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25 May 2019

Board Game Review: Ginkgopolis

The cover art for Ginkgopolis. A man and a woman in vaguely futuristic clothing looking at some technology that appears to be planning the construction of a futuristic city, standing on a metal platform in a grassy area with a few trees, as a path runs towards some sci-fi buildings in the background.

Not too long ago, I got to try out a game that you may have heard of. It's called Ginkgopolis, by Xavier Georges, from Z-Man Games. I had fun learning it, and am anxious to try it again, now that I know how to play it! See, it's... not quite an area control game, and not quite a deck-builder, and not quite a resource management/building game... but it's got elements of all of those things, all crammed together in a most intriguing little mechanic!

But I seem to be getting ahead of myself again, as I am wont to do. So let's pause for a moment and take a look at the numbers:

18 May 2019

PinkFae Archive #36: ZOE (Zombie Orpheus Entertainment) - A Great Little Company

This article is another entry from the PinkFae Archives. It is another in the series I wrote about Gen Con 2016. It was originally published on 8 October 2016.

The ZOE logo: a white circle with five hands rising up from the bottom in silhouette, as if they were the hands of zombies erupting up out of the ground. A short arc, about a quarter the circumference of the white circle, concentric with the white circle, runs along the bottom edge of the circle, bisecting three dots. This logo, which is white on a background of dark blue fading to black in gradient, is the inverse of the normal colours: a black logo on a white background.

One of the booths I stopped at whilst I was at Gen Con was the Zombie Orpheus Entertainment booth. I knew I wanted to see what they had, because I'd enjoyed Dark Dungeons so much. ZOE was the company that had produced that particular film. So I stopped by and talked to one of the representatives for a moment. This is what they had to say.

11 May 2019

PinkFae Archive #35: Board Game Review: Tell Me a Story

This week's entry is another PinkFae Archive, this one being a review of the game Tell Me a Story from Escape Hatch Games, by Kirby Atwood, Cody Faulk, Brent Woodside, and Kayla Woodside. It is also an installment in the series I wrote about Gen Con 2016. This article first appeared on 1 October 2016.

The box, about 3 centimetres by 7 centimetres by 5 centimetres, with the game Tell Me a Story. The box is black with various white line drawings all over it, and a large speech balloon with the title n the front and the lid.

A brand new company called Escape Hatch Games had just released their first game a month or so before Gen Con. As I was wandering around the exhibit hall, I saw their booth, with the name of this first game proudly displayed on a banner behind them, and I knew I had to check it out. I stopped to ask them about it, and they did a quick one-round demo with me, and I knew I had to have it. Last week, I finally got to play a full game for the first time with three of my friends. It was epic. So now I shall review for you, my loyal readers, the wonderful game called Tell Me a Story.

04 May 2019

PinkFae Archive #34: MetaArcade: A New Frontier in Roleplaying Games.

This week's entry is another PinkFae archive from the series I wrote about Gen Con 2016. This article is a look at MetaArcade, an online platform allowing solo gaming using the Tunnels & Trolls system. This article was originally published on 23 September, 2016.

The MetaArcade Logo: The word MetaArcade in stylized letters, the first four in blue and the rest in red.

One of the more interesting things that I got to see at Gen Con was the MetaArcade booth. They're working on an interesting new concept: digital roleplaying. That sounds like computer or console-based RPGs, like the Final Fantasy series or Secret of Mana. But it's not. Here, let me explain. In order to explain, we'll need to go back in time to 1975, in Phoenix, Arizona.

The Tunnels and Trolls logo: the words in a fancy serif font, coloured yellow, curved up in the centre, with a troll's head at the end of the text.

Tunnels and Trolls

A librarian by the name of Ken St Andre read a friend's copy of Dungeons and Dragons, and loved the idea of fantasy roleplaying. However, he thought that D&D's rules were too complex, and the need for multiple polyhedral dice would intimidate new players. So he wrote his own game in the same genre, calling it Tunnels and Trolls. Although it was very similar to D&D in feel and style, the rules were more straightforward, and it only required six-sided dice. St Andre self-published the first edition, and in July of that year, Flying Buffalo mass produced the first commercial edition.