Board Game Reviews

I’ve talked and written a lot about video games, but I love a really wide variety of games and play of all sorts. Video games of course, but also arcades, bowling, laser tag, table top RPG games, karaoke, escape rooms… the list goes on. In fact just yesterday my partner and I went out for the afternoon and played some arcade games (wow I’m bad at Mario Kart) and a round of mini golf – it was an ideal date. Probably the only “games” I don’t like are sports, and I sorta think that’s probably because I wasn’t popular in school and didn’t have parents or siblings who were interested so I just never got into it.

I want to start bringing some of my love for other kinds of games, specifically board games, to my content creation too. I’ve had a lot of ideas but some of them feel like I need a dedicated office space to implement, some involve other people and I need to be super sure of what I’m doing before I get to the point where I am willing to get other people to invest time, and some I’m just not confident enough in my ability to pull off. Like, I could absolutely stream more digital board games but I don’t feel like I do a very good job of making those streams fun and interesting.

So one of the options left is writing about them! Which I absolutely can do. But there seems to be a pretty set structure for board game reviews that many people seem to follow. They tend to write about the mechanics, the theme, how the game compares to other games in the genre – standard stuff. I don’t know if this is a product of my weird brain but this isn’t the kind of stuff I find interesting to read. I absolutely think those kinds of reviews have a place in the world but I don’t think I’d do a great job of writing one. So I’ve been trying to come up with a word that is similar to review to indicate that what I’d be writing would be kinda similar to a review but maybe not what a reader would be expecting? I’m sure I’m overthinking it.

With all that said, I’m hoping to publish my first one sometime soon. I guess this post is a kind of “heads up” that unless someone has a secret word up their sleeve for me to use, I’ll be calling it a review but it might not be the kind of review you’re used to if you read other game reviews. Also most reviews are kinda timely and come out when the game comes out, and these won’t be. They will be kinda just reflections on games as and when I feel like writing about them. I guess part of my overarching motivations behind creating content has always been to share the things I love with the world, and that’s what I’ll keep doing in whatever way feels good to me.