John Farrell

Overwhelm will test you. It will test your skill, your reflexes, and a little too often it will test your patience. This miniature action-horror platformer flips the some of the conventions of the Metroidvania genre to create a mounting sense of dread, pushing you further and further out of your

Free League Publishing seems determined to prove itself in every game genre available, and I am happy to be along for the ride. I was charmed by their 80s kids adventure Tales From the Loop, I adored their post-apocalyptic community building game Mutant: Year Zero, and I am over the

In late November of 2018, the parks and fields of Tennessee bore witness to magic in the making. A team of strange people clad in armor spoke with the voices of others, and all around was the clamor of…foam. Over the course of a few months, a team of

A crisis of identity sits at the heart of Waterdeep: Dragon Heist. Is it an adventure? Is it a gazetteer of Water Deep? Is it a toolbox for urban sandbox adventures? In trying to be all of these, it never commits to any of them well enough, though there are

As gaming relies more and more on digital assets to supplement the experience, the Decks of Many are proving just how much utility we can get out of an analogue supplement. Apps can be helpful, especially for tracking spells and abilities, but physical products have a table presence that will

Experimentation is a healthy part of any growth, but by its nature leads to some failures. Outbreak: Undead Second edition is not a failure in its entirety, but many of the chances that it takes with game design and presentation are. The basic premise is one with which we have

Sometimes the best of intentions and ideas fizzle as you get into the details of completion. Overlight is just such a product; described in broad strokes, it’s a bold new fantasy RPG with accessible rules and unique art design. The central imagination carries through, and makes me want to

As the apocalypse looms ever larger in America’s collective subconscious, it’s fitting that such a high quality RPG has come about to help us experience it at our gaming tables. Mutant: Year Zero sets the stage long after humanity has ceased to be. In its wake, rising out