If you're going to invite people over for games, what kinds of games should you play? How many people should you invite? What will you do about food and drinks? How about music and atmosphere? What do you do with people who arrive late, in the middle of a game? The answers aren't too complicated, but they're worth thinking about ahead of time to make sure your game night will be a good time for everyone.

Different games require people to be creative in different ways, but usually when people say they want a game that lets them be creative, they're only talking about one particular type of creativity. They want something that involves miming or writing or giving clues about a word or phrase. But what about the creativity that comes from making up stories, or devising novel ways to best your opponents? Why are these two kinds of creativity treated so differently by players?

In most games, each player comes to the table with the same resources, the same capabilities, the same rules. In Monopoly, everybody starts with the same amount of money and rolls two dice. In Chess, everybody starts with sixteen pieces laid out just so. But there are some games where each player starts out with something unique and different from the rest. On this week's SnakesCast, we'll introduce you to this intriguing area of game design.

In our last Game Spotlight episode, we talked about Splendor, which was nominated for this year's coveted Spiel Des Jahres award (international game of the year). Though many consider Splendor to be the front-runner to win, the other two nominees are also strong contenders. This week we'll put both of them in the spotlight and talk about their chances for an upset win.

Even for seasoned game players, choosing something to play for a group of three can be a challenge. You can't play anything that's designed for just two, and many games that are dependent on group dynamics won't work either, because three just isn't enough. But it's harder still when the players want a party game like Taboo or Cranium, which can only be played in teams. What's a guru to do?

It's cottage season in Toronto, and if you're lucky enough to have a place where you and your friends can go to get away from the city heat, you'll want to bring some good old-fashioned games to pass the time together. What sort of games are best for those times when you can get away from civilization for a while?

In a communication game, players need to express thoughts or ideas to one another. But usually, the interesting part isn't the ideas you're trying to express, but the things you're not allowed to say or do. Like maybe there are certain words you're not allowed to use, or maybe you can't talk at all. This episode, we communicate about communication.

This year's Spiel Des Jahres awards nominees have been announced, and the front-runner is Marc André's "Splendor", a game about collecting coloured jewels and cashing them in for points. It's simple to learn, beautifully presented, and offers surprising depth considering how easy it is to learn. It's a quintessential SdJ nominee, and this week the gurus will be talking about it.

A game guru's job is to recommend games according to the tastes of the customers. They tell you what they want, and you try your best to provide it. But what if what they want and what they think they want are two very different things? This does happen sometimes, and so the guru has to go off-book, recommending games that look like one thing when they're actually something else. Especially when what they think they want is strategy.

Boardgame hobbyists like to refer to some games as "gateway games". They're very easy to learn, but they have far more depth and interest than the games most of us learned as children. They're supposed to be a gateway to the larger world of modern tabletop games. But once you've tried the most popular gateway games, where do you go from there?