Going Analog Show

Legendary video game designer Tim Schafer of Double Fine (Psychonauts, Broken Age, and most recently, Kiln) has been one of our board game buddies for years now. So we took advantage of that relationship and put Tim on the show, filmed right in Double Fine's studio.

As our guest, he gets to pick the topic, and he had several good ideas. We steered him toward our favorite, though: Why making board games is harder than making video games. He's been successful for one of those -- not so much in the other. So he'll be speaking from experience here.

Chapters:

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We were a little late in getting Eric Yurko from What's Eric Playing? on the show to discuss The American Tabletop Awards. But hey, these are 2026's winners and nominees...for games released in 2025. So who's to say when we should be covering these things?

We are also on the judging committee, so it's always fun to do this each year: bring Eric on, discuss the winners and almost-winners, and tell everyone how we voted. Come join us to see what was the best of 2026! Er, we mean 2025!

Chapters:

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our industry guests pick the topic that they want to discuss on our show, and Josh Wood, designer of Let's Go! To Japan (and the upcoming Let's Go! To France), asked us if he can talk about "big decks."

That was an immediate "yes" from us, without even knowing what he meant (Hey, "big decks" makes for a great headline).

What it's really about: the recent trend of huge decks of cards that supply most of the replayability for a board game. Josh gives us his POV as a designer of games with sizable...um, decks. We also ask him a million questions about Let's Go! To France as it gets ready to go live on Kickstarter, go over our respective "Game Picks," and more.

Chapters:

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last episode got too heavy for us, so we're going super light this time around. Light games, party games...we have a dozen of them to chat about this week!

Chapters:

• Game pick: Vantage.
• Light/party games.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

• We might need to make this an annual tradition: We get new heavy games in. We take forever to learn them. We then spend hours playing them (with our good friend Daniel from The Game Table, who even spent the night at our place this time to get in more gaming the next day). Then we record a podcast episode giving our thoughts on them.

  We have a bunch of new, newish, and future releases to cover, so listen in to see what we liked and didn't like about our plays.

  Timeline:

  • 1:34 - Brass: Pittsburg.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fort Circle Games takes history very seriously...but not overly so. Titles like Votes for Women and The Halls of Montezuma treat their subject matters with respect (the women's suffrage movement and the Mexican-American War, respectively) with research, consultants, and even facsimiles of documents.

It might sound a little dry, but Fort Circle is on a mission: to bring this knowledge to gamers while adhering to modern game-design sensibilities. They want you to learn a thing or three...while having fun.

We invited Fort Circle founder and owner Kevin Bertram to talk more about his company's interesting philosophy and how games can be educational, without necessarily being educational games.

Timeline:

• 2:38 - Going Analog's game pick: Behind the Lens: Photographing Earth.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're back from Dice Tower West, horribly dehydrated and almost 200 games lighter. While we offloaded a lot of our collection at the convention's flea market, we did get to play a bunch of new games (super shoutout to Grant's Game Recs for showing us the majority of them). So it's only a matter of time before we start buying more games to fill in those sad gaps on our shelves.

Listen or watch to see what's got us excited after five days of conventioning!

Timeline:

• 3:02 - Shoe's game pick: Pantheauction.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our guest this week is crazy enough to include his personal phone number in every game he sells. Brent Beck (aka "Grandpa Beck" of Grandpa Beck's Games) wants no barriers when it comes to learning his games, so he includes his digits in every copy in case you want to text him for rules clarifications.

That's why his chosen topic -- bringing people together through gameplay -- makes so much sense. Brent wants nothing more but to draw people to him and each other to enjoy the hobby he loves so much.

Listen/watch as we discuss his work and play philosophies, how many texts from customers he gets per day, and more.

Timeline:

• 3:03 - Going Analog's game pick: Pandora's Legacy.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We had to bring in this episode's guest to settle something. In our 2025 Games of the Year show, Christina called Wine Cellar a runner-up for her Party Game of the Year. Shoe took issue with her calling the wine-making card game a "party game," so whom better to bring in than its designer, Andrew Stiles, to settle this hugely important argument?

He has a great topic for us, too. Since he gets to playtest so many games for his colleagues, he goes over several he's particularly excited to see finally released this year. And since we get to preview many titles ourselves, we get in on the conversation. Listen to see what we think are the most exciting games to watch for in 2026.

Timeline:

• 7:55 - Going Analog's game pick: Snow Colony.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's our yearly tradition now: We invite a new content creator on our show, and we discuss the best games of the year in several weight categories. Joining us for our 2025 edition is Candice Harris, formerly of BoardGameGeek and now doing her own thing with Kickin' It Creative. She's just as board game crazy as we are, so check out what we thought were the best of the year.

Timeline:

The 2025 Games of the Year (hit up our website for the full list of winners and runners-up):

• 7:06 - 2025 Party Games of the Year.
• 18:10 - 2025 Light Games of the Year.
• 33:38 - 2025 Medium Games of the Year.
• 50:55 - 2025 Heavy Games of the Year.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices