Let's try something new! For some reason (spoiler: the reason is laziness), we don't have a guest this week, so Shoe and Christina decided to feature the seasonally appropriate (for the Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival) Moon Bunny and then discuss some exciting new push-your-luck dice games that we've been enjoying. Timeline 1:30 - Game pick: Moon Bunny…

We've been keeping an eye on the Kinfire series (which includes the cooperative campaign Kinfire Chronicles and tactical card game Kinfire Delve), and we walked away very impressed with our plays of the latest one in the franchise, Kinfire Council, a competitive worker-placement game set in the same world. Publisher Incredible Dream Studios is appr…

Cozy is the new zombie. Or Cthulhu. Seriously -- just keep your eye on those store shelves (especially over the next few months), and you'll likely see so many new board games themed around the art of non-conflict. Maybe you'll be cuddling up with kitties. Or you'll be sitting around, peacefully matching tiles at your own pace. Or you'll be arrangi…

We love Gen Con so much, we couldn't fit everything into our Games of the Show episode. And Corey Thompson loves Gen Con so much that he became a part-owner of the giant North American gaming convention. Corey leads Above Board TV, cohosts the Board Games Insider podcast, co-owns Play to Z Games, and...lots more that will just take up way too much …

We're back from North America's giant gaming convention: Gen Con 2025! Did you miss us? Don't answer and don't worry -- we've got the coverage for ya. We sit down and talk about SO MANY GAMES -- over 20 of 'em in this episode alone. Which did we like? Which were the best in show for us? Listen to find out! Timeline: 4:21 - 2025 Party Games of Gen C…

We love unique gaming experiences, especially from those tough-to-find games in Asia. Why are they so different from Western-made games? And what are the differences between games that originated from Japan, Taiwan, Korea, or other parts of the East? Jay Bernardo, marketing manager at Bezier Games and content creator at Cardboard East (which specia…

Do you enjoy hosting a handful of people for game night? How about a few hundred? That's what these three tried for the first time about a month ago in Burbank, CA: Dustin Staats, content creator and owner of online and brick-and-mortar retailer BGE Tabletop; George Caceres, owner of board game cafe Game N' Grounds; and Dae, owner of board game sto…

We just finished Halloweeeen! What are your favorite board games for spoopy season? We ask Creepshow: The Suspense-Building Game co-creators Ben Kepner and Dan Stong about what they like to play during this holiday...plus how they feel about designing while working in-house at a publisher compared to working independently. Timeline: 3:45 - Going An…

Game time! We catch up on a bunch of reviews for new games and expansions -- tune in to find out how much we liked them! And whether Christina ever found her Pringle. Thanks to the publishers for providing review copies. Timeline: New games: 1:30 - The Architects of Amytis. 6:24 - Medieval Academy. 11:41 - Combo. 15:55 - Star Trek: Star Realms. New…

The 2025 American Tabletop Awards were just announced! (Whispers offstage inform us that they were announced back in April....) Well, we're now ready to talk about them after our extended break. With ATTA cofounder and content creator Eric Yurko of What's Eric Playing?, we react to the recently crowned finalists and winners -- and tell you how we e…

We're back! Again! Tune in to hear all our excuses about why we haven't been podcasting recently, then stay to hear our guest, fabulous designer (Evolution, Wits & Wagers, Oceans) and North Star Games founder Dominic Crapuchettes! We talk about the upcoming Evolution sequel Nature, tariffs (gah), and Dominic's process when designing a science-based…

Imagine the longest, most suspenseful drumroll ever....... Sorry we've been MIA, but real life has been unforgiving and busy. Luckily, we're making it up to you by commemorating our 150th episode with our TOP 10 GAMES OF ALL TIME! We invite Ultimate Beige Gamer and Going Analog Editor Mike Zipkin to join us to share our individual top 10 lists. Who…

Did someone say Phil Walker-Harding? Praise be! The prolific designer (Sushi Go!, Barenpark, Imhotep, Gizmos, Adventure Games, and so many more!) joins Christina and Shoe to talk about how his film background has surprisingly influenced his design process. Plus, Phil's been noticing the "playfulness" inherent in some games recently. Why is he excit…

We just wrapped up last year with our 2024 Games of the Year episode, so naturally, it's time to move on with our lives and think about what gets us all excited about 2025. What are we looking forward to playing? What have we previewed previously and are now eagerly awaiting the retail release? What's the buzz we're hearing from others in the biz? …

We did it, folks! We recorded our 2024 Games of the Year episode before the end of the year! (We didn't say anything about releasing it before the end of the year, though.) Joining us just under the wire is content creator and Twitch streamer Beneeta Kaur who contributed her own picks. We actually played a good number of games in-person with Beneet…

How is it almost the end of 2024?! Christina and Shoe sneak in some more recent games and tell you about them. Timeline: 1:02 - Small-box games: Bottle Imp, Codex Naturalis. 14:10 - Medium-box games: Looot, In the Footsteps of Marie Curie. 26:30 - Big-box games: Rallyman: Dirt, Creature Caravan.

BoardGameGeek's BGG.CON is always a good time: just days and days of straight gaming (with some delicious Texas BBQ sprinkled in throughout). So what did we play? And what stuck out to us? Christina and Shoe talk through the games, the show, and more in their big post-BGG.CON update. Timeline: 2:41 - SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. …

Publisher Bitewing Games has a thing for designer Reiner Knizia (most recently with Zoo Vadis and the Mythos Collection's Illiad and Ichor). Now they're back at it with a new three-part, big-box, Knizia-palooza Kickstarter campaign. We had the opportunity to play one of those parts, SILOS (Secret Interlopers from Outer Space), a retro sci-fi (with …

Tired of hoarding resources, majority-ing areas, and adding up victory points? Want to make your frenemy continuously act like they're milking a cow instead? Then let's talk party games! Shoe and Christina run through a bunch of new big-group activities to help you with your next big game night. This episode was sponsored by Magic Mind, our favorit…

We were thrilled to meet Ben Rosset, co-designer of our favorite deduction games The Search for Planet X and The Search for Lost Species (as well as the classic Between Two Cities), at Gen Con 2024. Find out why that first meeting was ridiculous (in our eyes), what's Ben's creative process on his deeply thematic designs, and how we feel about the v…

Board games = cardboard. It's in the name of the material itself! But...what about An Age Contrived, a new Euro-style, action-programming strategy game designed by Chris Matthew of indie publisher Bellows Intent? It has magnetic bits, chunky Azul-style tiles, and in the Founder's and Collector's Editions, the player boards are set into solid metal …

Last episode, we gave a quick recap of North America's largest board game convention, Gen Con 2024. But what everyone really wants to know is, what was best in show? We did our due diligence, played as many games as we could during and after the con (we know -- our lives are so hard), and are ready to report back. Plus, we tapped Twitch streamer Am…

We're back from Gen Con! North America's largest tabletop gaming convention is now behind us, but our coverage is just beginning. In this episode, we share our stories from the massive show, plus a few impressions of our favorite games that we got to play. Stay tuned for lots, lots more. And make sure to check out Magic Mind, the "Mental Performanc…

It's almost time for North America's largest board game convention, Gen Con! We've been frantically trying to cram in all the hot new games on our shelf of shame/opportunity before we discover...even more hot new games at the big show. We ask the busy Ruel Gaviola (board gaming showrunner, producer, podcaster, and host of several YouTube and Twitch…

What's your favorite movie genre? And which board games can you play to relive those feels? We ask performer and board game writer Mx. Tiffany Leigh to chat about this. As someone who worked in movie production and a real-deal old-school video store, she has fantastic movie and game recs! (We got so into the movie topic that we ran out of time for …

We were sitting on a new stack of word games, so we asked our editor Mike Zipkin (he of fancy game upgrades and beige game tastes) to join us in covering Word Traveler, Illiterati, Mind Map, and ContraBanter. Plus, upgrading your board games is old news -- how do you upgrade your entire game room? Timeline: 2:00 - Christina/Shoe's game pick: Captai…

Who doesn't love a beautiful nature game? Shoe doesn't, the grump. He just hates nature. But did he like the upcoming Everbloom, designed by our guest Ian Moss (Bunkers & Badasses, Dinosaur Island, Wonderland's War), from publisher Nerdvana Games? (Check out the Kickstarter!) We also discuss what makes a new deluxe or big box edition of a game wort…

We've got so many new board games to talk about this week that we decided to skip having a guest on, so we can just blab and blab and blab about what we've been playing lately. So yup, you're just getting all Christina, all Shoe this episode. And they're ready to dish on what they liked and what they didn't about each of these. Timeline: 1:16 - The…

Legacy games can often light a classic franchise back on fire, as demonstrated by Flash Point: Legacy of Flame's successful Kickstarter. We asked Legacy of Flame codesigner Ken Franklin (The Mansky Caper, Back to the Future: Dice Through Time, Tsuro: Phoenix Rising) to share some insight into how they turned the long-running co-op series into an ev…

The 2024 American Tabletop Awards winners were just announced, so we invited ATTA founder, fellow judging member, and content creator Eric Yurko of What's Eric Playing? to hash them all out. How did Eric, Christina, and Shoe vote? Timeline: 3:30 - Early Gamers category. 19:45 - Casual Games category. 35:51 - Strategy Games category. 53:52 - Complex…

We knew Connie Vogelmann, designer of Apiary, was holding something back the last time we talked to her. So we brought her and Elizabeth Hargrave back to interrogate them about Wyrmspan, the new dragon-themed sequel to Elizabeth's now-classic and award-winning Wingspan! What was it like designing a new game under the Wingspan name? How much did Con…

We spend a lot of time with our friends playing board games, so we're bound to bond. But how well do we really know these people we've invited to our table? We teamed up with our pals Raina and Phil from 1 Minute Board Games to take the next step in our gaming relationship: not just play "normal" board games (which we still do plenty of with them) …

When we read that Eric Slauson (designer of MonsDRAWsity, the upcoming Chucky game, and many more) likes to deal cards in a...very unique way, we knew we wanted to invite him on to discuss just how weird his board gaming habits are. Are we weirder? And just how do YOU compare anyways? Plus, gamers always talk about how some games aren't "worth" the…

Though we fancy ourselves "omnigamers" -- gamers who enjoy all genres -- we're kind of fooling ourselves. There are certainly specific categories of board games we try to stay away from. But! With every "rule" (if you can call it that), there's gotta be exceptions, right? So we explore ours with Peter C. Hayward. The game designer (That Time You Ki…

I know we just finished our 2023 Games of the Year episode, but we're so over last year. It's cult-of-the-new time -- what are the badass games we're looking forward to in 2024? We invited gaming sommelier Alex Hart of Might I Suggest a Game to help us out since he also just put out his list! And while we're frequent boardgame recommenders, sometim…

The end of 2023 means only thing: time to talk about the best board games of the year. And for this awards season, we invited board game content creator and standup comedian Grant Lyon to discuss our favorite party, light, medium, and heavy games that released over those 365 days. Do you agree with our picks? Did we miss any that would have changed…

New year, new(-ish) games! Christina and Shoe pit some newer board games against their predecessors or competitors: the new co-op King of Monster Island vs. the original free-for-all King of Tokyo, two-player Tokaido Duo vs. the original Tokaido, and head-to-head dice-chuckers Kapow! vs. Dice Throne. Timeline: 1:39 - Shoe's game pick: The Fox Exper…

What's better than a bunch of adorable, flower-pollinating honeybees? Putting those honeybees in space! New worker-placement game Apiary is the buzzworthy debut design of Connie Vogelmann. We invited her on the podcast to see how she went from playtester to a proud creator of a high-production game by a big-time publisher. We also chat about what r…

We are back and ready to cover more great Euro games with Daniel Wahlen of The Game Table! This time, we focus on the new hotness that 2023 has generously brought us, but if you're more into modern-day remakes or sequels to legendary classics, make sure to check out Part 1. In this episode, we give our impressions on... Timeline: 2:30 - Nucleum. 21…

Euros, Euros, and gyros! We love a good Euro-style strategy game, but we couldn't cover all the great releases this year in just one podcast. Especially when we're chatting with fellow enthusiast Daniel Wahlen of The Game Table -- we just have so much to talk about! So in part one, we cover some fantastic remakes and sequels to some legendary class…

Ten years ago, your Going Analog hosts Christina and Shoe were obsessed with the digital collectible card game SolForge. Sadly, the daily (and nightly) sessions of lane-based combat mixed with a revolutionary upgradable-card system went away when the game eventually sunsetted (solsetted?). But, Richard Garfield (Magic: The Gathering, Android Netrun…

Let's be honest: We'll make any excuse to talk with Elizabeth Hargrave, the Kennerspiel-winning designer of Wingspan, Mariposas, and Tussie Mussie. So our current excuse? We wanted to talk to her about her soon-to-be-released The Fox Experiment (published by Pandasaurus) and Undergrove (by AEG). So now we can nerd out about how Elizabeth marries a …

We've had so much fun with Friendly Skeleton's upcoming party game Trash Talk that we wanted to dedicate a whole episode to other light-hearted fare that's great for gaming groups. Are you more of a co-op party gamer...or do you prefer to go at it in teams? We asked Jacob Way, Head Skeleton at Friendly Skeleton (formerly Deep Water Games), to join …

Prolific content creator/streamer Banzainator joins Christina and Shoe to talk what we love best: video and board games! What do we like better...and when? Also why do we keep going back to co-op games when...we think we don't really like them all that much? What types of games break through that barrier for us? Listen for fun times! Timeline: 3:38…

We haven't played anything quite like The Arkham Asylum Files: Panic in Gotham City. This super premium, augmented-reality, multimedia experience is a pricey box at $149 for a one-time (maybe? -- listen to learn more) playthrough. Is it worth it? To dig into how The Arkham Asylum Files is pushing the boundaries of tabletop gaming, we invited Animal…

Hosting this podcast isn't all just fun and games...no, wait, it actually is! Check out this episode for our impressions of a hilarious adventure game where monsters thrive in a human-less world, a deckbuilding game with cute robots smashing each other, the sequel to our favorite logic-deduction game, a roll-and-write version of Tetris, and two par…

The 2023 edition of Gen Con, North America's largest board game convention, was the biggest yet -- breaking attendance records and our wallets so we could get the hottest games...to tell you about, of course! We asked American Tabletop Awards committee member, content creator, and general awesome gamer Ruel Gaviola to join us to discuss the show an…

We hosted a huge party recently and got a ton of new board games to the table -- so we wanted to dedicate an episode to six of them! You've wondered about the hot new sequel to Scythe, Expeditions, and we played it! Plus Marrakesh from Stefan Feld and Queen Games' City Collection, Vaalbara and Rauha from Hachette Games, Overboss Duel from Brotherwi…

Forget Terminators. The thing about artificial intelligence that you should be worrying about is how it's creeping into the creative aspects of board-game-making. Plaid Hat Games Marketing Manager Niki Shults and Multimedia Director (and newly minted game designer of Freelancers: A Crossroads Game) Donald Shults join our podcast this week to tell u…

Women and people of color are barely getting proper representation in the board game industry. And how about the LGBTQ+ community? Even worse. Joining us with no shortage of opinions on this matter is Theo, aka GeekyGamerGuy. Theo's a board game content creator on the frontlines, fighting for equality and representation in this hobby he loves so mu…