Dude! Take Your Turn!
A Gaming Life
December 2025 Gaming
December turned out to be a gaming lost cause for the most part.
Two Sundays cancelled for various reasons, one shortened one, and a bunch of work stuff going on so lunches weren’t always available as well.
In fact, if it wasn’t for my Final Girl plays (6) and four games of the very short Werewords in one lunch period, it would have been a wasteland!
I also didn’t really get to use my 3 days between Christmas and New Year’s for much gaming (just one Final Girl game) because of having to take care of computer issues and the like.
It looks even worse compared to November, because of the November convention.
Still, it was a restful month in other ways, and I do love the holidays.
In December, I managed to play just 13 unique games a total of 24 times (and remember, 10 of those were for 2 games!).
Here’s what I played last month.
And here it is in grid format.
Many thanks to the wonderful Boardgame Stats for the app that provides these images and lets us track our plays so efficiently!
As you can see, only one new to me game last month!
That post is going to be incredibly short.
However, there were some highlights for the month, so let’s look at those.
Read MoreBlog in Review – 2025
Happy New Year, everybody!
I hope you had a wonderful and safe holiday season and new year’s celebration last night.
Maybe you were out celebrating, or just having drinks with friends?
Or maybe you were even asleep?
Whichever it was, I hope it was good for you.
As I did last year, and for the last 6 years as well, this is a Blog Review post for 2025, looking back at my gaming and blogging and reflecting on the changes from year to year.
It’s not a full year in review post, since that would seriously depress me.
I mean, 2025 was a real shitshow overall.
Instead, it’s just me, my personal stuff, gaming and blogging.
Which, while not a shitshow, was really up and down.
Let’s take a real look and see what’s what.
Read MoreHorrifying Christmas – Final Girl – North Pole Nightmare Review
Just in time to miss Christmas by a few days, how about checking out a Christmas-themed Final Girl feature film with all the bells and whistles of cheer and good tidings to you!
Oh, and some evil monster wanting to kill everybody (including you) at the North Pole.
It’s time for Mrs. Claus and one of the Elves to step up and fight him off!
Yes, North Pole Nightmare is a Final Girl feature film set in Santa’s Village with the maniacal Krampus as the villain.
Let’s nail all of those Christmas traditions!
This feature film was designed by A. J. Porfirio with art by Vincent Dutrait (what a catch!) and was published in 2023.
It’s a “Special Feature” for Series 2.
This one is a straightforward bloodbath, except that it has a few extra twists which really make this one engaging.
Before Krampus steals all of our presents away (those left over from Christmas because I’m lame and couldn’t get enough plays done in time), let’s take a look at it.
Read MoreNotable Books Read in 2025
I love Goodreads as a way of tracking books read, though I am also really liking Storygraph as an alternative (since Goodreads is owned by Amazon, in case that matters to you).
Starting in 2025, I have been using both, but eventually I may just go to Storygraph. I try to limit my Amazon usage (though we are Prime members, so I know we’re not there yet) so I would love to use Storygraph exclusively.
One of these days, I’ll break this chain.
But not quite yet.
That being said, 2025 was a great year for books read.
My Goodreads reading challenge for 2025 was 55 books (I was conservative again) and I ended up reading 59!
I’m quite proud of that one.
This isn’t going to be a Top 5 or anything like that.
Instead, it’s going to be a list of books that I think you might enjoy, either from the non-fiction perspective or from the fiction one.
With that caveat, let’s begin!
Read MoreBGG Top Games – 1501 Through 1600
Sorry for breaking the weekly schedule, those of you who have been following these posts so religiously (hi, Bob!)
Last week had other important posts to do that didn’t take quite as much time, because these posts do take a lot of effort and such.
Not to mention it was Christmas!
But we’re back with another century of Boardgame Geek rated games goodness.
This time we’re looking at games rated on BGG from 1501 – 1600 and I have to admit that the returns on these are getting sketchy.
I’ve played fewer of them as time goes on and some of them just aren’t that interesting.
If the trend continues, that may put an end to these posts!
But for now, let’s carry on.
In this batch, I have played ten of them while owning (or once owning) four.
There may be some that I’m interested in playing, though, and there are at least a couple of gems here.
So let’s get started!
Read MoreRiding the Rift – Riftforce Review
There are a lot of two-player lane battler games out there, some with twists and some…without.
The best ones have cards with different abilities that are squaring off against your opponent in an attempt to have the most strength in a lane.
Riftforce meets half that definition, and it’s the good half!
Riftforce is a 2-player card game (though you can play it solo or in team mode with the expansion) published by Capstone Games in 2021.
It was designed by Carlo Bortolini with artwork by Miguel Coimbra.
What adds variety to the game is that each player is going to draft four different guilds which will then give them access to their elementals to play onto the long rift that divides the table.
Players are trying to accumulate Riftforce (wow, that’s the name of the game!) in order to win the game.
Read MoreSee You on the Flip Side – Fliptoons Review
One of the big hits in 2025, especially when you’re looking at fun, fast, and zany card games, is Fliptoons.
This game just basically covers all the bases if you’re looking for something light but yet intensely fun (sorry, Dan).
The game was designed by Jordy Adan and Renato Simões, with beautiful artwork by Diego Sá. It was published by Thunderworks Games in, as I said above, 2025.
The game is part deckbuilder, part auto-battler (except that there is no battle) and part race.
Those seem pretty distinctive, so you might be wondering what the hell I’m talking about.
Let me explain!
Read MoreDoing “Unethical” Things in Games
Short post tonight because it’s the Monday before Christmas and I wasn’t going to post anything, until something on Boardgame Geek sparked a thought.
Sam C on Boardgame Geek asked this question about Architects of the West Kingdom (a fantastic game, though one that’s falling a bit in my estimation as other games overtake it):
“This may seem silly, but it’s important to me to not play games with stealing. This game looks like a really solid worker placement game though…
Would this game still be fun without stealing taxes? Would I not have access to the black market? Would I not be able to afford very much without stealing? Or would I need to play a straight virtue strategy every time?”
Now, I’ve seen questions about “take that” in games, including about Architects! I know some people don’t like to do anything bad to their opponents in a game.
But this is the first time I’ve really heard a question about doing something immoral in a game that wasn’t a game about immoral actions in general.
Read MoreBGG Top Games – 1401 Through 1500
I really like how successful these posts have been!
There has been some true engagement as people have gone through the lists and talked about their own experiences with them.
I know the last post was Sunday, but let’s get back onto that weekly track by doing a Thursday post.
Here’s the link to the 1401-1500 ranked list of games on Boardgame Geek, though keep in mind that the list can change over time, especially if you are looking at this in the far future!
Like the year 2500 or something.
A couple of them changed between me writing part of the draft of this post and when I finished it!
This sequence of games will have a lot of “I want to” or “I have no intention to” mentions, because I’ve only played 9 games!
Also, I only own 5 of them, some of those of which I haven’t played yet.
The inspiration for this list came from the This Game is Broken podcast, where they did a “Higher & Lower” segment based on games ranked from 1000-2000.
I took it from there, and will probably carry this on until people stop caring!
Please don’t stop caring…
The last post was heavy (well, 3, but still) in COIN games, but this set only has one (Liberty of Death: the American Insurrection #1487), which I happen to own.
There also don’t appear to be that many wargames in general.
That’s a switch!
You know what else is a switch?
Moving on without some kind of witty (ha!) segue…
Read MoreSomebody’s Knocking – Final Girl – A Knock at the Door Review
Horror movies are not really my forte (though I have to say that you should definitely check out Dust Bunny now if you can! It’s great and not really much of a horror movie, but it’s still fun).
Jump scares and creepiness while watching movies are just not really my thing.
For some reason, though, I love the tropes!
And that’s what Final Girl brings in spades.
The A Knock at the Door feature film for the illustrious solo game takes inspiration from a bunch of home invasion movies like “The Strangers”.
A trio of killers are trying to get into this secluded cottage and kill everybody in it.
This feature film was designed by Mike Martins with art by Heather Vaughan. It was published by Van Ryder Games in 2023 and is part of Series 2.
It’s not the first feature film with multiple killers (though maybe it is, since I’m not sure of the order in which this one and Panic at Station 2891 were published) but it has its own unique set of rules to manage the multiple killers.
Some may be good, some may be bad.
Before we let this person who’s knocking madly at the door inside, let’s take a look at it all.
Read More