Any creative work is built on a lot of conventions – things that we take as granted, the unspoken rules that must be followed. We get a lot of really great games by following design conventions, but some times, in order to innovate we have to break them. Before we try to find the balance between convention and innovation, we talk about Darwin’s Journey, Aleph Null, and Rome in a Day.
I always love this one. It’s the time of the year where we look at what your favourite games are, and discover whether there are any exciting movers and shakers in what you’ve been playing! It’s the BGB Listener Top 20! Before we check in with all of you, we talk about Tower of Babel, Great Western Trail: Argentina, and Jump Drive.
We’ve reached the penultimate part of our five part series, the great series that is sometimes called our top fifty greatest games of all time! We’re barreling close to the end now, but not without a lot of moving and shaking first. Here’s another fine selection of thirty amazing games we love.
I hope you all had a good holiday break, but it’s time to get back to business. The very serious business that is the top fifty greatest games of all time. We return to our heroes in what the enthusiasts call phase two, and boy are things heating up! Thirty more incredible games that we absolutely love are coming right at you.
Yes, you could make the argument that every game is a negotiation game if you try hard enough, but for a lot of games it’s more integral to the design. We look at games that we think integrate negotiation mechanics especially well, and ask how much is too much (or too little) when it comes to negotiation. Before we compromise, we talk about Septima, and Kremlin.
It’s easy to get lost in mechanical discussions of games, and forget to appreciate them as physical creations. There can be beauty in games, and we’re here to get to the heart of it the only way we know, the one on one fight to the death that we call BGBBOB. Before we get skin deep, we talk about First Empires, Mille Fiori, and Foundations of Rome.
Wow, hundreds of you sent in your lists, and it was absolute chaos. But we got all the data together, cleaned up the typos, crunched the numbers via a super secret algorithm, and here we are, your favourite games of all-time! For this year, at least. Before you take the stage, we talk about Schotten Totten 2, For Science!, and The Bridges of Shangri-La.
Return of the Bob! If you don’t know what a BGBBOB, boy you’ve missed out. Twelve games enter, and, well, they all exit, but only once they’ve been arranged in the appropriate order via a series of one on one fights. And fights are doubly appropriate this week, because we’re battling it out in search of the best combat systems. Before we wish for peace, we talk about 7 Wonders: Architects, Kokopelli, and Canopy.
It’s the grand finale of the event of events that is the BGB Top 50 Games of All-time! These are our ten absolute favourite games, and, fittingly, it’s a bumper episode with more than one surprise. Joining us in the peanut gallery this week, it’s none other than the manic imp of Shut Up & Sit Down himself, the absolute mad genius that is Tom Brewster. Buckle in, it’s going to get weird.
What better way to send off the year than part three of the party to end all parties, the BGB Top 50! We’re adding thirty more incredible games to the list, with our 30th to 21st favourite picks. This week, we have the Black Tank, Mike Walker of So Very Wrong About Games tearing apart our choices from the peanut gallery!