An elegy for PnP Arcade

 This was not a blog that I had been planning on working on. I had been thinking about working on something about Looney Lab’s Pyramid Arcade.

Then I saw that PnP Arcade was shutting down on January 29, 2026. 

It’s the end of an era.

PnP Arcade was an online store that sold print and play game files. I’m not sure how many different publishers used the site but I’m sure I wouldn’t have heard of a lot of them if it wasn’t for PnP Arcade.

The store started in 2018 and I know I was actively following it and using it by 2019. So I got a good six years of out it, checking every Friday for new games to see if there were any that interested me. Their Black Friday sale became a tradition for me.

I don’t think I can overstate the impact PnP Arcade had on my gaming life. By 2019, Print and Play had become a major focus for my gaming. I was actively looking at design contests and Kickstarters that had PnP options. However, PnP Arcade took me to the next level, looking at products that were intentionally created for home creation. So much of what I had been looking at were prototypes with the intent of being eventually physically published. In theory, the games at PnP Arcade were the finished product.

Frankly, the site let me explore whole new worlds of gaming. And between the backlog of games that I haven’t made and tried yet and the games that I want to keep on playing, even with the site closing down, I have years of entertainment ahead of me.

The notice that went up stated that life had just gotten too busy to keep on running the store. Which I can easily believe and completely accept. PnP Arcade had to have been passion project and a lot of work to keep it going, and I find it hard to believe that it generated a ton of profit, although I would be delighted to be wrong. If Jason Tagmire and Jason Greeno decide that they are burnt out on publishing games and want to sell aluminum siding door-to-door, they have already made a positive impact on my life.

Now, I do understand that PnP Arcade is going to continue in some form on Substack. Which means I have to figure out what the heck Substack is. However, it’s clearly going to be different.

Thank you to both Jasons for keeping it going as long as you did.

Man, I can’t stop writing about Maigret

 You know, I really hadn’t planned on doing any more writing about the Maigret series by Georges Simenon. Not until I had read a decent selection from different points in the series. Definitely not after I read a second book.

But Maigret and the Headless Corpse just ended up being so much more interesting than I expected. I had accidentally gotten it out because I mixed it up with Maigret and his Dead Man. (An easy mistake I think) And, from what I can tell, it is considered a middle-of-the-road book in the series. 

Which I entirely believe.

But what was so striking for me was the structure of the book.

A dismembered corpse, sans head which would make for easy identification, is found in a Paris canal. Maigret, a police detective, takes on the case, needing to figure out who the dead guy is and who killed him.

And here’s the thing. Pretty early in the book, Maigret figures those things out. However, he has to understand the motive so that he can put all the pieces together in a way that will actually land a confession and conviction.

In other words, it is not a who done it. It is who is this person that has done it and why did they do it in the first place? The book isn’t a mystery. It is a character study.

And, while there are some revelations by the end, there aren’t any sudden twists that change everything. Instead, we learn just enough to understand why the murder happened.

Maigret spends time around the neighborhood where the body parts are found and much of the book deals with everyday life. And Simenon makes the immersive, not tedious or boring. We also get to see plenty of Maigret’s own personality. One of my favorite touches is that he makes sure a suspect in custody’s cat is taken care of and is irked when it’s implied he shouldn’t have bothered.

Maigret and the Headless Corpse wasn’t on my short list of books to read, which makes my enjoyment even better. I’m not planning on an exhaustive exploration of the series but I am hoping to read at least ten Maigret books this year.

Racing by centimeters and other Formula 1 thoughts

 I recently tried out a PnP racing game called Formula 1cm. And it pretty much is just what it says on the tin. A game about Formula 1 racing and measures. 

Here’s the core concept: you are playing a race as a dot-to-dot game where you supply the dots. You have an inventory of line segments of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 centimeters. You need to use each measure at least once but no more than three times.

Here’s where the actual game part is: you have to draw the lines freehand, not with a helpful ruler. And each player has three free challenges to accuse the other player of getting the measure wrong. They can accuse people after that but if they’re false accusations, the accuser has a penalty, being forced to use the shortest measure they have available.

And you can wear out your car by cutting corners and getting caught getting measures wrong. And you have to change lanes every move. There is some race car crunch mixed in.

The game comes with a lot of content. Twelve F1 tracks. Three kid-friendly tracks. Two more special tracks. A bunch of variant rules, including solitaire. Having so many tracks and variations is crucial to any kind of replay value because if you only had one or two maps, muscle memory would make them too easy.

I have tried it solitaire, which was perfectly pleasant. However, I am positive that the game sings at two-player. Having someone to mess with and who will mess with you will really add a lot to the gameplay.

I think there’s a very distinct dividing line for potential responses to Formula 1cm. If players don’t mind a no-frills pencil and paper game, I think they’ll enjoy it. If you need even a little bit of chrome, Formula 1cm is a hard no. 

Which is absolutely fine. We play games for fun and escapism and mental stimulation and social interaction. You shouldn’t be asked to play games that don’t work for you.

Of course, any Formula 1-themed game is going to be in the shadow of the Formula De/Formula D family of games. The gear dice system is both single and utterly brilliant. For me, that remains the gold standard. 

Sadly, for many reasons, I haven’t played Formula D in many years. (For one thing, the guy I know who has a bunch of tracks lives in another state lol) Almost every version of the game takes up some decent table space (Formula De Mini being the exception) and is a serious evening’s play. Is it worth the time and the space? Yes. But you have to have that time and space.

I think it’s a crying shame that it’s out of

print.

And Formula 1cm also brought me back to Rallytaire, a PnP that clearly was inspired by Formula D and is an absolute example of a shoestring game. It does a really good job giving me a ten-minute Formula D fix and I’m glad Formula 1cm made me go back to it.

I think the need for budget gaming, which has always been out there, has only become more important. And I think Formula 1cm is a valuable potential addition to that library.

Doctor Who, comics and me

 I recently read a Doctor Who graphic novel, The Forgotten. The short version is that the Doctor finds himself with a case of amnesia in a museum devoted to himself, which is, of course, a trap.

It was published in 2009 and the David Tennant Doctor was the protagonist. However, the museum is really just a framing device for vignettes about the previous nine doctors. 

One particularly nice touch is the Hartnell and Troughton stories are black and white, just like their television serials. In general, the graphic novel is drowning in continuity shoutouts and references. 

Because it’s really ten different stories, some bits are stronger than others. I feel the Hartnel story really captures the feel of his pure historical stories in only a handful of pages. And the Baker Doctor dealing with a Minotaur in Paris who wears a beret captured the absurdity of Graham Wilson’s time as the show runner.

Which actually makes the Forgotten very hard for me to judge. Did I enjoy it? Yes. I had a lot of fun with it. But I have spent decades immersed in Doctor Who. Would the Forgotten have worked for someone who doesn’t know Who that well or even someone only started watching Doctor Who in 2005?

Truth to tell, l have always struggled with Doctor Who comics and comic books. Part of it is because every character from the television show has a definitive visual interpretation, that of the actual actor. I can handle Wolverine look like whatever because he was a drawing first and Hugh Jackman later on. However, no drawing will ever look more like Tom Baker than Tom Baker himself.

But the other problem is that there is just so much content out there. The earliest Doctor Who comic strips date back to 1964. Multiple publishers, including Marvel Comics, have made Doctor Who comic books. Where do you start? And if there is any kind of internal continuity in any given series, that just makes it even more confusing.

So, from that perspective, as a standalone work I was able to sit down and enjoy, Doctor Who - The Forgotten is a resounding success for at least me. 

Travel Light is a brilliant fable about choosing who you are

 Travel Light by Naomi Mitchison, published originally in 1952, is frequently described as a lost classic, a book that should be a staple of the fantasy genre. And now that I’ve read it, it turns out that I am one more person who’s going to say that.

I first heard of it through This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone, which is how I think a lot of people discovered Travel Light. One more reason for me to praise This is How You Lose the Time War.

Halla is a princess who was cast out into the wilderness by her stepmother. Fortunately, her nurse becomes a werebear and takes care of her until the winter. Then she becomes the ward of a dragon. Afterwards, she is given the blessing Odin to be a wanderer and travel light.

That is the _prologue_

After that, Halla takes on her own agency and her journey, at that point, becomes about her own decisions. Her first decision is to become a wanderer and see the world through eyes of bear and dragon and girl.

Travel Light is written like a fable or a fairy tale but it is never twee. It never offers simple answers. It deals with themes of death and loss, religion and politics, despair and hope. For such a short little book, there’s a lot going on. It is not a book about discovering who you are. It is a book about deciding who you are.

And, yes, Travel Light is a book that deserves more attention. It is accessible to children and meaningful to adults. It offers valuable thoughts on life and asks us to decide what the lessons are.

Urban planning in the palm of your hand

 Downtown Las Palmas does one of my least favorite things that you can do with an In-Hand game and does it so well that I really quite like it.

At its core, Las Palmas is a dexterity game. You have to hold the cards in your hand to build up a city-scape and try not to drop any. However, also has you make interesting decisions. The fact that there is a tabletop variant that doesn't involve hand cramps that is also a solid play speaks volumes for the game.

The idea behind the game is that you are renovating the downtown of the city of Las Palmas. Each card shows a piece of a cityscape in grayscale tones with scoring elements like palm trees or pedestrians in black silhouette. Since you are building a picture, the art is a crucial part of the game and it really clicks for me.

On the back of each card is a bonus scoring conditions. Getting ten points for having no pedestrians or two points for every dog. That sort of thing. You draw two and keep them, revealed, at the bottom of the deck. You'll be holding all the cards in your hands for the entire game. One hand holds the draw pile, face up so you know what's coming, while the other hand hole the cityscape as you add to it.

The core rule is that all the cards in the cityscape have to be in your hand. Skylines have to lock up and you can't partially cover up features. The game ends when you drop at least one card, run out of cards or decide to stop.

You score points based on your bonuses, number of visible cards and number of visible scoring elements. Your goal is based on the size of your hand.

There is a tabletop variant where you make a playing space that is the length of a card and you mark the edges with the bonus cards. HOWEVER, you get a penalty for any cards leftover if you end before running out of cards.

Downtown Las Palmas is intuitive to understand. Like I said, you're building a picture. It's tought to do well, either playing In Hand or with the tabletop varient. You will always be struggling for space. And, on top of all that, it is pretty. Well, at least I think so. All in all, Downtown Las Palmas is a good experience.

I was able to be part of the play test group for Las Palmas (just for full transparency) at the time, I was quite impressed with the game. The idea of, for all intents and purposes, making a picture by holding cards in your hands, is very simple. I remember a very early gaming experience was learning CheapAss Games' Lightspeed and wondering if it was too simple but also finding it to be so much fun. Simple doesn't mean bad or good. More than anything else, it is a starting point.

Around the time I was first examining Downtown Las Palmas, I also learned the game Ham Fisted, which is another dexterity based on making a grid with various pig products you get at the deli. Ham Fisted isn't bad. It's good enough that I do occasionally play it. However, Las Palmas is significantly better in my arrogant opinion. It offers more variety and deeper decisions. (I also prefer the artwork but that's just me)

Downtown Las Palmas represents a niche within a niche. At the same time, it's also a solid game regardless of that.

Carnival games transformed into dice and pencil

 I backed Coin Pusher: Galactic Surge more due to theme than any other reason. Being designed by Jason Greeno and Jason Tagmire probably would have pushed me over any way but the theme was still a big draw.

I am fascinated, for whatever reason, by board games based on pinball. Coin pusher machines are adjacent, although they don’t have the culture cache or history of pinball machines.

Galactic Surge is a Print-and-Play Roll-and-Write solitaire. Along with one of the four different play sheets, you’ll need three dice and something to write with.

The main play area consists of three areas. Alien attacks, which make life more difficult for you. Level one, where you make most of your decisions. Level two, where you can earn points. Thematically, level one is where your coins land and level two is what falls down.

Without flat out repeating the rules, you are writing numbers in either ascending or descending order on twelve columns. Fill up a column and you get to fill in the columns the second level where you can earn points.

Oh and the aliens are bad guys and can eliminate columns. Which isn’t a feature I’ve seen in a physical game but definitely makes the game more interesting. And you can also get items that will get you points or special abilities.

There is more to the game that that. Still, the core is roll three dice. Assign one to further the aliens’ plans, and two to determine what value you put in what column.

Jason Nemo’s designs always seem to be about pushing the limits about what you can do with the Roll and Write or micro game medium. Coin Pusher is, in all honesty, one of his most accessible designs, which may be why I’ve take to it.

Coin Pusher does a very solid job reflecting its theme. The mechanics definitely reflect pushing something along. And the actual game itself is fun. It has good decisions and a good tempo.

I am glad that it has multiple sheets (and you can mix and match the levels) but I hope the two Jasons make more.