Meeple Land Board Game Review

In Meeple Land players will be creating their very own amusement park by purchasing a variety of attractions and services while luring in lots of paying customers.

Attention will need to be given to how things are laid out, making sure services are within reach of visitors, and paths don’t lead to dead ends.

The game ends after 4 rounds, at which point the player with the most reputation points wins. Reputation is earned from a diverse collection of attractions and services, number of visitors in the park, and lack of dead ends and stranded visitors at the entrance.

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Cloud City Board Game Review

Cloud City, a board game from Blue Orange Games, should not be confused for a Tibanna gas mining colony floating in the clouds of the planet Bespin run by a smuggler named Lando.

Although that might make a really cool game…

In the game, 2 to 4 players ages 10 and up, take on the roll of architects vying to win city council votes to become the best city planner. They will zone land, build skyscrapers that reach the clouds, and connect them with spectacular walkways high above the ground. The player to do this the best wins.

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Minecraft Builders and Biomes – More Than Punching Trees

Back in early 2019, my four boys started asking me if we could get the hit game–Minecraft. I said “No” for a long time. Until after much research and finding out that you can play solo and in private servers, I finally relented and Minecraft entered our home.

Flash forward a year and a half and Minecraft has become a huge hit in our house, not only by my kids, but also by me!

Many hours have been spent creating worlds, adventuring to find treasure, and fighting the steady stream of monsters placed in our way.

When Ravensburger released the board game Minecraft Builders and Biomes, in late 2019 we were all very interested in how it would compare to its digital counterpart. I watch some play-throughs and sure enough, it looked like something we would enjoy very much. Once I got connected with The Board Game Family, I asked Trent to hook me up, and boy did he come through.

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We’re on The Learning Life Podcast!

The board game hobby continues to smash through boundaries. And we’re excited to be a part of it!

Today we made another such breakthrough on a podcast targeted to business leaders — The Learning Life Podcast with Jon Tota.

As you might guess from the title, The Learning Life focuses on the learning industry. They have weekly guests sharing new insight, new stories, and best practices to help organizations take their learning to the next level.

But when Jon saw our 2020 Board Game Gift Guide, he thought it would be awesome to take a break from the weekly corporate learning talk and talk about something fun — board games!

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Board Game Gift Guide 2020!

It’s that awesome time of year again when we look for great fun ideas for gifts for family and friends.

With this crazy year, we know many families have already been grabbing a lot more board games to pass the time together throughout the year.

But it’s always nice to get some ideas for fresh games to play too.

This marks our 10th annual Board Game Gift Guide and we love sharing great gift ideas!

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Sketchy Tales: Disney Edition Game Review

One of our family’s favorite party games is Telestrations. It’s a hoot every time we play it because things never turn out the way they start.

So when we heard about Sketchy Tales: Disney Edition by Big Potato Games, and that it sounded a lot like Telestrations, we were happy to give it a go.

I mean, why not take a crack at seeing how mixed up our Disney drawings could get?

And we’re happy to report we’ve had plenty of laughs with Sketchy Tales!

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Some Exciting News – and Free Games!

With the COVID-19 pandemic still rolling along, interest in family board games continues strong.

More people are looking for games to play with their families while they’re mostly spending time at home. With so many activities canceled (like sports, travel, concerts, etc.), families have more evening time for hanging out together. And once the binge-watching runs its course, there’s more time for games!

And we think that’s great news!

We get a number of family board game-related news items on a daily basis. Yet we usually don’t share them through our site so we can keep focused on reviewing great family games instead. However, there have been a couple of game-related news items over the last month we think you’ll be interested in. 

Check these out!

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Help the Toy Story gang!

I’m a big Toy Story fan.

I was blown away with the animation in the first Toy Story movie in 1995 and have loved every one since. So when Disney and Pixar released Toy Story 4 last summer, it didn’t matter if my kids weren’t young anymore. I was going to see it!

And as soon as it hit Disney+ this year, I was ready to see it again.

But Toy Story 4 wasn’t the only cool Toy Story release last year. The OP also released a new Toy Story cooperative board game — Toy Story Obstacles and Adventures!

With as much as I like Toy Story. And as much as we enjoy cooperative board games. I had high hopes diving into the game.

And I won’t make you wait until later for the surprise — it delivers the fun!

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Stuck inside? Play more family board games!

Being stuck inside for long periods of time can really stink!

Since most of the world is now practicing this new hot term, “social distancing”, it can really get you down.

It’s definitely impacted our lives. And we’re sure it has yours too.

More time at home can mean a lot more family time to do things together. And that means things of every sort.

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Another SaltCon Success

Last weekend wasn’t what I’d expected.

But SaltCon still made me smile.

That’s because every year, I look forward to attending SaltCon — an awesome board game convention in Utah.

As you can see from my anticipatory post last month, SaltCon has tons to offer.

However, this year turned out to be much different for me.

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