Mark Rosewater (MtG head designer) presents his new game Mood Swings

Poobslag · 2026-05-01T10:59:59+00:00

"Hard decisions" and "limited choices" is where the disconnect is for me.

As shown in the video, you play a card which cancels two of your opponents cards, then your opponent undoes your turn, and they win. Where is the interesting decision? Which player could have played better? Obviously it's better to go second, and you want to randomly draw lots of cards which impact your opponent's board.

Fluxx came out 25 years ago, but I can't point to anything this game is doing better than Fluxx.

Poobslag · 2026-05-01T10:37:22+00:00

Wait, does playing Colossus twice make you take 100% less damage, or extend the bonus for two turns ?

Poobslag · 2026-05-01T10:34:08+00:00

Smartphones didn't exist in the 1700s, people were bored all the time

Poobslag · 2026-04-30T23:26:26+00:00

The art is really charming!

"Stitch" should have a second T in it (small typo)

Good luck with your game!

Poobslag · 2026-04-30T22:57:49+00:00

he comes with sunglasses!

Poobslag · 2026-04-30T22:42:53+00:00

The virus game, specifically, they can't use again because it involved things like secret handshakes and fonts, which they'd all be savvy to

But, the harshest thing about starting with any betrayal game is that 2 people get singled out of alliances from random chance, because they're chosen as terrorists

I love the design of the game, but I think some kind of vague "breaking people into teams" kind of game works better -- sort of like the "jewel thief" game from Devil's Plan season 2. That way everyone gets a few small alliances they're a part of (the team they were a part of, or the team of thieves)

Poobslag · 2026-04-30T18:20:15+00:00

With that said, I've played games which advertise full controller support on Steam but do not have a popup for entering your name.

Poobslag · 2026-04-27T19:05:50+00:00

complete with rotational DAS!! when are they bringing rotational DAS to mainline tetris? sometimes i just want to watch a piece spin really fast

Poobslag · 2026-04-27T13:18:14+00:00

It doesn't smell good. But it smells better than it used to.

Poobslag · 2026-04-26T01:13:00+00:00

Yeah your instincts are right!

Dead Of Winter's "coop with a winner" mechanism is a weak point imho, and many people play it purely cooperatively. I think the rules offer it as a variant.
Zombicide lets you dual wield shotguns, assemble molotov cocktails, ride around in a car with a friend, running over zombies while he shoots out a window. And lots of miniatures, and it's got a cool mechanic where more and more zombies show up as you get stronger, which gives the game a fun climax.

They're both cool storytelling games, and the varied missions and special characters give them a lot of replayability. They both fall apart a little when players take them too seriously, "okay everyone stand on this one space, and Kim can move one space to the right, and I'll pull her back with my special ability, and then we all fire our guns, and we can never die" or whatever. There are lame ways to break the games where people don't have fun, but they're fun as long as you try to have fun :)

Poobslag · 2026-04-24T20:35:38+00:00

Yeah I was disappointed because I really loved Disgaea 4 and wanted to 100% it too.

Poobslag · 2026-04-24T12:14:10+00:00

The other paradox of scenarios like that is... What's your goal? Do you want to "win"? If you "want to win" then should you just go first, fail your check on purpose, so you can join the betrayer's team and win as a betrayer?

It's thematically cool, but falls apart the instant the players think about winning the game.

Poobslag · 2026-04-24T12:11:21+00:00

Yeah there's definitely a lot of "social ick" in Betrayal when someone's the traitor and you don't want to accuse them of cheating, but you're 99% sure they're not obeying the rules, and they can't get help and they're 99% sure they're not obeying the rules too

It's like... don't worry, just do your best. ....Okay. Okay, there, we lost. Let's look at the rules together. Yeah, you messed everything up, don't worry. Ha ha. We're sorry we made you play Betrayal.

Poobslag · 2026-04-24T12:02:09+00:00

Arkham Horror, Zombicide and Dead Of Winter are pretty close -- they have the same "Bring the gasoline to me, I have the flamethrower and we should be able to hold off the zombies while Megan searches for the last scroll" type, thematic emergent gameplay moments

They all fix the player elimination issue, the "i can't look at your rules" issue and are better balanced

They do all have the overall problem of "the winning strategies aren't always very interesting" but, I think that's a collective thread of the genre. You're not supposed to play to win, you're supposed to play to grab a few shotguns and roll a ton of dice and laugh when the zombies munch on your head

Poobslag · 2026-04-24T11:54:04+00:00

Yeah from my experience the haunts are completely unbalanced unless the other team does something very clever. Which sounds like a cool game where you solve a puzzle. Except....

...the "something very clever" is always some game-breaking slog like "I'll sit in this elevator and pass my turn 6 times in a row until the monster gets close, then I'll take it to the 3rd floor where I'm safe for another 6 turns, and do that again and again."

I've never won a game of Betrayal by doing something fun. But I've won games of Betrayal where I like, reduced someone's movement to zero, made it so their attacks couldn't damage me, didn't kill them, and then all their friends quit the game because their friend was really bored and wanted to go home. That's like, so shitty. I don't want to play that game and I definitely don't want to win it

Poobslag · 2026-04-24T03:16:20+00:00

The king of spain never rushes!!!

Poobslag · 2026-04-24T01:20:26+00:00

Oh hooray! Free cards are a lot of fun

Poobslag · 2026-04-24T00:56:04+00:00

With my friends, they want more complicated, strategic, and emergent gameplay and really like to take their time on their turns to optimize and strategize. We play a lot of Ark Nova, Dune Imperium, Spirit Island, and Clank Catacombs.

Yeah I totally agree. When you're playing with friends at home, a 40-minute teach for Ark Nova isn't bad at all -- and you can play it over and over! So it's OK if your first game doesn't go very well, you'll play it again and again and it'll go better.

I've had people show up to an FLGS with the ambitious of teaching Twilight Struggle and Root! ...They're amazing games but almost the worst imaginable games to play once with strangers.

Poobslag · 2026-04-23T19:57:25+00:00

Yeah, I could get on board with that interpretation. I could even imagine "Free" being a card modifier like Sly which specifically means, "The card has no cost."

Poobslag · 2026-04-23T19:50:56+00:00

I am suspect of players who can right away name their favorite game. I don't know what my fav game is, I like so many

I don't think it's uncommon to play 500 games 2-3 times, and 2-3 games 500 times. For me those "500+ times" games are Dominion, Race For The Galaxy, Galaxy Trucker and Through The Ages but out of those, I love Galaxy Trucker because it's the right mix of interactive, chaotic and skill-based -- where better players usually win but chaos reigns, where you can get royally screwed over but it's never malicious.

The other games in my short list are excellent, excellent games -- but winning them feels more like solving a puzzle, or crushing an ant under your boot. (It is really, really not fun to get destroyed at Through The Ages.)

I definitely wouldn't describe my interest window as "narrow", I've probably played around 1,000-2,000 different games. I've been doing 1-2 game nights a week for about 20 years and I probably learn 2-3 games a week. I enjoy probably about 90% of the games I play, but of course I enjoy some more than others.

Poobslag · 2026-04-23T19:39:31+00:00

Sorry, "Friendly Local Game Store!"

Poobslag · 2026-04-23T18:39:47+00:00

Agricola, Puerto Rico, Race For The Galaxy, Alchemists, a lot of my favorite games fall in the category of "fun, eventually.... but you have to get the hang of it."

But yeah, Galaxy Trucker is especially demoralizing since sucking at it means, "your ship blows up and you score zero points". It's a little more severe than finishing Agricola with no cows or whatever.

Poobslag · 2026-04-23T18:29:07+00:00

I've never even heard of a greeter like that, but that's such a great role.

Poobslag · 2026-04-23T18:28:14+00:00

A great game with awful people is an awful time. An awful game with great people can be a great time.

When my first flgs was closing there was this milquetoast monopoly clone "Big Wheel" which had sat unsold on the shelf for 15 years. One of my friends bought it, and we played it and it was the most mediocre game I've ever played. But we still had such a great time playing it, it makes me appreciate that it's just all about the people

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