Board To Death

Okay, I usually don't do similar games back to back, and I generally try and steer away from games based on things, or from external media (Jumanji was an outlier, obviously), but this one that cropped up while I was doing last weeks post really caught my attention and demanded I discuss it, so here we are. Because, look at this, and I mean just look at it for a good solid few minutes before we continue. There's so much to appreciate here, and that's just aside from the fact that it actually exists, ok?  Released in 1972 and published by Lakeside, 2 to 4 players attempt to move their Doom Buggy throughout the Haunted Mansion. Meanwhile, there's large swaths of the game board which feature rotating discs that regularly change the path your Doom Buggy can or cannot take, which is an extremely neat idea. It also means that if you land on a spin stone via these discs, you'll activate the spooky ghosts you're trying so hard to avoid, so there's a whole other leve...

I was a weird little girl, into some weird shit, like taxidermy, taking photos of roadkill and horror movies, and because of this I often didn't have a ton of female friends (or really many friends at all) because the stuff I liked was just too "icky" and "strange" and "dark". Because of my strange obsession with all things macabre, it's very sad that I wasn't aware of Haunted House as a child, because holy shit would I have loved it. Just look at the graphics on this box, look at that ghoulish face in the little box at the bottom, and the beautiful black and blue combination of shading on the house itself. The font, the sky and sun. This is an absolute work of art worthy of being framed and hung on a wall. And the game itself, for a change, doesn't fail to live up to the hype the box creates! At least, design wise, as I can't say from personal experience whether or not this game is fun seeing as I've never actually played it. Rele...

When I was a little girl, I went to the horse races a lot. I had a great aunt who went a lot, and she took me along with her quite often, and I really enjoyed it. I like gambling, I like horses, so it was a nice mesh of things I enjoyed to make one thing I really enjoyed. Despite having not been to the horse races for years now, sadly, I still enjoy it and would like to go back some day. But you know what's even cooler? Bringing the horse races to you! In 1975, MPH Games Co released a "board game" titled "Across The Board: Horse Racing Game", and the reason why board game is in quotations will become clear enough very very soon. This is going to be somewhat of a weird post, but please bare with me. Across The Board is technically a board game. If you looked at its packaging, it wouldn't look out of place whatsoever on the shelf next to Monopoly. But it actually doesn't have a board. Hell, it even says on the front of the box "as advertised in Reader...

One of the games I never owned but once I learned about I would've killed to have owned is Fireball Island. First published by Milton Bradley in 1986, it's hands down one of the single coolest looking board games ever made. It's got so many aspects to it, it comes with so many pieces and the overall game itself can be rather complex at times, but just look at this gorgeous thing. I believe this image is of the redesigned Kickstarted version from the past few years, but even then it's incredible. The level of detail and the amount of artistry that went into this is nothing short of astounding, especially when compared to other board games, and especially when compared to other board games near its original release date. Stuff simply didn't look like this back then. Now-a-days, board games can be very visually complex and interesting, but back in 1986, this sort of thing just wasn't really done. Board games mostly had all the art on the board itself, unless you we...