Reviews

Reviews of books, games, software, and other things

Metatopia 2024

November 12, 2024

Metatopia continues to be a brilliant convention for game designers who want to alpha- and beta- test their game designs with smart, capable people from the design and playtest community
(15 minutes read)

Stories from The Between RPG

November 1, 2024

An account of stories told when playing The Between. In celebration of the successful crowdfunding just taking place.
(30 minutes read)

Review - Alien RPG

May 4, 2024

An RPG which captures the feel of the Alien/Aliens films beautifully.
(13 minutes read)

Review - Signal to Noise RPG

April 14, 2024

A card-based epistolary game about fading communication and saying goodbye.
(25 minutes read)

Review - The Price of Coal RPG

January 25, 2024

A diceless, card-based story game about labour rights and the Battle of Blair Mountain.
(10 minutes read)

Review - Fedora Noir RPG

December 29, 2023

A diceless, card-based story game about a detective and his hat. Perfect noir feel.
(14 minutes read)

Metatopia 2023

November 13, 2023

Metatopia has run again as an in person event for the first time since the start of covid. This was smaller than before, fully masked and vaccinated, and absolutely excellent!
(24 minutes read)

Review - Notability & Goodnotes

January 4, 2023

Digital notepads are some of my favourite apps for the ‘noodling around’ stage of game design
(7 minutes read)

Review - The Between RPG

December 22, 2021

A deeply atmospheric game of people with dark secrets hunting monsters in Victorian London.
(6 minutes read)

Review - iA Writer

October 23, 2021

The choice of software for writing is as individual a choice as anyone is likely to make. I’ve shifted over time from one to another, and at the moment my preferred choice is iA Writer.
(6 minutes read)

Review - Jump the Shark RPG

September 14, 2021

Do you remember Happy Days, with Fonzie, Richie Cunningham and all their pals in a nostalgic situation comedy back in the 1970’s? It was fun, exciting and spawned a whole generation of people who knew how to say “Heyyyyy” while showing two thumbs up. But one day it jumped the shark.
(6 minutes read)

Review - One Page Howitt

August 9, 2021

During the last year of COVID I’ve had the great delight of enjoying some regular Sunday night games with friends from America. We’ve played a wide range of one-shot games and playtests. Today I’d like to focus on the one-shot games which we have played which were written by Grant Howitt - well known for Honey Heist, but actually the purveyor of a very wide range of fine one-page games. These are presented in the order in which I played them.
(6 minutes read)