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The guy in charge of art for publisher Allplay has some strong opinions about...art. How does his company pick what art and which artists go with which games? Who are the artists he loves working with, who's on his wishlist, and what happened to make him never want to work with a particular artist again? How do art and artists impact sales?  And what does he think of generative A.I. art? Allplay CEO Joe Wiggins joins the show to discuss art, art, and art! Chapters: Going Analog's Game Pick: Drillers. Joe's Game Pick: Size Wise. Joe's Topic: Game art and artists Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Everywhere we look, there are sequels and remakes of some older (and some not-so-old) classics. We're suckers for super deluxe beautified versions of, say, The Gang, and we're loving the latest in franchises like King of Tokyo. We played a bunch of these fresh new takes and are ready to give you our thoughts! Chapters: Christina's Game Pick: Oasis: New Life on a Distant World. Shoe's Game Pick: Super Auto Pets Card Battle. New spins on classics. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We've been playing so many board game remakes, redos, and sequels lately that we knew we had to invite Rob Daviau to the show. He's perhaps most well-known for creating the "legacy" concept and genre in which board games get permanently altered as players progress through their chapters (see: Pandemic Legacy, Risk Legacy). He's also working on The Lord of the Rings: The King's Gambit, the highly anticipated follow-up to the well-beloved and long out of print Star Wars: The Queen's Gambit. Oh, and he co-founded Restoration Games, a publisher whose entire existence revolves around reviving older games with fresh coats of deluxe-ness. We chat about restoring games, the business of making sequels, and more. Chapters: Going Analog's Game Pick: Bookwyrm. Rob's Game Pick: Pathfinder (no, not that Pathfinder). Discussion! Restoration games, sequels, remakes, and more. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Board game conventions: These massive gatherings of game makers, game players, and games can be so fun (and sometimes chaotic), but how do you know which to go to? You've got Gen Con, Essen Spiel, BGG.CON, PAX Unplugged, Origins, Dice Tower...and these are just the big-name ones. This week, we're joined by Paula Deming of Things Get Dicey (and about a billion other board-game-related projects). She suggested we talk about all these board game conventions that we get to go to. What are our favorite and bucket-list shows? How are they all different from each other? Want to know what the vibes are at these major conventions? Then tune in. Chapters: Going Analog's Game Pick: Whisperwood. Paula's Game Pick: Among Cultists. Paula's topic: Board game conventions -- how they differ, our faves, and which ones we still want to go to.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Gen Con 2026 was eventful. We saw some big shifts in the tabletop industry, we previewed a trillion new games, and we even got a close call with a tornado. Yes, a real-life tornado. As cool as it would've been to see thousands of cards, dice, cubes, and other pieces swirling into the heavens, we were thankful no precious games got hurt. Oh, and people, too. We're back from North America's largest tabletop gaming convention and sat down to chat about all the fun and excitement. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last episode, we had an expert come on the show to talk about trick-taking games. But we're not sure what's an "expert" for the broader category of just "card games" so...no guest today! Just Christina and Shoe talking about new cards games they got to try that all have one interesting element or twist to them. Chapters: Going Analog's Game Pick: Cozy Stickerville. Sponsored spot: MILLRAT Pack! – 4 Games Made for Game Night. Card games with a twist: Haunted Mouse. dnup. Beach Bandits. Soothsayers. Questline. Circadia. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You just can't miss 'em: trick-taking games are everywhere. Maybe there are too many -- but we did find some interesting new ones that are worth a closer look. And who better to join us in this discussion than Taylor Reiner of Taylor's Trick-Taking Table? Taylor's done it all in this category: content creation, game development, and original designs. Together, we cover a few noteworthy new releases in the world of trick-taking, including some obscure ones you've likely never heard of.  Chapters: Going Analog's Game Pick: Entropy. Taylor's Game Pick: Finger Crane Game Championship. New trick-taking games worth checking out. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's always fun to get a peek at what goes on at these giant board game conventions in faraway exotic lands -- in this case, the United Kingdom. The 2026 UK Games Expo is behind us now, but our man on the inside (of the country) got to go and tells us all about it. Henry Stenhouse, frequent Going Analog contributor and full-time British guy, gives us his thoughts on the UK's largest hobby games event. What are all the cool things he got to see and play? Listen or watch to find out. Chapters: Going Analog's Game Pick: SETI: Space Agencies. Henry's Game Pick: Spooky Goose. The 2026 UKGE. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Legendary video game designer Tim Schafer of Double Fine (Psychonauts, Broken Age, and most recently, Kiln) has been one of our board game buddies for years now. So we took advantage of that relationship and put Tim on the show, filmed right in Double Fine's studio. As our guest, he gets to pick the topic, and he had several good ideas. We steered him toward our favorite, though: Why making board games is harder than making video games. He's been successful for one of those -- not so much in the other. So he'll be speaking from experience here. Chapters: Going Analog's Game Pick: Postcards. Tim's Game Pick: Cave Evil. Tim's topic: Why making board games is harder than making video games. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We were a little late in getting Eric Yurko from What's Eric Playing? on the show to discuss The American Tabletop Awards. But hey, these are 2026's winners and nominees...for games released in 2025. So who's to say when we should be covering these things? We are also on the judging committee, so it's always fun to do this each year: bring Eric on, discuss the winners and almost-winners, and tell everyone how we voted. Come join us to see what was the best of 2026! Er, we mean 2025! Chapters: Going Analog's Game Pick: VNTYPL8S. Eric Yurko's Game Pick: MicroMacro: Kids. The 2026 American Tabletop Awards: Early Gamers. The 2026 American Tabletop Awards: Casual Games. The 2026 American Tabletop Awards: Strategy Games. The 2026 American Tabletop Awards: Complex Games. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Our industry guests pick the topic that they want to discuss on our show, and Josh Wood, designer of Let's Go! To Japan (and the upcoming Let's Go! To France), asked us if he can talk about "big decks." That was an immediate "yes" from us, without even knowing what he meant (Hey, "big decks" makes for a great headline). What it's really about: the recent trend of huge decks of cards that supply most of the replayability for a board game. Josh gives us his POV as a designer of games with sizable...um, decks. We also ask him a million questions about Let's Go! To France as it gets ready to go live on Kickstarter, go over our respective "Game Picks," and more. Chapters: Going Analog's Game Pick: Bloodstone. Josh Wood's Game Pick: Yeti in the House. Let's Go! To Japan. Big deck energy (and how it affects replayability). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Last episode got too heavy for us, so we're going super light this time around. Light games, party games...we have a dozen of them to chat about this week! Chapters: Game pick: Vantage. Light/party games. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We might need to make this an annual tradition: We get new heavy games in. We take forever to learn them. We then spend hours playing them (with our good friend Daniel from The Game Table, who even spent the night at our place this time to get in more gaming the next day). Then we record a podcast episode giving our thoughts on them. We have a bunch of new, newish, and future releases to cover, so listen in to see what we liked and didn't like about our plays. Timeline: 1:34 - Brass: Pittsburg. 12:59 - Speakeasy. 17:40 - The Great Library. 20:50 - Nippon: Zaibatsu. 27:05 - Thebai. 33:25 - Tianxia. 40:09 - Covenant. 45:14 - Barrage: Duel. 51:57 - Darwin's Journey: Oceania. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fort Circle Games takes history very seriously...but not overly so. Titles like Votes for Women and The Halls of Montezuma treat their subject matters with respect (the women's suffrage movement and the Mexican-American War, respectively) with research, consultants, and even facsimiles of documents. It might sound a little dry, but Fort Circle is on a mission: to bring this knowledge to gamers while adhering to modern game-design sensibilities. They want you to learn a thing or three...while having fun. We invited Fort Circle founder and owner Kevin Bertram to talk more about his company's interesting philosophy and how games can be educational, without necessarily being educational games. Timeline: 2:38 - Going Analog's game pick: Behind the Lens: Photographing Earth. 6:50 - Kevin's game pick: Fortress America. 8:52 - More about Fort Circle Games. 17:52 - Kevin's topic: The educational value of board games. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

We're back from Dice Tower West, horribly dehydrated and almost 200 games lighter. While we offloaded a lot of our collection at the convention's flea market, we did get to play a bunch of new games (super shoutout to Grant's Game Recs for showing us the majority of them). So it's only a matter of time before we start buying more games to fill in those sad gaps on our shelves. Listen or watch to see what's got us excited after five days of conventioning! Timeline: 3:02 - Shoe's game pick: Pantheauction. 5:56 - Christina's game pick: Bullseye. 11:30 - Going Analog's topic: The best games we played from Dice Tower West 2026. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices