Jan 20, 2012

Shake Out! Reviewed by On Board Games!

I'm home today cause I'm feeling a little under the weather. I was, however, feeling well enough to do a little work and, as I usually do when working, I put on a podcast; On Board Games to be exact. So, imagine my surprise when Shake Out! was mentioned in the intro! 



On Board Games is one of my favourite podcasts about board gaming. The show is put on by Donald Dennis along with Erik Dewey and Scott Nicholson, of Board Games with Scott fame, with occasional segments by Giles Pritchard. The show is full of thoughtful discussion on games, game play mechanisms and the industry as a whole. I highly recommend it for any fan of the hobby.

Now, a little back story as to how Shake Out! ended up getting reviewed on the show. It's pretty standard practice for game publishers to send out complementary review copies of newly released or upcoming games to reviewers in the hopes of getting the word out. As Shake Out! is published through The Game Crafter and I've got to pay for each copy sent out this way I decided to play it a little safe and start by emailing a number of reviewers to ask if they were interested. A number of them wrote back, showing interest in reviewing the game and these are the ones I sent copies to.

A funny thing happened with the email I sent to Donald, who runs the On Board Games podcast. He said he wasn't interested. Boo... But he said he thought the game looked right up Erik's alley. Yay! So I placed an order to have a copy shipped to Erik... And that's when inspiration struck! I remembered that Donald runs a number of programs promoting gaming in public libraries and I figured, "Hey! The kids might like Shake Out!" So, I sent another email to Don saying: "Hey! The kids might like Shake Out!" and this time, he agreed and figured he and Erik could chat about it on the show if they both gave it a go. Well, they gave it a go, liked it and totally chatted about it on the show!

You can listen to the episode in question here. As usual it's full of great stuff and very informative. If this kind of podcast isn't really your thing and you would rather skip to the bit about Shake Out! you can scrub ahead to the 1:07:07 mark in the show.

Both Erik and Don liked the game and gave it a green light and a "high" yellow light respectively! I couldn't be more thrilled!


No comments:

Post a Comment