Shelf Life - January 2026 (games covered in June 2025)

0:00 Hey everybody, welcome to Shelf Life, the monthly series where I look at games I covered about six or seven months ago and let you know whether they're still in my collection. And it is January of 2026, so we're looking back at June of 2025. Let's get to the games and see which of them had shelf life. Starting in the crowdfunding corner, we've got the small expansion for roleplayer adventures. One of my favorite narrative adventure games, The Silver Threat of Fate. And actually, I think this one is delivering soon. So, nice turnaround from the company, but yeah, this is a great little side adventure. Certainly not necessary and not amazing like the big box roleplayer adventures and the big box expansion. Uh, but still a good amount of fun. So, yeah, I'll keep this once it arrives. I love more roleplayer adventures. Next up is the new addition and new expansions for Cradia Wild Hunt Festival, the solo cooperative boss battler. And yeah, this is one that if you didn't watch my more recent preview, I kicked myself for getting rid of because it is so much fun and the new stuff is amazing and they've made some upgrades to the playability of the system and all kinds of stuff. Great for solo play. Uh just an awesome JRPG inspired boss battler in general. Yeah, definitely going to keep this one when it comes. Can't wait for it to all all be finished. That is Crradia Wild Hunt Festival. And finally, last in the crowdfunding quarter is Battle Forge Berserker or Berserker Battle Forge, one of those. Uh, this is another kind of boss battler tactical game with a rondelle system for the players. Uh, really cool. And you can also transform into giant monsters. Uh, this one I'm not 100% sure about yet. I did enjoy the prototype. It only had a single boss and a few scenarios, so it wasn't clear

1:30 whether it would have enough variety. I think the publisher might be sending me another boss prototype before things are finished. Look at Mike's uh face reflected in that card sleeve. Very nice. But uh yeah, so I might get the chance to do another preview of this one before it finally delivers and let you know how it's looking and how much the variety improves with more bosses. We'll see if that happens. But for now, I am cautiously optimistic about Battle Forge Berserker. But getting to the release games, first is the Clan of Two expansion for the Mandalorian Adventures. Uh this was on my top 40 of the year list. I love this one. Definitely a keep for me. If you haven't seen it, it adds everything you would want out of a Mandalorian expansion. It has new characters who are really cool, actually more interesting than the originals. It adds a bunch of new missions and maps and then you can modularly mix and match those missions and maps with the original games. So, it just incredibly increases replay and variety for the game and it's just a lot of fun. So, if you already like the Mandalorian adventures, this is a no-brainer. Great expansion and to keep the clan of two. Next is a card driven war game in the shadows. This one can be played solo or competitively. And I did find the competitive play better.

2:38 There's like several mechanics that the solo leaves out and also it does feel a little bit exploitable. It's also pretty random which cards come out. I do think that the competitive mode is more varied and more balanced, but still if you want a quick playing, pretty simple card driven war game that plays solo, you can't go too wrong with In the Shadows. Uh, but it was a call for me. Next is Seventh Inning Stretch, the solo dice game of baseball madness. This one is good, goofy, chaotic fun. If you've seen my plays, it's pretty crazy. And they did add in the final version some very much appreciated mitigation options if you want to play the game easier. Uh that being said though this was still a call for me mainly because the upcoming storybook saga I think it was called which is I think by the same designer from the same publisher uses a similar system with dice. I liked that one better with the sort of random Winnie the Pooh punching out Captain Hook mechanics it has in there. So Seven Stretch is a call for me. If I want to play a baseball game, I'd probably rather play baseball highlights. But for a quick dice game, it is a ton of fun.

3:39 Next up is the Unlock Kids series. If you didn't see my coverage of this, it takes the great puzzle action of unlock, but takes away the app and makes it entirely playable just with cardboard components and sort of item combinations. And this one is probably going to mess up a lot of people's brackets, but it is a keep just cuz me and my kids haven't finished it yet. You know, unlock is certainly a finite experience once you play through it. there was not necessaril necessarily that much more to see, but we got I think four boxes all at once when I covered this and we still have maybe a few of them left to play. So, I will pass them on or get rid of them after that. But yeah, this is a great one. And actually, I'll say it's even good if you aren't playing with kids cuz some of the puzzles do get a bit more challenging and the lack of an app really forces them to do different kinds of puzzles than regular unlock. So, it's not just a kid experience. I think it's fun for any puzzle lovers. So that's unlock kids, a keep for now. Next up is a big Euro Galactic Cruise. This one has worker placement. You're trying to launch these cruises. I did enjoy this one, especially for competitive play. Uh but they have it on BGA now. So honestly, that's probably an easier way for me to play it with my friends than playing it on the table. And while the solo mode played pretty smoothly, it was also pretty swingy and didn't give me a full kind of meaty feeling experience.

4:51 Although it doesn't change the fact that the core experience is a ton of fun, especially launching with shuttles. But yeah, with the option to play this online, this is not a keep for me. Galactic Cruise is gone. Next is World Spanner Faction, the redo of Duel of Ages. I used to love the original Duel of Ages. I liked this one quite a lot. It is a tactical skirmish game with wildly different heroes trying to complete adventures, but also fight each other. And while I still adore the variety in strategies and play of this one, it is just a little bit clunkier for me compared to more modern games. Although, they did improve it quite a lot. So, if you want to really deep dive into a game, I think this is a great system. But for me, who has to be playing different games all the time, just constantly and can't uh devote a ton of time to get like my friends to learn this game really well, uh this one did not stay. So, that is a call uh world spanners factions, the new version of Duel of Ages. Next is Vantage, the big Stonem Adventure game. This was also on my top 40 of the year. Uh but that being said, it is a cull. I do enjoy this one. the Vantage and just viewing these crazy uh locations is awesome and I do like the quick core action of the dice mitigation and using your different powers in your tableau. Uh that being said though, eventually after playing it several times with my family and solo, the fact that it's just an openw world kind of wander around like yes, you do have missions and stuff, but often you're just kind of wandering. Uh that started to wear on me cuz that has never been my preferred style of adventure game. I like things with more controlled stories like role-player adventures or even a seventh citadel to get a little bit more open world. See, Vantage, great game, but it is a call. Next up is

6:22 Rescuing Robin Hood. This is a solo cooperative deck building combat game with sort of a push your luck aspect. This one was fine. Uh my kids enjoyed it. I enjoyed it. It's not by any stretch the best solo cooperative deck builder, and that's a pretty crowded category. It's a little bit too mathy, I think, for some people, but it can be a bit of good fun if you really like these deck builders and want something with some push your luck elements in there as well. So, that is Rescuing Robin Hood: Another Call quite a few this month. Next, almost done, is Hercules and the 12 Labors. This is a solo dice placement game where you try to battle through different bosses. Interesting that I covered this and microhero Hercules in one year. Uh, but yeah, this one uh I was a little mixed on. on. I know some people in our Discord have enjoyed it a lot more than me, but I found the dice placement pretty obvious and repetitive.

7:07 And you do get different rewards potentially when you go through, but it's kind of like you making yourself weaker if you don't take the obvious ones. So, I just didn't see a lot of replay here. I mean, Microhero Hercules is, I guess, not the best and is also kind of repetitive for that, but I did enjoy it more than this one. So, that was another call. Hercules in the 12 Labors. And finally, we've got maybe the goofiest game on the list, which is Conquest Princess. This is a crisis management scenario-based cooperative and solo game where you're trying to use fashion to stop somebody's world domination plans. And the crisis management here is very tense. The scenarios are quite varied. Uh there's some interesting bag building with the combat. Uh the powers are incredibly cooperative. There's a lot of stuff you can do together. So yeah, very cool game. Now, that being said, a lot of you know that Crisis Management is not my favorite. This is still a keep. Uh why is it a keep? because I really think the publisher is a good guy and I believe he's at some point sending me a prototype of the expansion. So, I want to have the base game stuff to preview that. Will I keep it afterwards? That really depends on whether my kids like it or not. We shall see. But for now, it is a keep. That's Conquest Princess. So, that was a pretty harsh month. I'm keeping one expansion and then two games that there's a high likelihood I won't keep forever. I'm just kind of hanging on to for different reasons, but the crowdfunding list is more positive. I'm excited for all three of those. But anyway, let's get to the contest and see who was the big winner. So, in group one, this was actually the most confident correct answer. 70% of you picked Mandalorian Adventures. 23% said neither of them, and only 7% said In the Shadows. Group two was one of the big spoilers. There were two that mess up a

8:37 ton of people. 69% said neither. 24% said Seventh Inning Stretch, and only 7% said Unlock Kids. Ouch. Group three, 52% got it right with neither of them. 26% said Galactic Cruise and 22% said World's Spanner Factions. Pretty even there. Group four, I think, was the other huge. Yep. Vantage messed everybody up. 59% 39% said neither. And 2% said rescuing Robin Hood. Actually, that one's not as bad as group five cuz yeah, look at this. 50% said neither, 35% said Hercules, and only 15% said Conquest Princess. So again, I guess not quite as bad as group two, but pretty rough. And for the first time in a while, nobody got all of them right. In fact, the highest score was three out of five. And here's all the people that got that. Uh, names in yellow are our Patreon supporters. They get double entries. And Dan and Allan in red up there said they didn't want to be entered in the contest. So, I'm going to roll a D6 for the column and a D10 for the row and see who our winner is. So, column is a two and row is a three. So, column 2, row three is Paul Kim. So, Paul, congratulations on winning Shelf Life. I'll be in touch soon about your free game. And everybody else, thanks for entering. Don't forget to enter next month's contest with the link in the video description.