Episode 252 - Our Holiday Recap
January 8, 2026
Ambie and Crystal discuss a couple games they played recently, including Cozy Stickerville and Sunderfolk. Then since it's our first episode after our holiday break, we talk about what we did during the holidays - games, puzzles, escape rooms, and advent calendars!
Intro: 0:00
Recent Games: 0:41
Holiday Gaming: 15:58
Outro: 33:51
Bloopers: 34:46
Games mentioned this episode:
Cozy Stickerville: 0:41
Sunderfolk: 7:44
Taskmaster Advent Calendar: 20:40
Mystery Puzzle: 32:26
This episode was sponsored by Grey Fox Games. Use the code "BLITZ10" to get 10% off your entire cart.
Board Game Blitz's theme song was composed by Andrew Morrow.
Transcript
[00:00:06:19 - 00:00:40:17]
Crystal: Hello and welcome to episode 252 of Board Game Blitz, a podcast about all things board games that you can listen to in less time than it takes to take down your holiday decorations. Board Game Blitz is sponsored by Grey Fox Games. This week, we recap what you missed during our holiday hiatus in December. First, we discuss a couple of games we've played recently, Cozy Stickerville and Sunderfolk. Then, we talk about what gaming and advent calendars we did this holiday season. And now, here are your hosts, Ambie and Crystal.
[00:00:40:17 - 00:01:15:18]
Ambie: Recently, I got to play Cozy Stickerville, which is published in 20-- will be published in 2026. I think it comes out February, published by Unexpected Games, designed by Corey Konieczka. I got to play it because my friend-- I'm not sure-- okay, so my friend works for like Office Dog and Z-Man, and so somehow she got Cozy Stickerville. I guess they're related somehow, I don't know. But anyways, she was not involved in the making of this game though, but she got a copy and we played it together. And so Cozy Stickerville is a campaign legacy type game. It's a cozy game.
[00:01:15:18 - 00:01:27:28]
Crystal: If it's called Cozy Stickerville and is a brutal war game, then I'd say they maybe named it wrong. But yes, if it is a cozy game, in fact, then that's good.
[00:01:27:28 - 00:04:49:19]
Ambie: Yeah, the name is pretty much descriptive of it. It's a cozy game, you're building a village with stickers. So there's lots of stickers in the game. It's kind of like Stardew Valley type theme. You're building up a village and you-- well, you're not really farming, but you're doing different things and meeting-- getting different residents in your village and you're kind of like-- I don't know if you're like the mayor of the village or something, I don't know. But it's very story driven. Usually I'm not a big fan of cozy games. We had like our cozy episode before and a lot of cozy games are like tiling and stuff and I usually get bored in them, but this one was because it's more like story driven and choose your own adventure feeling. I like that better. It's not like a game where you're going for a high score or anything. It's a cooperative like storytelling, sticker game. So I was in it for the story. When we played it, Toby was saying it reminded him of Tales of Arabian Nights because that also had like a lot of story passages and stuff, but that one was a competitive. But this one's like way more cozy.
So the way you play, there's a board and there's two sides to the board. So you can play the game twice. It comes with a bunch of stickers and two sides of the board. You're going to sticker up the board. So once you play it, you're like, that's it with that side of the board. And then you can play it again with the other side of the board. Theoretically, I mean, I haven't seen exactly how that's done because we just played one thing and that's 10 years is the whole campaign. And so we play like 10 games in each year is a deck of cards. It's 12 cards. And so each turn is one of those 12 cards. So you get like 12 turns in a year and you take turns taking a card. It has an event happen. And then sometimes you get to choose things or sometimes the events, sometimes the cards will be out on the table and then be like actions that you can take. And then you can do one action on your turn and actions are things that have hourglasses on the board or sometimes stickers that you place down. It'll be like a house and it has a location that you can visit. And that's also an action. And a lot of the actions are you either read what it says on the card or you read a passage in the book. There's a story book and then sometimes you make decisions. And so like the person next to you will read it to you. And then you say, okay, I want to do this. And then they'll see what the consequences. So you're not like reading it yourself. You can play solo. And I think for a lot of the stuff, like the consequence will be under it and it's not like that bad or like, it's not like, if you just don't read ahead. But I think for some of the cards, it has like the consequence upside down. So those are like, I guess more important things. But, and then some of the cards, it says like, whenever you're building a house, you need to spend resources and you pick one of the two residents, like this person is a scientist, or you can bring this person who wants to build a business and make a lot of money. And so you pick which one will move into the house. And then it says, okay, now then put their sticker on the board and read this passage or something after you make the decision. So you can't like cheat and look ahead. I mean, you can, but that helps if you're playing solo, you're not going to see the result a lot of times, like right next to it, because it's on the card and it says, okay, read this passage when you choose.
So the mechanics are super simple. It's just you get resources at the beginning of each year based on how your village is, they have little icons of like how much food, how much wood you can get. And then you could spend those to build things and you put stickers. And so a lot of times it's like put sticker 11 C on here and the stickers are page, page numbers, and then letters. So you go to page 11 and get the C sticker and you put it on the board. And then there's lots of stickers on the board. And it's fun putting stickers on you put stickers for everything.
[00:04:50:22 - 00:05:19:07]
Ambie: So yeah, I enjoyed that. That's like cozy storytelling vibes. No stakes. There are like achievements you're going for. So it feels kind of like a video game type thing. Like you want this much stars, you get stars, different milestone goals and stuff. And you want this many to get like a good thing. And there's these long term achievements that you're trying to get. And we ended up doing pretty well. So we got like, at the end, it reads a story based on how many of the milestones you get. And we got like the best one. So that was exciting.
Crystal: Yay! That's exciting.
[00:05:20:16 - 00:05:42:16]
Ambie: Also, like each place you put down has a little story that goes with it. And so when you play it the second time, I mentioned that there's like two people that can move into each house, the one that you choose, I think you can't choose that one the second time. So you have to choose the other one.
Crystal: Oh
Ambie: because I think because you use up that sticker. So I don't think there's duplicate stickers of every option.
Crystal: Interesting.
Ambie: But that also helps. That also helps you get to see everything.
[00:05:42:16 - 00:05:56:17]
Crystal: Well, yeah, but then it also kind of makes the second time in theory, if there are no duplicates of a lot of the things, then you're kind of like not making choices. You're just like, see what happens, which maybe even cozier. I don't know.
[00:05:56:17 - 00:06:08:28]
Ambie: It probably is cozier. Yeah. But yeah, I guess you wouldn't be making as many choices. And then also like some things we felt like we made might have made the wrong choice in some of them. So we can't go back and fix that.
[00:06:08:28 - 00:06:23:18]
Crystal: But it sounds really cute, though. Like, yeah, definitely sounds like a fun, especially like a family experience. Like, I assume the content is all family friendly, since it's got cozy in the title. Or is there any like adult themed content in it?
[00:06:23:18 - 00:06:37:00]
Ambie: I think it was mostly family friendly. I can't think of anything super adult themed. There were I mean, there was like something kind of, you know,
Crystal: You don't want to spoil anything, yeah
Ambie: I think we were making it we were making it sound more culty than it actually was.
[00:06:37:00 - 00:06:42:28]
Crystal: So basically you can interpret things.
[00:06:42:28 - 00:07:02:28]
Ambie: But yeah, I think in the art was super cute. Yeah, so I think it is pretty family or at least what we saw. It seemed family friendly. It says ages eight plus on BGG. Oh, and also it says one to six players. I said, Yeah, I can be played solo. I played it with like four players most of the time. I think it says 30 minutes. I think Yeah, each, each year took about 30 minutes for us.
[00:07:02:28 - 00:07:05:17]
Crystal: Oh, that's not that's those are pretty quick games then too.
[00:07:05:17 - 00:07:23:00]
Ambie: Yeah. Oh, the first play was longer because we didn't know what was going on. But the other one. But the other ones were quicker. So yeah, that was Cozy Stickerville. It is if you want a cozy like storytelling cooperative game with very low stakes. Then that's Cozy Stickerville.
Crystal: Nice.
[00:07:23:00 - 00:11:25:25]
Crystal: All right. Well, the game I'm talking about today, I think I have mentioned at least offhandedly on the podcast before. But I wanted to do a formal review of it now because we have finished the main campaign in the game. It is technically a video game, but it is one that board gamers are going to be all over. And that is called Sunderfolk. Sunderfolk is a digital co op RPG, much like a Gloomhaven or, you know, something of that nature. But it is all digital. But what's neat about it is only one copy of the game needs to be owned. And then it can be shared via a QR code to the other players. So you can screen share or do couch co op. And then each player controls their own character using their phone. And your phone, it's a free digital app that you use to maintain everything. It saves your game progress. And it has your character sheet, all of your skills, items, abilities, everything is on your phone. So each player can easily access every all the information going on, like from their digital device. And then the shared screen shows like the scenarios and the story beats and everything else.
The story of Sunderfolk, as you immediately find out when you start the campaign, is it is set in a world where anthropomorphic animals are kind of the only things alive. There's no humans. And there they have like a what is essentially a life tree that is powered by something called Bright Shard. And things are going wrong in that with their tree. And bad things start happening in the world of Sunderfolk. And you and your adventurers, of course, are sent out by the people of the town to go fight bad guys, figure out what's going on and save everybody. I bought this, I want to say last summer when I saw it on sale on the Nintendo Switch, but it's also available on other digital platforms like Steam. And I did not really know what to expect. I just saw that it was a Jackbox style game in that you use your phones to control things. But that it's a, you know, tactical co op game that happens on a digital screen. And I we've now finished the campaign, you can do one shot scenarios as well. But honestly, like blown away by how much fun the experience was. I like there are lots and lots of characters in between scenarios, you get to have conversations and build up affinity with individual characters that are in the world. And the things that you do both in and out of scenarios all affect the party, the world you're in, you can upgrade your buildings, you can acquire new items, like if you gain enough affinity with certain characters, it'll unlock other things for you. It's a very dynamic and vibrant world that interacting with in multiple ways does cool things.
And you use your phone to do all of the things during the scenarios as well. So like when you go to move, you hold your finger on your phone screen and slide it to show like where you're moving or where you're attacking on the main screen. And it was a little awkward when we very first started playing kind of trying to figure out like, oh, if I click and then slide like where that goes. But it got easier quickly. And it was very intuitive once we kind of like wrapped our heads around it. So it made things really easy. We played on voice chat with my 20 year old bonus kid who lives in Oklahoma. And it was me and my partner Dan and then her. So it was the three of us playing the campaign together. And we just had a blast with it. Like absolutely loved it. In fact, we've restarted the campaign with all new characters because they have six different character classes you can play. So instead of the three we already did, we picked the other three this time around.
[00:11:25:25 - 00:11:27:24]
Ambie: How long was the whole campaign?
[00:11:27:24 - 00:13:40:28]
Crystal: How many sessions did we end up playing? I don't actually know. Because it- so like each time we would play, it would give us the option to choose from different scenarios. And some of those were considered to be side missions. And some of them were considered to be like the main story. And I was around 20 total missions probably. But it was neat because it did tell us to like, hey, you're going to pick a certain number of side missions, and then those will become unavailable and you have to progress the main story. So and we didn't get to do all of the side missions. So now that we're playing through the whole campaign again, we can go see some of the side missions that we didn't see the first time around or we could play those as one shots if we wanted as well. Your characters do get stronger over time, they level up, they- your health increases, you get new skill cards that will affect what things you can do in combat and different spells you can cast if you're a spell caster, etc, etc.
They have all the character classes you would expect. They're not called the normal like they're it's not fighter and mage there, they have, you know, different names for those. But it is essentially like all the things you would expect to be there are there like there's a rogue, there's a bard, there's a tank, there's all the things that would normally be in an RPG, but they're all animals. So they're all adorable. In the first round, I actually played a little lizard who was really good at manipulating fire and got powered up by fire. So like some of the enemies if they like threw us into like lava or something, my character was like, Yeah, give me more, I will be powered up by that. So we just had a blast with it. And I think this is a game that if you are a board gamer who enjoys playing games remotely with people, this is one that is great for that because you just have to share your screen and then people can scan the QR code directly from their phone. It opens the app automatically and connects them to your game session. And it works like a charm. And they've just announced recently that they have more content coming in 2026, like as part of the game that you would already purchase. So they have new stuff coming in 2026. So we're already excited to see what else they release as far as like new scenarios and things like that. But yeah, I love it.
[00:13:40:28 - 00:13:45:05]
Ambie: Does it have to be the same characters throughout the campaign? Or like, can people come in?
[00:13:45:05 - 00:15:54:10]
Crystal: If you do the campaign? Yes, you basically like and it's, it's neat because it recognizes your device somehow.
Ambie: Oh!
Crystal: Yeah, like we don't have to like you can take over for other characters if you have to like if somebody were to leave in the middle of a session, you could take over the control of their character for them. But like every time we would log in and choose the campaign in like in my Nintendo switch, and then scan the QR codes, it would automatically assign all three of us to our characters. So it knew who we were from our devices, essentially. So yeah, you stay with the same character. If you're playing the campaign for one shots, obviously, I imagine, you know, you can kind of pick and choose how you want. And once we become more familiar with all the characters, I imagine we'll do that more in the future. But for now, we're just playing through the campaign again, because it was so much fun. We want to do it a second time. And if that's not a ringing endorsement of Sunderfolk, I don't know what would be that we literally finished the campaign and then like the next day restarted the campaign. Oh, it was the same day? Okay, yeah, we literally finished and then restarted immediately. So and yeah, and we've been and we've been continuing to play regularly. So I love it. It's great. And I think that a lot of board gamers would really enjoy the experience.
It's currently on sale, but won't be by the time, at least on Steam, it won't be on sale anymore by the time this episode comes out. But I imagine, you know, once something has been on sale, whenever Steam does their big sales, things tend to pop up again. So I'd say if it's something that interests you, you know, hit a wishlist button on Steam or the Nintendo Switch eShop or wherever, and, you know, grab it full price if you want. It is developed by Dreamhaven, which is a game publisher I'm not actually familiar with for any, like for any other game, like some other other stuff looks kind of neat, but it seems different. It's not like the same style of game. But yeah, I really, really love it. So I highly recommend Sunderfolk. And if anybody plays it, like reach out to me, let me know how you're enjoying it, because I want more people to discover this game for sure.
[00:15:58:21 - 00:16:33:23]
Crystal: Coming back from our holiday break, we it's funny, you would think that with it being four weeks since the last time we did an episode that we would have lots of things to talk about game wise, but it never ends up being that way after the holidays. And in fact, you and I are both a little bit under the weather right now. So that makes things more difficult. But we do not miss episodes. So we're just gonna chit chat and talk about what we did over the holiday break and what games we did play and yes, just see where things go. So how was your Christmas and New Year's, Ambie? What have you been up to?
[00:16:33:23 - 00:16:52:15]
Ambie: It was good. I visited family, did lots of family stuff. I actually did get some gaming done with my mostly with my kids. We actually did escape rooms with my kids for the first time. So my kids are six years old. And I hadn't done any real escapism with them. Because most real escape rooms are for like 13 and up or something.
[00:16:52:15 - 00:17:05:19]
Crystal: Yeah, like they're, they're harder puzzles than a six normal six year old would usually be able to handle. But your kiddos are pretty smart kiddos. So I'm so excited that you got to take them to some real escape rooms.
[00:17:05:19 - 00:17:40:21]
Ambie: Also, before I was worried about their attention span and stuff, but I had been playing escape rooms with them at home and stuff like that. I'd been playing the Exit games with them, or like Exit Kids, Unlock Kids. And I actually did the Exit Advent Calendar with them this year. And they really liked that. I've been doing the Exit Advent Calendar every year since it came out. But then this year, like they remembered it from last year. And they're asking, when can we do the Santa one like, and they saw that I got it and they're like, can we do it with you? Like, oh, yeah. And so, yeah, they did it with me this year. Toby didn't, but the kids did.
[00:17:42:07 - 00:17:43:25]
Crystal: You know what, that's fine.
[00:17:43:25 - 00:18:15:12]
Ambie: Yeah. And then so like, when we were down visiting family, we did it with my parents and my kids, we did an escape room together. And my kids loved it. And then we were visiting my friends later that week. And we did another escape room with them and our kids. And our kids loved that too.
Crystal: That's so cool!
Ambie: So yeah, it was really cool. Like, they definitely needed help with stuff, but they were able to, we would have them help us with some of the things like some of the things that were like pushing the buttons when it lights up or like match this color and stuff. And then they would find they got they're pretty good at finding things actually.
[00:18:15:12 - 00:18:33:23]
Crystal: Oh, yeah, I bet it's helpful to have someone like that little because you and I have done escape rooms together where like we did the playground themed one where like people had to get into very small spaces. And we were all like, I don't I don't I don't want to. Yeah, it would have been helpful to have actual children.
[00:18:34:25 - 00:18:53:25]
Ambie: Yeah, actually, for like the second one we did was an Alice in Wonderland themed one. And then they had like a small door at the end. It was like their size. That's where we get out. And then also like there was a balcony area that there was like we have to crawl in. And they're just like, they actually had to crawl into but it was like kind of their size thing. And they thought that was really cool.
[00:18:53:25 - 00:18:58:12]
Crystal: Way easier for them to crawl through.
Ambie: Yeah.
Crystal: That's so cool, though.
[00:18:58:12 - 00:19:26:20]
Ambie: Yeah, so that was that was a lot of fun. And you had mentioned before the Exit: The Game - Family, which you had played. And so I played that with my kids too.
Crystal: Did they like it?
Ambie: Mmhmm
Crystal: Yeah. It's cute, right? Like I really do- I appreciate the puzzles in that they did. They weren't like, like, I think they did a good job of balancing the difficulty to make it not boring for adults, but also approachable for kids. Like I really liked how they handled it.
[00:19:26:20 - 00:19:36:27]
Ambie: Yeah, we had played the first one before, but then we played the second one after my kids experienced a real escape room and they still liked it. So that's good. Because like, the
Crystal: Oh, yeah.
Ambie: Because when we were coming home from the escape room-
[00:19:36:27 - 00:19:44:01]
Crystal: You were worried that the paper ones would be not interesting anymore. We want to do real escape rooms, Mommy.
[00:19:44:01 - 00:19:56:10]
Ambie: Yeah, no, that's what one of my kids actually was saying, like, I want to do more escape rooms when we go home and like, not the ones at home, not the box ones, I want the real ones. Like, okay, well, I mean, we will, but-
[00:19:56:10 - 00:20:03:28]
Crystal: This is when Ambie starts designing her own in house escape rooms, because real escape rooms cost money.
[00:20:03:28 - 00:20:20:23]
Ambie: I mean, that's what like, I had been doing some stuff like for their birthday, doing like, kind of scavenger hunty escape room type stuff, but it's not. It's not on the level of actual escape rooms, because they have they're like all decorated and all themed and stuff. I'm not doing that at home.
[00:20:20:23 - 00:25:22:22]
Crystal: That's still really cool. I'm so glad that they enjoyed themselves. I didn't do the exit advent calendar this year. I chose to do a different advent calendar this year, but it was a very similarly styled advent calendar in that it was made- it was the Taskmaster advent calendar. I don't know how much I have mentioned on the podcast how obsessed I am with Taskmaster, like full blown. I've talked to I know we've talked about like I own the board game and things like that. But for those of you who are not fans of the British panel show Taskmaster, watch it it's free on YouTube, you can watch all of the seasons, which they call series because it's made in the UK. They're not seasons there, they're series, but you can watch all of them for free on YouTube. And it's a just brilliant show where a bunch of comedians are tasked with doing ridiculous tasks. And sometimes you're trying to do them the best. Sometimes you're trying to do them the fastest. Sometimes question mark? Like the show is definitely intended to be more amusing than like legit competition. Like they are competing, but it's very much tongue in cheek. Like a lot of the contestants recognize that doing the tasks in a funny way is sometimes better than doing them straightforward. Because if it was straightforward all the time, it wouldn't be as fun to watch. And they made an advent calendar for the first time ever. And when I saw that this past fall, I was like, Oh, I'm pre ordering that immediately.
And so the advent calendar, the premise of it was that Little Alex Horne who is the Taskmaster's assistant and the creator of the television show Taskmaster, even though he's not the Taskmaster himself, he's missing and we have to find him before Christmas. And so as you're going through the calendar, each day had a little fun fact about Taskmaster that was related to the number for that day. So like day one had a one number one related thing. Yeah, like every single day had a fun fact or no, almost all of them. And then they had little task envelopes, little paper task envelopes that you would open each day and would tell you what your task was. And then the answer to that day would be what you would open the door you would have to open on the next day. And then there were some little surprises and things in there as well bonus tasks that you could complete Little Alex Horne, the actual person judge to some of the bonus tasks on social media. So there was some like actual real time interactivity there. And it was neat to see other people's attempts because then when he would you know, say hey, this person one, you got to see what they did. It was a very well put together advent calendar
Most of the puzzles were definitely on the easy side, which I think is a smart choice because Taskmaster fans are not necessarily going to be, you know, hardcore puzzle gamers like you and I could probably handle harder puzzles than what most of this contained. But I liked that it was easy when I'm doing an advent calendar, I'm not there to like, sit there and think hard for you know, like I want it to be relatively easy. Some of them were a little too easy for my liking even, but mostly pretty straight awesome across the board. The biggest negative for me was that some of the tasks involved and only like two or three not a lot but involved calling or texting a British phone number. And I don't live in the UK. That like I tried I actually I wasn't even thinking about my phone plan at the time but I tried calling the number and it did not work properly. Like the message that was supposed to be there wasn't there. And that was a bummer because I have to know like they have to recognize that they have an international fan base and they were shipping these all over. But there was no like alternative for those like I don't know what I was supposed to do other than I looked up somebody else online who had done it to see what the answer was because I didn't have another way to get it. I mean, they I guess they had hints on their website, I could have just looked those up, but that didn't feel as satisfying.
So needless to say, I loved it. I hope they do another Advent calendar next year and I will 100% buy it again if they do. So yeah, just awesome. So awesome. I as a Taskmaster fan, lots of lots of interesting facts that I didn't know about the show. And lots of nods to previous episodes like funny moments throughout the series history. And then I recorded every single day of the Advent calendar, I recorded myself doing it and put it on TikTok. A couple of the days of my videos like went crazy viral, like people were all about this Taskmaster Advent calendar on TikTok. So I guess if you're interested to see what it looked like, go find me on TikTok. There's probably links to that somewhere or you could just search for the Taskmaster Advent calendar and chances are all pop up because I don't think there's that many people that were doing it. So yeah, I loved it. It was great.
[00:25:22:22 - 00:25:28:26]
Ambie: The other Advent calendars I did were just a bunch of jigsaw puzzle ones.
Crystal: Nice.
Ambie: Which I think I might have done too many. I had like seven.
[00:25:30:02 - 00:25:38:10]
Crystal: That is a lot.
Ambie: Yeah.
Crystal: So wait, so are you actively assembling seven jigsaw puzzles basically day by day at the same time?
[00:25:38:10 - 00:26:21:06]
Ambie: Yeah, well, a lot of them are small, not all at the same time. So like a couple of them were ones we did in a swap. So like people assemble 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle and then break it up into 24 pieces and then put them in envelopes. And so a couple of them were like that. And then I had those in the living room and then I actually did one before Advent started. So I had a pre, I did a pre-Advent Advent calendar. I knew I wouldn't have enough space. And then I had other ones that were like a single puzzle each day, a hundred piece puzzle or like a 50 piece puzzle or something each day. And so then I took those apart. So I would do it and then take it apart and put it back in and do the next day. So there were only a couple that like made into a big puzzle at the end. And those ones I just had in the living room.
Crystal: Got it.
[00:26:21:06 - 00:26:26:19]
Crystal: Okay. But you basically you got, you got a lot of good puzzling done in December is what you're saying.
[00:26:26:19 - 00:26:45:01]
Ambie: Yeah, well, it was all small puzzling though. So it didn't feel like that much puzzling because I didn't do like a puzzle like a whole puzzle as much. Whereas usually I'll do like a big puzzle or do some speed puzzling and I'll be there for an hour doing a puzzle or something. But these were just like not that long.
[00:26:47:10 - 00:26:49:22]
Crystal: Well, there you go. That's, that's still fun, though.
[00:26:49:22 - 00:26:51:21]
Ambie: Yeah, it's nice bite sized puzzles.
[00:26:51:21 - 00:28:19:17]
Crystal: Yeah, most I mean, my board gaming throughout December was pretty much just Clank Legacy, which I know I've mentioned that I we started a couple months ago, and we are almost all the way through it. Now we're getting toward the end, I will probably provide like kind of my final thoughts after we've finished it. But I can already tell you that after having played eight games, so like if you just think of a regular game of Clank, we've played eight of those within Clank Legacy so far. And I'm not going to clarify what that even means just in case for spoiler reasons, but we've played eight games, and we're getting close to the end. And oh my gosh, I can see why so many people say this is their favorite legacy game. It's quite fun. And I will I'll give a final recap after we finished it, which will be probably in a few weeks. As we were playing through this, we're not done yet. Greg, my buddy who I talk about a lot who owns this copy of Clank Legacy, he had told us when we started playing that he had not purchased Clank Legacy 2 because he hadn't played Clank Legacy yet. And that seemed like you know, why would you purchase the second one? Well, in the midst of us playing Clank Legacy, it went on sale over the holidays and he bought it. So chances are, at some point in the near future, we're going to tackle Clank Legacy 2. And I'm already looking forward to that as well. So yeah, as far as legacy games go, it's a good one.
Ambie: Cool.
[00:28:19:17 - 00:28:34:17]
Crystal: Do you have any specific board game plans in the near future? Is it just kind of business as usual heading into 2026? Like, I know you do your weekly game nights with your friends, just kind of more the same. And I don't know, like any anything special coming up for you?
[00:28:34:17 - 00:28:37:23]
Ambie: I don't know if anything special is coming up. I can't think that far ahead.
[00:28:37:23 - 00:28:47:10]
Crystal: I know you and I especially because we're both kind of sick right now. It's really hard to think more than like five minutes in the future. I'm like, tomorrow what?
[00:28:47:10 - 00:29:08:01]
Ambie: But yeah, just weekly. Yeah, weekly game nights when people are available. And like, it seems like the last few months, my kids have been playing more with me like during the week too, they are going to go back to school. So we'll see if we still have time as much. But I think when they were in school, still, they were doing sometimes like afternoon board games with me, which is neat.
[00:29:08:01 - 00:29:32:00]
Crystal: I wish I was around my nephews more so I could do stuff like that with them. I didn't get to see them over the holidays. I got to see them back in November when they came to town for my wedding. So that was fun. But yeah, I wish I could hang out with them. I wish I could hang out with your boys. I should just come. I should just like surprise you. I should just fly.
Ambie: We have a guest room.
Crystal: Oh, okay. You know what I should I should just come visit for open games sometime.
[00:29:32:00 - 00:29:33:08]
Ambie: You should let us know.
[00:29:34:21 - 00:30:23:02]
Crystal: I'm not going to just show up randomly. It is funny though, because I remember when I was a kid, obviously not from like across the country, but like, you would just leave your house and go to your friend's house on a- Like, you wouldn't call them you wouldn't tell them you were coming, you would just go to other people's houses and knock on their door and say, Hello, I'm here now. No one does this anymore. And I'm not like mad at it. But also I kind of miss the like, Hey, look, it's your friend. Like, fun surprise of like, yeah, I just at this point, it feels like surprises are sometimes bad. Like, like, no, I'm in sweats and the house is a mess. And yeah, no, I promise if I come to San Francisco, I will let you know. Okay, that's happening.
[00:30:24:06 - 00:30:38:02]
Ambie: Yeah. So but like, my kids like this morning, they're like, I want to play another Exit game. Like, we don't have any more of those ones. We did play a couple of the Exit Kid ones, but those aren't the same. I do have like the regular Exit games
[00:30:38:02 - 00:30:44:06]
Crystal: So basically, they're growing past the kids stuff is what you're saying. They're ready for- they're their full blown escape room enthusiasts now.
Ambie: Yeah.
[00:30:44:06 - 00:31:46:20]
Ambie: So so yeah, I do have some of the regular escape room, or Exit games that I got to play with Toby that I haven't played with him yet. And so I'm not sure if those ones are-
Crystal: Yeah, screw Toby, let's play with the kids.
Ambie: Yeah. I'll have to check the themes of them.
Crystal: Right, of course.
Ambie: But maybe.
Crystal: Not all of the themes are family friendly. And it's funny, because then like, my brain immediately was like, Oh, I should buy you more Exit games. But I can't do that because you've played and own so many of them that there's no way I would be like the last time I bought you a board game that I knew that you wanted. And it was you didn't have it marked as owned on Board Game Geek yet. You already owned it. So I can't buy you board games.
Ambie: Yeah, that was my mistake.
Crystal: No, hey, no, no, no, no. I could have asked. I just was trying to be sneaky and like surprise you with a gift. But I just I should I should know better. We as board gamers, we know that that's risky business buying somebody a game. So that was really my mistake. But yeah, no, I can't buy you escape room games for sure.
[00:31:46:20 - 00:31:52:04]
Ambie: Well, we are a couple years behind on the Exit games, I think, because we haven't bought any in the in like, at least a year.
[00:31:52:04 - 00:32:00:05]
Crystal: Has the release schedule- I haven't kept up with it like we used to has the release schedule for exit games kind of stayed consistent? Like, are they still releasing like a few a year?
[00:32:00:05 - 00:32:04:25]
Ambie: I'm not sure I thought they were but I don't know. Like
Crystal: Okay
Ambie: I didn't keep up last year.
[00:32:04:25 - 00:32:23:10]
Crystal: I mean, I know that Markus and Inka Brand are literal geniuses and they have come up with so- like they have to run out of ideas at some point, don't they? I guess not. They're so like, clever. Everything that they've designed, I really enjoy. So I don't maybe they'll just be making escape rooms till the end of time.
[00:32:23:10 - 00:32:40:10]
Ambie: Oh, and speaking of them, like, I don't remember. Did I talk about Mystery Puzzles? But I have like, I bought these on Ravensburger sale. But this is like a jigsaw puzzle mystery thing that I think I might have talked about. But I did another one. But this is by Inka and Markus Brand too.
Crystal: Oh my gosh, they're like,
Ambie: So, jigsaw puzzle murder mystery.
[00:32:40:10 - 00:32:45:17]
Crystal: Basically, they're all over the place. They make board games, they make escape rooms, they make puzzles, they make everything.
[00:32:46:17 - 00:33:08:05]
Ambie: Yeah. Mystery Puzzle.
Crystal: I want to talk to them. I don't know. I've never really like do they go to board game events? Do they- they must go to conventions. I wonder at some like, I want to meet them. Of all the people that like we've talked about on the show that we've never met-
Ambie: Maybe Essen?
Crystal: Maybe. I do- I've never made it to Essen and I do really want to go sometime. So maybe at some point we can do a blitz....
[00:33:09:08 - 00:33:50:25]
Crystal: ...petition. Blitzpetition to Essen. And maybe I'll get to meet Markus and Inka Brand and just like gosh, about how much I love their work because they're just wonderful. Well, we would love to hear from you all what you did over your holiday break or just holiday times in general. Did you play any fun new games? Did you get to do any escape rooms with your kids like Ambie did? Did you play video games from a distance like I did? Let us know on social media or in the blitz discord. Tell us all about it because we'd love to hear it. And yeah, we hope you all had a Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and whatever you ended up celebrating. We hope it was lovely.
[00:33:50:25 - 00:34:37:06]
Ambie: And that’s it for this week’s Board Game Blitz. Visit our website, boardgameblitz.com for more content and links.
This episode was sponsored by Grey Fox Games. Didn’t get the game you wanted this holiday season? Head to greyfoxgames.com to do some post-holiday shopping and enjoy 10% off your entire cart, including exclusives, when you use the code BLITZ10 at checkout!
Join the blitzketeer community on discord for game nights, discussions and more by following the link in the show notes.
Support the show by leaving us a rating and review on your podcast provider
And if you like us a lot and want to support us monetarily (and get some cool perks), check out our Ko-Fi at ko-fi.com/baordgameblitz today!
Our theme song was composed by Andrew Morrow.
Until next time,
Should all these board games be forgot
Or played just one more time?
Bye everyone!
Crystal: Bye!
[00:34:46:14 - 00:34:51:03]
Crystal: At some point in the near future, we will also tank- tankle? We'll tackle.
[00:34:52:24 - 00:35:03:09]
Crystal: I'm so like-
Ambie: And that's it for this-
Crystal: Oh sorry. I did not record right into it. I'm like, blah, over here. You're okay. Sorry. You go, you go.
[00:35:04:13 - 00:35:15:15]
Ambie: Should all these board games be forgot
Or played... Wait.
Crystal: Or played da da da daaa
Ambie: Okay, I thought it was the next part.
Crystal: Yeah
Ambie: I was like, how does that part go?
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