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The year in boardgames

“2015 is the year of the board game,” I told everyone I knew. I wrote it out in emails. I typed the words out in text messages. I casually said it over the phone. If friends or family wanted to get me something for my birthday, a PlayStation gift card would not do: I had a manicured Amazon wish list pruned with all the games I wanted to play. Sure, I occasionally played games on a screen. But people know, now: when they invite me over for dinner, they better be ready to play Love Letter or Netrunner or whatever…

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Before summer ends, Dracula wants to go to the beach

For a character who has already died, Dracula sure is a chill dude. In Hotel Transylvania, the 2012 children’s movie that has a sequel coming out this month, Dracula is clumsily adjusting to domesticity. In Mel Brooks’ 1995 parody of traditional vampire stories, Dracula: Dead and Loving It, Dracula is…well…dead and loving it. All of this is a world away from Bram Stoker’s 19th century horror novel. But none of those interpretations are as far from Count Dracula’s origin story than Beardo Games’ Surf Monster, a game in which the famous vampire goes surfing. Seriously. That’s the elevator pitch. There…