It was a long journey. We started with a paragraph book, just like a base game of Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective, and then we began to develop the idea and look for improvements. *** The one thing that has always bothered me are these moments where players are snatching the

by Ignacy Trzewiczek The rulebook for Detective is the first rulebook we published that besides rules of the game also covers advice on how to approach the game to enjoy it the most. Why would we do that? What differs Detective from any other game? Why care to tell you

We’ve entered the convention season. I just came back from Pyrcon, next week I am going to UK Game Expo, and in U.S. geeks and publishers have BGG Spring, Origins, and The Dice Tower con on the horizon. Everything builds up to the biggest of them all – Gen Con.

In may, this very month we finally released all 12 (twelve!) armies for Neuroshima Hex. There was a ton of armies released only in Poland and for years fans worldwide were waiting for release – Portal Games was releasing two or three per year, but that was a very slow

Last week I wrote about the philosophy behind the new expansion for Imperial Settlers. Today let me go and dive into the details of each deck. What exactly did we do? What cards made it to the appropriate decks? Romans In a base game of Imperial Settlers Romans built a

Late Spring season is the moment of the year when geeks read reports from two famous exclusive conventions: Alan Moon’s Gathering of Friends and Bruno’s Faidutti Gathering of Friends. One takes place in Niagara Falls, the other in a small village in France. Both events look so cool. *** It

[I run #BoardGamesThatTellStories blog since July 2011. I’ve decided I will choose articles I like the most and republish them to present them to all new board game fans that joined our hobby meanwhile! For all of you who already read the article, I hope, you will have a good

We Didn’t Start the Fire expansion for Imperial Settlers is a small Empire pack. One would say it is just a 50 card you’ll shuffle and hopefully, get some replayability. The other will say that these 50 cards changed the whole game. How is that? The expansion introduces the idea

We were on the right track. I exactly knew what I wanted to achieve with the expansion. I exactly knew what the title of the expansion would be. We were ready to rock. The expansion was supposed to increase interaction between players, make the game more brutal and aggressive and

Long story short, I played the card game called Revolver. I liked the general idea, but I did not like the details. I thought I can do better and based on the general concept of moving cards from one location to another towards the final city I designed Convoy. Asymmetric

[I run #BoardGamesThatTellStories blog since July 2011. I’ve decided I will choose articles I like the most and republish them to present them to all new board game fans that joined our hobby meanwhile! For all of you who already read the article, I hope, you will have a good

The storyline for Alien Artifacts moves the universe to the point in which humans discover a new resource – Xenium. Hidden under the crisp surface, not known before, now, thanks to miners from Community faction, got suddenly revealed. Everything in the known worlds immediately changed. How the fluff, the story

I talked recently about Rising Sun, new design from Eric Lang, and what was said was: ‘There is no single rule that you could call not necessary. It’s super clean design.” I nodded. Games Eric designs lately are brilliantly clean. I had a pleasure and honor to work with him

[I run this blog since July 2011. I’ve decided I will choose articles I like the most and republish them here to present them to all new board game fans that joined our hobby meanwhile! For all of you who already read the article, I hope, you will have a

It was 1999, I was in the process of starting Portal Games and I was looking for an artist to do a cover art for my first product. Finally, I found a guy. It was pretty challenging – in 1999 there was no internet galleries, no DeviantArt, no emails, no