Alrightreads: TV XXIV

Ilaria Vescovo, Star Trek: Baby's First Klingon Words

2022 / Ebook / 20 pages

**

A novelty item for babyish adults or parents so desperate to hook their toddler on a favourite franchise that they'll educate them in a useless fictional language, non-existent planets, curses and the names of specific weapons. There's life to waste on that stuff later.

Timothy J. Lee, Doctor Who: A Companion – An Unofficial Guide to 50 Years of T.V.'s Most Iconic Show!

2013 / Audiobook / 424 pages

***

The type of low-effort blog-as-book that's just the sort of thing I feel like sometimes.

Thomas Ligotti and Brandon Trenz, Crampton: The X-Files Screenplay

1998 / Ebook / 41 pages

****

This would have made a memorably eerie episode at the series' peak, after the extensive revisions needed to make it fit into the semi-plausible X-Files world.

Dafydd ab Hugh, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Fallen Heroes

1994 / Audiobook / 282 pages

****

Would have made a memorable time travel disaster puzzle episode, until it was made redundant by 'Visionary.'

Jacqueline Rayner, Doctor Who: EarthWorld

2001 / Audiobook / 252 pages

***

One of many books that wouldn't have crossed my path if the free audiobook hadn't been sitting there, I don't know where I'm dropping in, but the historically inaccurate killer theme park was crazy enough to keep my interest.

Alrightgames: Choose Your Own Adventure – The Warlock and the Unicorn

Choose Your Own Adventure: The Warlock and the Unicorn

2023 / Adventure gamebook / 1 player

**

The belated sequel to at least one of the endings of the surprisingly dark classic. We persevered, despite characters trying to persuade us to pack it in and go and play something else at various points. It's not difficult to work out where you are along the branching map on the back cover, but I let the six year old enjoy the often doomed journey.

Alrightgames: Takenoko

Takenoko

2011 / Board game / 2-4 players

****

Swapped into Ticket to Ride's place just in time to be a more appealing "family" Christmas game (i.e. for Daddy), this comical panda/horticulture simulator looks quite delightful, but a cute theme and miniatures only hold the six year old's interest for a few rounds at present. I hope we'll have some good memories growing up with it anyway – especially once the expansion babies come along.

Alrightgames: Tinderblox

Tinderblox

2020 / Stacking game / 2-6 players

***

I don't think we've had a stacking game since Bugs Building, but constructing this 8-bit/Minecraft fire to plan with tweezers (sometimes forced to use our less dominant hand) is considerably fiddlier.

A fun time filler, though even the low end of the suggested playing time seems optimistic.

Alrightgames: Dos

Dos

2018 / Card game / 2-4 players

*

The daughter loves a bit of Uno, so seeing that there was a sequel for about dos pounds was a no-brainer birthday present. In that I didn't think to check out reviews like I normally do until I'd already bought it and learned how terrible it supposedly was. So it skipped her birthday to avoid disappointment and ended up being more safely cushioned in a Christmas budget games bundle with other tat.

We've played it uno times. Stripped of all the cards that make Uno fun (replaced with maths!!!), we had to play a few rounds of Uno afterwards to get rid of the taste. She won't let us get rid of it though.

Alrightgames: What Next?

What Next?

2021 / Narrative/dexterity game / 1-4 players

***

A selection of choose-your-own-adventure stories enhanced with bits and bobs was an appealing idea, but in practice it feels more like overcomplication, and the tasks are very repetitive, so we might sell this on before bothering with them all. It's at least a step up from Usborne Puzzle Adventures.

Alrightgames: Muse – Dice Tower 2018 Kickstarter Promo Pack

Muse: Dice Tower 2018 Kickstarter Promo Pack

2018 / Card game mini expansion / 2-12 players

**

A few extra options at an acceptable discount that made them just about worth getting. Mixed in from the start, we wouldn't know if we had one, but they're getting their use. They should have included more in the first place, but they're easy enough to make up and there's still plenty of space in the box if we want to add our own.

Alrightgames: Muse

Muse

2017 / Card game / 2-12 players

****

Essentially Dixit or Stella for teams, though its cooperative two-player variant was more appealing for our needs. It doesn't spark imagination quite so much, but its restrictive instructions still encourage the six year old to think outside the box – like giving me the three-letter clue "agn" that baffled me until I finally realised it was an abbreviated "dragon." Nice one!

Already having surplus Dixit cards, this was easy to DIY at first by writing down the Inspiration cards and rolling dice to choose, but then we upgraded to the proper game at Christmas, whose purpose-built cards proved a greater challenge.

Alrightgames: Sushi Go!

Sushi Go!

2013 / Card game / 2-5 players

****

Similar set collecting to Sea Salt & Paper, with the twist that hands get passed around, so you need to strategise your next turn in advance, or more likely curse yourself for giving your opponent what they're after while trying to make the best of your selection, forgetting that the same thing will happen again. The cute Squishmallow sushi made it a hit with the six year old (let her have all the puddings), who was eager to head to the shop to try sushi again straight away, and apologised to the game for finding it "disgusting."

Alrightgames: Top Trumps Monster High

Top Trumps: Monster High

2013 / Card game / 2-6 players

**

An inevitable product and gift, she tends to use these more as a Guess Who than the proper game. It was good to see that no more thought was put into the stats than with the My Little Pony set, with Frankie Stein's SAT score of 1 making them considerably dumber than the overachieving pets.

Alrightgames: Monopoly – Sailor Moon

Monopoly: Sailor Moon

2024 / Trading board game / 2-6 players

***

This was a bit of a Christmas dilemma when searching for affordable Sailor Moon stuff, but I wanted us to upgrade from Monopoly Junior anyway (which barely even counts as a game) and the curiously specific theming around the exact season of the anime we just watched (the best one) and the pieces doubling as shiny souvenir tat ultimately triumphed over my distaste for completely irrelevant board game adaptations, especially ones that nonsensically use characters in place of properties. How do you mortgage Tuxedo Mask? What the hell is going on???

None of this bothered the young player, who wanted to play it every day of the school holidays after Christmas (and had to be talked out of multiple rounds for the sake of sanity). We use the house rule of everyone starting out with three random properties characters, keeping games within a tolerable range of 15–90 minutes depending on who shuffled.

Alrightgames: Star Realms – Rise of Empire – Backer Promo Pack

Star Realms: Rise of Empire – Backer Promo Pack

2024 / Deckbuilding card game expansion pack / 2+ players

****

I've got no interest in starting over with new factions in Star Realms' legacy game, but fortunately they recognised this when making the latest generous assortment of briefly-exclusive ships and bases for their loyal Kickstarter backers more of the same old shit instead. Hooray! These made their way to an apathetic eBay before long, where a seller perhaps disappointedly accepted my offer for cheaper than a standard base set.

This is mainly variety for its own sake, but Hero cards are new to me, since I'd avoided having people in my spaceship game before, and it's nice to see more docking action and double faction bonuses. Along with the Frontiers Promos, I've now got enough nu-school cards to separate the two eras (pre- and post-Frontiers) to suit almost imperceptibly different moods.

Alrightgames: The Settlers of Catan (Third Edition)

The Settlers of Catan

1995 (1997 edition) / Strategy board game / 3-4 players

***

Resold

I decided Catan wasn't really my game when I upsold the swanky new Sixth Edition set that I found cheap on eBay, but then I saw a tatty old-school '90s set going for even less, but with more character.

I hadn't realised it was the modern artifice that was putting me off, but as with Cluedo and Carcassonne, I don't need or want old games to be remastered so they appeal to people born in the 21st century. That gigantic box with its wasteful compartments, personal tuckboxes, bland card text and boardroom-abbreviated title wasn't for me. A sensible jigsaw-sized box where everything gets chucked in on top of a black and white A4 rulebook that makes it hard to tell which type of tiles are being depicted? That's more like it!

It's the same stilted and slightly boring game of development and trade as before, but it feels like I'm playing a classic now, even if it does need an expansion to be worth bothering with.

Alrightgames: Ticket to Ride – Europe

Ticket to Ride: Europe

2005 / Board game / 2-5 players

Resold

The last of the modern board game trinity after Catan and Carcassonne, it looked to be a promising silver medallist (with bonus geographical and historical education angles helping to justify it as a family purchase), but the six year old showed no interest in playing with plastic trains, and it's not really one I can play against myself, so I had to settle for upselling it for minor profit.

Alrightgames: Rory's Story Cubes – Actions

Rory's Story Cubes: Actions

2007 / Dice activity / 1+ players

***

With our existing sets being heavy on the nouns, this verby batch seemed a necessary addition to get full creative use out of the concept, so I set up a budget price alert about a year and a half ago that finally paid off. I now supposedly have everything I need to create endless roleplaying NPCs and situations on the fly, except perhaps for an optimally functioning mind.

Alrightgames: Basic Fantasy Adventure – Island in River (Adapted)

Basic Fantasy Adventure: Island in River (Adapted)

2011 / Roleplaying game adventure / 2+ players

****

These laid-back prompts for an island trek were just what I was hoping for when the young player wanted to play 'Story Game' on the Catan board again with no preparation and I grabbed a trusty Adventure Anthology off the bookshelf. The map helped to populate the hexes (not to scale) with equivalent creatures, structures and morbid ambiance as our characters set about gathering wood to build a bridge across a narrow channel back to the mainland, even though one of us can fly and the others are capable swimmers. All those points put into Mind were clearly a waste.

Alrightgames: The Game

The Game

2015 / Card game / 1-5 players

***

The most abstract of games was a charity shop steal (not literally), though sorting ascending and descending number piles isn't the most rewarding solo activity in my roster. It'll be more useful as maths practice when my daughter's a bit older, and not being allowed to warn young teammates about potentially costly mistakes is no doubt where the real challenge lies.

Alrightgames: Scaled Cluedo (Variant)

Scaled Cluedo

2004 / Board game variant / 2-5 players

****

This setup for two-player Cluedo worked a treat with a young player who enjoyed beating me to the rooms to steal the sequestered cards. She'll probably insist on it even when we have enough players for the normal game.

Alrightgames: Solo Splendor

Solo Splendor

2015 / Economic card game rule variant / 1 player

****

My daughter likes to impress the select nobles she's impressed by, but her interest doesn't usually stretch to a full game of gem... conquest or whatever's going on, so I was glad to find some guy's solo house rules online.

The ever-dwindling supply seemed hopeless until I succeeded with one gem left in the stock on normal difficulty, so working up the levels could be a satisfying challenge when I feel like something lighter than Machina Arcana.

Babyliography CCXXXIII

Stephanie Moss and Junissa Bianda, Bedtime Stories

2020 / Hardback / 48 pages

*

Her pick from a charity shop's free Christmas clearout, I insisted she wouldn't actually bother to read it, which motivated her to read the whole thing in one sitting. I know what I'm doing.

Heather Amery and Linda Edwards, The Usborne Children's Bible

2009 / Paperback / 144 pages

**

Most of the stories look terrible, but there are a few that are good to have in your general cultural awareness, and it was nice when she read to herself over Christmas.

Paul Mason and Tony De Saulles, The Wee That Animals Pee

2020 / Paperback / 32 pages

***

Like some questionably themed QI compilation.

Naoko Takeuchi, Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: Eternal Edition, Vol. 1

1991-92 (2018 edition) / Paperback / 304 pages

****

We skipped the early reader episode adaptations and went straight to the source manga, authentic reverse printing and all. She doesn't even mind that they're not coloured in, and not having to sit through the same animated transformation sequence every issue saves time.

Naoko Takeuchi, Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon: Eternal Edition, Vol. 2

1992-93 (2018 edition) / Paperback / 352 pages

****

I thought these two might last her a while, but she's not satisfied by just the one chapter per day, and it's not like we can pause just as her favourite character shows up, so I had to extend the Christmas present to the whole set. That doesn't happen with dolls.

Babyliography CCXXXII

Paul Sloane and Des MacHale, Great Lateral Thinking Puzzles

1994 / Ebook / 96 pages

****

Clever classics and ridiculous stretches, both types entertaining.

Zanna Davidson and Barbara Bongini, Fairy Ponies: Unicorn Prince

2014 / Hardback / 96 pages

**

Short-sightedly incompatible with the later Fairy Unicorns spin-off, but parallel evolution could explain it.

Linda Chapman and Biz Hull, My Secret Unicorn: The Magic Spell

2002 / Paperback / 128 pages

***

We started again after not getting far the first time. She already greedily wants more books advertised on the back of her six-book gift set, but we have to put the work in first.

Catherine Baker and Carl Morris, Collins Big Cat Phonics for Letters and Sounds: Dragon Owner's Manual

2020 / School book / 24 pages

**

She picked up on the disconnect between what's being claimed vs what's actually being shown. She didn't find it funny, but she got it.

Linda Chapman and Biz Hull, My Secret Unicorn: Dreams Come True

2002 / Paperback / 128 pages

**

Backtracking from more recent secret unicorn friend series, it's clear those are copying these ones beat for beat, unless the debt goes further back. At least the cover art kept the other horse's identity ambiguous this time.

Babyliography CCXXXI

Various, My Little Pony: Friends Forever, Volume 6

2015-16 (collected 2016) / Paperback / 104 pages

***

Pinkie Pie comic stories are pretty much her favourite My Little Pony stories, even if none will compare to the Noms story.

Stephen Mulhern, Unbelievable!: The Secrets of Magic Revealed

2025 / Library book / 96 pages

**

A cornucopia of unimpressive tricks, but she liked the lipstick one.

Ben Hubbard, Collins Big Cat Phonics for Letters and Sounds: Sharks

2021 / School book / 24 pages

***

Not as scary as it would have been a few months ago. These books seem designed to desensitise.

Emily Grossman, DK Findout!: Science

2016 / Library book / 64 pages

****

The answers to many of her questions, explained more clearly than I'm able to on the walk to school.

Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

1911 / Hardback / 10 of 200 pages

***

At her insistence, we got through a chapter of this literary classic at bedtime, but she didn't express interest again.