We're back from BoardGameGeek's big show, BGG.CON 2022! Your hosts Christina and Shoe sit down to talk about their Top 10 games panel with Our Family Plays Games, stand-up comedy with Grant Lyon, our own live Board Game Quiz Show events, and of course, all the great games they got a chance to check out.

Timeline:

• 1:47 - BGG.Con highlights, including our live Board Game Quiz Show!
• 4:50 - Our Family Plays Games Top 10 games panel
• 8:21 - Grant Lyon's board game standup
• 12:09 - Exhibit Hall, Many Worlds Tavern
• 13:59 - Gaming stories
• 19:50 - BGG Top 5 games we played
• 20:07 - Starship Captains
• 27:13 - Lacrimosa
• 31:40 - Tiletum
• 36:40 - Atiwa
• 42:28 - Splendor Duel

We recently spent six solid days playing board games. Seriously. It was exhausting -- but amazingly fun.

We blame Going Analog contributor Jess Yi, who visited and forced us to play one board game after another. At the end, with bloodshot eyes and brains working at half speed, Shoe and Jess picked three games each to discuss. Hear their thoughts on...

Timeline:

• 2:52 - Knight Fall
• 11:02 - Star Wars: Rebellion, Stars Wars: Rebellion - Rise of the Empire
• 18:26 - Bequest
• 23:00 - My Father's Work
• 31:58 - Disney Sorcerer's Arena: Epic Alliances, Disney Sorcerer's Arena: Epic Alliances – Turning the Tide
• 44:40 - The Guild of Merchant Explorers

Can a board game kill ya? Nah...but Black Mold may try. This "co-op till it's not" survival-horror game has players taking as many actions as they can until they can no longer...hold their breath. You read that right.

So we have questions -- lots of questions -- for our guest John de Campos, CEO of Terrible games and co-designer of Black Mold.

Timeline:

2:37 - Oceans: Legends of the Deep

7:00 - Veiled Fate

11:59 - Keystone: North America

17:00 - Shoe's topic: What's up with Black Mold?

32:19 - Christina's topic: Other games with great/interesting pitches

46:59 - John's topic: Pairing the right music with your board games

Logic-deduction board game Turing Machine challenges players to figure out a secret code using innovative punch-card verifiers that layer atop each other to "magically" reveal clues. How does it work?!

We had to know, so we asked our guests from publisher Scorpion Masqué and Hachette Games to sit there and explain it to us. Oh, we also talk artwork and rulebooks, too.

Topics on this episode:

• Christina (host): How Turing Machine was made (14:43)
• Matthew (guest): What makes for good or bad rulebooks? (34:51)
• Danni (guest): How does artwork influence gameplay? (50:12)

Game designer Ryan Courtney loves making connections (if you've played Pipeline or Curious Cargo, then you know what we're talking about). His newest creation, Trailblazers from Bitewing Games has you -- you guessed it -- making and blazing connecting trails in nature.

We invited Ryan as well as Bitewing co-founder Nick Murray to join our podcast to talk about this new project, other games that travel well, and more.

Topics this episode:

• Christina (host): Games would you pack for travel (18:22)
• Nick (guest): Games that work well at all (stated) player counts (25:17)
• Ryan (guest): Heavy games and their matchmaking problems (40:18)

Gen Con 2022 saw the return of over 50,000 attendees (and four days of non-stop gaming) to Indianapolis -- and, most importantly, the return of Christina and Shoe to the big show! We invited Twitch streamer and content creator Amanda Panda to join us to discuss our experiences and the hot new games.

Topics this episode:

• Christina (host): Hot games of Gen Con (15:31)
• Amanda (guest): Lighter party games of Gen Con (34:16)
• Shoe (producer): Games that flew under the radar (50:34)

Since you can download the fantastic and completely free Sunshine City from Coffee Bean Games, we invited designer Peter C. Hayward to talk some of our favorite lighter and heavier games in the roll & write genre. Shoe tries to articulate the idea of "hybrid" games of multiple ideas coming together to form one new product, and we discover Peter's complete fascination and almost encyclopedic knowledge of games you can play in a car.

Plus, Peter reveals details about an upcoming game to be published by BoardGameTables.com called Fiction!

Topics this episode:

• Christina (host): Favorite lighter and heavier roll-and-writes (16:35)
• Shoe (producer): "X meets Y" games (35:41)
• Peter (guest): Games for road trips or Disneyland lines (47:31)

Johnny O'Neal, one of the brother cofounders of Brotherwise Games (publisher of Unearth, Call to Adventure, and the recently successfully funded Castles by the Sea), drops by Going Analog to discuss his design philosophy and asserts that every game needs to be shorter. We're pretty sure that's the takeaway.

We also figured the co-designer of Boss Monster (in which you play as, well, the end-of-dungeon boss monster) would have thoughts about why it's so fun to to be so bad (ahem, play the "bad guy") in games. And with Gen Con and BGG.CON coming up, what's our take on the continuing return to in-person conventions?

Topics from this episode:

• Johnny (guest): How games end (11:18)
• Christina (host): Playing as the "bad guy" (26:57)
• Shoe (producer): Return to conventions (41:25)

Tim Fowers, indie designer and publisher at Fowers Games, intrigues Christina and Shoe with the concept of "anticipation" and how it plays into dopamine-filled play. And because Tim is such a marketing mastermind, he drops a Fugitive 2 tease about...46 minutes into this episode.

Christina talks to Tim about Paperback and Hardback, Fowers Games's two popular word/spelling games...and listen for a shocking revelation from Tim!

Topics in this episode:

• Tim (guest): Anticipation in games (15:12)
• Shoe (producer): Escape (not escape room!) games (25:44)
• Christina (host): Our favorite word (spelling) games (39:40)

Matt from YouTube's Board Game Bollocks drops by to (somehow successfully!) not swear while chatting about his gaming lifestyle, nihilism, and how Americans are so "happy and bouncy." Our topics this week:

• Christina (host): Our favorite animal-themed games (10:36)
• Mike (editor): Board gaming as a lifestyle (19:59)
• Matt (guest): The rising prices of board games and their implications (32:27)