The Game Design Reader: A Rules of Play Anthology

If you like designing games or even just modding them, take a look at this book. It's got articles about everything, from video games (half-life) to Magic the Gathering. I found it super intriguing to learn what worked or didn't work in making successful games. It's also huge (954 pages) and for $35 at amazon it's a pretty good deal. I came across it at my university arts library when working on a class paper. Recommended!

 In other news, i've been playing a lot of Super Dungeon Explore lately! it's pretty great, i'm loving it, seriously. Almost done painting up my first figure, the dwarf, so i'll be posting that soon hopefully!

Homebrew Shurro chess set

Shuuro is this sweet new chess alternative game I wanted to try out but given my poor grad student status I couldn't afford the $80 price tag for the 2-player base + 4-player expansion.  Really, the first thought you get when you see this is why don't people just make it themselves?  So I set out to do just that and saved $40, but that's because i scored a sweet ebay deal for 7 chess sets.  W/ithout Ebay, most likely the cheapest you can possibly build this for is ~$50.  Yeah, that's right, you need 7 chess sets for 4 player set, 5 chess sets for 2 players.  Is it worth saving $30 to spend time making it yourself?  Read on and find out!

Qual-line Skateboard Upgrade Review

This is a bit departure from the usual maker stuff i post but there aren't a lot of reviews on this on the internets, so here are my two cents. If you don't know what Quad-line is it's basically replacing the the skateboard wheels with roller-blade wheels which are larger and softer, which equates to a smoother ride. I thought i'd give it a shot! Read on for the review!