Shut the Box has a place in pubs and toy boxes

 I was surprised to see I’d never written about Shut the Box, even though it’s one of these games that I’ve played every once in a blue moon for years. 

Shut the Box is one of those pub games that can be played when you are blind drunk and the components can survive having drinks spilled all over them. There are different versions of the game but they all break down to rolling dice and flipping over numbered levers equal to the sum of the dice.

The classic version of the game has the levers in an actual box that you can close if you flip over all the levers. However, I have also seen instructions to just write the numbers on a sheet of paper and cover them with buttons. (That was in a book of kids games) 

I first came across it as a heritage edition-style game that was bigger than a Ticket to Ride box. The back, which also included the rules, said that the game originated on fishing boats where it could be played despite waves. Which is a delightful story but I haven’t actually found any evidence to back to up. It was a charming and pretty object but that couldn’t hide that there’s really not much to Shut the Box and it didn’t stay in my collection for long.

When you get past the novelty of flipping the levers, Shut the Box doesn’t offer very much. When you compare it to other pub-style dice games, like Farkle, it barely has a decision tree. The game makes more sense when you figure that its origins are in gambling. Money on the line always makes things more interesting. 

Despite that, I have gotten in the odd play, be it online or a simpler homemade copy since that heritage edition took up too much space on the game shelf. There is an odd fascination to Shut the Box for me, particularly as a historical item.

Recently, I made a set of Shut the Box cards because it amused me. More than anything else, it reminded why I don’t play it much. Yes, I play  brain fog games that I can play in a daze but Shut the Box is really too slight for even that. But a tiny handful of cards is something I can keep around.

Shut the Box is a game that will probably never be in my wheelhouse but it seems to have kept it’s home as a pub game and found one as a children’s game.

My July Gaming

July was a solid month for learning games for me. I finished going through Dr. Finn’s Book of Solo Strategy and Word Games. I got in some play testing, which always feels like a privilege. And I learned some other games.

I learned:

My Perfect City (Dr. Finn)

Paper App Galaxy

Cosmic Run: Mission Run (Dr. Finn)

Aqua ROVE

ROVE JR

Aqua ROVE - Dangerous Depths expansion (playtest)

Monster Dinner Party 

Around the World in 10-15 Minutes (USA and Europe maps)

I’ve really enjoyed Dr. Finn’s book. The games are really strong for casual play. They don’t last longer than ten, fifteen minutes and they’re easy to learn. At the same time, they deliver a definite game. I’ve been going back to them and I think I will keep doing that.

However, exploring the ROVE family was my big July experience. As I’ve said, I appreciated the design of the original ROVE, I didn’t actually enjoy playing it. Since I decided to play test an Aqua ROVE expansion, I had to learn Aqua ROVE and I decided to learn JR as well.

Both Aqua and JR meaningfully shift the movement rules in a way that are easier for my brain to handle. Aqua ROVE is arguably harder than the original game but being able to process it makes it more fun. JR is simpler, enough that it’s now on my casual play list.

Although it’s not on the list, I also tried out the dice-free variant of Paper App Golf. I appreciate that it exists but, unsurprisingly, it removes everything that’s interesting about what is already a very simple game. Paper App Galaxy, on the other hand, promises to be an interesting campaign game.

With some games, after I’ve learned them, I figure out what I’ve learned from them and I’m done. Which isn’t that unreasonable with PnP and prototypes. But last month, just about everything I learned, I plan to go back to.

My July PnP

 Huh, August snuck up on me. Well, time to write about what Print and Play Projects I made in July.

I made:

Dungeon Post

Concealed (zen mode board)

Par Out Golf demo

Rollway Station (basic map)

Aqua ROVE

Aqua ROVE - Dreadful Depths (playtest)

Battle Crest - Fell Woods

Battle Crest -Imperator 

Monster Dinner Party

One Card Maze

My original ‘big’ project for the month was Dungeon Post. I haven’t actually learned it yet but I know that I won’t play it if I don’t have it made lol

However, playtesting for Button Shy was what actually ended up being my crafting focus. I realized that I hadn’t actually ever made a copy of Aqua ROVE so I had to make a copy to playtest an expansion. And while I didn’t think I would playtest the new Battle Crest module, I made a copy of the base game and the solo module/AI so I could learn the system if I felt like it. (So far, I haven’t but having a copy makes it much more likely)

I can already see with the school year kicking in, my crafting time will be limited. But July let me make stuff that will be seeing some play.

Exploring new places in Around the World in 10-15 Minutes

 Last year, I tried out Around the World in 10-15 Minutes, a print-and-play game from No Box Games about world travel. My initial impressions of the game was that the mechanics were a little weak but it was rich with theme.

And, to be honest, my opinion has remained pretty much the same. I don’t find it hard to get a good score, at least while playing it solitaire. Having said that, it hits the table at least a couple times a month.

TransAmerica and Ticket to Ride were a big part of my early board gaming experiences and I still feel they are essential gaming. Around the World in 10-15 Minutes isn’t even vaguely in their league but it definitely has a similar flavor, which isn’t bad for a one-sheet Roll and Write. And since you sightsee and buy souvenirs as well as travel, the game just has chill, decompressing feel overall. 

I had been saving the expansion maps for a good occasion but I realized that it is human nature to always have more games than time. So I have now played the USA map and the Europe map, both of which have their twists.

The USA map is broken down into six areas like the original world map. However, it has four bonus cities (Anchorage, Honolulu, Washington DC and San Juan) They only have two paths each, cannot be used for souvenirs or exploring, but they are worth a fourth set of points. I can usually hit every city in the world map but adding four more cities ramps up the difficulty in a good way.

While the Europe map has 18 cities like the world map, it only has four regions. The twist is that you compete for who has the most cities in each region.

The USA map has become my favorite map of the series. It does what I want with an expansion map. It adds a new mechanic that seamlessly fits in with the mechanics and the theme. It also ups the difficulty, keeping the game from becoming too formulaic. 

On the other hand, as someone who is playing the game solitaire, the Europe map doesn’t interest me as much. Its twist is only for multi-player games. On the third hand, by adding a layer of player interaction (albeit indirect interaction), the Europe map is the one for multi-player. To the point where I’d skip the world map and go straight to it if I was playing the game with other folks.

I am actually surprised that I haven’t seen any fan-made maps. I think the system would be ripe for fan expansion. If they are out there, point me their way. 

The expansions of Around the World in 10-15 Minutes have the system continue to do what keeps me coming back: remind me why I got into board games while being engaging in its own right.

Monstrously Cute is unadulterated escapism

Hitting the random media button on TV Tropes (which I do quite often) let me discover the web comic Monstrously Cute. Which I proceeded to describe to my family as ‘Monster High if Sanrio made it’ To which my son replied ‘Sanrio already did that. That’d be Kuromi’ 

He makes a good point.

Monstrously Cute is a slice-of-life comic about a gorgon, a sphinx, a werewolf and a vampire who are roommates. And they are such chibi monster girls that I only got the vampire’s species right when I saw a cast picture. (Before I saw the tail, I felt the werewolf looked more cat-like than canine)

Monstrously Cute is so cheerfully benign that it makes Chi’s Sweet Home look like Berserk. It is relentlessly sweet and gentle. Heck, the vampire is even vegan.

The stories are about how the girls help and support each other out through life’s trials and tribulations. Their inhuman natures are simply used for gentle jokes like the gorgon’s snake hair getting stuffed up too when she has allergies.

… Actually, Kuromi is hardcore compared to Monstrously Cute.

At another time, Monstrously Cute would just be a blip on the radar for me. However, with the world not only constantly on fire but so many different flavors of fire, Monstrously Cute is wonderfully decompressing. 

Monstrously Cute’s biggest virtue may be escapism but that is a definite virtue.

https://www.monstrouslycute.com/

Mario Kart World is cartoon physics at its finest

I found myself struggling to write about Mario Kart World because I wanted to open with ‘Its Mario’s World and we’re just living in it’

The Mario Kart franchise is about video game characters racing in go karts with heavily exaggerated physics and incredibly unlikely random weaponry. Aaaand  you probably already know that.

I remember a PC gamer friend telling me that the Switch 2 having a party game as their big launch game was mistake. My reaction was ‘huh, I guess Mario Kart can be a party’ and ‘Isn’t Mario Kart 8 the best selling Switch game so wouldn’t that make Mario Kart a solid bet for Nintendo?’

And, at least for our family, Mario Kart World has been a winner. To be fair, we occasionally revisit Mario Kart DS and Mario Kart 7 and played tons of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe so we were always going to be an easy sell. But Mario Kart World may become our favorite so far.

(The idea of an open world Mario Kart still feels kind of strange. I personally am in it just for the races but I do like the option of cross county races.)

Instead of boring you with details about the game, since people far better qualified than I am have published plenty of articles about it, I want to comment on one key element. That Mario Kart World leans even further into the exaggerated physics, getting us even closer to a Looney Tunes cartoon.

You are now able to do jumps and flips simply by accelerating. You can grind in rails and even things like telephone lines, although I don’t know if grind is really the right term. You are a cartoon pinball and the world is your cabinet.

Something I have come to realize as I grow older as a gamer is that the casual audience is a quiet giant. I am paraphrasing but I remember James Ernst saying at a convention that a designer asking him if a pub game like Pairs had any sales potential and Ernst’s response being ‘Have you met people?’

Mario Kart World is not a work of literature in video game form (which definitely exist) but it is a ton of fun.

Pen Pals recycles old mechanics into solid gameplay

Pen Pals from Dr. Finn’s Book of Solo Strategy and Word Games is one of the strategy games, although the name sounds like it could have been one of the word games too. Instead, it’s about making animal pens.

Like every game in the book, it’s a solitaire Roll and Write. The play sheet has six by seven grid with pigs, cows, ducks and sheep sprinkled in the squares and two spaces in each row for possible water bucket placement. At the top has a twelve by two grid of different fence shapes.

You set up the game by rolling to see which of the two water bucket spots you’ll use in each column. After that, you start fencing. The border of the grid is a fence. The first placement has to touch the border and every piece after that has to be part of the same network. You also can’t flip or rotate a shape. 

Choosing the shape of the fence is a little different than the usual R&W formula. The table has two columns for each pip and the two rows are for even and odd. Roll two dice. Pick one for the column and one for the row. You cross off a column after it’s been used. If it’s impossible to pick a column, the dice become wild and you can pick any available column. After twelve turns, game’s over and you figure out your score. 

Animals have to be in a pen with a water bucket to be worth any points. If a pen has only one water bucket, you choose either to score how many different types of animals or how many of one type of animal. The more, the merrier. If there is more than one bucket in a pen, you just score one point per animal.

Pen Pals uses a lot of well trod ideas. Thematically, it reminds me of Raging Bulls. It has a lot in common with 13 Sheep, my go-to for introducing Roll & Writes in the classroom. And, frankly, drawing shapes on a grid practically feels like the default idea for Roll & Writes.

And the tweaks Steve Finn added aren’t that crazy. The even-odd rows, the fact that you can’t rotate or flip shapes and some more unusual shapes aren’t dramatic changes. 

But they are enough to make an interesting decision tree and an engaging game. Pen Pals is a game that keeps me coming back. The short play time makes it easy to come back to and the tough choices make it worth coming back.

It doesn’t remake the wheel. Instead, it is a very good wheel. If you’ve played when a few Roll and Writes, the learning curve is practically a flat line. But that doesn’t change the fact that the game play is good.

Something I keep coming back to when I look at this book is that Steve Finn has made a collection of games that are extremely accessible and very suitable for casual gaming. It is a book for a wide audience.

Tower of God is a masterclass of world building

When I learned that part of Solo Leveling’s journey as a multi-media entity was being a manhwa, that brought me back to one of my only manhwa experiences, Tower of God. Which was also an amazing read.

(I was also curious if it had also ever gotten an animated adaptation. Yup. Five years ago. lol)

No matter what you seek, wealth or power or transcendence, you will find it at the top of the Tower of God. Every floor requires an increasingly difficult tests to ascend to the next floor. The series depicts a vast and diverse cast in their efforts to climb the tower.

I’m not really planning on spoiling anything but…

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The real star of Tower of God is the titular tower itself. It is the mutant offspring of the TARDIS and Castle Ghormangast on steroids. The number of floors is unknown and each one is the size of a continent. The author has said there are civilizations that don’t even know they are in the tower. 

Instead of air, the tower has something called shinsu, which is also like magic or psi energy or the force. The higher you go, the denser it becomes, making deadly for normal people. And you have to make a contract with the deity-like administrators of each floor to manipulate shinsu.

So, every floor is like its own world and it gets more dangerous and more magical the higher you go.

While there is a protagonist (Twenty-Fifth Baam), the cast is sprawling and characters come and go. Sometimes character die and sometimes they just leave the story that we see for a while. They all have their own motivations and schemes and they form a fascinating tangle.

I would have to go back and reread Tower of God, which is now much longer compared to when I read it, to try and summarize the story. Particularly after the first arc, the Floor of Tests, because after that, the cast and the setting and plot explode. 

The overall plot is a ‘Chosen One’ story but there is a lot going on. The fact that the plot doesn’t strangle itself is a wonders

I’ve also read that the manhwa has periodically gone on hiatus due to the author’s health issues (which I have no idea what those are) That makes me wonder if we will ever see the end of the vast story of Tower of God. Heck, the site I was able to read an English translation is gone.

But it is an impressive work no matter what.

Monster Dinner Party is another cozy little game from Alexander Shen

It had been a bit since I had tried a new (or new-to-me) game from Alexander Shen and, when I saw that Monster Dinner Party was a quick 9-card build, I decided it was a good one to try out.

In typical whimsical Shen fashion, the game has you seating a group of goofy-looking monsters at a dinner table. Of course, being monsters, they are fussy about where they sit.

The game consists of a deck of nine cards with no other bits like dice and tokens. Each card has a scoring condition, a special power and a color. The front of the card has a waiting edge and a seated edge. The back side of the card has a negative one symbol, along with the game name.

Shuffle the cards up and deal seven cards in a row with the waiting edge up. The other two cards are put on standby. A move is using one of the waiting monsters special power, which then switches the monster to seated. You can also swap out a waiting card in the line with a card in standby. They arrive seated and the other card is flipped to the negative side. If a card can’t use its power, it’s flipped over. When all seven cards in the line are seated or flipped, figure out the score.

The powers are switch the card with the same color, switch the card with a different color, move two spaces and place the card anywhere in the line (but must actually move) The scoring conditions are ends of the line, even spot, odd spot, and next to monsters of the same color.

Alexander Shen has a true knack for making coffee break games. Games that don’t take up too much time or space or brain power but are enjoyable little time outs for your mind. They aren’t headliners but there is definitely a place for games like them.

While Monster Dinner Party isn’t one of Shen’s best works, it’s still solid. It’s only seven moves and it doesn’t take long to figure out which moves are optimal. However, I’ve found it to be a fun little puzzler. It might even get a turn as a lunch game.

I have to admit that a lot of value of Shen games comes from the low opportunity cost. Many of them, like this one, are free downloads. Making nine laminated cards took me maybe fifteen minutes to make. For that, Monster Dinner Party has good value.

https://www.pnparcade.com/collections/new-games/products/monster-dinner-party

I like ROVE’s children better than I like ROVE

 I tried out ROVE (Results-Oriented Versatile Explorer) when it first came out because, quite frankly, Button Shy has had a very good track record for me when it comes to solitaire games. 

And I was left with two impressions. First, it was a terribly clever design. Second, I did not grok it. A game can be good and I cannot enjoy it and both those statements can be true.

In ROVE, you are trying to rearrange six module cards into different patterns and each card has its own kind of movement. (It was pointed out to me that Chess clearly influenced ROVE’s design, which turned out to be obvious when someone else pointed it out) You pay for action points by playing move cards and you try and complete seven patterns (the move and pattern cards do double duty), as well as have access to one-shot special powers on each of the module cards.

And don’t get me wrong, I think it is a good game but I am profoundly bad at it. I am so very bad at parsing it. 

I did back the Kickstarter for Rove’s two sister games, ROVE JR and Aqua ROVE, but I was in no hurry to try them out since ROVE hadn’t been engaging for me. However, when I finally did, I found both of them clicked for me much better.

Both games remove the chess-like element of each module having its own kind of movement. In JR, every module moves the same and in Aqua, the movement cards dictate how the modules will move. For whatever reason, that is much easier for me to understand. 

There are other differences. JR uses only four modules. Aqua’s patterns include requiring specific modules in specific positions. Every flavor of ROVE is distinct. I can see the value in owning all of them (of course, since I just buy the PnP files, the cost is minimal)

I can’t say that JR and Aqua have fired the original ROVE for me… because I wasn’t playing it. If anything, my enjoyment of them makes it more likely for me to revisit ROVE. 

Still, Aqua ROVE and, if I’m to be honest, ROVE JR in particular are games I want to keep playing.

The time Don Rosa explored publishing

I sometimes wonder where Don Rosa would rank worldwide in popularity as a cartoonist. Particularly if you took the United States out of the equation lol

Don Rosa is justifiably considered to be one of the best creators of Disney Duck comic books. And it is hard to discuss his work without also discussing Carl Barks (who _defined_ Disney Duck comic books) or without discussing Duck Tales or without describing his magnum opus, the Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck.  

But earlier drafts ended up being bloated and, even by my standards, rambling and incoherent. And I probably got lots of details wrong. So I am just going to touch on his Uncle Scrooge story Guardians of the Lost Library.

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The Guardians of the Lost Library features Uncle Scrooge and grandnephews Huey, Dewey and Louie going on a globe trotting adventure to rediscover the Library of Alexandria. In regular history, it was destroyed but there are hints that it survived in the Duck version of the universe.

What unfolds is actually a history of the development of written information. Uncle Scrooge and his nephews discover that each version of the library was condensed and added to by developments in publishing. We go from papyrus scrolls to published books. Each set they find has been destroyed by time but hints are left to guide them further.

The ultimate reveal is that the most recent version of the Library of Alexandria is the Junior Woodchuck Guidebook, the closest thing Disney has to the Necronomicon. It had already been well established as a repository of all knowledge and a Deus ex Mechina that let the nephews get the ducks out of any crisis.

Before I read the story, I already knew about that and I thought that was the point of Guardians of the Lost Library. Instead, Don Rosa explores both how we wrote stuff down and how that affected history. The bit about the guide is just the cherry on top.

Despite being a globe-spanning adventure, Guardians of the Lost Library is a thoughtful work without a lot of blatant conflict. No villains like the Beagle Boys or Magica De Spell. Instead Scrooge and the boys have to deal with forces of time that decayed the various forms of the library and ignorance, embodied by Donald spending the entire story watching TV.

Wikipedia states that the Comic Buyer’s Guide allegedly mentions it as ‘possibly the greatest comic book story of all time’ but with a note stating citation needed. Yeah, that’s a bit much. I wouldn’t describe it as even Don Rosa’s best work. (The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck easily hold that title but it’s also twelve stories, not counting later companion stories, so you can accuse it of cheating lol)

With that said, the Guardians of the Lost Library is fun and charming. It’s a lesson both in history and why people love Don Rosa.

The Little Flower Shop: Open for Business is a charming little package

The Little Flower Shop: Open For Business from Dr. Finn’s Book of Solo Strategy and Word Games is a such a mouthful that I’m just going to call it Little Flower Shop for the rest of this blog entry. It’s a cute little game about managing a cute little flower shop while dealing with market fluctuations. It’s also a Roll and Write (the whole book is nothing but) 

You’ve got six different types of merchandise (half flowers and half tchotchkes), one for each pip of the die. You have a column of ten pieces of stock for each but you don’t have any of them until you start rolling the dice. Off to the side is a row of ten boxes where you’ll be writing down each day’s profits. They also serve as the game’s timer. And on the bottom is the market prices for each item, which will fluctuate throughout the game.

Each turn has three steps. First of all, get inventory. Roll four dice and choose three of them to circle the corresponding merchandise. And, yes, you could theoretically get three of the same item. Second, market fluctuation. Roll two dice and cross off the current price of the corresponding merchandise so the next price in the row is the active one. Prices will end up going all over the place. Third, sell all of one item of merchandise at its current price. Write down the profits and start the next round.

Twice during the game, rounds four and seven, you have to choose a special order that you will try and fill at the end of the game. These are things like five different items or two of the same items. And they are all worth a set price. You also get three rerolls during the game.

After ten rounds, figure out how much money you’ve made. The contents page of the book has a scale for each game to figure out how well you’ve done and so far, I’ve done terribly :P

I quite like Little Flower Shop. I haven’t played any of Dr. Finn’s other Little Flower Shop games so I don’t know how this one compares. But it does feel like a larger game translated into one sheet of paper. (He has made another Roll and Write game for it so I’m planning on looking at that sometime)

Some R&Ws manage to feel bigger than a sheet of paper and, in all honesty, Little Flower Shop doesn’t manage to do that. Six items of merchandise and ten days of sales doesn’t give the game enough scope to be big. But they are enough to give a bite-sized chunk resource management experience. More than that, the game is very clean and accessible. There are no fiddly bits. The game visually just makes sense.

I have played a _lot_ of R&Ws that are filling in grids or filling out boxes. (And had a lot of fun along the way) Little Flower Shop isn’t like that and doesn’t have a ‘traditional’ R&W feel. It’s a R&W for folks who aren’t into R&Ws.

The Little Flower Shop: Open for Business is a cozy little game that doesn’t take a lot of time to play but does give you a charming experience.

Entering Dr. Finn’s world of word games

Dr. Finn’s Book of Solo Strategy and Word Games Contains three different word games: Word Wrap, Leftover Letters and Spell It Out.

To be honest, I don’t feel like I have enough to say about each one specifically for a blog each. Which isn’t to say that I think they are bad or dislike them. Quite on the contrary, as someone who generally isn’t into word games, I think they’re downright brilliant.

All of them are Roll and Writes. While they are all designed to be played as solitaires, there is no reason that you can’t play the multiplayer Take It Easy Style. They also all show a strong Scrabble influence. Letters are worth specific amounts of points and there are rules for multiplying letter and word scores.

Leftover Letters is the most complex game by virtue of having three steps. You start out with a seven by seven grid that already has some letters in it. Step one: You roll dice to fill in the fourteen empty spots. Step two: Keep rolling dice to scratch out letters, using the dice to determine the coordinates for points where four boxes come together. (So you have four letters to pick from) Step three: make words out of each column and row with the letters you have left. You don’t have to use all the letters in a group but the more letters, the more points.

Spell It Out, on the other hand, is the simplest game of the three. Possibly the simplest game in the entire book. You have a blank crossword-style layout that has space for six 2-letter words, four 4-letter words, and two 5-letter words. Every turn, roll two dice and pick a letter a group for each pip. After you fill in all the empty spaces, score all the words that are actually words.

Word Wrap changes things up by having you drawing Tetris–style shapes on a grid of letters. After you draw each shape, you write the letters you just encircled in the spaces for two 3-letter words, two 4-letter words, one 5-letter word, one six-letter word, and one 7-letter word. After you’ve filled every space in, score all the words that are actual words.

Frankly, if I put a playsheet in front of you, you’d have an idea how to play before I even started going over the rules. More than that, you’d be playing in less than five minutes. All these games are very accessible. Even more than that, use of the Scrabble’s visual language helps make the games accessible.

On top of that, I found that the games offered choices, particularly at the start. Near the end, they become more push your luck as you hope to get the letters you need to finish the words you want to make. They are all quick games, none of them lasting long enough to get tedious.

While FlipWord remains my go-to word game, I enjoyed all three of these more than my previous favorite Roll and Write word game, which was Lingo Land by Dark Imp. (Sorry, Ellie Dix) In fact, my reaction to playing Spell It Out was to play it again.

Word games aren’t my go-to for gaming, although I seem to have played plenty of them by this point. With that said, word games are clearly a large and successful niche of the gaming world. And I think all three of these games are ones that Word gamers would really enjoy. I think making them a part of the book was a very wise choice on Steve Finn’s part.

The Singles Club uses pop culture to make high art

I had read that Phonogram vol 2 The Singles Club was the right place to actually start the series, the best of the three volumes. 

Well, I read the first volume first anyway. And quite enjoyed it. I found the complaints that you have to be familiar with the indie music scene for it to make any sense to be heavily exaggerated. You just have to understand fandom in general. 

Then I picked up The Singles Club. And couldn’t put it down lol

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The Singles Club describes the same night at a club seven different times. Wikipedia claims it’s based on a real event but I couldn’t find any other reference to that. More than that, there isn’t any dramatic moment in this evening. It’s eight different people having a night out.

I also want to note that this isn’t a Rashomon story, at least as I understand the term. None of the stories contradict each other. They are just different points of view.

(Rashomon is a movie that has really stuck with me. I know Kurosawa didn’t invent the concept but, man, he created such a definitive example. The dead husband testifying through a medium was so wild to me. And I also appreciate that every single person, even the woodcutter, turns out to be lying)

But that formula wouldn’t be enough to make for a good read. No, the reason the Singles Club is good is because the art and the writing come together to give memorable, believable, flawed, sympathetic characters. 

And the characters are everything. All of the action is internal. There isn’t a dramatic plot structure. Instead, we watch pretty much every character end a touch wiser than they started. 

And then they stick the landing with Kid-With-Knife. Who isn’t a serial killer and whose name I _think_ is a reference to the band Knife. A band I have only heard of through Phonogram. He’s a big, loveable goof. He was the Chas Chandler to David’s John Constantine in the first volume. And he’s convinced David to teach him about Phonomancy.

And KWK works so well as an endnote because he is such a contrast to every other character. He may be a loveable idiot but he knows who he is and he is comfortable in his own skin. His reaction to phonomancy instructions being listen to the music until it fills you is ‘Hell, everybody does that’

Truth to tell, as an old duffer, I related to Rue Britannia better. However, as a work of art, the Singles Club is better. The journey seems to go nowhere but takes you so far.

Paper App Golf makes minimalism a virtue

My interest in Gladden Design’s Paper app series was rekindled when I heard about Paper App Golf. Golf seemed like a good fit for the Paper App mission statement of a minimalist game you could carry in your pocket and play anywhere.

Oddly enough, I find golf an interesting subject for board games, particularly solitaire games, while I’m not very interested in the actual sport itself. I think part of that is that golf can be functionally a solitaire athletic sport. 

In a nutshell, each hole is a grid of dots and you roll a six-sided die to see how many spaces you draw the line per turn/stroke. You also always have the option of putting just one space. Amazingly, this is not the simplest golf board game I’ve played! (I’d say that goes to Par Out Golf)

The grit of the game comes from the terrains. Fairways give you a plus one to distance and let you draw a line through trees. Sandtraps, on the other hand, give a minus one. You can’t stop in water but you can draw over it. Near some holes are slopes, automatically moving the line. And you just draw the line normally in the rough.

There is also a speed variant if you can’t be bothered with dice. The ball can move six spaces if it starts on the fairway, three everywhere else and you can still putt one space.

Look, if you’re looking for a deep, involved golf game, you are looking at the wrong game. If you’re are looking for a game you can play while waiting in line at the bank, then you’ve come to the right place. And you probably don’t care about the weird looks you get at the bank.

I have to compare Paper App Golf to Paper App Dungeon, the game that made me aware that the series existed. While Golf is somehow even simpler than the minimalist Dungeon, I enjoy it more. The mechanics are cleaner and fit the theme much better.

Paper App Golf is very niche. It’s a game to play when you have basically no time, no space and no concentration. And there are times like that when I need a game break so I know I am going to keep playing it. I think the dice-less variant just turns it into a meh puzzle but I appreciate that the option exists. 

Paper App Golf isn’t that good a game but it does a very good job at what it’s meant to do.

Jim Shooter leaves behind such a messy legacy

On Monday, June 30, 2025, comic book editor, writer and publisher Jim Shooter died.

And when I read that, I was struck by two thoughts. First, as the editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics from 1978 to 1987, he had a huge impact on my childhood. Second, man, he left a complicated legacy.

Because, history has judged him as, to put it politely, quite the jerk. And, from what I can tell, not unfairly.

(I also can’t get over how he started writing comics professionally when he was fourteen.)

Trying to summarize his career, even just the Marvel part, is more than I think I can do without getting too much wrong.

However, during his time as Marvel’s editor-in-chief, he restructured it to be, well, more professional. I think it’s safe to say that allowed Marvel to thrive in the 1980s and his influence on both Marvel and the comic book industry can be felt to this day. From what I have understand, Marvel Comics was close to shutting down when he took over and he turned things around dramatically, making it the market leader.

It’s also safe to say that he could be a tyrant and a jerk, particularly near the end of his time as editor-in-chief. He instituted what were then viewed as homophobic editorial policies (which has to be saying something since it’s not like other media were very embracing) And some of the stories that were made under his watch or even under his pen are terrible. (Avengers #200 is one of the crowning examples. And, no, I don’t feel comfortable describing it)

I’m not very familiar with his work after Marvel so I can’t comment on it.

Jim Shooter leaves behind a complex, divisive legacy. He was profoundly hated by many. And I was only on board for a relatively small part of the journey, albeit what might have been the most important part. And I don’t know if I would have become a comic book fan without his work.

My June Gaming

For most of June, our printer didn’t want to talk to any of our devices. And, while I have plenty of games already made that I could have learned, the annoyance got in the way of me wanting to. Wow, I feel petulant writing that. However, for reasons known only to it, the printer decided to connect to the computer near the end of June and my whole dynamic changed.

I learned:

Roll for the Goal (Gladden Games)

Hens

Crunch the Numbers (Dr. Finn)

Leftover Letters (Dr. Finn)

Paper App Golf

Spell It Out (Dr. Finn)

Word Wrap (Dr. Finn)

The Little Flower Shop: Open for Business (Dr. Finn)

Nanga Parbat: Alone in the Wilderness (Dr. Finn)

Pen Pals (Dr. Finn)

Looking at the list, I realize that my real frustration was that I wanted to get into Dr. Finn’s Book of Solo Strategy and Word Games and wasn’t able to. In fact, I learned Hens on Board Game Arena just to learn a game.

I’m going to have plenty to save about Dr. Finn’s book as I go through it but I have to say that the best part is I want to keep playing the games. I go through a lot of Roll and Writes and a collection that keep me saying ‘let’s do that again’ is impressive and a joy.

It ended up being a good month for learning new games.

My June PnP

It originally looked like June would be a minimal PnP crafting month because our printer was acting up. However, near the end of the month, it decided to connect back to devices and I was able to make up for lost time.

I made:

Control (first edition)

Solo Dice (half sheet)

Six Sons of the Sultan

Roll for the Goal

Rolling Realms vol 9

Wayfarer - Switzerland 

Wayfarer - Spain

Wayfarer - Poland

Cosmic Run (Doctor Finn)

Crunch the Numbers (Doctor Finn)

Leftover Letters (Doctor Finn)

The Little Flower Shop: Open for Business (Doctor Finn)

My Perfect City (Doctor Finn)

Nanga Parbat (Doctor Finn)

Pen Pals (Doctor Finn)

Spell It Out (Doctor Finn)

Word Wrap (Doctor Finn)

Caterpillar Feast

Bowling Solitaire (skinny cards)

Seal (Creative Kids)

TetriGo (Creative Kids)

Koala Rescue Club - Map 3

Paper App Golf - Course 1

My big project for the month was the first edition of Control. I actually printed, cut and laminated it over two years ago. I decided that it was time to trim it, particularly since I wasn’t getting any printing done.

I’m giving Bowling Solitaire another try with Pack O Games style cards. I’ve tried it with regular cards and the tile set. It’s a Sackson design so I want to like it but I have yet to like it. The charming design of these cards was the real reason I made them.

However, what has led to the most fun and laminating has been Dr. Finn’s Book of Solo Strategy and Word Games. It’s exceeded my expectations and I thought it would be good to begin with.

The end of the month gave me a lot of Roll and Writes, ones I can see getting a lot of play out of.