Quick rounds mean that player elimination doesn't make for dead space, it makes for a couple of minutes to watch your so-called friends meet their inevitable demise (VENDETTA! VENDETTA!) and then everyone has a good laugh before pouring another round and playing the next game. 

I wasn't able to sit down and play a full game at this event, but Chris Cooke humored me into walking through as much of a game as he could while still needing to answer questions of other passers-by. 

Unscrewed is a game for 3-5 players, plays for around 30 minutes (or less!) and is waiting anxiously to launch on Kickstarter! For more details (and probably far more accurate details) check out their official website: https://www.meanhyenagames.com/ or any of their socials for MeanHyenaGames. And while I cannot yet give a detailed review of gameplay, I'm confident enough to declare that this game is "BETTER THAN BAD, IT'S GOOD!"

Pretty sure that this site has been growing cobwebs since 2019. My bad. 

To be honest, I think my days of regular once-a-week posts are probably behind me, but that's not to say that things have not been active behind the scenes. Various attempts at writing have occurred. At some point I might even post the flash fiction pieces I've been playing with these past couple of years -- just for fun.

The BIG NEWS event, however, is that my dabbling in table top games has snowballed into something really big. So big that I'll be passing most of the reigns over to Variable Outcomes since they can run this full-time business stuff better than I can. Even my books will soon be available through them... us... I don't know the technical terms for my association, I just know that we share the same garage.

So have a gander at some simplifications made over here at NewellBooks, and then take a peak over at Variable Outcomes. Most of the in-person events I attend will probably now be under their company banner, but I am keeping my brand; it's my name and my family crest, so I won't be abandoning it any time soon.

I fully intend to keep writing. What I write and whether or not anything hits publication are completely different questions, and ones that I cannot answer at this time. I do know, however, that I will be focused predominately in the game world for the time being, and impersonating a fictional character through a hand-painted wooden meeple and a small speech bubble. Honestly, I think it's my calling. I am having far too much fun with it, and sadly am not yet being given nearly enough opportunities to unleash this talent. So, please, if you see a chance to leave a comment about the game, do so! Draw my attention and let me make my social media magic!

Here's a taste of the gifts I've left so far. Search through Facebook and Twitter to see the whole interactions.

Even with the new elements introduced in the Kickstarter version of this game, setting up the game table is pretty straight-forward. Select a Potion for the group of players to play with, and then set room for four cards within reach of all players. The four cards will be the "Cauldron", or in other words, the "Cauldron" will be the four number sequence to create the formula for the Potion value. 

Last I played, players put five Ingredient cards into their hand, and then the group determines a play order. First player plays a card from their hand and then may discard and re-draw their hand. Turn order continues until an Action card (or in the new game, an Ability) determines otherwise. Your rulebook will be much more comprehensive than this one:

It's been way too long since I last made a game post, and somehow whenever I think to do it, it's always when we're playing the games I usually post about... I mean, we have about 100 games, you'd think this wouldn't be an issue!

Anyways, my brother dropped by for a visit, and of course he came with a bag of games of his own. We fell in love with Slaughterville, a crowd-funded horror-movie style game. At my brother's recommendation, we are not only now on the lookout for a copy of Slaughterville of our own (everyone is out of stock so we loaded up on the expansion packs in the mean time), but we were told that we would love A Touch of Evil. 

A Touch of Evil is a Flying Frog production, and it's been around for several years. We've often seen it in the game shops, and because we have Conquest of Planet Earth which is another one of their games, we own like 5 separate pieces of advertisement for A Touch of Evil. 

We never really jumped at it because, to be honest, it looks super cheesy. And while Slaughterville has similar graphics within the game, it owns its cheesiness by tongue-and-cheek portrayals of B-movie stereotypes. A Touch of Evil really just looks like they hired a handful of models/actors and played dress up in a costume store for a photoshoot montage moment, which was then photoshopped together as a grade 10 intro to graphic project....

...I know this sounds harsh, and clearly I've made crap covers in my day, but it was a huge factor in us not going near this game 10 years(-ish). 

The game board is a totally different story. It's a beautiful old-timey map design that had both @TheMattCave and I thinking Sleepy Hollow. So it was very fitting that we chose our villain to be the Headless Horseman. 

There were 3 of us playing for the first time, so, as usual, play went a little slow. We each took up an unlikely townsperson, and off we went to investigate, hunt wolves and ghost pirates. I know for a fact that we did not do the Town Elder thing well at all, along with other things. And there was a bit of confusion as we flipped back and forth from Competitive rules to Cooperative. I don't know who decided to play Cooperatively, but that's what we started with, and somehow we started with the tutorial setup and then @TheMattCave kept saying that we should be playing the advanced rules - so I really have no idea what we were doing right and what we were doing wrong...

...I'm very finicky when it comes to learning games, and while I make mistakes too, I do much better when I can take charge of the rule book - I'm a bit controlling that way. 

So I'm going to reserve my final evaluation of A Touch of Evil until we play it again. I want to get a better feel for how the game is supposed to go!