A few weeks ago, I spent several days in Salt Lake City on business. During the day, the mountains around the city look beautiful, but at night it’s difficult to see much and I didn’t feel like getting lost on a drive. So instead of sitting in my hotel room, I went to visit a local game store that I discovered through a little internet research. What a find!

Game Night Games is an amazing store. It’s a little unusual for a game store in that it carries no roleplaying games, no collectible card games, and no miniatures. But in terms of board games and non-collectible card games, I haven’t been to a brick-and-mortar store with a better collection. Game Night Games’ inventory is both broad and deep. The store has many different board games of all styles and genres. There are complex Euro games, light family games, heavy themed games, children’s games, war games, traditional card games, and modern card games. And not just a few in each category. The store has separate sections for different categories, some by theme and some by style. There’s a section for science fiction games, a section for young children, a section for economic games, and several more. The store also has multiple copies in stock of most games.

But that’s not all. The store is neat, clean, the fixtures are nice and all match, each section has a painted wood sign, and they even have fancy custom printed paper shopping bags (like the kind you get at a nice department store). It’s the kind of place that would be attractive to non-hobbyists as well.

When I went to Game Night Games on Tuesday night, there was a meeting taking place of the Board Game Designers Guild of Utah. This group meets 1-2 times per month to playtest each others games and discuss advice on getting games published. The group was extremely welcoming and I participated in two playtests that night. The first was a Latter Day Saints themed game that was a cross between a Euro style and a war game. I thought it was a very good game and while I recommended the designer consider a few areas that could be improved, it definitely had the potential to be published. (Unfortunately, I don’t remember the name of the game. I recorded the play in Board Game Geek as “Unpublished Prototype.”) The second was Abstracts. This game has been published before, but the designer is working on an update. For what I little know of trivia games, it had some interesting twists, but I didn’t enjoy it. I’s just not my type of game. Nevertheless, I think the designer must have appreciated my comments because he gave me a free copy of one of his other games (a card game that uses a standard deck, so doesn’t seem to be in the BGG database).

With all the great game play and conversation, I neglected to actually purchase anything on Tuesday, so I had to go back on Wednesday (what a shame!). As I was ready to check out with Army of Frogs and Leaping Lizards (for my neices), a group of people completely different from the night before invited me to play Werewolf with them. I did, twice. And though whene I played it before, I hated it, this time was fun. I think the nature of the players makes a big difference. My home group is much more analytical and serious. This group was ready to have fun with the accusations and betrayals.

In summary, if you’re ever in Salt Lake City, you most definitely should check out Game Night Games.