The State of Games, Episode 31 – The One About Origins, Chemistry and The Big Blue Noodle

This is a really big show about a Really Big Show – namely, Origins Game Fair. Ok, so it wasn’t as Really Big as it usually is because of a date change and gamer malaise and rampaging pomeranians… but we’ll get to all that. Regardless, we had a blast at Origins, and it was awesome getting to meet and play with a whole bunch of you. At any rate, get comfortable – we’ve got a whole lotta podcast for ya! Read More  Read More

Origins 2012 Photo Recap – A Publisher’s Perspective

Hello dear readers! Monkey238 and I have returned from Origins 2012 a bit weary, but incredibly happy as we met many of you and made lots of new friends along the way. We worked hard from 10 to 6 every day in the Exhibition Hall running demos of Carnival, VivaJava and Compounded, teaching the joys of Lucky Dice (and awarding awesome prizes!), and just generally spreading the Dice Hate Me Games love around the con. After the Exhibition Hall closed for the day, we also got a chance to do quite a bit of after-hours gaming with a great group of people in Cartrunk Entertainment’s Unpub area in open gaming. The easiest way to share our adventures... Read More

The Hunt Is On – A Kickstarter Quick-look at The Legend of the Lost Dutchman

We live in an age of the reborn gold rush. It’s happened many times through the course of history; whether it’s the search for spices in the Orient, the great American gold rush of the 1840s, or the race to build the best and brightest dot com in the 1990s. Now we have Kickstarter. And just like in those days of yore, many enterprising individuals have been frantically strapping on their digital boots and wading into the crowdfunding flood in search of the newest treasures. I mention this analogy to make note of the meta when I talk of the theme of Legend of the Lost Dutchman. In the mid-1800s, Jacob Waltz is rumored to have discovered... Read More

Venture Cardboard – A Kickstarter Quick-look at Ground Floor

There are certain things in life that instantly and easily lend themselves to interpretation and adaptation in a board game. Farming, naturally. War, racing, and buying/trading on the stock market are practically games already. But until recently, one of the only recourses an entrepreneurial zealot had at the game table was to roll dice and move a little Scottie past Go. Enter crowdfunding; suddenly, games about business and start-ups became not only viable, but incredibly meta, making funding such entrepreneurial ventures possible. Startup Fever hit Kickstarter last spring and found gangbuster sales, while Briefcase tore through Indiegogo earlier... Read More

Feeding Frenzy – A Kickstarter Quick-look at My Happy Farm

When I first joined the ranks of the hardcore gamers lo so many years ago, if someone had asked me what the most prolific theme in gaming would be in 20 years my answer would not have been farming. War, maybe. Space travel, most certainly. But raising pigs, picking radishes/squash/bok choy, and figuring out the best price I could get out of my bundle of hay at the county market would not have been the first things that popped to mind. And, yet, here we are, in the future, and farming is everywhere. I can’t fully explain the allure, and robots do most of the harvesting these days, but we all flock to farm-themed games like a murder of crows... Read More

Better Gaming Through Chemistry

Dice Hate Me Games is proud to announce today that a new title will be joining the growing ranks of our board game family – Compounded! Many of you may already be familiar with Darrell Louder’s Compounded from our mentions on The State of Games and from coverage of Cartrunk Entertainment’s Unpub events. For those who may be unfamiliar, Compounded is a game about building chemical compounds through careful management of elements, a fair bit of social play and trading, and just a bit of good old-fashioned luck. It’s fast-moving, accommodates two to five budding chemists, and is a lot of fun. We fell in love with it the very... Read More

The Crowded Table – Spring 2012 Edition

I’m not sure what it is about spring, exactly, but board games tend to multiply in this season like a certain cotton-tailed carrot eater that likes to deliver painted eggs. That usually means that more games start hitting the table and more games need to be reviewed – because hey, it’s what I do, and all of you dear readers deserve it. So let’s ditch the dallying dialogue and hop straight to the heart. Dragon Valley I’ll be completely honest – when designer C.W. Karstens first contacted me about Dragon Valley during its Kickstarter campaign last year, I was a bit trepidatious. The combination of art and main... Read More

A Titanic Talk with Matthew Duhan of Gozer Games

Dice Hate Me and Go Forth and Game have joined forces to bring you some of the best gaming interviews on the web! That’s right, from time to time here on Dice Hate Me, Tom Gurganus will contribute one of his comprehensive conversations. In this interview, Tom sits down for a chat with Matthew Duhan of Gozer Games to discuss the current Kickstarter project, Titans of Industry. Enjoy the interview and be sure to let us know if there are other designers, artists or gaming insiders that you would like to know more about! Tom: Welcome to Go Forth And Game again Matthew. Before we get to far into this remind us about your company Gozer Games. Matthew:... Read More

The State of Games, Episode 30 – The One About the Duke of Dice

If it seems like we’ve been cranking out podcasts lately as fast as The Flash on a caffeine binge, that’s probably because we have! Sometimes there just seems to be a lot to talk about in the world of boardgaming. We’re aiming not to wear out our welcome, though, so it’ll likely be a bit before our next online roundtable – but we promise that when we do come back, it’ll be with good stuff just for you, dear listeners. Because we love you. Read More  Read More

The State of Games, Episode 29 – The One About Mr. White

Every now and then serendipity raises its pretty head and projects just come together. The past week has been a lot like that here at Dice Hate Me HQ, with some great moves on our own projects and some very interesting developments in others’. And then there are those special times when serendipity whispers a secret in your ear and you get to share it with the world. This is definitely one of those times, and I’m here to tell you that it just warms this old journalist’s heart. Read More  Read More