Just Desserts puts you in the shoes of a waiter at a specialty dessert restaurant. Customers are looking to satisfy their sweet tooth and it’s up to you to serve them with the delicious treats from the kitchen. Competing against other waiters, you want to be the first person to serve five people of different suits or three people of the same suit to win. I bought the game off the strength of its core concept, but does it have what it takes to satisfy my taste for a small card game?
I get my bearings in this first beta for Nintendo’s latest. It doesn’t come through in the video, but once I got a hang of it, I had a blast! Can’t wait to play the final product!
One of the key selling points about board games is that they are a great catalyst for face-to-face social interaction. Besides just having something to do while hanging out, these games can steer the conversation in directions that it normally wouldn’t go if you were just talking on the couch watching television. Some of my favourite games that spark a unique social interaction include Lords of Vegas, Cash ‘N Guns, and Space Cadets. Other games, while great to play, don’t necessarily add to that social dynamic. Certain games actually take that away in a weird way. Case in point, Splendor and The Resistance.
Jumping off of its pages with a striking art style, juicy stories and a powerful heroine that demands respect, Wonder Woman by Brian Azzarello and Cliff Chiang rocked my socks in a huge way. That series immediately became one of my favourites and converted me into a huge fan of the character. I have since tried to track down more Wonder Woman content by other creators, though none of their works have captured my imagination like Azzarello and Chiang.
I wish they could have stayed with the Amazonian princess forever, though their run concluded with issue #35. Picking things up at issue #36 is Merideth and David Finch. Based on their debut outing, are we in for a new Wonder Woman dynasty?
In the eyes of most, Ike is probably just another sword dude like Marth in Smash Bros. or one of the Amiibo figures that are seemingly impossible to find. To me, Ike is so much more than that. He’s a star character from Fire Emblem; a series that is one of my all-time faves. He also happens to be the star of my favourite game in the series.
Whether it be on the silver screen, Saturday morning cartoons, or lunchboxes, superheroes have existed outside of the comic book pages for almost as long as they’ve existed. I, for one, knew of Spider-Man and the X-Men first from their cartoon exploits, while my first real exposure to Batman was from the Michael Keaton movie back in 1989. Superheroes have also had a presence in the board game space for decades, though the vast majority of these efforts were shoddy cash grabs.
Some of the modern superhero games still are poor titles that are excuses to make a quick buck, though both DC and Marvel have made honest efforts to improve their board game portfolios to the point where they both have games that are great by any measure. If you’re in the mood to live the superhero experience in tabletop gaming form, try these ones out!
I vividly remember the first time I ever played a Mega Man game. It was the summer of 1990 and a family friend that was a year older than me had come over to my house with his new copy of Mega Man 2. Having never heard of the franchise up until then, I had no idea what to expect when I booted it up. Within seconds, the music in my ears was all I needed to hear to know that I was in for something special.
In Third Person 