Between "Mr. Jambo" and "Charlie Sheen Reaches Out to the Feds," this has been an amazing month for earworms that are also super funny.
Dan Thurot
@danthurot.bsky.social
I'm just some dude. A cardboard cowboy. I also write Space-Biff!, the world's first and only board game review site.
“Out of Sorts is every bit as good as I remember. Partly that’s because it’s such an improvement that it retroactively persuaded me that this is how the game was always played” Gonna be honest I’ve been so worried if I was gonna pull off walking this line, so this makes so happy to hear ☺️
Dan Thurot@danthurot.bsky.social · yesterdayOut of Sorts is getting a new printing. What is Out of Sorts, you might ask? It's a memory game about aliens forcing you to categorize books in their library. Yeah, it's weird. Also excellent. My review: spacebiff.com/2026/08/20/o...
Out of Sorts is getting a new printing. What is Out of Sorts, you might ask? It's a memory game about aliens forcing you to categorize books in their library. Yeah, it's weird. Also excellent. My review: spacebiff.com/2026/08/20/o...
Gooey-Free Classification
Two years might not seem like enough of an interval to warrant a second edition, but Connor Wake’s Out of Sorts is not your average board game. Actually, it’s become something of a coun…
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After being so difficult to acquire for many years, the new edition of Schadenfreude is every bit as good as the original. My review: spacebiff.com/2026/08/19/s...
All Flesh Is Grass
One of my favorite games ever designed is getting a new edition. Apart from some component upgrades and better availability, nothing has changed. Which is precisely what this title needed. So come …
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So far today, ten people have said they love my shirt... and then asked "What the heck is a Mountain Goats?"
If I ever earned a billion dollars, I would rather have it taxed down to a manageable number than suffer from the disease that makes billionaires start to think of people as not-people.
Haha, I found that "But can C3P0 make art?" dweeb, which can be fun to discuss, I suppose, but... ...but misses the entire point of philosophical paradoxes about theories of mind. These thought experiments don't serve to claim that robots are alive. They serve to claim that HUMANS are alive.
Well, now some readers are asking me to write about Grinivil, and of course it's already impossible to pick up. Anybody have a copy they're desperate to part with? XD
Today is the birthday of my review of Eila and Something Shiny, a difficult review of a difficult game, but maybe one of my favorite pieces. spacebiff.com/2023/08/17/e...
Eila and Something Disconcerting
I’ve never taken a firm stance on age ratings, in part because I’m not sure what they’re trying to impart. Most of the time, I take them as an evaluation of a game’s complex…
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Board games! I played some this week. What did you get to the table?
As expected, I have thoughts. But they're... complicated and scattershot.
TODAY IN SPACE-BIFF! In 2017, I reviewed Sidereal Confluence. Still a banger. In 2019, Paco Ŝako. Niche, but still good. In 2023, Peacemakers: Horrors of War. Banger. In 2024, Arabian Struggle. Still amazing. Guess August 15th is a good day.
Dan Thurot covered Shortstack!! 🥞 “It’s still a simultaneously charming and vicious little thing.” Such delicious writing!
Dan Thurot@danthurot.bsky.social · last wk.Today I'm looking at three trick-takers for big jerks. One about barfing up pancakes, another about magic that traps you in a store, and a third about getting dragged deeper into a dungeon. Read about them here: spacebiff.com/2026/08/13/s...
Today I'm looking at three trick-takers for big jerks. One about barfing up pancakes, another about magic that traps you in a store, and a third about getting dragged deeper into a dungeon. Read about them here: spacebiff.com/2026/08/13/s...
Flapjacks, Magic Tricks, & Sputtering Torches
All I play anymore is trick-taking games. Fortunately, it’s an uncommonly smart genre. Today I’m covering three titles that highlight both the format’s breadth and what makes tric…
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For whatever reason, this one went overlooked yesterday! Which is a shame, because Revolutions: France 1820-1880 is one of the best new-wave historical games I've played. Like, ever.
Dan Thurot@danthurot.bsky.social · last wk.Revolutions: France 1820-1880 is one of the best new-wave historical games I've played, covering uncomfortable coalitions and legislative action, uprisings and urbanization, and all with smooth rules that are a cinch to teach. My review: spacebiff.com/2026/08/12/r...
Revolutions: France 1820-1880 is one of the best new-wave historical games I've played, covering uncomfortable coalitions and legislative action, uprisings and urbanization, and all with smooth rules that are a cinch to teach. My review: spacebiff.com/2026/08/12/r...
The Shortest Nineteenth Century
According to one of my uncles, the terms “right” and “left” derive from the fact that conservatism is correct while liberalism is wrong. You know, because we say “that…
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There's a lot to like about Greylune, especially when it comes to its worker placement/removal system. But after one or two plays, I found myself chilling on its lack of variety. My review: spacebiff.com/2026/08/11/g...
Spylune
I never played Spyrium, William Attia’s 2013 game of steampunk factories, but I heard good things about its worker placement/removal system. Greylune, as near as I can tell, recaptures that t…
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If something is worth doing, it's worth doing badly. I don't mind reading wonky emails. I love talking to people who appreciate art but struggle to interpret it. I adore bad drawings. Some of my favorite people are poorly-rounded. But the instant those things are done by robots, I lose interest.
lol you need a robot to summarize what books you've been "reading"? I read books in a big bed with my wife.
Years after its overstuffed third version, Dawn of the Zeds is back with a Designer Edition. Hermann Luttmann has made some fundamental changes that make one of the great solitaire games even more dynamic and exciting. This is excellent. My review: spacebiff.com/2026/08/10/d...
Zed’s Dead — All Over Again
There was a run there, between the aughts and the teens of the current century, when Victory Point Games published multiple of the best solitaire board games ever. Banger after banger. Then it was …
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John Crowley died yesterday. His novel Little, Big touched me in ways I cannot describe. I sat and stared at the announcement, and felt a little sad, and then thought about Smoky Barnable and Edgewood and the Drinkwaters, and felt much better. Go well, my dear friend whom I never met.
"Why is Crokinole a board game but pool isn't?" who cares. say pool is a board game. drink deeply of the richness that is your birthright. become an insurgent to the categories that chain you. reject canon. write fanfiction that's better than anything jj abrams could ever dream.
Excited for somebody to define for me what qualifies as "play" versus "not play."
Had a great week! Played a bunch of things that may or may not be legally categorized as board games by the valiant self-appointed attorneys who protect us all from mentally sorting things into one conceptual box instead of another. What did you get to the table this week?
"Does x qualify as a game?" Games and play predate our efforts to categorize them. Play came first, and belonged to us as children, and we understood it with instinctual fervor.
David Masnato 🔜 PAX West@davidmasnato.com · 2w agoAfter almost 2 months waiting in the pending queue and a contentious submission process, Pax Playground is finally on BoardGameGeek. Despite having a ruleset and player objectives, BGG didn’t want to list the game because the ending doesn’t explicitly identify players as winners or losers.
Deep Regrets is about fishing, chance, and regret. But mostly regret. And not entirely in the negative sense. My review: spacebiff.com/2026/08/07/d...
No (Okay, Some) Ragrets
As a natural melancholic, the idea of being drawn to the sea — to drown one’s regrets, whether figuratively or bodily — makes me glad there isn’t a significant body of water within six …
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Two years ago today, I wrote about Wilmot's Warehouse, a game I still play regularly: spacebiff.com/2024/08/06/w...
Ars Wilmot
Meet Wilmot’s Warehouse. Based on the video game by Richard Hogg and Ricky Haggett, and designed by David King — creator of browser-based roll-and-write Tiny Islands — Wilmot’s Warehous…
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