouldn’t I? My wife and I set up a date night for a Friday evening play. I made the cocktails; she grabbed our note-taking components, laid out the game, and read the…

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What a charmer, this Honeypot. It has a great hook. It’s hard to have a bad time when you’re tucking cards into tiny manila folders. Also, there are bear costumes. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Honeypot isn’t quite I Split, You Choose, but it’s close. I Arrange, You Decide, maybe. I Slice, You Bite? I’ll work on it. As secret agent bears across five brisk ursine rounds, players draw six cards from the massive deck, arrange them however they see fit, place them in the aforementioned manila folders, and hand said folders to the next player in the direction of play. On your turn, you open your little gift and look at the first two cards. Now you have to make decisions.

[caption id="attachment_328210" align="alignnone" width="1024"] Photo by Ilya Ushakov[/caption]

If you want the two cards you revealed, great. You keep them and that’s your turn. But what are the odds your opponent, this rival secret agent bear with a grin on their face, would put the best cards at the top? The honey only gets sweeter the further down you go, right? If you think there’s something better deeper in the dossier,…

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I play maybe a half dozen one-shot/escape room/murder mystery-style games a year. I’ve written so many reviews of these deduction titles that it’s hard to even remember them all at this point!

I know a winner when I see one, and on the heels of some of the best games to hit the market in this category with the entries from the KOSMOS Masters of Crime series, I am continuing to explore the market. I’m sure other publishers are making great titles here…right?

During my visit to Germany for SPIEL Essen 2025, I picked up a copy of My Murder Mystery: A Dead Monkey from the team at Horrible Guild. There’s no getting around it—the title of this game is terrible. I might have even said that to our friends at the publisher…”My Murder Mystery” is the name of the series? “A Dead Monkey”??? What is going on here? Even if some of this was lost in translation (Horrible Guild is an Italian publishing house), I still can’t figure out why they landed on “My Murder Mystery.”

(My 11-year-old heard the game’s title and was horrified by its implication: “do you have to investigate the murder of a MONKEY???”

Don’t sweat it. The title is terrible…but the game here is magic, and it instantly becomes a serious…

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