About

Welcome, traveller, to our little blog. An oasis of irreverent board game love. We think there is something inherently amusing about simulating reality using cardboard and small wooden cubes, and it’s this sense of fun we try to bring into our content, too. If you enjoy our articles, or if you don’t enjoy our articles, let us know in the comments, or on twitter @creakingshelf, or check out our contact page.

Our site features a few different article types:

 

Kickstart Your Week: a look at the best games on Kickstarter this week. We tend to write about games with 7-14 days left so that even if you miss the article on launch day, you hopefully won’t have missed the Kickstarter just yet. What constitutes the “best games” is based on our impressions from looking at the rules and descriptions on the Kickstarter pages. We won’t have played these games. Consider these the impressions of a potential backer, just like you.

Of course, we also play lots of games and we want to tell you our

 

Thoughts on…  games. These are our reviews of a game! Sometimes we get sent games by publishers, and we’ll always make this clear at the top of the article. They don’t get any special treatment but we want to be honest! We don’t use any kind of rating system, but we’ll tell you the good points and the bad points. Read the article, and you should always have a good impression of our feelings for the game. The last paragraph is normally a good summary if you’re short on time.

But if you’re really short on time there are always:

 

Quick Reads: shorter articles, normally just a few paragraphs long. These include First Impression articles, based on our feelings after a single play through of a game, and other quick-fire ramblings, like fun stories from games night.

And if you like game reports, we have

 

Let’s Plays: longer articles telling the full story of a game we played. Probably in a full “thematic” style, where possible, and almost certainly daft.

 

Those are some of our broad themes! To be honest, we are constantly experimenting and trying to come up with new fun things for you to read. We always appreciate feedback on our efforts!