Love to see it!

At long last, we have arrived at the final day of Best Week 2025. To the surprise of myself-minus-a-few-years, today I'm celebrating the best games that let me spend a few quality minutes with my daughters. Read the list here: spacebiff.com/2025/12/30/b...

An honour for Molly House to be included in Best Week! More than just that, it's really exciting to see there are enough great board games exploring interpersonal relationships to make a Best Week list from. I hope this is the start of something that will continue to grow.

Seriously, @dvcgames.bsky.social has been releasing some great stuff, y’all.

Honoured that That’s the Spirit is part of Best Week! This really has become my favourite genre of board game and it’s exciting being part of such great company.

What an amazing list of games! I’ve had the pleasure of playing most of these titles and am honored to see Adulting amongst such esteemed company.

Had a lovely holiday week! What did you get to the table?

I'm honored to see Molly House in such company! Congrats to @miasmacorp.bsky.social for their debut Best Week appearance and to all of the other ways fantastic games on the list.

Today is the fifth day of Best Week! Did you know that 2025 contained an unusually high number of games about human relationships? An unusually high number of *good* games about human relationships? Now you do! Read about them here: spacebiff.com/2025/12/29/b...

This has been an amazing year. I am still not sure how to process so much of the love we have seen, except to make ten new games, of course. Thank you for the space, Dan!

For this, the third day of Best Week 2025, we're doing something peculiar by celebrating the best titles from a single publisher / design collective. That's right, it's DVC Games and Jasper Beatrix! Read the full list here: spacebiff.com/2025/12/28/b...

Onoda was an experiment in storytelling. A sad story, by the way. Probably more linked to a rpg than a standard solitaire game. Not a puzzle, not a resource management game, but more akin to a comic book plus a game. I am proud of the job done when somebody, as Dan, reports this kind of experience!

“Chicago ’68” … is a reminder that conscientious people have always struggled to craft a better world, have always marched uphill through teargas, have always founded awkward coalitions, have always, sometimes, suffered setbacks and loss. 🤩🙏✊ @danthurot.bsky.social

Best Week continues! On this our hallowed second day, we're celebrating the best board games of 2025 that stare into the abyss. Read the full list here: spacebiff.com/2025/12/27/b...

Best Week is literal

It has begun. Best Week. The only year-end list that matters. And for the first day of Best Week 2025, we're celebrating the board games that transported us to new places, showed us wondrous sights, or used their visuals to illuminate a topic. Read here: spacebiff.com/2025/12/26/b...

Continuing the annual tradition of immortalizing the year's reviews. As a bonus, I can use a dry-erase marker to plan out Best Week!

It was a real treat to talk trick-taking with @danthurot.bsky.social ! spacebiff.com/2025/12/22/s...

For today's Space-Cast!, I chatted with Brian Bornmueller about Tolkien, trick-taking, and Tolkien trick-taking! Listen over here: spacebiff.com/2025/12/22/s...

It was a lighter week round these parts. What did you get to the table?

The alt-text is the chef's kiss here 😘🫰

I know it's a niche thing, but I'll confess it makes me chuckle that my pull quote is above the New Yorker's. Take that, yuppies!

For my final review of the year, I figured, hey, I've never talked about Mindbug. spacebiff.com/2025/12/18/y...

I may print this out and put it on my wall like I'm a local burger joint. Thank you, Dan!

Night Soil is about more than moving and disposing of poop. It's also about unseen labor, contract work, and why indoor plumbing is amazing. Mostly, though, it's about the poop. My review: spacebiff.com/2025/12/17/n...

I don't know how he manages to play so many games and then write such engaging reviews about them all, but I thank @danthurot.bsky.social for spending a slice of that time with my first little indie game Venusian Vegas and for all his support of the Indie Games Night Market this year! ❤️

In the final triple review of the year, I'm covering three trick-takers that go above and beyond: casino-heister Venusian Vegas, snitty restaurant manager Beastro, and social parable The Hedgehog's Dilemma. Read 'em here: spacebiff.com/2025/12/16/v...

Ha ha, I wrote an entire article about how Small World is a classic board game! This would have been a goof on my part if Small World weren't old enough to drive a car.

Queen of Spies is Liz Davidson and David Thompson's take on spycraft in WWI. Despite some unevenness around flowchart-y decisions, this one spotlights ordinary acts of courage, from eavesdropping to pigeon-training. My preview: spacebiff.com/2025/12/15/q...

Had a lovely week, even if it didn't go totally as expected. What did you get to the table?

7p Persuasion is so chaotic. In a good way!

I'm laying the groundwork for Best Week 2025, and it's going to be hard to avoid having a "Best Jasper Beatrix Games" list. Wowza.

I don't understand "tryhard" as an insult.

This was a really fascinating explanation of a line I was playfully indignant about. Only Dan can get away with calling my work cis and yet still make me feel understood.

I've had the honor to play both of these games (Persuasion digitally and PnP, Conviction after picking up a copy at Pax), and they're dynamic, engaging, thoughtful exercises in what boardgames can accomplish when they aren't chained to convention, and also a great time! Fantastic review, and games!

After many delays so I could keep playing it, I've finally gotten around to writing about The Old King's Crown, an astonishing freshman debut that is lavish in production and gameplay alike. My review: spacebiff.com/2025/12/10/t...

As always, go read Dan’s writing! But even more importantly, go support @xoe.gay’s work! I have persuasion on the way from Hollandspiele now!

been talking to my friends about these games a lot, really love this article highlighting their perspectives. i hope ttrpg people are paying attention to what @xoe.gay is doing, because it's about to steal our lunch money and leave us in the dirt

Persuasion and Conviction, both by @xoe.gay, explore two distinct acts in the life cycle of a relationship. Both installments are incisive, thought-provoking, and (deliberately) toxic. My review: spacebiff.com/2025/12/09/p...

Pacts is another excellent title from @dvcgames.bsky.social. That was to be expected. The surprise is that this is perhaps the best divide-and-choose game I've ever played. My review: spacebiff.com/2025/12/08/p...

Despite our furnace being knocked out for the first major cold snap of the year, it was a lovely week! What did you get to the table?

Back in 2014, I wrote a short story called "Drupe," in which an alien von Neumann probe mind-blasted humanity into becoming fruitarians so that the population would die out and be easily conquered. It wasn't any good. But it feels nice to see similar ideas being mined in a popular TV show.

Oh no! We spent last week without a furnace. I do not recommend. But I do recommend Endurance! (And should have thought to play it while wrapped in four layers.)

This exchange on r/boardgames, in reference to the review I wrote yesterday, raises a whooooooole lot of emotions for me. Bear with me as I work through them.

I LOVE This review, because it really nailed what kind of game Re;ACT is. Side note, Battle-Con is the board game that got me into board games haha. Being compared like so here is certainly a point of pride, even if Battlecon is certainly also a design that no longer aligns with the times.

Re;ACT: The Arts of War is about dueling artists who love their work and are having the time of their lives. Even when the game disappears into a predictive fugue, that optimism is catching. My review: spacebiff.com/2025/12/04/r...

For this latest Space-Cast!, I sat down to chat with Paolo Mori and Alessandro Zucchini about their collaborative project, Battlefields of the Napoleonic Wars, and why they decided the world needed another (and better) hex-and-counter wargame. spacebiff.com/2025/12/03/s...

Issue 21 is out now! Including our new regular feature: The Classic, where a Senet writer revisits a masterpiece board game. This issue: @danthurot.bsky.social on Small World. (Illustration by Julian Osbaldstone.) Go to senetmagazine.com to order your copy or subscribe. #boardgamesarebeautiful

Ayar: Children of the Sun brings Fabio Lopiano's love for action grids to Inca mythology. My review: spacebiff.com/2025/12/02/a...

"The human brain is just a very advanced computer!" Um. No. It isn't. Not even close. It isn't a computer any more than it is a series of flywheels and hydraulics, a steam engine with little workers marching on treadles, or any of the other metaphors we've used to describe it in the past.