Can You Smell That? Aroma – a Game of Essence Q&A

One of the reasons why we love playing physical board games is because of their tactile nature. Moving pieces, rolling dice, and flipping cards is more satisfying to us than tapping an icon on a screen.

Board games give us a chance to interact face-to-face with other players and utilize more of our senses.

Yet, I can’t recall ever engaging my sense of smell as part of playing a board game. That’s why when I heard about Aroma – A Game of Essence, I was curious to learn more.

Here’s a Q&A I had with the designers about this fascinating new board game.

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We’re on The Learning Life Podcast!

The board game hobby continues to smash through boundaries. And we’re excited to be a part of it!

Today we made another such breakthrough on a podcast targeted to business leaders — The Learning Life Podcast with Jon Tota.

As you might guess from the title, The Learning Life focuses on the learning industry. They have weekly guests sharing new insight, new stories, and best practices to help organizations take their learning to the next level.

But when Jon saw our 2020 Board Game Gift Guide, he thought it would be awesome to take a break from the weekly corporate learning talk and talk about something fun — board games!

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Board Game Gift Guide 2020!

It’s that awesome time of year again when we look for great fun ideas for gifts for family and friends.

With this crazy year, we know many families have already been grabbing a lot more board games to pass the time together throughout the year.

But it’s always nice to get some ideas for fresh games to play too.

This marks our 10th annual Board Game Gift Guide and we love sharing great gift ideas!

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Back to the Future board games Comparison

What are the chances that two different companies would publish cooperative board games based on Back to the Future in the same year?

Well, it is 2020 – and anything can happen.

Seriously though, we’re big fans of cooperative board games families can play together. So of course we were up for reviewing both Back to the Future: Back in Time by Funko and Back to the Future: Dice Through Time by Ravensburger.

We posted our review of Back in Time in June and posted our review of Dice Through Time this week.

So now it’s time to give you our take on the how the games compare!

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Some Exciting News – and Free Games!

With the COVID-19 pandemic still rolling along, interest in family board games continues strong.

More people are looking for games to play with their families while they’re mostly spending time at home. With so many activities canceled (like sports, travel, concerts, etc.), families have more evening time for hanging out together. And once the binge-watching runs its course, there’s more time for games!

And we think that’s great news!

We get a number of family board game-related news items on a daily basis. Yet we usually don’t share them through our site so we can keep focused on reviewing great family games instead. However, there have been a couple of game-related news items over the last month we think you’ll be interested in. 

Check these out!

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Are you BOOKSMART?

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…”

“Call me Ishmael.”

“All children, except one, grow up.”

Can you name which famous books these are opening lines for?

Or better yet, if you heard the title of a book, would you be able to come up with the opening line?

That’s the premise of a new game just launched on Kickstarter that sounds really intriguing to us – BOOKSMART.

Do you consider yourself BOOKSMART? Let’s find out…

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Stuck inside? Play more family board games!

Being stuck inside for long periods of time can really stink!

Since most of the world is now practicing this new hot term, “social distancing”, it can really get you down.

It’s definitely impacted our lives. And we’re sure it has yours too.

More time at home can mean a lot more family time to do things together. And that means things of every sort.

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Another SaltCon Success

Last weekend wasn’t what I’d expected.

But SaltCon still made me smile.

That’s because every year, I look forward to attending SaltCon — an awesome board game convention in Utah.

As you can see from my anticipatory post last month, SaltCon has tons to offer.

However, this year turned out to be much different for me.

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Countdown to SaltCon 2020!

February just rolled around and it’s time to get excited!

Of course, there was a lot of excitement around the Super Bowl last weekend when the Chiefs triumphed over the 49er’s.

And Valentine’s Day is next week — which can be something to get excited about.

Then there’s also President’s Day right after — which brings a day off of work in the U.S. for many companies. So we can see people getting excited for that.

But what I really get excited about when February hits is that SaltCon is only a month away!

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