Dude! Take Your Turn!
A Gaming Life
October 2025 Gaming
Who knew that after my 1000th post celebration, the next one would just be a regular “hey, what did Dave play last month?” post?
In other words, we’re back to normal. The cake has been eaten, the ado has been stored so nobody can steal it (though that doesn’t stop them for some reason), and now I’m working on getting to the 2000th post.
In another 7 years, maybe?
Anyway, October was a lighter than normal gaming month, with two of our Sundays cancelled and not as many lunchtime games as there are some months.
I did make up for that with 7 (!) Final Girl games, racing through the feature films so I can review them (and more so to justify how much money I’ve spent on Final Girl in the last few months).
Here’s what I played last month (or I guess I should say this month, since technically it’s still the 31st, and Happy Halloween!).
And here it is in grid format.
Many thanks to the wonderful BG Stats app for its assistance in putting this post together (and just for being all-around great and responsive people).
And the Hypnagogue Podcast for providing the ambient music I’m listening to while writing. This is the first time I’ve listened to that podcast, and if you like ambient, electronic music to just relax to, or write to, or what have you, I have to say that after two episodes, I’m hooked!
Definitely going to use this when writing, if I can.
Anyway, let’s talk about the games!
Read More1000 Posts and Counting
This blog started back in March 2017 and has been a going concern (sometimes very concerned!) for over 8 years now.
As my mental health has changed and my motivation has lagged sometimes, the post count has gone up and down, but I’ve consistently done about 110 posts a year (not counting some low years but also not counting a huge year last year of 160 posts, which I have no idea how that happened).
I realized earlier this week that an ideal 1000th post would have been last week’s “Why do we play games” post, but I did that without thinking because I wanted to break up the string of reviews that I had done.
Sadly, I can’t unpublish that and republish it later (I could, but that would be wrong) so I’ll just have to find something else to celebrate with!
It’s hard to imagine, 1000 posts (plus one post from a friend of mine who helped me name this blog and contributed one post, who is also dear to me).
It’s also hard to imagine that it’s taken me 8 years to get there!
I’ve been gaming regularly since 2012, as I detailed in my “how I became a gamer” post.
I was also a gamer long before that, though I took a break for almost 20 years so I don’t really count that earlier part.
Titan was a great game to wile away some time in college, and I really loved my time with Jerry Miller (he’ll never see this post, but who knows? A high school friend of mine found a post that referenced her and we reconnected, so that was amazing) playing Squad Leader and its expansions in his dorm room.
But I’ve been blogging off and on for maybe 16 years now and it’s something I’ve really enjoyed doing.
Read MoreDying on Strings – Final Girl – Carnage at the Carnival Review
As a kid, I was never really that fond of puppets.
It’s not that they creeped me out, necessarily.
They weren’t like clowns.
I just never really went to puppet shows to be entertained, and Pinocchio was not one of my favourite Disney cartoons.
If I had played Final Girl – Carnage at the Carnival, however, they would have had me hiding under my covers almost day and night.
Carnage at the Carnival is a Series 1 feature film in the Final Girl solo franchise from Van Ryder Games.
The film’s location is a deadly carnival while the film’s killer is the evil puppet master Geppetto.
It was designed by Evan Derrick and A. J. Porfirio with artwork by Vladyslava Ladkova and it was published in 2021.
I have to say that this one is brutal, at least in my three plays of it.
Read MoreFinding the Aliens Among Us – SETI Review
Action selection games usually don’t have a lot of theme to them, at least as far as the actions you are selecting from.
Usually it’s like “oh, I select this noble to do this thing, and oh, supposedly I’m building some part of this medieval cathedral by doing that, ho hum.”
In SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, you are actually choosing actions that would supposedly help achieve the theme’s goal.
Whether it’s scanning for alien signals or exploring the planets in our solar system for traces of these aliens, you are actually doing something that supposedly will help discover the aliens!
Yes, you’re still playing a card to move your probe to maybe land on a planet, or maybe you’re spending the data you’ve received to find some trace of alien presence somewhere.
But at least you can see the connection to your action.
SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (I’m just calling it SETI from now on) is a game designed by prolific designer Tomáš Holek (seriously, he had 3 games published last year) with artwork by a bunch of people (too many to name, but they’re credited at the BGG link).
It was published by Czech Games Edition in 2024.
(Though I have to say to stay far away from their Harry Potter Codenames because trans people deserve not being nuked by assholes like J.K. Rowling and you know that money she made is going to anti-trans causes)
Ostensibly in this game, you are using various methods to find traces of alien DNA to then discover the aliens and hopefully be able to interact with them (or their remnants) to score a lot of points.
Yes, this is a points extravaganza, though in my plays of it, it’s more a points “minor get together with one or two people who may not even be your friends”.
But I suck, so don’t let that deter you!
You’ll do fine.
Read MoreGambling With Success – The Gang Review
Poker can be a really hardcore game, and quite cutthroat too.
Bluffing your opponents into thinking you have an unbeatable hand when you have nothing but crap is a mainstay of the game.
Why is he betting so much on that flop?
But what if…and just hear me out before scoffing…what if, it was a cooperative game?
I know, right?
The Gang takes Texas Hold ‘Em poker and makes a cooperative game out of it, and does a really nice job of it.
It’s basically turned into a deduction game where you can only hint at what you have, but it’s important for the other players to actually have an idea.
Designed by John Cooper and Kory Heath (RIP), with artwork Fiore GmbH, the game was published in 2024 by Kosmos.
And it is surprisingly addictive if you like working out hidden information.
Do you need to know how to play poker?
Not necessarily, as there is a player aid that ranks all of the hands and the instructions do tell you what it all means (for those of you who think “flop, turn, and river” are Greek words).
It helps to have somebody knowledgeable about the game just for advice (in between rounds, of course) in how to read some of the tells from other players.
In this game, tells are good!
Read MoreTerraforming Mars: The Legacy of Mars – Coming to Gamefound
Two posts in one day, but when I become aware of something (or in this case, become aware that a link is live even though I knew it was coming before), that’s news!
This may be a day or two old, I’m not sure, but there has long been talk about a Terraforming Mars Legacy game, and now there is an actual link to give people.
Terraforming Mars: The Legacy of Mars is coming to Gamefound…sometime in the near future. No date has been set yet.
The campaign preview is now live, but unfortunately there is no Boardgame Geek entry for it and none of the pictures on the Gamefound page are linkable, so no pictures here.
You can go to the link and sign up to be notified when it does go live.
As with all of the other Terraforming Mars games, this is going to be published by Fryx Games and Stronghold Games.
Here’s the blurb from the Gamefound preview:
“Terraforming Beyond Mars! Mankind has finally dragged itself out of the hole that is Earth’s gravity well, and now has the entire solar system at its feet. We are now ready to take terraforming – the true legacy of Mars – to new worlds! The Legacy of Mars is a fully replayable campaign divided into two parts. In this campaign we launch Part 1 covering missions 1-4. Gameplay is based on the original award-winning Terraforming Mars boardgame, so if you’ve played that game, much will be familiar, while still introducing new mechanics and hundreds of new cards to explore! Since no components are destroyed or permanently altered, the campaign or individual missions may be played again at any time.”
What’s that you say? Divided into two parts?
Yes, not only the game, but the actual campaign is divided into two parts.
Read MoreWhy Do We Play Games?
I enjoyed board and war games as a kid, though I obviously didn’t think a lot about them.
There was, of course, Monopoly and Candyland and all of that childhood trash that we look back on and say “did we really play that?”
As I mentioned in my “How I Became a Gamer” post, though, I also played some wargames with my brother because he had bought them, and they opened my eyes to what games can be.
I also treasured that time with my brother.
I had my 90s lull after college (college is where I played Squad Leader and Titan a whole bunch) and picked them up again in 2012 by visiting a convention’s gaming area.
But that’s not what I’m talking about today.
Instead, I want to explore why I (and maybe by extrapolation, we) play games.
What does it do for us?
What do we enjoy about it?
Why is it something we do over doing many other things?
There are a number of reasons for me, so let’s explore them and see if you’re of a similar mindset.
Read MoreLiving on the Edge – Forest Shuffle – Woodland Edge Expansion Review
I want to say that the Alpine expansion for Forest Shuffle was the first one, but I’m not 100% sure.
That one (as I mentioned in my review) helped by adding a few different cards that mitigated some other favoured strategies in the base game.
No matter which was first, though, I have to say that the Woodland Edge expansion is so good at this!
Forest Shuffle: Woodland Edge is another expansion designed by Kosch with artwork by Toni Llobet and Judit Piella. It was also published by Lookout Games in 2024.
If you must own only one expansion, this is the one to get!
Not only does it help with some overpowered strategies in the base game, but it adds so much good stuff to help other strategies, and with only 36 cards.
Read MoreHe Comes For You in Your Nightmares – Final Girl – Frightmare on Maple Lane Review
Nightmare on Elm Street was one of the few horror movies I could really stomach as a teenager (I’m not really a fan of horror movies, especially with jump scares and the like).
There was just something about Freddy Krueger that was cool, plus I liked the actor who played him (Robert Englund) because he was the nice alien in the “V” TV movies and series.
Freddy is such an obvious horror trope that you knew the Final Girl franchise would emulate the movie and character pretty early.
Sure enough, it’s a Series 1 feature film!
Frightmare on Maple Lane is a hilarious (well, to me anyway) pun on the title.
Designed by A.J. Porfirio with art by Roland MacDonald, this Final Girl feature film was published in 2021.
Let’s talk about Maple Lane first since it is such an interesting location with somewhat limiting mechanics (though still pretty cool).
Read MoreFinding a Stranger in the Alps – Forest Shuffle – Alpine Expansion Review
(100,000 bonus points for anybody who gets the (kind of) movie reference in the title)
I’ve been a fan of Forest Shuffle for quite a while, as you can tell from reading my review.
This wonderful tableau-building game never really gets old and plays equally well at 2-4 players (I’ve never played it at 5, but I imagine it does).
However, there were a couple of strategies that were dominant in it (especially the Wolf/Deer one) and some strategies were pretty weak (bats and butterflies).
With the arrival of the expansions, though, that has greatly been helped!
I’m not sure which arrived first, but let’s talk Forest Shuffle: Alpine first.
Also designed by Kosch, with art by Toni Llobet and Judit Piella, this expansion was published in 2024 by Lookout Games.
This expansion is a simple card expansion, adding two new trees (7 cards of each), 12 top/bottom animal cards and 10 left/right animal cards for a total of 36 new cards.
So it’s not very big, but it does have a pretty big impact on the base game.
Read More
Dude! Take Your Turn! 