Roll-and-write board games are having their moment in the sun

polygon.com:

The COVID-19 lockdown was truly the best of times and worst of times for the board game industry. Forced inside for months on end, consumer demand for board games skyrocketed while supply chain problems made getting those games harder and harder. The most popular games to come out of the pandemic are the roll-and-writes, a genre of game that lends itself well to socially distanced and even Zoom-based gameplay. That popularity was reflected at this year’s Gen Con, where the presence of these games at numerous companies’ booths suggested that we’re entering a new age of innovation for the genre.

Roll-and-writes represent a lot of opportunity for the designer since they can accommodate higher player counts, flexible asymmetry, and brand-new ways to approach co-op and competitive gameplay. Interestingly, the “writing” portion of these games has shifted from pad-and-paper setups (as in games like Cartographers) to laminated dry-erase mats (which most of the new games at Gen Con featured). With a few years since the craze kicked off, every aspect of these games have been tinkered with and improved over time. It sure ain’t Yahtzee anymore.

Designer James Kniffen came up with the idea for Twilight Inscription almost by accident — it came to him as part of a series of pitches he was working on for Fantasy Flight. The prospect of condensing Twilight Imperium, a game famous for its complexity and length of playtime, into something as compact as a roll-and-write was no easy task. It took over a year of work to get it to its final state, the key breakthrough being the decision to split the game into four separate sections: Warfare, Industry, Navigation, and Exploration.

What Kniffen ended up with is a perfect distillation of what