Fascinating! 😲
Could you figure out the date of publication? It certainly looks pre-Monopoly, so really interesting that it has an auction.

Episode 32 - Rejected again. And again. And again. I guess now we can talk about how to handle rejections. - Life Beyond Board Games Well known board game designer Phil Walker-Harding and we dive into the glamorous world of… getting told “no.” A lot. Turns out even designing 30+ hit games doesn’t unlock the “immune to rejection” ac...

Had an interesting chat with Stella and Eric on Life Beyond Boardgames!

I love that hand drawn patch!

Great card Ruel!

I love that chair!

Congrats!

I’ll add that Magical Athlete is in its own category to me because it feels like a parody/pastiche of the genre. By throwing dozens of wild rulesbreakers at a 1d6 race it kind of revels in how dumb a 1d6 race is, and comes up with something surprising and fun.

Of course random movement has its place, especially when racing isn’t the only concern: Monopoly, Backgammon, That’s Life, etc. But I feel like mass roll and move is almost our hobby’s early 80s video game crash - a whole lot of bad games left real scars on how the craft developed.

For me it was playing The Jetsons Game - realising these things are all the same… and the NES beckoned. Is it an inherently “bad” mechanism? I’m willing to say yes if the game is a 1d6 race. Why should progress be random and with 600% variance? Plenty of better ways to use roll to resolve.

It was the default setting for a deluge of bad mass market games in the 70s, 80s, and 90s to the extent that it almost became definitional to what a board game was for kids growing up then. A couple of generations were turned off games at a young age by these lazy products.

💯

Looks great! Can’t code but very happy to help with testing down the line.

I had the same experience watching it for the first time recently! Such a fascinating flip of the crime show formula that somehow I never heard about.🤯

Thanks so much for the kind words Ella, and so glad you had fun with Wombat Poo! 😊

Thanks for the kind words Dan!

A photo of Wombat Poo from Joey Games with a stack of wooden poo cubes beside the game box.

It’s finally here! Wombat Poo is a stinky stacking game, brand new from Joey Games!

You can find out more and order from:
joeygames.com.au/wombatpoo
Or ask for it at your local game store!

Wombat Poo will be available in North America in March, 2026.

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An inspiration for Joey Games’ packaging, as was 70s Galt Toys.

Funny little frog! 🐸

Amazing result!

Play Cities online from your browser Play Cities online from your browser with the whole world!

Cities is now on BGA and it's a very nice adaptation! 🏙️👍

4 cards from the game Misfit Heroes showing characters made by combining a card and a transparency in a cards sleeve.

My copies of Misfit Heroes came today! Here are some favourite characters from my first deck: Spider Spirit, Reptilian Leprechaun, Tiny Giant, and Evil Baker.

I’m the same. Making actual marks on paper seems to help the ol’ brain get going.

As long as we never speak of this again: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowl-out

Acquire, Medina, and T&E are so good I sometimes wonder if we even need another!

A board game prototype showing a grid board with small tiles on it forming different green and grey regions.

Working on another shared board tile-laying game! No keepers yet, but fun to try using a pretty old game design muscle again.

A Marimba Christmas should be 🔥

This is Matt’s most important video so far. Thanks for being vulnerable and getting the conversation going about the hard stuff in our job.

Still a great game!

A screenshot of the high score list of the Super Mega Lucky Box app. The high score is 88.

The players of the Super Mega Lucky Box app are amazing!.. I didn’t think 85 points was even possible and someone just got 88! It has been really interesting to watch players optimise this game so long after its release.