Matthew Smail

Cascadero is a clever, spatially-driven tile placement game from Reiner Knizia and Bitewing Games — blending route-building, area control, and cascading bonuses into a tight, interactive puzzle that rewards timing, positioning, and…

Hispania, from Draco Ideas, is a focused and abstract historical strategy game that casts players as Roman praetors (and maybe a consul) tasked with subduing the Iberian Peninsula over the course of two centuries. Hispania is a primarily…

MicroMacro: Crime City was already a standout in the tabletop space — a small, affordable cooperative detective game that turned a sprawling black-and-white city map into a living crime scene. Designed by Johannes Sich and published by…

Even though we never quite got as far as reviewing it, My City was already a quiet triumph in the tabletop space — a legacy game from Reiner Knizia that managed to distill decades of urban development into a breezy, tile-laying campaign.…

FlickFleet, designed by Jackson Pope and Paul Willcox and published by Eurydice Games, is a dexterity-driven space skirmish game that swaps dice and cards for finger flicks and acrylic templates. It’s a game that doesn’t take itself too…

Labyrinthine on PlayStation 5 is a co-op horror experience that trades jump scares for slow dread and linear, scripted scares for disorientation and existential panic. Originally released on PC, this console edition brings the full package…

Kingdoms and Castles lulls you into a false sense of security. You start with a single keep, a handful of peasants, and a patch of fertile land. The music is gentle, the visuals are bright, retro and deliberately blocky, and the early game…

Nature is a modular, ecosystem-building strategy game from North Star Games and Dominic Crapuchettes that follows on from the popular Evolution and Oceans games which use remarkably similar mechanics. This latest effort offers the most…

Tokaido Duo is a serene but surprisingly crunchy, two-player-only reimagining of the original Tokaido — offering a layered, asymmetric experience that captures the spirit of travel and reflection while introducing previously unexpected…

If you’re a fan of classic arcade shooters — the kind that throw you into a cockpit, flood the screen with bullets and dare you to survive — then the twin release of Toaplan Arcade Collection Vol.1 and Toaplan Arcade Collection Vol.2 is a…