A Backstab-Your-Buddy Publisher, Two Industrial Designers, and 32 River Stones That Fooled Everyone
Made the cut
Smirk & Dagger spent fourteen years publishing games about betrayal and backstabbing.
Then founder Curt Covert watched two product designers play a game made of carved wooden boards and tumbled river stones at a design conference. No theme. No luck. No cards.
He published it almost unchanged.
We scored it 8.3.
What We Verified
Both Manolis Vranas and Jamie Sajdak are professionally trained industrial and product designers, not game designers. They run Seesaw Games, a design partnership focused on compelling game objects.
That distinction shows in every material choice: four carved wooden boards (two light, two dark), 32 real river stones, and a cotton rope. No plastic. No printed cardboard.
Smirk & Dagger had to seek an alternative printing partner to preserve the natural aesthetic. No standard board game manufacturer could handle real wood and stone.
That is not a marketing claim. Meeple Mountain confirmed it in their editorial review, noting that each playing piece is comfortably weighty and uniquely oblong.
Why WOW Scored 9 Out of 10
WOW measures uniqueness and discovery factor. SHŌBU earned its 9 because it occupies a space no other abstract strategy game fills.
The components read as archaeological artifact, not modern retail product.
Board Game Quest gave it a perfect 5 out of 5 and called it an absolute classic not of that year, but ever. Gaming Trend scored it 100 out of 100.
Two perfect scores from independent outlets reviewing the same game.
The publisher’s own internal test raises the bar further. Curt Covert’s rule: if playtesters do not spontaneously ask “when is this coming out?” the game gets abandoned.
SHŌBU passed.
The Score Breakdown
GLOW (8/10): Four wooden boards, polished river stones, and rope create sculptural table presence. The boards display as objects between plays. One Amazon reviewer praised the wood’s scent.
WOW (9/10): Feels like an ancient game unearthed from a dig site. Two industrial designers, two perfect review scores, four award nominations including Origins Award and Golden Geek.
MOMENT (8/10): River stones call out to be held. The entire ruleset takes sixty seconds. First game creates an instant ritual. Fifteen minutes becomes an hour.
TRUST (7.7/10): 206 Amazon reviews at 4.6 stars with 79% five-star ratings. Six independent editorial reviews, all positive. Nominated for Origins Award, Golden Geek, and American Tabletop Awards. Minor quality complaints about board finish and stone sizing noted in three-star reviews.
Final score: (8 x 0.25) + (9 x 0.35) + (8 x 0.25) + (7.7 x 0.15) = 8.3. Threshold is 8.0. SHŌBU passed.
Who This Is For
We matched SHŌBU to husbands and boyfriends who appreciate design and materials, couples who want a screen-free evening ritual, and friends who want competitive strategy without chess’s opening theory.
The one-minute teach removes barriers for non-gamers. The wooden boards double as coffee table objects between plays.
At $40, it sits in the friend-gift and birthday sweet spot.
The fail case is a set of handsome wooden trays and polished stones. That is not much of a fail case.
What Gave Us Pause
Some copies have inconsistent component quality. The dark board finish has been described as unattractive in three-star Amazon reviews, and black stones are noticeably smaller than white in certain production runs.
Zero luck means zero mercy: mismatched experience creates lopsided games with no dice to blame.
Strictly two players. No theme, no narrative, pure spatial reasoning on wood.
We flag these because honesty about limitations is how trust compounds. The product passed our 8.0 threshold. The quality complaints are a minority pattern, not a structural flaw.
The Verification Trail
We confirmed the 4.6-star rating from 206 Amazon Verified Purchase reviews. We verified both designers’ industrial design credentials through Meeple Mountain’s editorial profile. We confirmed the alternative manufacturer sourcing through the same outlet.
We cross-referenced the award nominations (Origins Award 2020, Golden Geek 2019, American Tabletop Awards Best Strategy Game 2020) through Tabletop Bellhop’s review.
We verified Board Game Quest’s 5/5 and Gaming Trend’s 100/100 at their source URLs.
Every claim in this Lab Note traces to a verified source. The full methodology is available on our SHŌBU product page.
