Some games show their hand the moment you lift the lid: drink blood, devour humans and get home before dawn. The Hunger is one of them, and with a name like that, you do not get to miss. I brought it out one evening with four players, sold on the pitch: a deck-builder designed by Richard Garfield (yes, the mind behind Magic and King of Tokyo, no less). First game, gorgeous board, biting theme, and yet, halfway through, a lull. You draw, you move, you pray hard not to pull thr

Let me open with a confession: I bought this game for my own birthday, back in January 2025. In the original English edition, no less, because I didn't have the patience to wait for the French release. And then it just sat there. On the shelf. In plain sight, almost smug, while I dutifully unboxed the review copies and kept pushing this one back, again, and again, "next time." It's now August 2026. Eighteen months later, I finally opened the box one evening, with Ariane. And

There are boxes you open, and boxes you assemble. Ice and Idols belongs to the second kind, and that first encounter leaves a mark. Before you even play a game, you have to peel the protective film off every sheet of plexiglass, then slot the labyrinth pieces in one by one. The components are frankly stunning, but the operation cost me two or three hairline cracks while pushing the pieces into place. Nothing broken, nothing that stops you playing, but enough to understand rig

I sat down to start this game four or five times before I actually dared to play a full session. Every attempt, same story: I open the rulebook, I feel the sheer mass of it, and I close the box telling myself I'll get to it later. I even thought I'd found a back door through the solo mode, except the solo booklet is just as thick, so that escape route shut as fast as it had opened. It took me a while to digest everything and come back for real. And once the machine finally cl

I brought it back from Essen 2025 in my suitcase, grabbed in English on the Cranio Creations stand while Intrafin's French edition was barely out of its boxes. On paper, one more card box signed by Simone Luciani. My first game, though, comes down to a single word: grumbling. I spent the whole session muttering, "no, I've mistimed it again, my combos aren't landing together." It was only over the following games that I tamed this conveyor-belt effect, and there, freed from th

Some boxes do the work before anyone has read a single rule. When I put Emberheart on the table with Caro and Quentin, the silence that followed the lid coming off was worth every sales argument in the world. Andrew Bosley, the illustrator behind Everdell and Unconscious Mind, gives us dragons you actually want to rescue, and Super Meeple has taken good care of the French edition, released there as Dragonniers. We played it as a three, and I brought it back out a few days lat

For Belgium's national day, a review of Bruxelles 1893: Belle Époque. Belgian designer, Belgian publisher, Brussels theme, and a thoroughly deserved As d'Or.

I came back from Essen with Tolleno under my arm and real curiosity. The Sit Down! booth had caught my eye, the theme of a Latin city built on the water appealed to me, and once opened, the box delivers on the components: thick, nicely laminated tiles, notched player boards, pretty wooden pieces, a little boat to sail down the canals. Let me be clear from the start so there is no misunderstanding: it is not the object I hold against this game. It is what it asks you to do wit

I've always had a soft spot for games that surprise me. You know, those boxes you open thinking "well, here's another colorful family game," and that end up keeping you awake reflecting on your strategic mistakes while doing the evening dishes. That's exactly what happened to me with Propolis. The first time I opened the box, I smiled seeing these little wooden bees with their antennae. "A cute game about bees," I thought. Three games later, I was scribbling strategies in my

I opened the Allplay box after returning from Essen 2025 with that strange feeling you sometimes get when facing a gift you're not sure you deserve. Six boards unfolded on my table like an overly ambitious origami, and I immediately thought: "Reiner Knizia has lost his mind." Because let's be honest, when you know the guy for his streamlined, mathematical designs, seeing his name on a box that overflows like a Christmas drawer feels weird. Yet, after two games that transforme

I discovered Crown of Ashes during a particularly rainy game night when we were desperately searching for something to pull us out of our Sunday lethargy. That's when I pulled out this box with its neon pink cover (yes, neon pink for a necromancer game, go figure) muttering something like "let's see what this gives us!" Honestly, between the gothic theme and this striking cover, I was already curious. But it was only after placing my first workers on this board that I realize

I first discovered Skara Brae during a particularly wild game night at a friend's house. You know, the kind where you start with "just a quick game" and end up at 2 a.m. with tokens all over the table and wooden shells in your pockets. At first, I thought, "Another game where you collect stuff for points?" But around the third round, when I realized that my trash would literally become the foundation of my civilization, I had that little spark that told me we were onto someth

I discovered Altay during a particularly lively game night at a friend's house. Paolo Mori was on the program—you know, the creator of Ethnos and Libertalia, those gems that are always hanging around our game libraries. When my friend Nicolas brought out this box with captivating illustrations by Pauliina Hannuniemi, I admit I was curious but also slightly wary. Yet another civilization game that promised the earth in 60 minutes? I'd already dabbled in the genre, often only t

The call of the virtual garden I pulled Pergola out of its packaging on a rainy Sunday, secretly hoping to finally succeed at something involving plants. In real life, you see, I'm what you might politely call a "serial plant killer." My last cactus died from insufficient watering (managing to kill a desert plant through neglect is quite a talent), and my attempt with a pothos (supposedly indestructible) ended up as a sad brownish skeleton. Fortunately, my partner, my child,

When a game turns you into an accountant of the far North without you even realizing it Let me tell you the story of my past few weeks. Every evening, after dinner, instead of mindlessly scrolling through Netflix like a zombie, I found myself calculating the number of planks needed to build my Norwegian fishing village. My loved ones looked at me strangely when I muttered "I absolutely need three fish to upgrade my wood" while brushing my teeth. How did I get here? It all sta

You know that moment when you discover a game that completely upends everything you thought you knew? That’s exactly what happened to me with Perch. At first glance, it looks like just another territory-control game with cute birds. Then you read a line in the rules: “You can place your opponents’ birds.” And your brain does a little glitch. Wait, what? Playing with other players’ pieces? In a territory-control game? It’s like being told you can move your opponent’s chess pie

Picture yourself standing before the box of Tir Na Nog, a tableau-building game with an air of mystery. The name immediately evokes that "Land of Eternal Youth" from Celtic mythology, where the absence of time means suffering and death do not exist. The synopsis grabs you right away: you play as renowned bards exploring this divine world to bring back its most beautiful stories. The universe feels rich, full of promise, and charged with that distinctive Celtic atmosphere that