Kelsey Rinella

Review: Colt Express

December 6, 2016 Kelsey Rinella 8

Colt Express has two things I adore: an Old West theme of bandits robbing a train, and programmed movement with character decks. Westerns are in sort of a tough place right now. The themes common to westerns are largely in tension with some now-common values, so it’s difficult to make them without effectively taking a controversial political stand (either to support those themes, or explicitly reject them). As a result, family-friendly western content is rare these days. Admittedly, I have never seen Sheriff Callie’s Wild West, but Wikipedia tells me it occurs in the town of “Nice and Friendly Corners”. I am now imagining Fred Rogers in a poncho, chomping a cigarillo, and my attempt to deride the western credentials of the Disney Junior show has gone totally off the rails as I embroider that fabulous image.* Anyway, a western family game stands out.

Review: Red7

November 4, 2016 Kelsey Rinella 0

Red7, a simple but scalable card game now come to iOS, offers a surprisingly strong metaphor for American capitalism and its discontents. Try to think of this claim, not as total BS, but as a helpful mnemonic for the various details the game adds as you activate the three independent optional rule sets. My brain apparently abhors a purely abstract game.

I may share a self-esteem value with Doug Triggs.

Lensflare Games jumps genres again, releases word game Elexi

November 1, 2016 Kelsey Rinella 2

Doug Triggs of Lensflare Games just pinged us to announce Elexi for Android and iOS, which looks like a cleanly and cleverly designed word game. He describes it thusly: Elexi is a word game where the player spells words on a board of lettered tiles, then discards one of the letters used. There is no time limit, scores are based instead on the combination of the length of words as well as the rarity of letters used. There are several modes of play, including simple elimination (until no more words can be spelled) and a more challenging mode where letters are replaced by new letters from a queue if an ever-increasing threshold is met. There are also “express” versions of the game played from a 3×3 board (instead of the 5×5 board used by the “full” game). Elexi has word lists for six languages (English, Spanish, German, French, Portuguese, and Italian) and is localized into two additional languages (Japanese and simplified Chinese).

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