Dude! Take Your Turn!
A Gaming Life
Evolving in the Shadows – Doomlings- Shadow Puppets Bolster Pack Review
Card games, when given a bunch of expansions, can inevitably suffer from that bloat of having a deck of cards so massive that even God himself could not shuffle it.
Doomlings is getting to that point, but the good thing about this game is you can decide what cards you want to include and what you don’t, because each expansion or booster pack is clearly marked so you can remove what you don’t want.
The Shadow Puppets bolster pack for Doomlings is a set of 37 cards that can be added to the base Doomlings deck, adding three different factions of cards that build on each other.
It also adds a new Catastrophe and two new Age cards (as well as a foil card and five player aid cards) that can be added to your Doomlings round deck.
It’s not much of an expansion, but it certainly can add some heft to one of the other major expansions.
Read MoreBottoscon 2025 Retrospective
This past weekend was the 19th annual Bottoscon convention at the Inn at the Quay in New Westminster, Canada.
We’re almost at 20!
The con is run by Rob Bottos, a great guy who has taken to heart what many of us Canadians have thought about crossing the border for US conventions in these strange times, and decided to hold not just two conventions a year (starting in 2026) but three!
Yes, there will be a Bottoscon Winter in late February and the same Bottoscon Spring in June like there was last year.
While I don’t think I’m at the level of considering Rob a friend, I’m honoured to know him and have chatted with him a few times. He runs a great convention, he and the staff of volunteers who help everything go smoothly.
Also many thanks to one of those staff members, Allan, for working to get us a table that worked for our open gaming desires after a bit of an initial mix-up.
He went all out to try and help us, and it was greatly appreciated.
That, and the New West quay is simply beautiful, especially in the morning when we’re heading over to Angelina’s for a wonderful breakfast on Saturday morning.
The convention started as just a wargaming convention and there are still a ton of wargames played, but it has morphed into “regular” (i.e. Euro and other types of games) games as well as some role-playing games.
Just like last year (which was the first year of it), the Boathouse restaurant (attached to the hotel) offered tableside service so we could order a meal while not having to leave our table, which was really cool.
Unlike last year, they had a roaming server so that you could just order a snack or a beer or whatever, even between meals.
I took advantage of that and had more beer this weekend than I have had in quite a while (which only amounted to three, so you know how much I’ve had recently).
There’s also a possibility to sell some games, and for the first time I actually chose to benefit from it. I got to sell 6 games and basically financed my meals for the weekend!
I sometimes play wargames and would like to play more, but this year it was all about the non-wargames for me.
Four days (Thursday-Sunday) of gaming goodness!
What did I play?
Let’s take a look.
Read MoreIt’s Moving Through the Vents! – Final Girl – Into the Void Review
One of the classic horror movie franchises is the Alien series, or at least the first one.
The second one, I would almost count as an intense action movie with some horror elements.
And then things got silly.
Anyway, it’s not surprising that the Final Girl solo game franchise was going to come out with a feature film based on that series, and it only took them until Series 2!
Into the Void is the feature film with the terrifying Evomorph as the killer aboard the USS Konrad starship.
You know the crew are sitting ducks, right?
This feature film was designed by Evan Derrick with art by Tyler Johnson.
It was published in 2023 by Van Ryder Games.
Much like Ellen Ripley in the movie series, you are the final girl tasked with taking on this monstrosity as it appears and disappears without warning, viciously eviscerating crewmembers at every turn.
There’s even a Final Girl named Ellen!
I have yet to see the Evomorph emerge from one of the meeple’s stomachs, though I wouldn’t put it past Van Ryder’s ingenuity to somehow make that happen.
Is it the best one in the series that I’ve played so far?
Let’s take a look.
Read MoreNew to Me – October 2025
October was a really lean month for new to me games, with only two getting done!
That will change in November with Bottoscon coming up, but October was almost a wasteland.
However, the Cult of the New to Me was happy because, while one of them was a brand new 2025 game, the other one was from 2013.
That’s back when people were writing on parchment scrolls, isn’t it?
(of course, it’s been reimplemented this year as another title, but who wants to play that, am I right?)
The cult was so happy with me (they could only be happier if both games had been over 10 years old) that they bought me a new car!
I don’t think any of them are experts on cars, but the thought was nice.
Or maybe that’s what they think of me as a cult leader?
I may have to ponder that one.
And while I do that…
There, that’s done.
Anyway, without further ado (all of my ado was stolen to build some canal anyway), let’s begin!
Read MoreSpirited from Garphill Games – On Kickstarter in January 2026
There are so many games from Garphill Games (especially those that Shem Phillips is involved in) that I like, that news of a new game coming from them always raises my eyebrow in expectation.
We’ve now received an announcement of their next Kickstarter (after the just-completed Secret Societies) that will be coming in January 2026.
Spirited is unique in the sense that all three of the major designers from Garphill are involved in it: Shem Phillips, S J MacDonald, and Zachary Smith.
The art is also done by multiple Garphill veterans: Patri Balanovsky, Mihajlo Dimitrievski (the Mico) and Sam Phillips.
This was announced in a video last night, which given that it was New Zealand time, I was actually in bed when it happened, so obviously I didn’t see it.
And another first! I think this is the first of their major games that can play up to 6 players right out of the box (Raiders of the North Sea could be played with 6 if you include both expansions).
What is Spirited?
Well, it has anthropomorphized animals, so some people on BGG will already hate it.
But does it look cool?
Read MoreEldritch Horror Digital Coming to Steam in early 2026
I’m not sure when this was announced, but I stumbled upon this last night and just had to post about it (even though I haven’t done a lot of “news” posts recently).
One of my favourite games that I hate playing (mainly due to setting up) is coming out on Steam next year!
Eldritch Horror is a bear of a game to set up, with so many card decks to shuffle, so much table space to find room for, and then fighting with your fellow players about which Big Bad to play against, it just becomes unwieldy and by the time I have it set up, I’m so exhausted that I don’t really enjoy the game.
Ok, a bit of an exaggeration, as I do finally enjoy it (especially if we read all of the cards so that we really feel the immersion).
Now Asmodee has announced that this huge game is going to become much easier to play, if you have Steam (and hopefully maybe eventually tablets as well?).
Think of the table space saved!
(All photos are from the Steam page, where you can wishlist the game now!)
I do love the story that this game tells.
Travelling around the world, meeting up with God knows what kinds of horror, or just things that will make you question your sanity.
The ability to get items to help you along the way.
The game seems almost impossible to win (though we have won a couple) and so after an hour setting up (it seems that long, I’ve never timed it) and three hours of playing (or more), to just get overwhelmed and defeated just feels wasteful.
The digital version will really help with that.
The encounters, whether it’s a location encounter or some other kind of encounter, just make this game shine (as long as you read them out loud so everybody gets immersed).
I think this game would be great solo (as long as you have the table for it), so getting to play it solo on the app would just be amazing.
This app is apparently being developed by Cornerstone Software Development, and I can’t find any other Steam games under their banner.
Hell, I can’t find a web site for them, though my Google Fu may be failing me.
Maybe they’re another studio under the Asmodee banner?
So let’s hope they’re able to come through on this, not only on time but also with the quality that this game deserves.
Here’s the blurb from the Steam page:
“Experience a journey like no other in this narrative board game. The award-winning board game has been brought to life for the first time in an adaptation that will challenge your skills, assault your sanity and reward determination. Lead a diverse team of investigators in a globe-spanning adventure to stop the rise of the Ancient Ones: eldritch powers beyond comprehension that will destroy the entire world if awoken.
This turn-based adventure features hundreds of encounters, dozens of items and multiple Ancient Ones to pit your party against. A dynamic encounter system will change with your choices and challenge your strategies ensuring unique playthroughs and a world shaped by your decisions. In victory or defeat, this will be your story to sear across the cosmos.”
I’m not sure what they mean by “dynamic encounter system” (there’s a picture of an Encounter card on there already so I hope that’s what they mean).
Could be good!
You can wishlist it on the Steam page linked above.
Not much word on online play or how much it’s going to cost, though the page does mention solo, online co-op and split-screen co-op, so I hope that’s what they’re able to implement.
Does this excite you at all?
Let me know in the comments.
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 More
Dude! Take Your Turn! 