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All board game publishers have a certain envy for video game tutorials. No need to read a weighty manual or suffer through explanations by 'the person who knows the rules'...but who clearly has no idea how to explain them. No sir! Simply fire up the game and the interface guides us as we learn how to perform all the necessary actions to lead us to glorious victory!This kind of system could help bypass the biggest barrier in our beloved hobby: Learning The Rules. You can imagine my excitement, therefore, when I came across a number of board games that offered in-game tutorials! What a concept! I threw myself into them with great enthusiasm, and discovered... that I wasn't at all convinced that they were a good idea after all. 

 I didn’t want to talk about COVID-19…It seems to me that everything has already been said. This illness has already become the sole subject of conversation between families, friends, lovers; I didn’t really want to add anything to this, and to talk about something else. Anything else! But I realise that to ignore this, in our current environment, would verge on the indecent.

When we released Decrypto, I gave myself the goal to reach the 300th position in the ranking at BoardGameGeek.com. I even dreamt of 200th place, without really believing it. I also told myself that if Decrypto didn’t make it to 500th position, I would give up this whole publishing gig!! Why? Without taking away anything from the other titles in our catalogue, Decrypto had the best potential to connect with the ‘connaisseur’ gamers (notice the quotation marks!) that often visit Board Game Geek, and who play hundreds of games. Our other top-sellers, Monster Chase, and J’te gage que… (I Betcha), don’t appeal to that crowd, despite selling 200,000 and 400,000 copies respectively. If Scorpion Masqué wasn’t able to get Decrypto to 300th place, we would have to be doing something wrong, perhaps without even knowing what… and there’s no room for improvement if we can’t identify our mistakes.