Seth Donnelly
Portrait of Seth Donnelly

My name is Seth Donnelly, and I'm a reader, board gamer, and shelf-goblin based in Rochester, New York.

I do IT support for a university library system in Rochester, New York, which is a funny job to have if you already read too much, since I spend half my day inside the same catalog systems I use for fun after hours. I keep a running spreadsheet of everything I've read or played instead of trusting my own memory, and I've broken more than one Kickstarter budget buying the special edition when the regular one would've been fine. The name of the site is a joke my old roommate made about how I hoard both books and games on the same shelf, and it stuck.

Latest in-depth article

Essay · Oct 6, 2026

Games Like Cloudspire: A Fresh Lane Combat Pick

Games like Cloudspire scratch a specific itch: lane combat without a screen. Trials of MAYA is the newest name on that shortlist.

Everything else

  • Essay · Sep 8, 2026

    Games Like Skytear: Drafting a Team or Building a Champion

    Skytear is a card-driven miniatures MOBA with a smart structural idea: you draft your heroes from four asymmetric factions in response to what your opponent picks, and drafting a hero brings that hero's cards into your deck. Team selection and deck construction happen in the same motion.

  • Essay · Aug 24, 2026

    The Right to Be Unmodelled: Is Privacy Still Enough in the Age of Predictive AI?

    Privacy has traditionally been described as control over information. A predictive society raises a harder question than who can see your secrets.

  • Board game · Aug 20, 2026

    Sleeping Gods

    A gorgeous exploration game that ships its default difficulty way too hot, and asks you to sail back to port so often it starts to feel like a chore between the good parts.

  • Book · Aug 18, 2026

    The Cyberiad

    A robot builds a machine that can make anything starting with the letter N, someone asks it for Nothing, and the universe nearly ends over a joke, which tells you exactly what kind of book this is.

  • Essay · Jul 28, 2026

    Why I Read the Rulebook Twice

    Once to understand it, once to catch what I skimmed past the first time thinking it didn't matter yet.

  • Book · Jul 18, 2026

    Permutation City

    I spent more time reading Wikipedia articles trying to actually understand Dust Theory than I spent reading the chapters explaining it, which is either the book's biggest flaw or its whole point.

  • Board game · Jul 17, 2026

    Star Realms

    A tiny box that turns into a shelf commitment the moment you buy one expansion, but the actual attacking-your-opponent deckbuilding underneath is still some of the fastest fun I own.

  • Board game · Jul 14, 2026

    Kemet: Blood and Sand

    Streamlined and mean in the best way for the first two thirds, then the endgame at four or five players runs long enough that everyone's running on fumes by the time somebody actually wins.

  • Book · Jul 7, 2026

    Supersizing the Mind

    The idea that your mind isn't just in your skull, that your notebook or your phone can be a real extension of your cognition, is a genuinely great one buried in a book that spends too long arguing with people who aren't in the room.

  • Book · Jul 6, 2026

    His Master's Voice

    Contact's evil twin, basically, a first contact story where the whole point is that first contact fails, written by a mathematician who breaks the fourth wall on page 31 to warn you not to expect thrills.

  • Essay · Jul 1, 2026

    The Ticket Queue and the Shelf Look the Same Lately

    Fixing a login issue for the third floor archivist and thinking about deckbuilders is not a healthy sign, but here we are.

  • Board game · Jun 26, 2026

    Magical Athlete

    Drafting the weird little athletes is the whole game, the actual races are just watching dice roll while you hope your screwage power triggers at the right moment.