You joined Facebook, which just proves Zuckerberg's plan is working. Whatever it is.
First, it was people tagging you.
Then poking you. (Or maybe it was vice versa. Whatevs.)
Soon after, your feed got the 'Villes virus with people needing stuff. Rather than run away, you're following your curiosity into the gaming wilds of Facebook. To quote a title that's not on the ginormous social network, it's dangerous to go alone. Take these games with you.
Update 12/26/12: You might have noticed that the names of the games showing up in your Facebook newsfeed have changed. Sure, some are the same titles with a 2 tacked on, but others look more clever or intriguing than the ones that have come before. Want to see the latest in what's actually worth playing on the big blue social network? Read on.
Yes, yes… you're all aghast. "How could they?!" But, as we've said elsewhere Angry Birds Star Wars is actually a smart infusion of gameplay ideas from the beloved film property and Rovio's inescapable game series. The Facebook version adds leaderboards so you can compete with friends and a weekly challenge designed to keep you coming back. This is an Angry Birds game that deserves your respect. Search your feelings. You know it to be true.
A Good Match for: Power-up lovers. ABSW doles out a bunch of cool Skywalker-themed items, like a Blaster Droid that fires laser bolts as you fly through the air. Gear like that and the Thermal Detonator—which acts as a sticky grenade on the pigs' shaky architecture—make it feel like you've got a Rebel Alliance arsenal at your fingertips.
Not for Those Who Want: Angry Birds to go away. This latest release is just further evidence that there's no corner of the world Rovio's fat flyers won't seep into. Start building that bunker.
Here's how it looks in action.
Avengers Alliance is a turn-based role-playing game featuring the entire Marvel Comics Universe. You're an agent of S.H.I.E.L.D., tasked with assembling the mightiest team of super humans the world has ever seen. Collect iconic super heroes as if they were stickers and deploy them on missions to take down the forces of evil. Research new weapons to aid in old school RPG battles with an easy-to-grasp rock-paper-scissors combat mechanic. Revel in the control a man or woman in a black business suit has over the most powerful beings in the universe.
A Good Match for: Comic book fans. There's not much in the way of comic book-related games on Facebook at the moment, and none of them are quite this good. Next to the classic four-player arcade game, this is probably the best Avengers video game going.
Not for Those Who Want: Action. This is an old school turn-based RPG. Cyclops, Iron Man, and Captain America stand on one side of the screen, taking turns with the enemy issuing simple battle commands. They gain experience. They level up. It's a more thoughtful way of beating the heck out of the bad guys.
Here's how it looks in action.

Bubble Witch Saga marries the colorful bubble-popping action of Bust-a-Move with a skee ball-like scoring system and creates a truly engrossing gaming experience. There are more than 150 levels to unlock and conquer, your progress tracked on a colorful map filled with all of your friends.
A Good Match for: Puzzle fans that aren't afraid to try, try again. Bubble Witch Saga starts off easy but gets challenging real quick. As new obstacles are added to the game's playfields you'll spend less and less time progressing and more and more getting incredibly close to beating a level and then failing miserably. The moment when you finally take down a tough level is glorious, but you've got to work for it.
Not for Those Who Want: Immediate reward. They'll love the first 10 levels or so but might crumble once the going gets tough.
Here's how it looks in action.
This Zynga game finally realized a proper purpose for the virtual real estate you build on Facebook: to make that airplanes rain death on your frenemies. Invading your friends' towns starts a turn-based conflict that happens on land, sea or air. Who needs crops?
A Good Match for: Advance Wars fans. Who knows when Nintendo's going to update its classic strategy franchise? E&A's a good substitute—complete with storyline and boss fights—that you can play with dedicated hardware.
Not for Those Who Want: A solo experience. You still need friends to wage war against. So get ready to piss some acquaintance off and get to fighting it out.
Here's how it looks in action.
Farmville. It's the game that seemed to exemplify everything that was annoying about social games on Facebook: a transparent scheme that limited how much progress you could make to ensure you'd be coming back for more, unless you bugged friends or paid cash to speed things up. The sequel to Zynga's big hit deepens the complexity—crops can be crafted to feed animals, lumber goes into new buildings—so that it feels more interconnected. The hated energy mechanic is gone, too, which means you keep tweaking your virtual farm as much as you want.
A Good Match for: People pressed for time. You can click around your virtual livestock and crops for as little as ten minutes and set up a series of advancing moves that pay off big time when you check in later.
Not for Those Who Want: Rewards for playing the first Farmville. You won't reap any benefits from all that time you sank into the preceding game in this series. An odd misstep for a game that relies so heavily on a network sensibility.
Here's how it looks in action.

The biggest surprise about Nexon's social game is how it manages to capture the quirky feel of SNES-era RPGs in the unlikeliest of places, Facebook. The art design is adorably idiosyncratic, the music rousing and poignant and, most importantly, the adventure builds to pleasant crescendos.
A Good Match for: Team builders. Players will have to venture inside an eldritch tower to battle evil creatures and maintain a virtual village that they'll cull supplies and allies from. You build houses to get new settlers, who then man the pubs and shops that make armor and food. Townsfolk can also be made to pitch in certain tasks to speed them up. When all the pieces of the experience are humming along, it really feels like you're in control of a mighty, monster-fighting machine full of tiny, weird-looking people.
Not for Those Who Want: . Collaboration. While villagers will get their names from your Facebook friends—who can give you gifts—there's no really significant way for those other human beings to influence your progress in the game.
Here's how it looks in action.
Legends: Rise of a Hero is what is being referred to as a "midcore" game, one that combines the action mechanics of a "hardcore" game with the more leisurely aspects of casual games. When players aren't busy cultivating their home base, populating it with shops to craft items and buildings to generate gold coins, they're out in the wilderness alone or grouped with AI-controlled companions, battling creatures and completing quests.
A Good Match for: Casual players looking for a little more action. While more hardcore gamers might not appreciate the slower pace of Legends, it's the perfect game to acquaint the farmers and city-builders of Facebook with the other side of gaming.
Not for Those Who Want: To sit back and watch their game happen.
Q-Games crafted an incredibly sticky, punishingly difficult single-player game for the PS3 a few years back. PixelJunk Monsters Online takes the same game and migrates it to the Web, where you're not only defending territory but expanding it as well.
A Good Match for: Alpha males and females. The social overlay for PMO turns friends into rivals and encourages you to grab at their grasslands. It's finally your chance to be a video game boss. Make everyone proud, okay?
Not for Those Who Want: To be isolationists. All the action happens on a shared world map, which means someone will come gunning for you. Be ready.
Here's how it looks in action.
Robot Rising doesn't look or play like any other game on Facebook. While other developers dabble with a blend of hardcore and social gameplay on the platform, Stomp Games stays true to its name, stomping in and laying down a full-fledged robot-powered action role-playing game with stunning graphics, explosive sound and a little base management thrown in to keep the more casual players from getting lost in a sea of exploding machine bits. There is no begging friends here—just gifting, should the mood hit you.
A Good Match for: Action RPG fans looking for a quick fix. With a never-ending supply of randomly-generated missions, fans of games like Torchlight and Diablo looking for something little, mechanical and different will be in click-to-kill heaven.
Not for Those Who Want: A relaxing city management sim. While building your base is a part of the process, Robot Rising's core experience is about exploring dungeons and blowing the hell out of anything that moves.
Here's how it looks in action.

The first Robot Unicorn was a Facebook classic, and the sequel ups the ante in just about every way. Now there are more animals, more power-ups, and… well, still just the one song. But who would want to change that? Best of all, it's the rare Facebook game that's cool enough that you won't mind if it tells your friends you're playing it.
A Good Match for: Erasure fans, panda fans, unicorn fans, people who like colors.
Not for Those Who Want: A game without Erasure, pandas, unicorns and colors.
Here's how it looks in action.

Part of what helped Facebook become a gaming powerhouse was networked word games like Words with Friends. WWF stands out because of its robust client and speedy refresh, making it so that you can hammer out rounds as quickly as you want.
A Good Match for: On-the-go types. The grid's slightly different than other such games, but the main draw for Words with Friends is its cross-platform functionality. iOS and Android apps access the same game that lives on the web, meaning that you'll be able to nail that triple word score on your way back from the gym.
Not for Those Who Want: To know what they'll score. There's a certain suspense that WWF generates by virtue of not letting you know what your word is worth until after you play it.
Here's how it looks in action.

It's the irreverent trivia game that in some ways defined the 90s, reincarnated in a sharp, current, updated way that takes full advantage of the friend connections Facebook has to offer. It actually uses asynchronous gameplay effectively, to let you compete against your friends (and strangers) as if in real time.
A Good Match For: Anyone who likes silliness, who could use a bit more PG-13 humor in their day, or who wants to prove to their family how much smarter they are in six minutes or less.
Not for Those Who Want: Straightlaced, cooperative trivia. You Don't Know Jack will try to mislead you with puns. Don't let it. Other players can use boosts to augment their scores. Beat them anyway.
Here's how it looks in action.
This list will be updated if and when we discover better games. We will only ever list 12 games, at the most.
Earlier this year when Sword Art Online hit its halfway point, I called it the smartest anime I had seen in years because of its in-depth look at the long-term effects of being trapped in a virtual reality world. This last week Sword Art Online finished its run on Japanese TV. And while the second half of the series was still entertaining, it didn't quite manage to live up to the thematic highpoints of the first half. [*Note: This review contains major spoilers for Sword Art Online; check out the review of the first half for a more spoiler-free review.]
When I wrote my review of the first half of SAO, I had seen up to episode twelve. The main characters were off on a series of side-stories as part of their honeymoon, and there were still 25 floors left to clear till the end of the game. Little did I know that two episodes later, the series would change completely due to the greatest plot twist ever: the hero wins early.
After discovering the creator of the game is actually one of the players—and the final boss of the game to boot—the creator gives Kirito the chance to fight a one-on-one duel. In any other anime, the hero would have lost and the villain would have escaped to await the main characters at the final dungeon. But in SAO, Kirito wins, and the villain, true to his word, sets everyone free from the online world. What's more impressive is that this doesn't happen at the halfway point of the series where you might have expected it; rather it happens two episodes after that. Moreover, it happens right after a seemingly irrelevant side-story about fishing, making it one of the most unexpected plot twists I have ever seen.
Of course, with 11 episodes left in the series, some sort of conflict has to remain after everyone escapes Sword Art Online. And the conflict is this: 300 people—including Kirito's love interest,
Asuna—have still not awakened. However, Kirito finds a picture from another VR MMORPG, ALfheim Online, that shows Asuna being held prisoner. Thus, it is up to Kirito to enter the new world and fight to save the girl he loves.
By heading into ALfheim Online, we, the viewers, get to learn about an entirely different VR world. While Sword Art Online was a world without magic, ALfheim Online is a game built around magic and one other gamplay mechanic: flight. So while Kirito may have been the best at Sword Art Online, he is a complete newbie when it comes to ALO. It's fun learning about this new world alongside him.
Starting up the ALfheim Online arch of the story, I had one question: How do you make a better villain than a man who trapped 10,000 people in a death game for no adequately explained reason? Easy. You just show how good that guy was by comparison to the new villain.
The villain of the second half is almost the polar opposite of the first villain. The first villain was honorable (in his own way), played alongside the players, and had some sort of higher (though unexplained) goal for trapping the people in the game. The second villain, on the other hand, is cowardly, fancies himself a god, and is torturing people just to make money. More than that, he is also constantly threatening to rape Asuna—both in the game and in the real world. Simply put, he has the greatest hallmark of a good villain: He is a guy you love to hate.
While the Sword Art Online arc dealt with the thematic issues of living in a virtual world for long periods of time, the ALfheim Online arc has no such deep thought put into it. Rather it is just a simple classic story: the princess was captured and locked away, so the hero must go on a quest to rescue her. Along the way, the hero makes friends and learns that alone, he is weak; but with companions, he can save the woman he loves. It is not a bad story, but it is a common one that you have no doubt already heard many times before.
In Sword Art Online, Asuna was a great leader and strong fighter. In ALfheim Online, she is a damsel in distress and spends the entire arc locked in a cage moping. The one time she tries to escape, she proves herself totally helpless in a fight. It is sad to see such a strong female character reduced to nothing but the quest item the male lead is hunting for.
A lot of the ALfheim Online arc is spent dealing with Kiroto's adopted sister, Sugu, falling in love with him both in and out of ALfheim Online (though having no idea that the in-game him is
her brother). The problem with this is that it is presented as a love triangle between Kirito, Sugu, and Asuna when that is clearly not the case. Kirito's devotion to Asuna in the SAO arc was such that even implying he might consider giving up on her for another woman—especially while she is in mortal danger—is ludicrous, to say the least. Moreover, in anime in general, when the "not-really-his-sister-I-promise" character is involved in a love triangle, she never wins. Simply put, when the outcome of a love triangle is obvious from the start, it adds no tension to the story and is instead just filler.
Much like its sister series Accel World, Sword Art Online is a series where the first half is far stronger than the second. The first half is interested in the psychological and sociological issues of living in an online world, while the second half decides to instead take the simpler route of retelling a classic myth in a modern setting. Both, however, are enjoyable for what they are.
In the end, if you wonder about the quality of Sword Art Online overall, know this. The moment the credits began to roll after the last episode, I immediately cracked the spine of the fifth novel to continue on from where the anime left off. I think that action speaks for itself.
Sword Art Online aired every Sunday at midnight on Tokyo MX in Japan. It can be watched in the U.S. subtitled in English for free on Crunchyroll.
Lots of people play mobile games in China. The mobile game market has exploded in the last two years into a multimillion dollar industry. According to iResearch, in 2012, mobile games raked in a profit of $197 million in China, so it's almost baffling to hear something like a young man playing on a mobile device getting beaten up by villagers because they thought he was secretly photographing them.
Back in April, 26 year-old Huang Zhansheng was suddenly attacked by the locals of Pingxiang, Jiangsu province. Playing the highly popular Chinese card game, Fight the Landlord (斗地主), the villagers mistook Huang for a "social worker", thinking he was secretly documenting what they were doing with his smartphone, and pounced on the young man.
After a small altercation, the villagers called for help, and then proceeded to pummel Huang until he gave up his phone. After seeing that Huang was playing an online game, the villagers released him.
Returning home, Huang complained to his mother that his head hurt and he was feeling dizzy. The next morning his mother found Huang convulsing uncontrollably. Turns out Huang's beating had given him head trauma and a concussion.
Reporters following the case called the village chiefs to inquire why Huang was attacked. The village chief replied that they thought Huang was a social worker, and that he refused to cooperate and give up his phone for the villager's inspection. The chief also said that Huang had struck first, and then a villager hit him on the top of the head twice.
According to the police and the village, the villagers gathered the night of the incident to mediate the issue. They scrounged up 600 yuan (about $100) as compensation for Huang for having been unjustly beaten.
Of course the money didn't help at all—8 months and loads of checkups and treatment later Huang is still having health problems from his head trauma: he still convulses uncontrollably at times.
When Huang's story broke earlier this month, more reporters called to inquire why the village felt it necessary to beat up a young man playing a harmless video game (Fight the Landlord is a very harmless game!). It turns out that the village was so wary of government social workers visiting because they didn't want them to see if the villagers were congregating illegally or conducting events while circumventing the state.
Luckily for Huang, the village government owned up to the assault and are currently paying all of his medical expenses. The village government committee has currently paid out a total of $93000 towards Huang's medical care.
玩手机游戏被指"拍照" 一村民被人打成脑震荡 [Tencent]
China has infomercials, a heck of a lot of them at that too, covering everything from breast enlargements to helping Chinese parents make their kids taller. Every now and again, in between the snake oil remedies, an ad will run selling electronics such as tablet computers and cell phones. If you are in China don't ever, I repeat don't ever, buy a tablet computer or cell phone from an infomercial; you'll regret it, just like one man in Haikou, Hainan province did.
Looking for a cheap deal on a tablet computer, Mr. Zhang (surname only) of Haikou city decided to buy a tablet computer that he saw advertised on TV. Zhang saw the infomercial on one of China's state China Central Television stations (the state owns television stations) and was swayed by the bargain.
The tablet PC advertised by the infomercial was touted to have free wireless internet, the ability to make phone calls, GPS navigation and various other "smart" features all for the price of $111. The kicker that got Zhang was an endorsement by a local celebrity saying that if the tablet was unsatisfactory, it could be returned for a full refund.
Caving into his tablet lust, Zhang purchased the tablet. After waiting a few days, Zhang's package arrived, and when he opened it he was vastly disappointed by what he received. Contrary to the features advertised, the tablet that Zhang received couldn't do anything but play very simple games—in fact, it was only loaded with "simple games".
Furious and confused, Zhang called the company to get his full refund. Unfortunately Zhang was never able to reach a customer service agent. After countless calls he finally found the company and they agreed to exchange his "tablet" with the real deal citing a shipping error. After waiting a little while longer Zhang's tablet finally arrived—except it didn't. Zhang received a box full of lottery tickets and a slip saying he needed to pay another $90 to get his tablet.
Fed up with the situation Zhang gave up, lamenting that he had learned his lesson. Never buy from Chinese infomercials.
轻信电视购物 海口市民买平板电脑送来游戏机 [Tencent]
Over the last few weeks, I've been making cinemagraphs celebrating just a handful of some of the most visually striking games. These were games that were either creatively or technically breathtaking, that really showed off what you're able to do with the medium.
Here are some of the most gorgeous games 2012 has had to offer:


No sooner than did GaymerCon gather enough financial backing to organize its first ever meeting in 2013 did a trademark issue—something that pisses off gamers of any orientation—arise with the name. "Gaymer" has been trademarked by the guy who owns gaymer.org, and he even sent a cease-and-desist letter over to Reddit for its r/gaymer subreddit. That didn't bode well for GaymerCon.
While the convention's organizers negotiated with Chris Vizzini, the trademark's owner, for a shared-use agreement they strongly disputed that "gaymer" was anything more than a generic term with a long history of use in gaming's vernacular. Vizzini insisted on a licensing deal, and the convention's argument evidently means little under the law, as organizers have said the convention now will be called GaymerX. The community's site, which has just launched, also is called GaymerConnect. There's more of an explanation in the video above.
[Update] We're hearing that this name change is to get GaymerCon/X clear of a trademark owned by Gam3rCon, and has nothing to do with Vizzini. There's no mention of Gam3rCon in that video or on GaymerX's official blog, but the name change is a little more understandable in light of this information.
The remainder of the original post follows.
While I'm not entirely sure how changing "GaymerCon" to "GaymerX" gets this off Vizzin's radar, unlike everyone else with Internet access, I'm not an expert in copyright and trademark law. Whatever the case, GaymerX is slated for Aug. 3-4 in San Francisco.
GaymerCon Renamed GaymerX [GamePolitics]
It's Christmas, and we know what that means. Board games!
Not the crap ones, though. 2012 saw board gaming continuing to grow from a greasy teenager into an intimidatingly gorgeous adult, with great games popping onto shelves every month like bones slotting audibly into their proper place.
This was also the year that video games have decided they want in on the action. In the last couple of months tie-in board games have been announced for Bioshock: Infinite, Crysis, Arkham City, even indie curio Sir, You Are Being Hunted.
Will they be rubbish? Who knows! Until then, let's look at the top 5 board games of this year. Have you bought /yourself/ a Christmas present yet? Just sayin'.
This year, it was Finnish monsterpiece Eclipse that made the most lasting impression on the scene. The game's goal was to take the 4X genre (Galactic Civilizations, Sins of a Solar Empire), where competing players scan and subdue a galaxy, and lock that appeal into something shorter and more elegant. Something that lasted a bantamweight 45 minutes per player.
The result is fascinating. Here's a genre that defines itself as being ponderous, suddenly stripped down to players snatching precious planets from one another with the cunning and bitterness of hobos brawling over lustrous pennies. There's still so much going on, from frantic researching of tech, to designing ships, but with absolutely none of the bookkeeping.
All the heavy lifting is done by the game's ergonomic design. As you socket population cubes, ships and tech into place, the galaxy's new vital statistics are revealed on the player mats you removed them from. It's as joyous as advancing through an advent calendar.
There's a fundamental disagreement at the heart of board gaming, which is that games have to either tell stories or offer a perfect challenge. Eclipse represents a heroic compromise. Players can enjoy telling rich stories of betrayal, plasma missiles, last stands and genocide, yet the game itself isn't some fluffy array of cards and ideas, as 2011's uniquely awkward Star Trek: Fleet Captains was. Instead, it's a rock-solid challenge that'll reward every ounce of attention you choose to invest in it. Beautiful.
You might have heard of 2012 zombie board game Zombicide. Zombicide's fine. It's good. But it's just a miniatures tactics game, in the style of Dungeons & Dragons. You're better than that, and that's why you buy City of Horror instead.
It's the same problem: you're tasked with keeping a handful of survivors alive, but in worse circumstances than you've ever seen before in a zombie game. Your only equipment is a tiny hand of one-shot items meant to last you the entire game, and these aren't, like, shotguns and grenades. Maybe you get a prop pistol. A can of mace. A flare gun.
That's because City of Horror isn't a game of defeating the zombies, but buying yourself a few precious gasps of breathing room... by feeding other survivors to them. A game of City of Horror is actually a game of shouting, pleading and threatening your real-life friends in a dark game of politics, its heartbeat the spoken "Three, two, one" of a table of players counting down to their voting (via pointed fingers) as to who's getting pushed outside.
City of Horror is as simple as it is smart as it is a faithful zombie game as it is personal as it is lovely to look at on your table. Any two of those would be reasons to own it. But all five? That's gold.
Netrunner was rebooted this year, and is now the sexiest collectible card game ever made. HIGH PRAISE, I'm sure you'll agree. You've heard of Magic: The Gathering? Netrunner is what the designer, Richard Garfield, did next, with an eye to making the game more like poker.
One player runs a cyberpunk corporation, from a glittering News Corp parallel to a Blade Runner-like replicant manufacturer. The other player, armed with an entirely different deck, is a hacker, with the enviable job of smashing the corp's glittering superstructure and picking through the pieces.
See? Sexy.
What's fascinating about Netrunner is that in the hacker's quest for those precious Agenda cards, they can raid not just the shell game of the Corp's private servers, but the corp's secret discard pile, his hand, or even scratch cards off the top of his deck. On a good turn, they'll slip out of that dark machinery of bluffs and traps without so much as a scratch on their ego, leaving the Corp player swearing. On a bad turn, they'll receive that darkest of scars on their moth-like career: a trace on their physical location. Suddenly, they're only one card away from the corp levelling their entire city block.
Every single person I've sat down to play Netrunner with has become hooked on the idea of making a deck, something made more palatable by the game's publisher, Fantasy Flight, selling Netrunner via their "Living Card Game" model. After the core set, you don't buy randomised booster packs, but pick up expansion decks that Fantasy Flight release every month. It's not quite the future of card games, but it could probably pass for a Blade Runner-esque day-after-tomorrow.
Technically this came out in 2011, but 2012 was Risk Legacy's year. Gaming groups across the world were cracking open the game's briefcase-like box and embarking on campaigns with no idea where this game was going to take them.
Risk Legacy is a clean-cut example of how joyous and experimental today's board game scene is. In its tidy box are not just whole packs of cards of sealed cards, but entire sealed compartments, which you only open after certain things happen in the wars of your world.
In other words, as you wage wars on this private Earth of yours, you'll change it forever. It'll gain a history, with irradiated regions and new cities ("ROBERT-OPOLIS" scrawled on your board, forever, in leaky pen). Cards are torn up. Winners sign the board. Within just a few games, your copy of Risk Legacy will be entirely unique.
How about that?
I don't own Risk Legacy, but my friend does. The other week he lifted up the box inlay, looking for more space to put the game's latest surprise, and found yet another secret pack of cards taped to the bottom of the box.
"DO NOT OPEN, EVER", it read. When my friends finish their campaign, they're going to burn it.
Board gaming, ladies and gentlemen.
Finally, we arrive at Mage Knight. Probably (definitely) (maybe) the actual game of the year.
The Czech designer, Vlaada Cvatil, first came to my attention with Space Alert, a kind of soviet Star Trek where players crew a ship together in real time, trying not to fly into moons or be eaten by slime while remembering to nudge the computer so the screen saver doesn't come on. He also made Galaxy Trucker, a game where players first build ships from a junkyard of cardboard tiles, take off in a convoy, then collapse into hysterics as an asteroid breaks someone's ship clean in half. Both of these games are skewed, genius, and hilarious.
Mage Knight is interesting because the publisher Wizkids came to Vlaada and asked for something achingly traditional: a fantasy game of wizards questing across a landscape. "OK!" says Vlaada. Then however many months or days or seconds later, he emails them this" a design for the maddest, most intimidatingly intelligent "traditional" fantasy game ever made.
You know how, in Tolkein's fiction, Gandalf oscillates between terrifying magic spells and being just a guy with a stick? Mage Knight is a Gandalf simulator. Everyone's wizard is a deck of cards, and it's your job to make the most of the cards you draw, the amoral eddies of the shared mana pool, the time of day, the terrain, your minions, treasures and opponents, all to the point that you take your friends' breath away every turn.
When you succed in Mage Knight, it's staggeringly epic. Your wizard treks to a mountain monastary to learn the darkest magic, only to use it to slaughter the monks themselves. Or better yet, he warps time in on itself, buying yourself an extra hour of sunshine to cast that holy spell that'll allow you to assault an entire walled city, with just you and your merry band of lumberjacks or mercenaries or whoever else you've tricked or threatened into following you around.
But the beauty of Mage Knight is that when you fail, it's still epic. Crawling away from an ambush with some orcs, your hand overflowing with wound cards, you'll be facing down a challenge that's unique to anyone at the table. Come back from that, and it won't matter how powerful your friends become. You'll have the moral victory.
In my board game review show we compared Mage Knight to a game of learning to fly. Here on Kotaku, I'll call it the most complicated, the most nuanced and the most interesting puzzle I played this year.
You've seen how many wonderful ideas, how much love and wit there is on this list. When I tell you that Mage Knight is everything that board gaming can be, just know that it's a warning as much as a compliment. Proceed with caution, young apprentice.
Quintin Smith is a games columnist able to identify different board game manufacturers by the smell of the glue they use. He is not proud of this. You'll find his analog ramblings at Shut Up & Sit Down, his board game site, and @quinns108 on Twitter.
Earlier this year I read about Loren 'Sparky' Schmidt and Anna Anthropy's game, Drink, and I immediately became fascinated. Get this: in Drink, you play a drinking game against a computer opponent. Yes, a computer opponent. It sounds kind of absurd, to try to out-drink a computer, I know. But, if nothing else, it's a conceptually interesting game—here is Anthropy talking about it on her blog:
We really liked the idea of a quantity that has different meaning in the game and outside of it: the virtual opponent's shotglasses stack up, but she's a computer and the same amount of drinks have a very different consequence to a human player. we liked the ambiguity of performing a physical endurance contest against a virtual opponent: how can you tell how close she is to losing, or if it's even possible for her to lose at all?
Very cool, but it wasn't until yesterday that I decided to actually try it out. I was joined by game developer Porpentine, which meant the game became a slightly more competitive thing: would either of us sport better endurance against the computer? Also, through her involvement I was able to suss out one potential partner should the world require us to go into battle against the machines.
But, um. Anyway.
I had a couple of rules going in to make sure the game was safe—didn't want to get alcohol poisoning or something. This is especially important when you consider that Anthropy says the computer has a 'high tolerance,' and may even be a 'massively socially irresponsible' game in its current form.
When I tested out the game beforehand—without any alcohol, to see what kind of tolerance we were talking about—the computer took 14 shots before passing out.
Four. Teen. Shots.
Fourteen shots!
I'm a firm believer in YOLO, but the game could be dangerous. YOLO is not code for "let's be stupid," despite what you may have heard. #truth!
So the rules were that we should be aware of our limits and must not be afraid to bow out of the game should we feel that we were crossing them. Also, the shots wouldn't be full. Personally, I also ate a heavy meal beforehand, which helps. And finally, chasers would be allowed, as would trips to the bathroom, dancing, or whatever you needed to do between shots to make the next one go down a little easier.
Which is to say, if YOU decide you want to play this game: proceed with caution and be careful. Hangovers aren't pleasant, nevermind alcohol poisoning.
We set up a projector so that the other folks at the party could look on while we played, though there isn't much to look at. All it involves is taking a drink, pressing a button, watching the alien-thing opponent take a shot, and then doing it all over again until one of you loses.
Honor system, obviously. The game has no way of checking if you're actually drinking. But if it helps to the veracity of the story, one of Drink's developers was in the audience, Loren 'Sparky' Schmidt.
SHOT ONE
Other folks who witnessed the game's creation/initial play testing become alarmed that we are playing it.
We also note that the alien looks like a dog with an eyepatch. Huh.
SHOT TWO
Still going strong. Porpentine starts Tweeting.
SHOT THREE
I start thinking of the alien as the dog from Duck Hunt, partially out of resentment.
VERSUS

SHOT FOUR
SHOT FIVE
I confess that I actually rather hate the taste of alcohol. Porpy makes fun of me.
SHOT SIX
Porpentine is starting to get belligerent, if not philosophical.
I have to take a bathroom break.
SHOT SEVEN
Beginning to worry if the dog will take like 20 shots this time, and not something 'small' like fourteen. I start making the shots smaller, which is cheating but... let's not forget that the f*cking dog isn't drinking! Also, it's not like we don't take the opportunity to exploit the limits of AI in most of the games we play anyway.
SHOT EIGHT
(She was joking around about the alcohol poisoning, to be clear.)
SHOT NINE
We notice the dog is starting to wobble. Huh, cool. Our resolve strengthens a tad.
SHOT TEN
The Nintendo 64 is 16 years old. Nintendo Sixty-FOUUUURRRRRRRR (the actual event) is 14 years old. And the Nintendo 64 Kids, Brandon and Rachel Kuzma, are 23 and 20, respectively.
But the most bittersweet aspect of their video (which also made them a bunch of money, remember) is not the fuzzy camcorder nostalgia of feety pajamas and shredded wrapping paper. It's hearing Brandon say, "Now we can get games from Blockbuster!" I guess you still can. By mail, anyway.
Oh what the hell, here's the Yes! Yes! moment for you, too. Merry Christmas. If your morning is half as exciting as it was for the Kuzmas in 1998, then it's still the best Christmas ever.
