The gang talks about Supergiant Games' new early access roguelike Hades and its excellent Boon system, which allows players to temporarily increase the game's difficulty for the chance to earn a permanent bonus.

The gang discusses Matt Leacock's 2013 cooperative board game Forbidden Desert. Although the game is considered by many to be a modern classic, we're digging into its Meteorologist class, and how one of its abilities is just... not fun?

The gang discusses Final Fantasy Tactics Advance's unique judge system, which imposed various restrictive laws on players during battle to force them to diversify their tactics. While this mechanic is a common one in tactics games, FFT:A took it one step further by personifying the laws as living NPCs: judges who could be attacked, distracted, and, most importantly... blamed.

We're back, and we're trying something a little different this time! It turns out that some design topics don't necessarily justify a full hour-plus episode all on their own, but are still worth talking about! To that end, we're introducing PGI Quickplays -- shorter, more frequent episode that deliver bite-sized chunks of game design bullshit to you on the weeks where we don't have a full-sized episode for you.

In our inaugural Quickplay, we dig into Valeria: Card Kingdoms, a dice-rolling and tableau building game that is suspiciously similar to Machi Koro, and yet somehow a lot more fun to play...