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The style is a cute, lighthearted, pastel-colored look at the wonderful world of forcing your way inside a female against her will. There are, to my mind, a lot of things wrong with this....

Tentacle Bento's Kickstarter success is the product of a society that doesn't take sexual assault against women seriously enough. It shows that enough people think it's "not a big deal". The argument comparing a game about rape to games about violence is limited by the fact that murder is almost universally penalized in our culture, meaning there is a clear line between fantasy and reality there. With rape and molestation, that line is not so clearly drawn, and it results in "cute" games like Tentacle Bento.

I have been told the game isn't overt about its scenarios, and is more about innuendo than obscenity. But there is no doubt where it comes from, and what it's drawing on. And molesting girls "just a bit" or through innuendo does not make the game much better.

The "tentacle" genre is a well known cliché in the anime/manga fan circles. This product is one of many products we have designed, or are designing to touch on interesting or odd clichés or themes in popular Asian and Japanese sub cultures that have found their way over to the US. They simple "are", and we wanted to give a snapshot that was true to the weirdness of the subgenre. A tip of the hat to one of the weirdest things I have ever seen come out of Japan, and one of the most "unspoken" of inside jokes within the US anime subculture.

Back to our previous response, it is something that "is". The project was an interesting premise, and we test marketed that premise with our target audience with great feedback, we overcame whatever our personal misgivings were and gave it a shot. We felt we dealt with the subject in a funny way to play up the relational iconic images of aliens snatching up humans for nefarious purposes, if those purposes were for eating them up... we wouldn't be having this conversation, the natural inclination of sexualized imagery in some Japanese manga and anime lends to a more lascivious bend, and in the culture, it simply "is".

Here are a couple of interesting quotes from his demo that seem to negate the clean image of the game he is trying to propose. At the 1:15 mark, he says, "In this case we grab poor sidney, drag her to the classroom, and we have ourselves a 'cram session'." After saying this, he suggestively bites his lip. At 1:53, he says you can "take a sexy student to the headmaster's office, and then get slippery when wet". Does this not imply sexual contact, in his own words?

I've played (relatively) few new titles since the middle of 2011, so I'm blending personal knowledge, crowd observation, and wild-eyed guesses in order to make my choices.

Josh [Miller, whose picks preceded mine in the list,] has a decent list of qualifications for SdJ nominees – visually attractive, easy to learn, smooth play out of the box, and vast sales/expansion potential. Africana and Kingdom Builder have all of this in spades. (I’ve yet to play Takenoko, but Antoine Bauza won the first Kennerspiel with 7 Wonders, the components are gloriously appealing, and the game has widespread German distribution, so it seems like a solid third choice.) One element he didn’t mention, but which seems important when viewing previous SdJ winners, is that the nominees tend to straddle the family/gamer line – that is, casual gamers can play them, have fun and do reasonably well while gamers will look deeper, discover more and play better. Again, Africana and Kingdom Builder fit this qualification well. Why choose Africana over Kingdom Builder? Partly due to its contrast with 2011 SdJ winner Qwirkle in that Africana has a realistic thematic setting, and partly due to the German love of travel.

All three of my Kennerspiel nominees – Glory to Rome, Hawaii, and Village – are excellent designs, and all fit the Kennerspiel category of games for connoisseurs as they're more involved that your average game, yet not off the charts in terms of complexity or opaqueness, although GtR might have one foot across that line. Still, I think GtR is an incredible design that goes beyond what you normally think is possible in a card game, and with Lookout Games having released an attractive version in German in 2011, I think it could get the nod.

As for Hawaii and Village, both are straight-up Eurogame designs that present gamers with interesting-to-explore game systems in an inviting setting. They're not too difficult to learn and play, making them ideal for those who have played the basics and want something more. I prefer Hawaii over Village as the money management and tight competition for goods among players makes the game tougher than Village, while also providing a wider range of set-up variability, which kicks your brain in new directions each game. Village gets my vote, however, as it has the homey thematic edge, just as Thurn & Taxis had the home-turf advantage over Blue Moon City in 2006. Yes, your villagers die and sure, that could be morbid for some, but that aspect of the game also encapsulates the broader cultural outlook in Europe, with people viewing themselves as part of history-in-the-making rather than above it, as seems to be more common in the U.S.

Who knows? I could just be blowing smoke...

Who will you invite to tea? Be careful who you invite as sometimes the characters will disappear as soon as they arrive!

In Tea Time, players collect characters from Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland, and each character card (other than Alice) is double-sided, with a normal image on one side and a reverse "mirrored" image on the other. Each round, an array of characters is laid out, with normal and mirrored images alternating. The round's start player takes one character, adds it to his collection, then places the Alice card in that spot of the array. The next player takes 1-2 cards, but if he takes two, the cards must be adjacent. From the third player on, each player takes 1-3 cards; again, you can take multiple cards only if they're adjacent. If you ever have a normal and a mirrored image of the same character in your collection, *poof* they both disappear.

After five rounds (with two players) or three rounds (with 3-4 players), the game ends. Players score 1-15 points for collecting 1-5 cards of the same character – with zero cards of a character being worth five points, so sometimes you do want them to vanish quickly! Alice herself is worth four points, and whoever has the most points wins.

In Home Sweet Home, players have five diving bells and want to get as many sea creatures into them as possible – but crabs don't like octopi and vice versa, so keep those two species separate if you don't want trouble.

To set up the game, each player lays out diving bell cards in front of them, numbered 1-5, and receives four cards from the shuffled animal deck; crab and octopus cards are also numbered 1-5. At the start of a round, a player lays an animal card from her hand in the center of the table and states the sum of all cards played. The next player does the same, making sure that all animal cards are visible. This continues until the sum of the animals played totals twelve or more. The player who laid the last card takes the stack, then places the animals in her diving bells based on the number on the cards. If you would lay a crab in a diving bell that already holds one or more octopi cards (and vice versa), you must discard one card of each type.

Once the deck rounds out, players finish the round, if possible, then sum the animals in their diving bells. The player with the highest total wins!

In the dice game Next!, players try to roll specific combinations of colors/symbols in order to claim target cards. The harder the target is to claim, the more points that card is worth.

To set up the game, shuffle the 45 target cards, then lay them out face up in stacks of 15 in the three card trays. On a turn, a player can roll the dice up to three times, setting aside any dice that she wants to keep after each of the first two rolls. If a player could claim a target card after the first or second roll – such as a card showing three-of-a-kind – but decides to roll again, she can no longer claim that card after a future roll. Once a player claims a card, her turn ends and the next player goes, rolling all six dice to start the turn.

If a player doesn't claim a card, however, the next player has the option of immediately claiming a card that matches the dice previously set aside or keeping those dice set aside and having only two rolls on his turn to try to claim a card.

Some cards have icons that allow whoever wins it to take a special action, such as a bonus turn or theft of a card from an opponent.

After a player has claimed a certain number of cards (4, 5 or 7 with four-to-six, three or two players), that player can decide to end the game. The game ends automatically once a player has claimed six, eight or ten cards (again, based on the number of players). Players then tally their points, and whoever has the high score wins!

In Panic Lab, the player-scientists have their hands full trying to figure out which amoeba to catch and where it might have oozed off to. To set up the game, shuffle the 25 cards, then lay them out in a circle.

At the start of a round, one player rolls four special dice which indicate the color, shape and pattern of the amoeba being sought as well as the color of the lab it left and in which direction it was traveling. Competing at the same time, players need to find the lab, then move in the right direction to spot the amoeba (which may, of course, be striped and not spotted).

But wait! If you encounter a vent after leaving the lab, you need to skip to the next vent in the circle before continuing your search. (Amoebas prefer to travel in the dark when possible.) Plus, if an amoeba passes through one of three mutation devices in the circle, you need to alter the criteria for your search, looking for a tentacled amoeba instead of one with a tail, for example, or an orange/red amoeba instead of a blue/purple one. Zap!

The first player to lay her hand on the correct card collects a token, and the first player to collect five tokens wins!

In Stratopolis, players want to build wide, while also building big.

Each player starts the game with twenty L-shaped tiles comprised of three squares; one player has tiles showing all green squares, green and neutral squares, or two green squares and one red square, while the other player's tiles reverse red and green. Players shuffle and stack these tiles face down, revealing only the topmost tile.

To start the game, a two-square tile (one red, one green) is placed on the table. Players then take turns adding their topmost tile to the display. A tile can be placed (1) on the table with at least one edge adjacent to an edge in play or (2) on top of at least two tiles already in play. When placed on a higher level, each square of the tile must be supported, the tile must be level, and red and green squares cannot cover one another. (Every other color play – such as green on neutral or red on red – is legal.)

Once all tiles have been played, players count the number of squares in the largest contiguously connected area of their color, then multiply this number by the height of the square in this area that is at the highest level. The player with the highest score wins!

The game board consists of an inclined plastic holder that holds ten racks, with each rack holding ten colored tokens. Tokens come in five player colors (19 each) and the white Jokers (5). To set up the game, slide the tokens into the racks, then place the racks in the holder so that no more than color has more than five tokens orthogonally connected. Each player then receives a token that reveals her color for the game, a token that she keeps hidden from other players.

On a turn, a player chooses a group of two or more orthogonally connected tokens and pushes on these tokens so that they fall through the racks and down the holder. (A player can choose to make a joker any color, so she can include or exclude a joker as she wishes during her turn.) Any tokens that were above these will slide down inside the racks. The player keeps all the tokens removed.

Players take turns removing tokens until either a player is eliminated from the game or no groups of two or more tokens remain. At this point, the game ends and players reveal their secret colors. Whoever has the fewest tokens of her color on the board wins! If two or more players are tied, they compare the tokens they collected during the game; whoever collected fewer of her own color wins.

"All Animal Comrades believe that 1984 was a great year for the Animal Farm – at least the Ministry of Truth claims so..."

1984: Animal Farm presents a dystopian reality in which animals have overthrown their human masters. When the fires of the revolution died down, a political game began to establish the only proper totalitarian regime. The players take the roles of animal dictators who will stop at nothing to gain absolute power over the global Farm.

1984: Animal Farm is a modular negotiation game for 3 to 5 players that's based on the concept of forced cooperation. On one hand, players share some business with their neighbors; on the other hand – they are divided by the will to win. The game favors efficient strategy, slick negotiations and successful bluffing. At the same time, it forces the players to form temporary alliances with their enemies and keep an eye on their friends. All this makes each round of the game abound in heated talks (both public and secret), pacts, promises and betrayals. Special abilities drawn before the game, along with the winning conditions, guarantee that no two games will be the same.

Bitcoin gets its power from a network of individuals and not from a central authority, so those individuals are the ones who must fight to spread the word. Others have compared Bitcoin with the printing press or even Napster, and have said that Bitcoin will be widely adopted when it gets "easier" to use. IMHO, this is not true. Bitcoin will be widely adopted when it becomes the only way to get something that you want.

Let me explain. Let's go back to the days of Napster. It was not easy to use. You had to download it from a non-user-friendly site, install it in your computer, look for servers, configure the ports...but it was a success after all. Why? Because it was the only way to get music for free! Not because it was easy to use. People wanted free music, but music was not available for free anywhere else. That was the product people were looking for – free music – and only Napster gave it to them.

So I decided to support Bitcoin by using my best skills (designing and producing board games) and bringing a product to the "real" world that can be purchased only in Bitcoin.

UNITY is a board game for 2 to 3 players in which each player strives to unite his pieces at any cost. By sacrificing the right pieces at crucial moments, you can shatter your opponents' groups as they coalesce, or eliminate a pesky splinter group of your own pieces — anything to create unity.

Why "Unity"? The game name is a call to all to awaken to join this technological wonder. Even if Bitcoin fails, others will come afterwards as this technology is here to stay.

I don't expect to sell thousands of copies. I expect others to follow this path or bring some new ideas to wipe out the central planned systems. This is not a giant leap – but a giant leap is made of these tiny steps.

In Mice and Mystics players take on the roles of those still loyal to the king – but to escape the clutches of Vanestra, they have been turned into mice! Play as cunning field mice who must race through a castle now twenty times larger than before. The castle would be a dangerous place with Vanestra's minions in control, but now countless other terrors also await heroes who are but the size of figs. Play as nimble Prince Colin and fence your way past your foes, or try Nez Bellows, the burly smith. Confound your foes as the wizened old mouse Maginos, or protect your companions as Tilda, the castle's former healer. Every player will have a vital role in the quest to warn the king, and it will take careful planning to find Vanestra's weakness and defeat her.

Mice and Mystics is a cooperative adventure game in which the players work together to save an imperiled kingdom. They will face countless adversaries such as rats, cockroaches, and spiders, and of course the greatest of all horrors: the castle's housecat, Brodie. Mice and Mystics is a boldly innovative game that thrusts players into an ever-changing, interactive environment, and features a rich storyline that the players help create as they play the game. The Cheese System allows players to horde the crumbs of precious cheese they find on their journey, and use it to bolster their mice with grandiose new abilities and overcome seemingly insurmountable odds.

The year is 3012. It's been a millennium since the Armageddon. Deep in the Yucatan jungle, humanity has mutated, degenerated, and segregated into five clans: Jaguar, Snake, Monkey, Gar, and Bat. These clans now battle it out for dominance in the region, cooperating when it suits them and actively working against each other when the opportunity arises.

In 3012, players start the game with small decks of Scout cards, which provide gold to make purchases. Two piles of cards – an Ally deck and a Weapon deck – provide static cards to buy, with three cards from each deck always available to purchase each round. Cards that are not bought remain there for other players to buy. Two non-static Action decks – one with cheap cards, the other expensive – are also available, and at the start of your turn, you reveal one card from each of these two Action decks. You get the benefits of the Action cards you reveal, whether you buy them or not, and they're removed from play if you don't buy them.

Dungeon Command: Sting of Lolth is a card-driven skirmish game played on modular interlocking map tiles that uses action cards, creature cards and miniatures. The object of the game is to remove all of the gold from your opponent's vault.

Each player controls a faction comprised of 12 miniatures, while also having a deck of 12 creature cards and a deck of action cards, the number of which varies by faction. Play begins with each player choosing, then putting into play creatures whose combined levels total no more than seven, with and no creature exceeding the third level during this initial placement. Each player then draws three action cards and three creature cards, then places 20 gold into his vault.

Creatures are put into play from your hand by paying gold from your supply equal to the creature's level. Action cards can be played by creatures whose stats match the card. (For example, a creature with Dex as its main stat can play any action card that has Dex as its requisite stat.)

When a creature is killed, the creature's controller moves gold from his vault into his supply equal to the creature's level. The game ends when a player can no longer move gold from his vault to his supply. Players receive victory points (VP) for gold in their vault, and the player with the most VP wins.

Most screenplays have a three-act structure, following an organization that dates back to Aristotle's Poetics. The three acts are setup (of the location and characters), confrontation (with an obstacle), and resolution (culminating in a climax and a dénouement). In a two-hour film, the first and third acts both typically last around 30 minutes, with the middle act lasting roughly an hour.

Fantasy Flight is publishing a new version of Netrunner, a standalone game rather than a trading card game. I am not involved with the design – Fantasy Flight offered to involve me but the time frame seemed too tight. I have not yet seen the design though it has been described – and based on its description and Fantasy Flight's excellent handling of many classic games, I am sure it is in good hands.

Android: Netrunner is an asymmetrical Living Card Game for two players. Set in the cyberpunk future of Android and Infiltration, the game pits a megacorporation and its massive resources against the subversive talents of lone runners.

Corporations seek to score agendas by advancing them. Doing so takes time and credits. To buy the time and earn the credits they need, they must secure their servers and data forts with "ice". These security programs come in different varieties, from simple barriers, to code gates and aggressive sentries. They serve as the corporation's virtual eyes, ears, and machine guns on the sprawling information superhighways of the network.

In turn, runners need to spend their time and credits acquiring a sufficient wealth of resources, purchasing the necessary hardware, and developing suitably powerful ice-breaker programs to hack past corporate security measures. Their jobs are always a little desperate, driven by tight timelines, and shrouded in mystery. When a runner jacks-in and starts a run at a corporate server, he risks having his best programs trashed or being caught by a trace program and left vulnerable to corporate countermeasures. It's not uncommon for an unprepared runner to fail to bypass a nasty sentry and suffer massive brain damage as a result. Even if a runner gets through a data fort's defenses, there's no telling what it holds. Sometimes, the runner finds something of value. Sometimes, the best he can do is work to trash whatever the corporation was developing.

The first player to seven points wins the game, but not likely before he suffers some brain damage or bad publicity.

Courtier began its game life as Henry the Great. This title may bring to mind Henry VIII of England, however my game was about the much-revered Henry IV of France (1553-1610). Champlain's Dream, David Hackett Fischer's engaging history of French-speaking settlements in the New World, inspired me to make a game about the complicated court intrigue surrounding Henry IV.

Fischer describes a world populated by strange but important-sounding figures such as Intendant, Chancellor, and Marshal who sought to administer the kingdom of France. Many religious groups, both Catholic (Jesuit and Recollet orders) as well as Protestant (Huguenot), and numerous artisans and businessmen all vied for the patronage of their king. Added to this web were several layers of nobility and those supporting the Queen, Marie de Medici (yes, those Medicis). In 1600, the famous Cardinal Richelieu was only a bishop, yet he had already begun to maneuver his way into the royal court. And hardly anything was done without the consent of the powerful Minister Maximilien de Bethune, duc de Sully. Champlain, the great explorer and founder of Quebec, routinely wove his way in and out of this complex mess to secure needed permissions, capital and supplies.

I admired Champlain's skill at navigating this sea of bureaucratic red tape. It seemed like a compelling setting: the kind of story that could be told by a board game.

In Tokaido, each player is a traveler crossing the "East sea road", one of the most magnificent roads of Japan. While traveling, you will meet people, taste fine meals, collect beautiful items, discover great panoramas, and visit temples and wild places but at the end of the day, when everyone has arrived at the end of the road you'll have to be the most initiated traveler – which means that you'll have to be the one who discovered the most interesting and varied things.

Through a unique zen mood, Tokaido is a strategic game while being extraordinarily peaceful and easy to apprehend by everyone.

Aztlán is a strategy game with bluffing and challenging mechanisms set in the mythical land of Aztlán, ancestral home of the Nahuatl (Aztec) people. In Aztlán, four tribes strive to survive and prosper, under the scrutiny of the Aztec Gods themselves.

The game develops during five different epochs, each one divided into four phases. Players try to conquer the largest realm, using an intriguing and highly interactive mechanism. In each epoch, the tribes have uneven and secret strengths, so the players' strategy must be based on intuition and bluff.

When winning a conflict, you are faced with the difficult choice between eliminating your enemies, or deciding to co-exist with them. Peaceful co-existence brings the opportunity to develop your own civilization and gain future advantages, but can you trust your opponent?

Road to Enlightenment gives players control of great scientists, artists, philosophers, religious leaders, politicians and military leaders, bringing them uniquely and individually to life.

You play as one of the great monarchs from 17th and early 18th century Europe representing one of the seven top powers of the era: Austria, England, France, Poland, Russia, Spain or Sweden. Your objective is to be recognized as the most prestigious monarch by producing the most admired art and culture, lead the continent in scientific innovations, spread or resist the spread of Catholicism, and attempt military expansion beyond your historical borders. All of this is accomplished by marshaling 134 historical "luminaries": important historical figures covering every relevant domain of human achievement during the period.

The luminaries are rated in between one and seven different areas of endeavour: military, politics, religion, ideas, science, art or wealth. Additionally, each luminary has a unique Action, Enhancement or Response based on their real historical achievements to be brought to bear in service of your nation.

In order to create a game that simulates the battle between nations for prestige - covering war, politics, religion, science and art - while focusing on many of the diverse people of history, we've mashed up aspects from wargames, Euro games, deck building games, and statistical sports simulations. While it is an eclectic mix, this broad spectrum approach to the game's design enabled this diverse and richly detailed set of conditions to come together in a game that is epic in scale but doesn't take all day to play.