PAXU 2025 Micro Reviews
Bite sized reviews of games I played at PAXU.
A quick review of every single game I played over the weekend of PAX Unplugged, presented in the order we played them.
These are not necessarily new games (although many are new to me) and they’re not even necessarily games that were available to buy at PAXU.
Many thanks to brstf who is responsible for the action shots of some of the games (and to all the people documenting boardgames on BGG for the others).
A followup to my post last year.
Pipoca
A shedding game contained entirely within 18 cards, and those cards remain entirely within your hands the entire time. This is the ultimate con game, a full featured shedder you can pull out and play while in line for something (or on the bus in the evening, as pictured above). It’d be a winner just due to the convenience and logistical triumph, but it manages to have genuine depth to its play and I would continue to happily play more in spite of how often it got pulled out over the weekend.
Verdict: I simply must get a copy of this.
Top Cat
A First Look game that’s functionally a super stripped down bidding game. Players simultaneously announce if they’d like one of a small set of cards, and if more players express interest than the number of cards, no one gets them! Instead you all take penalty cards. However the penalty cards are also sometimes good, giving you one time use powers to maniupate the bids, or boost the point value of some other low value cards.
Verdict: A good time! I don’t know that I’d go out of my way to get a copy, but I’d happily play it again.
Digit Code
Image credit: @undiscovered_games
Another game from first look, this time a hidden information deduction game. This is more or less numerical battleship, where you try to deduce which 6 digits your opponent has drawn into their 8 segment displays by asking questions relating to which segments are filled, parity, and relationships.
On a personal level, I find these games fun in theory and stressful in practice as about 75% of the way through I start to get paranoid I’ve made a small error early on that’s now cascaded through and resulted in my deductions being total nonsense.
On a specific level, this game is very clever, but is absolutely let down by the poor graphic design of the notepads it is played on. Alternating segments on the sheet are colored grey, which is almost exactly the color you get by filling them in with the provided pencils.
Verdict: I’m more likely to make and print my own version of this game than trying to buy a copy.
Magical Athlete
Image Credit: CMYK
More first looks. Magical Athlete is fundamentally Candy Land for adults. There are technically choices to be made, but practically speaking your influence over the game ends the moment you pick your racers. This game will either be the funniest thing in the world, or deeply frustrating, depending on your sense of humor and whether or not the wildly unbalanced mechanics have broken for or against you.
Playing the game was extremely funny, and I simply do not ever want to play it again.
Verdict: I have no desire to own this, but if you’re in a position where you might need to play Candy Land (or similar) this would be an alternative choice that’s at least engaging.
Das Schloss der 7 Schlosser
Image credit: publisher
The last first look game of Friday. This game is entirely absurd, silly, and I’m extremely happy I got to give it a try here. I also have zero intention of seeking it out to play again myself. This is a game about dropping little plastic pearls into cardboard towers and trying to gauge how much space is inside by listening to the tunk of the ball hitting the bottom. You use this information to try and guess which of 7 keys unlock the 7 towers, with an element of double guessing and bluffing each other based on if you think other players have guessed right. I think everyone should play this game once, and then probably never again.
Verdict: It is now my mission to get as many people as I can to play this game a single time.
Wriggle Roulet
Image Credit: Oink
I bought this game entirely on the strength of how funny the the little eel/snake meeples are. This is a push your luck game distilled down to the minimum it can be and still be a game at all. It’s so boiled down, in fact, that it doesn’t always feel like there’s all that much play to it, outside of just pure luck. Still fun, but it doesn’t hit the same pared down tenseness that something like Skulls gets you.
Verdict: I will get mileage out of this since I already own it, I don’t know that I’d recommend it to someone else.
Thing Thing
Image Credit: DVC Games
If the purpose of party games is to encourage laughter and arguments, Thing Thing might be the platonic ideal. Extremely simple: name a category and place cards with “things” on them onto the table while making your case for why they fit. Then everyone else gets to do the same, which causes you to draw back up for each one of theirs that passes. Enough meat to feel like you’re playing tactically and to make the arguments matter, and with a built in release valve for those arguments (only one person needs to agree).
Verdict: I will probably pick this up in order to have a compact and good party game to keep tucked in my bag.
Removal
Image credit: @Zhan_Shi
Back to first look! This is a tile laying game about moving house, and specifically packing all of the stuff in a house into moving trucks. You need to balance access to items in the house, how they fit, item fragility, etc.
I really like how this game splits the tile laying into three separate days (three trucks), so you get a more nuanced ebb and flow of “laying tiles is relaxing” to “oh god everything sucks and nothing fits”, as opposed to something like calico which has one, single ramp of building stress and tension.
Verdict: I’m not going to rush out and buy it, but I’d happily play this again!
Tax the Rich
Image credit: @henk.rolleman
More First Looking! A trick taking game uses bidding to set targets and trumps, plus semi-random partners (similar to schafkopf). The primary twist is the ability to announce a revolution if your hand consists of entirely low cards which inverts the card ranks for the rest of the round. This leads into the second twist, which is that winning a trick with a 1 allows you to “tax” the current leading player for one of their won tricks.
We played this at six, and I’m kind of shocked to say that it all still worked and was fun. I’m confident it would still be better at lower player counts, but getting it to function at all is fairly impressive.
I didn’t play with them, and I’m not sure the game needs or would benefit from the bevvy of optional bonus rules that can be thrown into the mix, but maybe I’d change my mind after repeat plays.
Verdict: It’s very good! I’d happily play more, but I also already have a number of trick takers in my collection that I love, so the bar to be included is very high.
Sausage Sizzle!
Image credit: @ratpack
Australian Yahtzee! Or at least that’s how it was introduced to me. A delightful little push your luck dice rolling game. Roll dice, lock at least one, reroll the rest. Your score is # of chosen animal times the lowest number you locked on a die. One of the “numbers” is a sausage, which is only worth 1, unless you have all four number dice locked as sausage, in which case it’s worth 7.
Verdict: I love to be hoist by my own hubristic petard.
Super Auto Pets Card Battle: Classic Pack
Image credit: Plaid Hat Games
I have an embarassing number of hours in the original Super Auto Pets video game, so it was only with an iron will that I managed to stop myself from reflexively backing the kickstarter for the board games. And I’m glad I did.
I got a chance to demo this at Plaid Hat’s booth, and they have done a tremendous job of translating the SAP experience to a card game experience. It’s small, snappy, quick to set up and play. It captures the feeling of being able to build broken combos and funny synergies, and also captures the experience of variance either saving you or ruining your day.
When playing asymmetrically online in the original, good or poor variance comes and goes, lasting only 20 seconds, and your opponents are ephemeral and pratically not really there. In person the variance feels a lot worse, and even mean spirited at times.
This is a weird one for me, because I do think they’ve done an excellent job with the design of this game, but it also revealed to me that I don’t really want to play this sort of game in a face to face, one on one setting.
Verdict: It’s great, and I’m glad I didn’t back it.
Typeset
Image via Jasper Beatrix on BGG
Not remotely a new game to, but a well loved member of my collection. A really fantastic combination of “roll” and write, push your luck, and word game in a package that makes it very easy to get to the table.
Verdict: This continues to be one of the most played games I own.
A Wizardologist Most Hexasperated
Image Credit: Nick Ferris
An Indie Game Night Market acquisition! A teeny, tiny, 18 card social deduction game. I only got to play a couple games of this at fairly low player counts, but it was pretty fun.
I’ll need to play more of this at different player counts and with different roles in the mix to really get a sense of how well it works.
Verdict: It successfully compresses this sort of game into the smallest possible package, warts at all.
Cat Poker
Image Credit: @board.game.omakase
It’s like tiny, simple, mahjong! (I have never played mahjong.)
Extremely simple game of trying to build one of a specific set of hands by just drawing or discarding on your turn. The only interaction is discarding the most common card forces everyone to pass a card around the table, allowing you a little disruption if you think someone is getting close to winning.
Verdict: Tiny, fun, fast. A great game to have tucked into a bag.
Neko Neko Racing
Image Credit: @reaper373
A car racing trick taking game! You’re actually racing cars around a genuine little track! Unfortunately, this fell a little flat for me. I never felt like anyone had a ton of real influence over the course of the game, the trick taking mechanics don’t really carry any of the racing themeing, and the odd trump system often doesn’t matter at all.
Verdict: I really wish I liked this more than I do.
Trickadee
Image Credit: @coinflipgames
An impulse purchase from the indie game night market, bought purely on the strength of the pun name (and my love of both trick takers and bird themed board games).
This is an odd one, because it’s good, but I feel like it’s missing some additional polish and playtesting to make it great. Without going too far into the weeds of the mechanics, my issues start with how the trick taking itself seems to barely matter. It’s more like a bidding game disguised at trick taking, where it mostly just controls the order in which you’re drafting the birds from each trick. You’re mainly scoring points via set collection (flocks of birds). Then there’s special mechanics to spend seed tokens on (gained by not picking first). Each card has a species, suit (indicated by color and a series of feature symbols impossible to describe or differentiate across a table), and rank (which also shift in start and end value depending on bird species).
This game has a lot of moving parts for how small it is. And although it all works, I don’t think it ever fully gels into something greater than the sum of its parts. As a point of comparison Gachapon Trick plays into some similar mechanical ideas: set collection, resource management, trick taking as bidding. But it does so in a much more streamlined package. It’s not a one to one comparson by any means, but I also can’t imaging reaching for Chickadee when Gachapon Trick is available.
Verdict: I love the bird themeing (some of which is very clever), and it’s a lovely game, but I think this needed a bit more polishing.
Medusa’s Garden
Image Credit: @mistergross
I barely have an impression of this game, seeing as we played only a single round with (I believe) far less than the recommended number of players. A hidden role game where Medusa tries to hide amongst petrified statues, shattering them one by one while Perseus tries to track her down, while only being able to see what’s going on via a mirror. A literal mirror, to be clear. Odd little cat and mouse game with very fast rounds, which makes it potentially a very strong contendor for a quality party game.
Verdict: I’d like to play more of this, especially at higher player counts.
Heavenly Bodies
Image Credit: @GeyseyAdvisor
This game is laser targeted towards punishing my exact brand of hubris. I love shooting the moon in any game that lets me try to do so, and this is a game mostly built around that decision. Yes, I could just take the points I have now, but if I go for it I could get more. A lot of fun, and I think there are depths of tactics to this I didn’t get the chance to reach in my one play.
Verdict: Going Nova is for sure going to work this time.
Bonus Parent Impressions
Parent rankings of the games I had them play while visiting for Thanksgiving. This is a sort of average of the rankings given by both my parents.
- Frog Fight (our custom frog based reskin of Fruit Fight)
- Curses! (a currently under playtest trick taking game of my own design, there may be some parental bias here)
- Pick A Pen: Gardens (they tend to enjoy Roll & Writes, and this one has nice tactile quality)
- MLEM: Cat Space Agency (only played by my Mom)
- Cat Poker (only played by mom Mom)
- Eye My Favorite Things (Dad, “barely above wriggle roulette”, my Mom liked it more)
- Wriggle Roulette (my Dad specifically said this was ‘the worst game’)
Overall Impressions
After PAXU I felt like I didn’t play very many games, right up until I started listing them all out.
My highlight of the con is certainly Pipoca, if only due to how frequently it appeared. The Indie Game Night Market was far less of a shit show than expected, and genuinely a ton of fun to browse around and chat with designers. The BGG flea market was considerably more of a shit show than expected, and I’ll have to be better prepared next year.