Look Back - 5/20/26

0:17 Hey everybody, I'm Tom Vasel and welcome to look back where I take a look at reviews that I did last year, 5 years ago, 10 years ago, and 20 years ago during this same time frame. And I tell you what I think about those games now if I think about them at all. So, 20 two years ago in May of 2006, a while's ago, I took a look at just a couple games. Uh Sefap od, this is from a uh self-published game from Mark Steer. Again, it's the kind of game I might not even take a look at today. Uh about moving dice abstract, uh 5 out of 10. And Thingamabots, a little Gamewright card game about making little robots. There's some interesting ideas here, but not much more. It's fine. 6 out of 10.

1:02 10 years ago uh let's see. I played Mashin Max. Game, now I wanted to like this game because I like the concept of you know, smashing Play-Doh little figures, but this game is a terrible game. 3 out of 10. The Princess Bride: A Battle of Wits. Princess Bride is one of my favorite movies. Like it a lot. And this is a game I ooh, is the wine in my cup or not in yours? But that is it. It's just garbage about moving stuff around and drinking something and seeing if you will ever die. And there's it's pretty bad. 4 out of 10. Monarch. This is from Resonym. Resonym's best known for Phantom Ink. Um but a lot of their games are cool concepts. This one, a monarchy moves some cards around, wasn't very good, unfortunately. 5 out of 10.

1:48 The Sibling's Trouble. Another one I wanted to like from Pencil First, a cooperative storytelling little game. Nice artwork, but it's a pretty bad game. 5 out of 10. Bad Medicine. This is from Formal Ferret. Gil Hova designed this one. Uh it's kind of like a game a party game made for doctors like medicine that what does it cure and hahaha. But it's so narrow the focus. I I don't I just didn't like it. Five out of 10. Candy Chaser. This is a little card game about collecting candy from yellow. It's okay. Almost a kids type game. Six out of 10. Crazy Carts from Portal. Portal tried their hand at a Super Mario style game. And it came out again just fine. Wasn't reviewing a lot of great games 10 years ago. Six out of 10. Dwarves. Now this is from Awesome Games.

2:34 It's a stock market style game. It's pretty solid game. Now I dropped it a bit because it just doesn't look that great. I wish it was a better looking game. And also it's dwarves but actually really stock market. But there's some neat concepts here. Seven out of 10. Star Trek Frontiers. It blows my mind this game's 10 years old now and everyone has forgotten it ever existed. If you never heard of this game cuz there's a lot of Star Trek games out there. This is Mage Knight the board game but they made a Star Trek version of it. Andrew Parks helped with a lot of what make this game. Some interesting ideas. I thought it worked well. Little over wrought but still good. Seven out of 10. Linkee. This is a game that's gone up for me in the past years. You get four words. What is the connection between these words? Four more words. What's the connection between them? What's the then the connection between the connections?

3:23 I I play connections a lot. The New York It's the New York Times. It's a lot of people play Wordle. I play a game called Connections. This does the same thing. Does a really good job. 7.5. Mystic Vale is now 10 years old. The first card crafting game from John Declare. This might have been the first game that I really like noticed who he was. But a very solid game. Eight out of 10. And Imhotep. Uh this I believe this one was Spiel des Jahres or was nominated for at least where you have these boats and you're moving the boats across with blocks to build structures and get points in various ways. It's pretty mean, but a lot of fun. Eight out of 10. Five years ago, I took a look at Sheepy Time, an abstract game from AEG. Doesn't look great, looks like kitty, but actually solid game. Seven out of 10.

4:08 Ruled the Realm. This is from Lifestyle Games and it's game about putting rubber bands on a board to show area control or elastic bands, not necessarily rubber bands. I thought it was pretty cool. Seven out of 10. Cloaked Cats, a deduction game for kids from HABA. Nice. Seven out of 10. Midnight Brunch, very good looking game, simple card collection game. Seven out of 10. Destinies is now five years old from Lucky Duck. This is a one to three player game with some cool stories. Destinies could have been even greater, um, but it was very good for its time. 8.5, really like it. Um, I wish they had continued on with it and done some really neat aspects of it, but I like it a lot. It has a really amazing combat system and then just a really fun sense of exploration.

4:58 Uh, and Commands & Colors Samurai Battles. This one's kind of dropped off everyone's radar. There's a lot of Commands & Colors games out there. Uh, now Memoir '44 is the most popular, but this one Samurai, really solid game. 8.5. Last year I reviewed, um, Burger ASAP. Didn't I just use this as a a trivia question? You're just making burgers with cards and stuff. Six out of 10. Cat Avenue, a circle of cats that you put in the middle of the table and then you're trying to move around and collect cards. It's kind of like a take that game, but with a circle. Not very good. Five out of 10. Caesar and Cleopatra was reprinted last year, so then I took a look at that. It's it's better than it was the original one and it's a it's pretty decent. Some back and forth trying to out think the other person, get majorities of plebians and patricians, seven out of 10.

5:48 Primates A simpler game than it looks. It looks like ape wingspan, but it's simpler than that. As you're collecting different primates and moving these primates along paths. I like the theme a lot. I think it's fun. Eight out of 10. And then Crown of Ash. This is from a company Cardinal War. Uh very stark looking game. Very much an area control fighting back and forth. Very in your face. But also takes just a little over an hour. And so there's some cool concepts in this one and eight out of 10. And those are the games that I reviewed 1, 5, 10, and 20 years ago. Thanks for watching. I'm Tom Vasel and this is look back on the Dice Tower.

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