The Board Game With No Rules

Boardgames Shut Up and Sit Down
1

2025-06-05T17:24:42Z

1 Like
2

Something I got a kick out of at university was reading the titles of the theses arranged on a shelf in one of the corridors in my department. Just the titles. They were always so incredibly specific, and a part of my brain just enjoyed knowing that someone had put that amount of effort into such a niche area.

This game feels a bit like that. It’s for such a niche audience, and there’s a piece of my brain that wants to be a part of that audience, but the rest of me says that the enjoyment:effort ratio is not going to go in my favour.

I never actually read any of those theses on the shelf, and I’m never going to play this game. But I love that it exists.

7 Likes
3

Younger me might have given this a try: the one that was more into logic puzzles, cryptic crosswords, IQ tests and pub quizzes. Current me who no longer has the time, patience, energy or sustained curiousity for such things, won’t go near this with a barge pole. Nice that it exists, I guess, but there are more than enough games as it is which are difficult to comprehend and play correctly even when they are written in a language I understand.

3 Likes
4

The part of me that loves that someone made up an alien circular language for the movie Arrival, and kinda wants to learn that language (and Dothraki and Quenya and everything else) is delighted this exists.

4 Likes
5

I’d love to have a chance to “play” this. But I’m not going to spend money on it.

And, it may be a board game. But it’s absolutely an art project, more so.

Additionally, it suffers from the legacy game problem where reviews and community reaction are shielded and/or shallow due to the spoilery nature.

3 Likes
6

I clicked the horrible secrets link so fast.

And yes, I was always really good at the IQ test shape puzzles.

2 Likes
7

I remember the moment when my taste shifted from that sort of thing to creative problems, including programming, to which there might not actually be a solution, or there might be more than one, but I wasn’t just following in someone else’s tracks to discover what they had set up.

2 Likes