Broken and Beautiful honors the art of Kintsugi, where broken pottery is repaired with golden lacquer. In Kintsugi, breakage and repair are beautiful facets of an object’s unique history. In the game, you’ll draft pottery cards, manage their breakage, and repair them to increase their value.

Broken and Beautiful presents us with a paradox: a simple set of choices with hidden depth and complexities. The game is easy to learn, but in the playing, thoughtful challenges reveal themselves.

Every choice you make is both a choice of taking and leaving. You take a card to add to your scoring possibilities, but what are you leaving for others?

Read on to to explore the hidden beauty we find in this humble deck of cards.

Written review continues after the break.

The years of training and sacrifice have all lead to this moment - the big chair - your first command of a starship! Stepping onto the bridge of this small cruiser, your crew - a team of dedicated beings from planets across the Cooperative - await your orders.

Each mission will require your leadership and many tough decisions as you explore the vast unknown sectors of space. Which crew to assign to away missions? Who to promote? What technology to install and upgrade your ship? When to confront pirates to clear the shipping lanes? How best to negotiate with strange new worlds and civilizations, hoping to welcome them into the galactic community?

Starship Captains crams a galaxy's worth of adventure into one box! Your success in the game will come from how well you're able to direct your crew. The challenge is not just deciding which crew to perform a task or mission, but what order you want to deploy them. It will take all your talent to find the right balance. No doubt, the Captain who ranks highest will soon lead the flagship of the Fleet!

This game chronicles the last 22 years of Portugal’s prodigal son, Fernando Pessoa, the renowned poet, mystic, and raconteur of the early 20th century. Pessoa wrote most of his work not under his own name but as one of 77 distinct heteronyms, each with its own identity, passions, and outlook on life. He allowed the artistic voice of each heteronym a chance to speak through his.

In the game , you play as one of Pessoa’s heteronyms, attempting to transform creative energy into inspiration and inspiration into poetry. Visit cafes to gather cards or the bookshop to influence your outlook and style. Then linger in the public square to assemble the best poems you can, hoping the stars align with each move you make.

But here’s the rub: There are four players in Pessoa but also only one. You, the player, live in Pessoa’s mind, while  Pessoa, the poet, the person, is an independent but neutral force in the game.You’ll need to flow from metaphysical mind space on one board to the physical world where Pessoa himself wanders Lisbon in search of his latest creations. Which part of Pessoa will be the most adept at finding the words that will echo through the ages?

ALSO FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE

Poetry professor and fellow podcaster James Engelhardt joins us for a special interview with Pessoa, the game review, AND Doug goes toe to toe with James in the Game Night Grab Bag segment.

Check out James on Lay It On The Table, part of the Geek & Southern Network.

It’s Autumn in Australia and you’re a Scribbly Gum moth, looking for the best places to lay your eggs. Behold the mighty eucalyptus! Lots of shelter for for your larvae as they burrow between the layers of bark, old and new. They’ll dig back and forth growing and moulting until the time comes  to munch their way to daylight. When the old bark falls away, their scribbles tell a story on every tree.

Scribbly Gum is a flip and write game. Each turn a movement tile is flipped and players direct their larvae by drawing paths through the layers of tree bark, hoping to gather food to complete meals. After three rounds of twisting and turning paths, the most well fed moths will emerge the winner!

Listen in to explore the game and take a fun side trip with our resident entymologist, Lucio Rodriguez, to learn more about the Scribbly Gum moth.

ALSO FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE...

A quadruple sized Meal segment featuring four recipes paired with four game recommendations, including contributions from Doug, Stephen, Lucio (The First Airbender) and Paco from GMS Magazine and So Play We All.

From the Declaration of Sentiments at Seneca Falls, to the protests, rallies, and organized campaigns across the nation, Votes for Women  chronicles the 72 year struggle to ratify the  19th Amendment to the Constitution, granting women the right to vote.

This two-part area control game is driven by sets of multi-use cards dripping with history. Compete or cooperate to explore both sides of this complex conflict. The Suffragists push Congress to pass the 19th amendment and gather support from 36 states to ratify it, while the Opposition uses the power of the status quo to systematically undermine and unravel these efforts over multiple generations.

In playing through this critical struggle, Votes for Women is a palpable reminder that the fight goes on today for a just and tolerant society. There will always be those ready to strip away the rights of others. If we can rehearse how to resist and overcome them in a game, we might be able to take those tabeltop lessons in defeat, and in victory, and see how they apply to the grander game where we are all players every single day.

That’s an awesome accomplishment; most certainly one worthy of our Spiel of Approval!

Listen in for a deep dive into the game and the rich history it embraces, followed by a chat with Tory Brown, the designer of the game!

Tory joins us for a Game Night Grab Bag segment. Her challenge? Bring three games that encourage players to engage with history (especially under appreciated history).
 

Mr Walton was killed in his study. And all the guests at Walton manor have good reasons to want him dead. Can you and your fellow detectives step in and find the murderer? Starting with a few leads, you must piece together the crime by asking questions and sharing information. Timing is everything. Gather enough evidence to support your theory and you'll solve the case before everyone else.

Awkward Guests uses an ingenious deck of cards to generate thousands of cases, each with a different outcome. With seven different difficulty levels and a companion app that allows co-op and solo play, this game is an open invitation to any fan of mysteries to channel their inner Sherlock Holmes, Miss Marple, or Jessica Fletcher for an evening of crime-solving fun.

Listen to explore the game and decide for yourself if we make a compelling case for the latest winner of our Spiel of Approval!

ALSO FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE...

A holiday-themed Meal segment! We offer up recipes for a snack and a game to give Santa a break on Christmas night.

You have come together to crown a new champion by assembling that most tasty treat - the root beer float! The ice cream, the soda, the straws and cherries are laid out and ready. Using these charming props, you will compete to complete a series of hilarious challenges - sometimes on your own, sometimes with a team, and sometimes head-to-head. Be the first to collect the right combination of ingredients and you’ll claim the crown!

Read on to explore how this game promotes active (but silly) competition. Root Beer Float Challenge reminds us the door to play is never closed. Sometimes all we need is a small push to peek through and rediscover Major Fun.

Written review continues after the break.

The work of a field biologist is never done. You can learn so much by studying how ecosystems hang together. And the more of North America you explore, the more you understand how each ecosystem is an interconnected and delicate mesh of organisms. So much depends on keystone species. These organisms are the glue that holds a habitat together. When they are threatened or disappear, a whole ecosystem can collapse like a house of cards, forever changed, and not for the better.

Keystone North America is a card driven board game. Players are biologists tasked with assembling ecosystems by arranging organisms into the most optimal sequences possible. The challenge is balance. The best place for an organism in one ecosystem may prevent another ecosystem from flourishing. The more you play with the building blocks of life on this large scale, the more chances you have to puzzle out small secrets from the living world.

ALSO FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE:

A Meal segment with Paco García-Reed Jaen's recipe for arroz al horno and a game recommendation from Stephen.

You are a stamp collector and your obsession is for one particular set of stamps featuring wild animals.

Driven by this animal passion, you'll do almost anything to collect the whole set, including messing with other collectors that get in your way.

But remember the Collector's Code. Play fair, no stealing! Just trading. Swapping one for one.

Stampede is a game of card swapping and set collecting. Using each animal's special action, can you build the best album? It will take stealth, planning, and a bit of luck to collect the most dangerous... postage!