Logan Barrett's board game and book reviews plus personal essays — a small, old-fashioned personal site, no review copies.https://loganbarrett.com/en-UShttps://loganbarrett.com/essays/why-i-wont-play-a-game-solo/https://loganbarrett.com/essays/why-i-wont-play-a-game-solo/I own three games with dedicated solo modes and I've never once played any of them by myself, and I finally sat down to work out why.Fri, 21 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalLogan Barretthttps://loganbarrett.com/reviews/candide/https://loganbarrett.com/reviews/candide/A short, brutal, genuinely funny demolition of the idea that everything happens for a reason, and I read it in one sitting out of pure spite for the philosophy it's mocking.Thu, 20 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksLogan Barretthttps://loganbarrett.com/reviews/the-core-of-the-sun/https://loganbarrett.com/reviews/the-core-of-the-sun/A Finnish dystopia about selective breeding for femininity, told partly through fake government documents, and it's about chili peppers in a way I did not expect going in.Wed, 19 Aug 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksLogan Barretthttps://loganbarrett.com/essays/the-library-branch-on-coldwater-road/https://loganbarrett.com/essays/the-library-branch-on-coldwater-road/Most of what my book club reads comes from one specific branch, and the two women who run the request desk know my hold list better than I do.Tue, 21 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalLogan Barretthttps://loganbarrett.com/essays/the-rating-i-went-back-and-changed/https://loganbarrett.com/essays/the-rating-i-went-back-and-changed/I gave Heat: Pedal to the Metal four stars the week I finished writing about it, then quietly agreed with myself a month later that it should have been a three.Thu, 16 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalLogan Barretthttps://loganbarrett.com/reviews/steps-to-an-ecology-of-mind/https://loganbarrett.com/reviews/steps-to-an-ecology-of-mind/A collection of essays by an anthropologist, psychiatrist, and biologist all at once, tied together by metalogues I now reread on purpose.Sat, 04 Jul 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksLogan Barretthttps://loganbarrett.com/reviews/scythe/https://loganbarrett.com/reviews/scythe/An engine building game wearing area control's clothes, gorgeous on the table, and the faction abilities are noticeably uneven at different player counts.Wed, 24 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesLogan Barretthttps://loganbarrett.com/reviews/forbidden-stars/https://loganbarrett.com/reviews/forbidden-stars/Warhammer 40k dudes-on-a-map with an order-stacking system that punishes you slowly instead of all at once, which I like more than I expected to.Thu, 18 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesLogan Barretthttps://loganbarrett.com/reviews/mechs-vs-minions/https://loganbarrett.com/reviews/mechs-vs-minions/A programming co-op with a legacy streak, box production that's basically a marketing event unto itself, and mission difficulty that swings around more than I expected.Tue, 16 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesLogan Barretthttps://loganbarrett.com/reviews/spirit-island/https://loganbarrett.com/reviews/spirit-island/A cooperative game where the win condition is watching invaders slowly run out of places to stand, and the brain burn is completely earned.Sat, 30 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesLogan Barretthttps://loganbarrett.com/reviews/dune-gf9/https://loganbarrett.com/reviews/dune-gf9/Winning a fight in this game is supposed to feel good and it usually doesn't, which sounds like a design flaw until you realize that's the entire point.Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesLogan Barretthttps://loganbarrett.com/reviews/schilds-ladder/https://loganbarrett.com/reviews/schilds-ladder/Greg Egan turns an entirely new universe with its own made-up physics into something like a game of life, and my math background wasn't quite enough to keep up.Mon, 18 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksLogan Barretthttps://loganbarrett.com/reviews/heat-pedal-to-the-metal/https://loganbarrett.com/reviews/heat-pedal-to-the-metal/I have no interest in racing as a theme and this one still got its hooks in me, mostly on the strength of the heat management deck.Mon, 11 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesLogan Barretthttps://loganbarrett.com/essays/the-shift-swap-that-almost-cost-me-book-club/https://loganbarrett.com/essays/the-shift-swap-that-almost-cost-me-book-club/Deb covered a Tuesday for me once without me even having to ask twice, and I don't think I ever properly told her what that meant.Mon, 04 May 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalLogan Barretthttps://loganbarrett.com/reviews/annihilation-of-caste/https://loganbarrett.com/reviews/annihilation-of-caste/A speech that was too dangerous for the audience it was written for, published instead as a book, and it still reads like it's aimed directly at you.Sat, 25 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksLogan Barretthttps://loganbarrett.com/reviews/brass-birmingham/https://loganbarrett.com/reviews/brass-birmingham/An economic engine so tight that the first era feels like a warmup for the actual game, which starts the moment the board gets cleared for era two.Sun, 19 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesLogan Barretthttps://loganbarrett.com/essays/why-i-still-buy-physical-books/https://loganbarrett.com/essays/why-i-still-buy-physical-books/Everyone in my book club has an e-reader except me, and the reason isn't nostalgia, it's that I need to see how far I've gotten.Sat, 18 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalLogan Barretthttps://loganbarrett.com/reviews/7-wonders/https://loganbarrett.com/reviews/7-wonders/A fast, pretty drafting game that I respect more than I actually crave, and the two player mode is doing something genuinely strange under the hood.Wed, 15 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesLogan Barretthttps://loganbarrett.com/reviews/anathem/https://loganbarrett.com/reviews/anathem/A thousand pages set in a monastery for mathematicians on a planet that isn't Earth, and the first hundred pages of invented vocabulary are worth pushing through.Sat, 28 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksLogan Barretthttps://loganbarrett.com/reviews/godtear/https://loganbarrett.com/reviews/godtear/Gorgeous sculpts, a genuinely clever objective system, and dice swingy enough that I've mostly stopped bringing it to the table.Mon, 09 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesLogan Barretthttps://loganbarrett.com/reviews/black-leopard-red-wolf/https://loganbarrett.com/reviews/black-leopard-red-wolf/A dense, brutal African-inspired fantasy that asks a lot of patience up front and rewards maybe two thirds of it.Sun, 01 Mar 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksLogan Barretthttps://loganbarrett.com/reviews/revelation-space/https://loganbarrett.com/reviews/revelation-space/Hard space opera with a genuinely unsettling answer to the Fermi Paradox, and an author a little too in love with explaining his own physics.Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksLogan Barretthttps://loganbarrett.com/reviews/the-book-of-the-new-sun/https://loganbarrett.com/reviews/the-book-of-the-new-sun/An unreliable torturer narrates his own exile across a dying Earth, and the prose is doing more heavy lifting than almost anything else I've finished this year.Wed, 14 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTBooksLogan Barretthttps://loganbarrett.com/essays/the-tolerance-stack-i-bring-home-from-the-plant/https://loganbarrett.com/essays/the-tolerance-stack-i-bring-home-from-the-plant/My job is finding the small defect nobody else notices, and I cannot turn that habit off once I walk in my own front door.Sun, 04 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMTPersonalLogan Barretthttps://loganbarrett.com/reviews/earthborne-rangers/https://loganbarrett.com/reviews/earthborne-rangers/A living card game that builds its whole narrative out of which cards you happen to play, and I finished a solo campaign for the first time in my life because of it.Tue, 30 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTBoard GamesLogan Barretthttps://loganbarrett.com/essays/what-a-fort-wayne-winter-does-to-thursday-game-night/https://loganbarrett.com/essays/what-a-fort-wayne-winter-does-to-thursday-game-night/Attendance drops, the games get shorter and simpler, and I've started keeping a mental map of whose driveway gets plowed first.Mon, 29 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTPersonalLogan Barretthttps://loganbarrett.com/essays/teaching-deb-spirit-island-on-a-wednesday-that-went-long/https://loganbarrett.com/essays/teaching-deb-spirit-island-on-a-wednesday-that-went-long/I offered to teach my shift lead a game I love, on a night I promised would be quick, and neither of those things went the way I planned.Wed, 24 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTPersonalLogan Barretthttps://loganbarrett.com/reviews/are-we-smart-enough/https://loganbarrett.com/reviews/are-we-smart-enough/De Waal's whole argument boils down to: we keep designing tests animals fail and calling that proof of their limits, instead of questioning the test.Mon, 01 Dec 2025 00:00:00 GMTBooksLogan Barretthttps://loganbarrett.com/essays/the-spreadsheet-i-keep-instead-of-trusting-my-memory/https://loganbarrett.com/essays/the-spreadsheet-i-keep-instead-of-trusting-my-memory/Before this site existed there was a plain spreadsheet, and it turns out that spreadsheet is still doing most of the actual work.Wed, 19 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTPersonalLogan Barretthttps://loganbarrett.com/essays/marcuss-basement-has-a-light-problem-and-nobody-will-fix-it/https://loganbarrett.com/essays/marcuss-basement-has-a-light-problem-and-nobody-will-fix-it/Six years of Thursday nights under one bad overhead fixture, and somehow replacing it has never once made it to the top of anyone's list.Thu, 13 Nov 2025 00:00:00 GMTPersonalLogan Barrett