Buried In A Cheap Cardboard Coffin

When we weren't looking, Cheapass Games died.

Admittedly, the current claim is that Cheapass Games is only hibernating. However, it's employees have moved on, James Ernest is designing games for other people, and Toivo is no longer collating.

I'm not sure what lead to this state of events, my three theories are:

1- At it turns out, people would rather pay 300% more for cool plastic widgets. The evidence for this can be found in the catalogue of "James Earnst Games," an imprint of Cheapass games that specialized in full-color card games, including previous hits like Give Me The Brain, and Before I Kill You, Mr. Bond. And while Killing Doctor Lucky was fun in black and white, the Paizo company has determined that it would be even more fun to do so in glorious Technicolor. (Paizo being the company that has licensed certain Cheapass Games assets. Perhaps I'll finally get a nice copy of Spree.)

2- Game Designer James Earnst's obsession with games where you bid for resources. For every The Great Brain Robbery, there seemed to be a Bleeding Sherwood, or a Jacob Marley, Esq.. I own some of those Bidding Games, and I can tell you that the only one I could ever convince people to play a second time was The Big Cheese. And that's because The Big Cheese could be played at a restaurant, while waiting for the pizza to come out. I do not imagine my experience is atypical.

3- My demographic cannot keep a business alive. Perhaps there was something else involved in the company's demise other than low sales, but given that Secret Tijuana Death Match never sold out of it's initial 5,000 copy print run, we can conclude that it was at least a strong factor.

At least the dream of James Ernest lives on. Unspeakable Words is a fun card game by James Earnst, where you try to gain 100 points by spelling out words. Every angle in the letters you use earns you a point, and the more points you make makes the word more likely to drive you insane. (Which potentially leads to a number of skipped turns, unless optional rules are used. Optional rules always make me wonder how fully a game was play-tested.) Sanity is measured by thirty neat little C'thulhu tokens, which could easily have been represented by pennies instead. I don’t know if the game has legs, but the first few play-throughs have been enjoyable enough that I’m tempted to snap up my own copy.

Alternatively, you can play Stonehenge, a board game with five different ways to play. James Ernest suggests you play a game that involves bidding on things.