SELF REFERENTIAL

In the game Brix, you use both orange and blue blocks, which when those two colours are combined, happen to be the name of the the publisher Blue Orange. Quite an obvious one but one nonetheless!

MISCELLANEOUS

As well as jokes and references, another really cool thing to hide in games are real items! In Cards Against Humanity: The Bigger Blacker Box, you need to destroy a part of the box to access a secret card that is not otherwise indicated, though for obvious reasons we will not disclose exactly what it says on it. A similar gimmick was used in The Grimm Forest as the rule book states there are 56 Fable cards, but you find one that isn’t mentioned in the riule book, a 57th card called Magic Lamp. Dig a little further, literally in the bottom of the box, and you will unveil a card called the Genie! Other games that have squirreled away cards include Megaland, Hostage Negotiator: Crime Wave as well as a few legacy games that I won’t spoil for you.

Stonemaier Games have a partially recurring reference to the companies base in Missouri, home of the Gateway Arch monument. The iconic monument can be found in the logo for Viticulture for example, as well as on one of the hexes in Scythe and also on the background of one of the cards in the game Tapestry . Sticking with the latter game, some of the tapestry cards reference things from other games by the same company, for example, one card called Feudalism has many workers in the scenery cutting down grass with scythes, obviously hinting at the aforementioned game Scythe, while similarly there is also a tractor mech visible on the Wartime Economy card. You’ll also find the symbols for each Charterstone charter on the Monarchy card, while the Dystopia card features artwork from the game Euphoria.