My Worst Enemies in Games

Are you looking for a list of dark lords or antagonists here?Â
Then you’re wrong.
For there are some that go beyond evil.Â
After playing print-and-play games for quite a while, I summoned enough courage to write about the culprits that no one dared to speak of. So here I go, typing out some of the worst enemies to encounter in print-and-play games.
You have been warned. Disturbing images and content ahead!
Unequal Dice
HOW?! How did this happen? How is it possible to make an unequal dice? It does not make any sense! If you don’t know this, dice are made literally with a dice (a cast), to ensure the sides are of the same dimensions. In other words, it’s not possible to make an unequal dice, unless someone is really out there to ruin your day.
So while I’m raging over my set of unequal dice that I just unboxed for a game night, some bugger is having mischievous laughter thinking of the priceless reaction of the recipient of this marvelous disaster.
I am not even going to talk about the defective dice that has repeating numbers on its ends- like a dice with two 3s and no 6.. It can be perfect for a game prank though. Imagine telling your friend that his game starts with rolling a 3, when you know the dice does not have it!

Lamination falling off
Just when I’m basking on my genius idea of laminating game parts to make sure they last long- they don’t! And it’s weird how they have to come apart right when I’m in one of those intense moments of the game.Â
Why would you fall off even after going through the machine twice?!Â
I patted myself on the back to have realized that laminating art papers is a no-go, so I stopped taking that path. It’s not that lamination falls off every other day, but the sad thing is that it may happen on any day. One of those days, when the laminator does not feel like doing its job. One of the days when the God of Lamination is not by your side!
Printer hates you!
Oh, the partner in crime, printer, and its ink tank. Just like the lamination machine, they have a mind of their own. Paper stuck inside the printer? Inconsistent ink? A drastic change in color balance? Printer pumping out blank sheets despite having all the ink the world has in the offering? Yep. I’ve been through all of this.
Deep inside, I feel the reason I have mastered the art of being patient is due to my printer and lamination machine. I am grateful. And awfully pissed off about that.
Lack of Playthrough videos
You love how the game sounds, enough to have already printed and assembled the game components? Guess what, there are no playthrough videos for this game!
Such was my luck when I tried out the game Leaky Boat. The game felt really awesome from just reading the manual, but finding a playthrough video or tutorial was a needle-in-the-haystack kind of scenario. Thankfully I got my hands on an old streaming video on Twitch that helped me learn the game.
Dear game developers, please create a small tutorial or playthrough video for your game’s sake! Big please.
Too many components
Dear game designer, you are supposed to make a game. Not a whole universe! While many will disagree with me on this point, I think there should be a limit on the number of components for print-and-play games. I am all in for tons of components for a board game, or even expansion packs for PnP games. But if the basic game has enough components to send humans back to the moon again, then I am on the fence.Â
And as far as the complications of assembling print-and-play games are concerned, please keep in mind that people are building the components. And the majority are as noob as I am!
No, John, I don’t know how to triple-fold and paste a cardstock paper! Good lord…

Poor Cliffhangers!
This is particularly effective for deductive games.Â
After playing a deductive game for 3 hours (God bless my patience level, kudos to my printer and laminating machine), I reached the climax of the game. And dare I say this. I was not ready for it:
Continue to Level 2 to find out. Click here to purchase Level 2
Is this what the buildup for the past 3 hours was for?!
So I saved up all my gasps for this?
I am never gonna mentally recover from this!
Continuation of a game in the form of a series is perfectly fine, as long as each level gives some form of satisfaction! I had to watch a few episodes of Mike Flanagan’s Midnight Club to let off all of my built-up gasps.Â
Okay, I am done ranting!
Have you made it thus far? How many enemies do we have in common? Which one in particular is your Jim Moriarty? Think!

Tasliman is a board game developer based in Bangladesh, with the dream of exploring the world of games and introducing it to anyone new to it. He is the founder of Kraftz, a brand that develops board games commercially, as well as with reputed entities like BRAC and The Gates Foundation.