South African primary schoolchildren may soon see a board game depicting acts of rape and murder. Yeah, I said board game; they already play video games with those topics.

Bart Dorrestein, the man behind Legacy Pride and a series of business endeavors, hopes to educate all schoolchildren about the consequences of crime. Bart’s own son was killed in a kidnapping, and his business partner killed in a robbery.

His first print run will be 25,000 games. No further info is available, yet, and the contact email for Legacy Pride didn’t work.

(source)

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Having recently covered the launch of Board to Death TV, it’s interesting to see another video review site pop up.  2D6 has been setup by a bunch of graduate students who will be putting up high quality board game reviews and industry interviews.  Reviews will be broken up into the following format:

Craftsmanship – The quality and sturdiness of the components.
Presentation – The quality of the theme / story (if applicable) and whether the components fit the overall objective.
Accessibility – Ease to learn / set up. Whether the theme or game type could be an audience deterrent.
Gameplay – Player interaction / strategy involved. Most importantly, whether or not the game is fun.
Replayability – The replay value. How much table time the game could see.
*Final Verdict: Whether or not the game is worth buying.

They hope to serve “cream-of-the-crop” content by having a very well-rounded group of content producers.

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In the annals of inappropriate ad copy for games, we’ve got the tag-line “Beat the Kids … Win Some Cash” from the game The Kids Are Alright.

The first example game quote for What’s Yours Like? beats that one: “Mine is tight!” screams the example. That’s nice.

In this game, players describe items that they possess using clues formatted similarly to the above.

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Reaper Miniatures’ first officially licensed figures for the Pathfinder RPG are now available from Paizo. Originally that license was held by Crocodile Games, but the designs already produced by Crocodile have been transferred to Reaper. In addition to those four, Reaper has added two sculpts of their own, and is planning four additional unpainted metal miniatures each month.

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Electronic Football dates back to 1947. It uses one of the oldest and oddest mechanisms in the tabletop gaming world: movement by means of a vibrating surface.

Each player is set to move in a specific direction, and the pieces arranged in a formation on the surface of the table. The table is turned on and the surface vibrates. The vibration causes the pieces to move generally in the directions set for them. But not really: some will fall over, some will spin around, and some will appear to have epileptic fits. You can also pass the ball using a spring-loaded arm (very tricky), and kick a field goal using a spring-loaded foot (slightly less tricky).

This mechanism has survived 60 years. Of course, it’s struggling to compete with video versions of football, but continues on as a niche hobby market with it’s own league play. Today’s versions of electronic football are prettier, but essentially the same. Excalibur makes a nice set. The original Tudor designs are continued by Miggle.

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