2024, Year In Review, Day Seven: All The Board Games Of 2024 (That I Played)!

by Christian Nonnenbroich

Aaaaaaand we're back. And it's finally time. It's the day when I talk about all of the 2024 releases that I played... and also some other things. Best game played. Worst game played. Most mediocre game played. I didn't do that last year and I also didn't think I would type these words out twenty seconds ago, but here we are, this is the world we live in now. Shit. What have I gotten myself into? Anyway, if you're expecting a long and meandering introduction-text, you're out of luck, because this post is gonna be massive (we've got at least 42 games to get through), so... we'd better get started, right? What is it that we usually talk about first? Ah, yeah, this one...

Best game played in 2024

Oh look, it's a new one! Nah, it isn't. This is the Doomtown: Weird West Edition, the new core-set for my favorite game of all time, Doomtown: Reloaded, released in 2023. And maybe it's time to finally proceeding to talking about Doomtown: Weird West Edition, whenever I would otherwise talk about Doomtown: Reloaded, because it's the new standard, eh? Anyway, I was lucky enough to play Doomtown: Weird West Edition a serious number of times over the course of 2024 and I hope that this will continue in 2025, because it's a fantastic game and I need more of it!

On the other side of the spectrum, we have...

Worst game played in 2024

Yes, for some reason I played a game of Elfer raus!, the hottest card-game 1925 had to offer, last year. We had a copy of it in E.'s gaming-crate that she brought into the marriage (there were actually some interesting things in there, not this one, though) and I agreed to try it out before deciding whether to... I don't know, burn it. The verdict after trying it? Yeah, this should be burned. It can hardly be called even a game, because there's basically zero decisions in it. I mean, I wasn't expecting anything great, but holy fucking shit, this sucks. It's even worse than Phase 10 Master, which I also played last year. And Phase 10 Master is utter horseshit.

Okay, now this one here. Crap. Why did I do that?

Most mediocre game played in 2024

Oh, yeah, right, this happened. It's kind of indicative that when I just went over the list of games I played in 2024 and stumbled across the name Rustling Leaves, my mind went "What's that? Did I really play that?", but then I clicked on it and saw the cover and yeah, I did remember that board-game-y equivalent to white noise that graced the table once in July of 2024. And if that's not a great pick for the most mediocre game played all year long, then I don't know what is either.

Okay, next is the...

Best New To Me Game Of 2024 (That Wasn't Released In 2024)

I thought about handing this title to Unicornus Knights, because it's a really lovely, unique game, but... yeah, I think Thunder Road: Vendetta did it even more for me. It's hard to truly say, I've only played it once, but I would really like to play it some more going forward. If it just weren't as fucking humongous...

Greatest Comeback Of 2024

This is kind of my own fault, because I had somewhat neglected the fabulous Gravwell: 2nd Edition since... holy fuck, December 31, 2021. Yeah, this gem of a game didn't hit the table in either 2022 or 2023. But then in 2024? Eight plays of it. Fucking A. I hope that it'll continue to thrive in 2025, because it is a great game and deserves to be played!

Greatest Mainstay Of 2024

This one still isn't really backed up by any data. I just clicked through some of the games that I've played the most and then noticed that Josh Wood's fantastic game Santa Monica has been in constant rotation at my place since February 16, 2021. It is a lovely game and I still hope that some day, we'll get a big expansion for this that will make the whole thing even more bustling than it already is. But until then... I'm still fine with just the base game and Santa Monica: The Long Weekend.

Okay, let's get to the 2024-stuff, shall we? Starting with the customary list of...

Ten Games Released In 2024 That I Haven't Played But I Think Could Potentially Be Good

10. Pizza Chef: The Next Generation
Let's start out with something pretty undergroundy that even I hadn't known about five minutes ago, but I needed something for number ten on this list and I wasn't happy with all of the other potential choices. So Pizza Chef: The Next Generation it is, a reimplementation of Pizzachef. It's a game where a bunch of chefs go up against one another to take over the pizzeria after the previous chef has retired and I know almost nothing else about it, but... it looks nice and I am still looking for a game that'll scratch that Pizza Tycoon-shaped itch in my heart (is that how you say that?). Would Pizza Chef: The Next Generation do that? I have no idea. Maybe? Maybe not. Who's to say? Maybe I should check it out to find out.

9. The 7th Citadel
I actually haven't even played The 7th Continent as much as I wanted to over the years. Yup, never completed a full run of it. But I did enjoy it quite a bit every time I dug into it. And since The 7th Citadel is apparently a refined and improved sequel to the original, it should be quite good as well. I am kind of weary of getting it, because it's probably another one of these games where you shouldn't involve anyone else in it and to paraphrase the great philosopher Jack Deth, solo-gaming - like dry hair - is for squids. But... yeah, I'd be interested in checking it out at some point in time, I guess.

8. Explorers of Navoria
This has been sitting on my shelf for a moment, but I haven't managed to get it to the table yet. It looks nice, with good components and vibrant artwork. And it also doesn't sound too bad. I heard that it fails to bring the exploration-theme across that well (because apparently, the original design wasn't even about exploration but about running a village or something like that), so that's a problem. But maybe it's nevertheless good?

7. Escape from New York
You might know that I'm a bit of a sucker for games based on popular IPs, so... Escape from New York intrigues me. I'm a bit weary of the fact that it's apparently semi-cooperative, something that has never ever truly worked, and while I admire Kevin Wilson's general design-philosophy and... I don't know, audacity? But it's been a moment since I've actually liked any of his games and... this one doesn't get a ton of positive coverage. But I'm still kind of intrigued by it.

6. Suna Valo
I've actually ordered this one a while ago (alongside Expeditions: Gears of Corruption and War of the Ring: The Card Game), but it still hasn't arrived. Is it out yet? I don't know. But I like the cover and also the general artwork, and while I don't expect this to be a deeply evocative, thematic game, it seems to have enough flair to be worthwhile for me. I don't know if I'll like it, but... it would be kind of weird if I didn't put it on this list, considering I've already paid money for it.

5. The Gang
I kind of suck at Poker. But I'm nevertheless fascinated by it. Not by the game itself, but by what you can do with it. I love Doomtown: Reloaded (I mean... Doomtown: Weird West Edition) dearly and I've played so much of Balatro last year for a reason. The Gang sounds like it's yet another quite interesting idea based on Poker. I haven't pulled the trigger yet because it's a cooperative game that you apparently can't play with just two people and I tend to play these with my wife only, but... maybe I'll bite the bullet and nevertheless get it at some point in time.

4. Space Lion: Divide and Conquer
Back to one that's already sitting on my shelf. And yeah, I've also featured Space Lion: Divide and Conquer on a "Hot damn!"-post last year. Despite that, I haven't brought it to any game-night, so chances of me playing it were slim. I can't really tell you why. I should probably change that going forward, because this actually sounds kind of cool. It's a slightly rough production, but... that's the price you have to pay when you're into indie-board-games, eh? So yeah, remind me to pack this for game-night some time... I don't know, Greg. By the way, where is Greg? Has anyone seen Greg? He hasn't thumbed my posts since early November. I'm starting to worry...

3. Dune: War for Arrakis
Let's talk about something less depressing than Greg's prolonged absence: Dune: War for Arrakis. A reimplementation of War of the Ring: Second Edition, transplanted into the Dune-universe, which I don't really like. That's okay, though, I don't like Tolkien's Middle-Earth either, and I do kind of like War of the Ring: Second Edition. Although I still prefer The Battle of Five Armies. But this one seems to be shorter than War of the Ring: Second Edition, which is a good thing for me, because War of the Ring: Second Edition is too bloody long. I don't know if I'm ever gonna get it. I do feel like I have enough big, epic two-player-dudes-on-a-map-games, so I probably don't need another one. But I'm sure it's good.

2. Creature Caravan
This one looks good. It's a tableau-builder with some dice-allocation and Ryan Laukat's very nice artwork, it's also apparently a bit The Oregon Trail (1971)-esque, only not as many people shit themselves to death, which is always nice, I think. I'm not sure whether I already ordered this. I seem to remember that I fiddled around on a Gamefound-page and tried to late-pledge for this, but... I can't find anything about that in my mails. So who knows when and how I'll be able to get a copy to try out, but... yeah, I'm intrigued.

1. The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth
I should shoot my brother-in-law M. a message, because he actually owns this, so... why haven't I played it? Good question. I really like 7 Wonders Duel and some people said that The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth kills that stone-cold dead, because it does everything that 7 Wonders Duel does, but more and better. Which isn't always a sign of quality, sometimes games that build on simple concepts and then do more overcomplicate things to the point where they aren't really fun anymore, but... apparently this one is actually really good. As said, I should pull a few strings and get this played. What else is (in-law) family good for anyway?

And that's it with that part. So let's continue to what you've all been waiting for. Some fact-based, objective analysis of popular board games. Or was it "gut-based opinions about stuff you've never heard of and also don't really care for"? It's one or the other. I keep mixing these things up. But this year, before we go into the list of new games, let's check out some expansion(-ish thing)s that were released in 2024 and I've also played... well, maybe not in 2024, but before I wrote this post. Yes, I didn't do that last year, but this year, we've got a total of five expansions that I want to shed some light on. And no, I'm not talking about mini-expansions or stretch-goal-expansions that call themselves thusly but are stuff that immediately came with the core-game. I'm talking about real expansions (or expandalones) for games that have somewhat stood the test of time. So let's see what we got in that regard in 2024, shall we? So I present to you the...

Current Top 5 Expansions Of 2024

5. Faraway: People From Below
A small expansion for the pretty good "going there and back again"-drafting-game Faraway that suffers a bit from the fact that Faraway was a relatively "gapless" game, so there wasn't really a way to put something "into" the original game. But yeah, the fine folks at Catch Up Games just added some new sanctuaries and then "tacked on" nine new region cards that go before and after the ones from the core game. They do add some sensible stuff, though, and are such a minor addition to the game in general that it absolutely doesn't hurt to just throw this in with the core game, no matter with whom you play this. It's just "more of the same" and it isn't even much more, but it's such an undisturbing addition that getting it if you like Faraway should be an absolute no-brainer.

4. Unmatched: Sun's Origin
Some folks consider this set for the Unmatched Game System to be among the strongest two-player-only sets. Which... perhaps. I don't know. I'm not a huge fan of the theme. I mean, it broadens the thematic scope of the whole system in new and interesting ways, but I'm generally not really a Japan-guy. And when it comes to character-strength and tiers and shit... I don't know, I don't really care about stuff like that, I'm more of a "Is it fun?"-guy. And while these two characters struck me as decent enough during my plays of them, nothing really jumped out at me in either a positive or negative way. Look, it's two new characters for the Unmatched Game System (plus one map). If you're into that, get 'em. If you're not, don't. I generally prefer the bigger expansions/expandalones, but this one is fine as well.

3. Res Arcana Duo
So I'm a huge fan of Res Arcana and this contains more, quite interesting stuff that you can throw into your game of Res Arcana. That's cool. I haven't tried it that way, though, I've only played it as a standalone-game thus far (so I could have put it onto the list of 2024-games, right? Nah, that would have felt wrong). And it was fine that way. The new drafting-system (draw two cards, keep one, give one to your opponent) is interesting, the focus on exactly enough stuff to play a two-player-game as well (especially since it means that this set of artifacts and mages and places of power is probably balanced quite well in itself), but... I like my games of Res Arcana big and grandiose with a lot of variability and shit, and this thing alone doesn't have that. It's probably a good entry-product for people who want to see what all the fuzz is about and it has some really interesting cards that I would love to see added to the rest of the cards that I already have, but since most of my Res Arcana-gaming happens via BoardGameArena, it'll probably take some time until that happens. But yeah, there's some neat stuff here and while as an expansion to Res Arcana, it doesn't change the game as fundamentally as the previous two, I'd say if you're a fan of the core game, this one is neat.

2. Unmatched: Slings and Arrows
And another set for the Unmatched Game System, this one contains four characters and one map, all based on... another interesting... erm... "property"? It's Shakespeare himself, plus three of his "creations", Hamlet, Titania and the Wayward Sisters from MacBeth. I've only played half of the characters myself (Shakespeare and the Wayward Sisters), but I played against the other two, so I've seen all of them in action. And all of them seem quite fun and interesting. Shakespeare and the Sisters seem to be "big" characters, with interesting, unorthodox abilities, while the other two struck me as more "common" (although as said, I didn't play them), but all of them seemed worthwhile, and that's a good thing with these boxes, eh? There's a lot of talk about this being such a great theme, which... yeah, okay, fine, I guess. I'm not a huge Shakespeare-guy. Then again, I only read "MacBeth" in school. So I'm not deeply enamored with the theme. But as with the other set above, it is an entertainingly different direction, that works especially well when pitted against the more opposite sets. Like having... I don't know, Hamlet fight She-Hulk or something like that. And that's half the fun of the Unmatched Game System, eh? So yeah, this one's worth the price of admission, I'd say.

1. Beacon Patrol: Ships & Shores
But yeah, my favorite expansion of the year is one that makes a lovely little game even better. Yes, the core games belonging to the expansions above might be superior to Beacon Patrol, but this little set of seven different ships does more for its core game than the other expansions did for theirs. I still feel like the whole thing could be better, I'm still missing a more definitive way of judging my prowess during a game of this than by tallying up points and then going "So I've reached this level in the table... cool, I guess?". Maybe we'll get that in a second expansion at some point in time? But yeah, this is cool stuff and has probably paved the way for bigger things in the future. Which is nice indeed.

Great. And now with that out of the way, let's continue to our main attraction. All of the 2024-releases that I've played. All of them? Well... not all. As always, I keep the worst of the bunch for last. It's not as spectacular as it was last year, but... traditions are traditions for a reason, eh? So without further ado, let's talk about the...

Current Top 42 Games Of 2024

And when I say "...Of 2024", you might want to take that designation with a grain of salt, because after threatening to do so every now and again over the course of the last couple of years, this time I deliberately include games that very obviously weren't released for the first time in 2024. But if I do so, then these are games that were virtually impossible to get before 2024 by yours truly, who - might I remind you - lives in Germany and therefore is sometimes cut off from the supply routes that you Americans have. And sometimes, we get games that you don't get. Such is life, right? So yeah, there's gonna be some non-2024-releases on this list, but if there are, then they were made available to me for the first time in 2024, so... that counts, I guess. Also what is time? Smoke and mirrors, I tell ya! Anyway, let's get started with...

42. Little Cities
This might already be one of those instances where I'm kind of cheating, because the back of the box of Little Cities said that this wasn't a 2024-release, but... I don't know what this Tom Harvey-guy was insinuating with that. I think he might have come up with the idea and maybe a prototype years earlier, and so when he printed his games for the first time, he put these dates on them. I don't know. What I know is that Little Cities is a semi-okay idea, basically an even more streamlined, even quicker Machi Koro with a slight pattern-building-element. Which suffers immensely from its utter banality (which isn't a dealbreaker, given how quick this game is) and the fact that thanks to some component-issues, this is nigh-unplayable. But even if it weren't... that, then it still would be hardly noteworthy in the grand scheme of things.

41. Quando
I'm not a huge fan of shedding games in general. I mean, I really like some of them (well, one of them... Custom Heroes), but it's nevertheless not a genre I'm into that much. Still, Quando struck me as especially mindless and frustrating, thanks to the weird shedding-rules, where you don't even have to beat something, but can just... I don't know, play stuff, and also the really stupid Skyjo-esque scoring, where you don't really try to shed your whole hand, but try to get it to zero points, no matter the amount of cards you hold, but then other people can (and will) force you to flip over your zero-cards and... it's just a gigantic mess and I have no idea why anybody would want to play this, if there's so many better games available in the same genre (I assume).

40. High Rise
Back to Tom Harvey (and back to games that might not be 2024-releases). High Rise is better than Little Cities, but... not much. It has some interesting ideas. The hand-management is technically solid and the area-majority-scoring could make for some clever plays and cool moments, but the problem is a) usability again (there's just a lot of fiddly stuff that you need to push around here) and b) the fact that everything seems to happen at a very even pace, so you can't really outplay your opponents, because they are probably currently in the middle of doing basically the same thing you intended to do. Also some of the actions make zero sense and it doesn't look especially good. It's a shame, there's some neat things here, but yeah, still not great.

39. Eternitium
"Skip-Bo: The Deckbuilding Game" might sound like a punchline to a very weird joke, but it's actually the best shorthand I can come up with to describe Eternitium. There's some interesting, almost clever things going on here, but the main problem is that the game is on the one hand far too random and on the other hand all of the effects are far too boring for this to be anything more than a forgettable little timewaster that could have been so much better.

38. Odin
Yes, I've played it forty times. So I can say with absolute conviction that Odin isn't an especially good game. It is slightly addicting, sure, but not because it is so much fun, because it seems so maddeningly easy that most of the time, after I received a thorough thrashing by some randos from the interwebz, I was like "I should be so much better at this, this can't be so hard, let's try that one more time". And that's why I played this forty times. But yeah, after all these plays, I noticed that it isn't that hard, it's just that the whole game is so woefully random that sometimes you just can't do anything at all, and sometimes you basically can't lose the game, unless you actively sabotage yourself or are a goldfish or something like that. And that's not a sign of a good game, if you asked me.

37. Dédale
Here's something that I stumbled across on BoardGameArena at some point in time and then fiddled around with a couple of times, at first without understanding basically anything about it, and then afterwards with a bit more comprehension up my sleeve. It's a game that you can play solo or cooperatively, where you draft cards which you then place partially over other cards in order to imprison the dreaded minotaur in an enclosed room according to some rules depending on the scenario you're playing. It's not bad. A decent little brainteaser that suffers a bit from the fact that the random element can sometimes make a game that looks like it is close to victory stagnate badly. And also... there's just not a lot going on here. I don't think I'd ever want to play this on a real table with other people. But as something to play via BGA for five minutes or so, it's okay, I guess. Am I great at making recommendations or what?

36. Ratjack
Also one that I only played digitally... against someone who liked it so much that he went out and bought a copy the next day and was very happy with his purchase. Good on him. I... didn't dislike my plays of it, but I nevertheless found the whole thing - for lack of a better term, because I know that it doesn't really fit - too mathy. Too much "Okay, if I flip this card over, I'm fine, but then I have to also flip that over, and then I have to steal a card from someone else, and if that's too high, then that's a problem", etc. pp. Which draws out what should be a fast and furious little game of playing Blackjack with some cool special abilities to ungodly lengths. Ungodly lengths for a game of this weight, at the very least. I like what it's trying to do. I just don't think that it works all that well.

35. Happy Home
Happy Home isn't bad. The problem is, with the game's look, the game's concept and the game's designer-duo, it should have been great. Alas, it isn't. It's a nice, fun, pretty polyomino-placement-game that suffers a bit from a lackluster implementation of the theme, a shitton of potentially game-deciding randomness and some incredibly weird usability issues that shouldn't be present in a game by a publisher of Alley Cat's pedigree. I really wanted to like this, but... at the end of the day, this'll probably fade into obscurity fast.

34. River of Gold
Another one that sounded really intriguing, River of Gold is a game of river-navigation, trading and building set in the world of Legend Of The Five Rings. I'm all for... "unlikely" themes connected to well-known IPs, because these often make a game feel more fleshed out than when a designer has to come up with a universe to set their game in on the fly. The problem is that River of Gold a) is far from an attractive game, because while the card-artwork is decent, most of the time you'll spend looking at a nauseatingly busy board that makes every sense of theme fade right before your eyes, and b) the central mechanism is so soul-crushingly random that you'll never feel smart or clever or crafty during a play of this, but mostly like you're at the mercy of that fucking die. And that's not especially fun in my book.

33. Worminators: Inside Job
Here's a game with a background-story that is probably more interesting than the game itself: it was "birthed" at PAX West, where there was a panel where the audience came up with an idea for a game and then afterward, the folks over at Lynnvander Studios would design that game. The result is a cooperative deckbuilding game about worm-detectives trying to solve a high-profile murder in the "Big Apple". And it has three fascinating elements to it. The first one are cards that appear in the market-row and give you positive effects while they are in there, but when they "fall" out of the market row, they end up being negative. The second is the building of a secondary deck, namely the event-deck, from which cards are drawn at the end of each player-turn. And the third is the play-and-draw-structure of the game, where indiscriminately of how many cards you have when your turn is over, you draw four additional ones, so you can technically hoard them and then unleash massive turns when you have all of the combos that you need in hand. The problem is that all of this is in service of a game that is almost on the level of fucking Pandemic when it comes to mindnumbing tug-of-war-back-and-forth-put-out-little-fires-and-wait-for-victory-to-become-possible-bullshit. I'd really love to see these brilliant ideas in a good game. This ain't it, though.

32. Looot
Also known as "Neuland" in Germany, because why the fuck not? Maybe because there's already a game with that exact title? Pff, whatever, hindsight is 20/20. I don't know what that means. But it's probably more interesting than Looot, which is a pretty stonkin' boring little game. It's solid and it looks nice and the mixture between network-building and tile-laying on your personal board and using these things you place there as efficiently as possible sounds like a bunch of good ideas on paper, but yeah, the problem is that it's just not that interesting. Also - and this is just cold, hard speculation - probably an absolute nightmare to play physically at a real table. I don't know, all of my plays of it have been digitally n it works decently well that way, but yeah, I probably wouldn't want to have to deal with the fiddliness and confusion of an analogue version of this.

31. Minecraft Explorers
A bit more interesting but not much better (although for different reasons) is the pocket-sized cooperative card game Minecraft Explorers. Don't get me wrong, Minecraft Explorers isn't not fun. It looks nice, it has a decently adventurous feeling, it has solid mechanisms and features the kind of cooperative gameplay that I tend to enjoy, where you're not constantly fighting an uphill battle against a deck of mean event-cards that undo all of your efforts at every turn, but where you have something to work towards and you have yay much time to pull that off. That's good. Progress happens mostly through "flip that thing and see what happens"-style gameplay, though, so that's something you should be aware of before going into this, and there's really no reason to involve any more people besides yourself in a game of this, although - and I haven't tried it, so I can't say for sure - solo-gameplay will probably totally bugger the difficulty-curve of the game. But yeah, if you're looking for a quick, portable, pretty attractive little adventure game to play solo or with undemanding coop-partners, this one might be for you.

30. PANDA
PANDA is a weird-ass game and I feel like I would have liked to play it some more to be able to judge it more accurately (which is also why I haven't covered it in an "On the table"-post yet, but people just didn't want to play this), but... this is the world we live in, so we have to do with what we have. It has an interesting drafting-mechanism. Actually, it isn't that interesting, but it is weird. You're basically drafting cards in a relatively normal way, but instead of having to keep your hand of already drafted cards and the ones you just got separately, you can just put cards that you already drafted back in and take more others out. It is kind of nifty, because that way, you can plan combos better. Aside from that, it's a card-placement-affair where you try to get the right animals next to the right other animals. It's an incredible table-hog, despite the small package, because the cards aren't small and they can go anywhere, and at least in our two-player-game, I usually found it way too easy to mirror E.'s moves in regards to the predators, the ones that give massive points at the end of the game and where everybody has their own set, independent of the drafted cards, so that it all felt a bit meaningless. But the artwork is kind of nice and... maybe I'll like it better the second time I play it. Whenever the fuck that'll be.

29. The Crows of Coppershell Bay
That's a tiny solo-game that came with my order of Paupers' Ladder and... it seemed kind of cool at first. You're owing money to some shady types and you have three days to raise that and pay it back and the world (of Coppershell Bay) is your oyster. You can go beachcombing, you can go to the carnival and play some carnival-games, you can go dungeon-delving in a surprisingly elaborate minigame. My main problem with this was... I've only played it once thus far, but that one game was pretty uneven. In the beginning, you completely suck and have to be supremely lucky to persevere, because everything is so much stronger than you and if die-rolls come out lopsided, you have very little chances of winning the game. But then halfway through, I stumbled across an exploit that made winning the game ridiculously easy. I'll probably have to try it some more with different characters (Ol' Pa Peth seems to be the one who after unlocking his second ability can put the game over his knee and give it a right paddling) to see whether it's better with those, but yeah, that kind of dampened my enthusiasm a bit. It's still a lovely product and has some good ideas, but... well, look this space for an upcoming "On the table"-post where I either substantiate or revise my opinion.

28. Milkman
This one's also one where my opinion might change going forward, because I've only played Milkman once and that was a play of the "beginners game" or whatever it's called when you use the side without the additional bonuses for bought upgrades and stuff... But yeah, that game-mode? That's a bit rubbish. Oh, it looks really, REALLY good, I absolutely adore the visual aspect of the game, but yeah, the gameplay is pretty mediocre. It's a Yahtzee-style rolling-and-locking-affair with some economic aspects and some pick-up-and-deliver tacked onto it, but the whole thing is so straightforward and the general progress-chain is so much without alternative that there really isn't much of a game to be found in here in general. I mean... it works. Probably better when you play the advanced version, where you can't (fully) run into the "I can't do anything worth points anymore during this final round of the game, so what am I even doing here?"-situation that is very obvious in the base-game, but... it's probably still not much better. Still, looks lovely and the components are good. But yeah, not great.

27. Vampire Nights
Another one where I could do with another play to judge it more accurately (although I'm fairly certain that I am pretty much on point with my current opinion) is Vampire Nights, which is a weird, weird game that holds quite a bit of promise in certain regards, but then... I don't want to say "fails", but rather "disappoints" because despite the interesting premise and quirky ideas, it's a surprisingly pedestrian little game that doesn't really excite in any way, shape or form, randomly punishes people who just couldn't draw the "right" item-cards every now and again and just feels off in certain regards. It's not bad, mostly because it is short and portable and not that complicated, once you've managed to get past the terrible rulebook. And maybe the problem is also kind of that I went at it with slightly higher expectations, but yeah, I can't help but be a bit disappointed by it.

26. Draft & Write Records
I haven't written about Draft & Write Records before, have I? Apparently not. Weird. Maybe it's because I played it back in June, thought to myself "I might play that more before writing about it" but then never did that. Not because it's a bad game, but because it's not as interesting as the theme would have lead me to believe. It is sort of kind of unique because I haven't seen a game mixing the general "cross off stuff on your personal sheet"-feeling of your X & write games with a drafting-mechanism, but when you get down to it, that doesn't make it feel that different from other drafting games out there, because the "& write"-part is just another way of marking down what you have got and stuff. This could very well be a non-"& write"-game. But yeah, the theme is good and fun and the game generally works. I'm still not a big drafting-guy, though, so it falls flat for me in that regard, but it is a solid little game of action-comboing and quasi-set-collection and a bit of pattern-building, so if you're into that, you might as well check this one out. Me? I'm okay with it, but... ironically enough, it didn't rock my world.

25. Forges of Ravenshire
Granted, I've only played Forges of Ravenshire solo, but I feel like the automated opponent (which you can also use in games with two or three players) simulates the competition in a real game of this quite well. And while I liked a couple of things quite well (the "place a die, then take a die"-mechanism is neat, the way you basically use the dice you take four times ditto, the whole production-phase where you can fiddle around with your dice and feel like you're really running a forge is kind of neat), I found the whole thing on the one hand a bit too fiddly (I constantly kept forgetting this or that substep whenever I did one of the more involved actions in the game), on the other hand a bit much ado about nothing. The whole "economic model" of the game is robust, but that's the problem: there's nothing here besides it. It's just "get these resources" and then "put them into the contract you're working on" and all forms of upgrading you do over the course of the game let you do these things better or more efficiently. And that's just not enough for the amount of faffing about that the game requires you to do. Plus... the numbers in this game are just too large. Especially when the level three contracts are concerned. They require you to shovel so many resources into 'em that everything loses all sense of meaning. It's a bit of a shame, because the good parts of this game are really good, but... yeah, this could have used another development-pass to make it a game that has something to offer besides resource-conversion en masse.

24. Dead Cells: The Rogue-Lite Board Game
So back to cooperative stuff, which Dead Cells: The Rogue-Lite Board Game apparently is. I don't know, I've only played it solo thus far. Well... "thus far" implies that I would like to play it some more and... I don't think I want to. It's not terrible (otherwise it would be weird that it had reached rank 24 on this list of 42 games), but it also just... isn't especially fun. Might be because the same year as this, another game that did something incredibly similar came out and was just so much better in every regard (we might get to that game in the near future). Or might be because even on its own, Dead Cells: The Rogue-Lite Board Game just isn't especially interesting. It is kind of cool how incredibly quick runs usually are (well... I haven't won one, maybe a winning one takes forever, but I don't believe that, and my "losing" runs have been anywhere between 26 and... friggin' two minutes (I think I died fighting the first encounter during that run and it wasn't even my first run ever), so that's nice, but aside from that, the combat is incredibly boring, the loot and general ways in which you can upgrade your characters likewise and... maybe all of that will be better if I grinded enough to reach the juicy parts of the game (although I doubt that there are especially juicy parts in the game, because this is by some designers who aren't known for putting juicy parts into their games), but... I just don't want to do that, so... nope, no thanks, I guess I'm going back to the video game this is based on, because that was way more fun.

23. Good Manors
Tom Harvey is back, baby! Yup, after punting two of his games straight into the bottom three of this list, he managed to do something more worthwhile with the third game his company Flying Carpet Games (maybe, sort of) released in 2024. Yes, Good Manors seemed to be way better than the other two games I played (he apparently also released a game called Mosaic, but I never saw that anywhere). It's an interesting card-laying-game where you try to build a manor in the form of a pyramid and then populate it with lords and servants who can only move into a room if the things they want are in the pyramid below them. The artwork is mostly clip-art-esque but it's kind of charming and while the perspective is kind of fucked, the manor you build looks surprisingly nice. Also it has a weird and interesting economic system where you use coins that are printed on two cards next to one another, but then you have to flip over these cards when you use them, and then flip them back the round after and... I never said it was smooth or easy to use, it's a fucking nightmare, but that seems to be par for the course with games by Tom Harvey. I like this one. Weird, right?

22. Spectacular
We already had one instance of "interesting puzzle, not enough board game" (sort of) with Forges of Ravenshire, and the same also holds true for Spectacular by the Chilifox-lads. Which has a nice, crunchy tile-placement/dice-allocation-puzzle at its core. But that puzzle is fueled by one of the most nondescript drafting-frameworks I've ever seen in a game. I like the goal and the way you get points and the tough decisions you have to make when it comes to how to plan your very own wildlife-preserve and shit, but the way you actually play the game, interact with the pieces by drafting tiles and dice from your personal supply but also rotating coasters or however you want to call them feels like such an afterthought and makes the whole thing feel so much less interesting than a game with this intriguing tile-laying-aspect would deserve. It's not bad. But it's just not very enticing to play and that's a problem right there.

21. Superstore 3000
Superstore 3000 has a fantastic theme. You are in charge of designing a shopping center of the future. The thing is... that's not what you're doing in the game. Or rather "what you're doing in the game doesn't make a ton of sense in regards to the theme". Because what you do is drafting tiles which you then place in order to build the shopping center of the future from the ground up, so you can't "plan" this kind of shop here if a) none of those are available and b) you haven't "planned" shops for everything below this thing. So you're actually physically building the "Superstore 3000"? Well, then why are people already visiting the shops while you're busy adding new ones to the building? And why can you only build this or that if it randomly shows up in a drafting-line? So the theme is great, but it doesn't really work well with the mechanisms. On the other hand, these mechanisms make for a kind of absorbing, quick little tile-laying-game where you often end up with a decently wacky shopping center. It's a game of pattern building and resource management first and foremost and... it's good. It feels a bit samey from game to game, because you don't have a ton of freedom in regards to where or what you build, so the way you approach this is usually similar from game to game. Doesn't sound great, eh? As said, it doesn't outstay its welcome and there's some primal fun to be had just enlarging areas of various colors, planning the things so that the customers can get to the shops they want to visit (they are lazy bastards who refuse to walk far), and putting these weird special attractions into your shopping center. If that's enough for you, then go give Superstore 3000 a try. I've played worse.

20. Floodlands
Floodlands has finally been made available to the general public. Nice. Now you can go over to itch.io, buy it for 7$, print it out at home or maybe just use your tablet or whatever to play a game of it digitally and... I don't now enjoy that? Is that what this is all about? Probably. And I also enjoyed my first and up until now only game of Floodlands. It's not especially unique or new and exciting or... I don't know, deep or anything like that. But it's a nice little roll & write game about... something something flood. And it gives you all the tools to create a really nice looking map of some semi-flooded area while you're also trying to reach the highest score or something like that. Look, it's not brilliant, it's not an absolute must-play, but if you like that genre and are looking for something that you can technically completely build at home without having to do a lot of work, then this is one that you might want to check out.

19. Umbrella
Here's one that I didn't expect much from but... ended up liking quite a bit. Quite a bit considering how much outside of my wheelhouse this technically is. Umbrella is a very abstract pattern-building-game about... I don't know, being a vengeful rain-god who decides to use pedestrians with umbrellas as submissive flesh puppets or something like that. It doesn't make a ton of sense and the game also doesn't pretend to have a ton of theme. But yeah, the mechanisms in this one are surprisingly interesting. You're shoving people into your own 4x4-grid from either of the four sides and then other people "fall out" of your grid on the opposite side and maybe the person to your left or right can use those then. It's not super-deep or ultra-engaging or anything like that, but it's a decently clever little game about making efficient moves in order to complete tasks in such a way that you can then maybe chain them together. If that sounds interesting to you, check out Umbrella. You weirdo.

18. Fairy Ring
Also kind of outside of my wheelhouse: Fairy Ring. A game that mixes drafting with something akin to the spy-movement from Pax Pamir (or maybe just a slightly variable rondel-mechanism?) with... actually kind of decent results. Halfway through the rules-explanation, I was sure that I would absolutely hate Fairy Ring, but at the end of the day, I was surprisingly with the whole thing. I probably wouldn't actively seek it out in my free time, it's a bit long for what it is and I feel like the possible strategies (or rather "strategy") is a bit one-note (says the guy who played it once... yeah, I'll let myself out). But it looks decent, has some surprisingly clever ideas and is not half as chaotic and uncontrollable as I had feared. Not a modern classic in the making, I'd say, but... it's not bad.

17. Seers Catalog
Another shedding-game. Well... an "almost shedding game". Which I still find is a misleading description for Seers Catalog, because it implies that shedding everything would be somehow bad in this game, but it's absolutely preferable to shedding nothing and depending on the prowess of all of the other players, it might even be good for you. But yeah, wonky labeling aside, I like Seers Catalog. In its best moments, it almost reaches the dizzying heights of Custom Heroes. Almost. It is a bit more portable, so that's a positive, but it never gets as crazy or as wild as that one. Still, good fun. Nothing more, but also definitely nothing less.

16. Fromage
Yes, it's the weird simultaneous-action-selection-worker-placement-game about making cheese and doing various things with it afterwards. It's a refreshingly unique game. Well... most of the mechanisms feel like I've seen them before in other games, but... not in this precise compilation, so that's something. Also the rotating board with its four different mini-games that you partake in sequentially? That's pretty unique. It also looks good. Partially to its own detriment, because the choice of colors for both the types of cheese and the players themselves is a bit unfortunate, and also the look of the game is a bit busy, but it's not a dealbreaker. This is good. We've reached the "good" part of this list. Did that come across?

15. Bauer
Also part of the "good" part of this list: the game with the weird name, especially if you're German, Bauer. Yes, I know, it's named after Swedish illustrator John Bauer, whose artwork was used for all of the cards. And it's a pretty fun, hyper-portable, quick and easy little drafting-game that doesn't do anything out of the ordinary (well, the way you draft is a bit weird... Everybody has their own personal deck and each turn, you draw three cards from yours, pick one to draft and then put the other two on top of the deck of the person to your left. It feels a bit gimmicky, because you could also just hand the person to your left the two cards and then let them draw another one from a central deck or something like that (well... there are effects that mess with that whole procedure a bit, so it's not that useless), but it is an interesting thing that differentiates the game from its peers. And I like it. It does help that it looks good, is very quick and probably fits in almost everybody's trouser pocket, but I'd like to think that it's also because it's a pretty good game altogether.

14. Naishi
"Less variable Fantasy Realms for exactly two players" isn't exactly what Naishi is, but it's close enough to that to get the feeling of the game across quite well. You try to build the best tableau made up of ten cards possible. Your opponent tries to do the same thing. Only one can prevail. Or something like that. Look, Naishi doesn't have the immense variability of Fantasy Realms, but it's a clever game where every move you make might help out your opponent, so you need to be constantly on your toes to figure out how to one-up them. And also getting the best tableau possible isn't all you have to do, you need to also keep it that way until the end of the game is triggered, which is sometimes easier said than done. I don't think that Naishi has endless replayability, but it is a clever and interesting game and 14 plays in, I'm still not tired of it.

13. Castle Combo
And another one that someone possibly described as maybe similar to Fantasy Realms. I don't know, I still haven't checked that Youtube-video, where the thumbnail screamed "Like Fantasy Realms? By the Faraway team!", so I can't say whether that's clickbait or someone's actual impression of the game. I mean... it is apparently by the Faraway team (sort of), so that part checks out. A bit. Castle Combo isn't as good as Faraway. Because Faraway was slick and easy and intuitive and over before you know it. Castle Combo is more complicated (not much more, but... more nonetheless) and longer and not quite as intuitive, but... it's still quite fun. You build a 3x3-grid of characters that fit together as well as possible, occasionally grabbing some money or keys, and generally just trying to find good synergies. I'm not a hundred percent sure about the balance, there's a couple of kind of insane cards that fill up other cards with money for points and these seem really strong, but... I haven't played it enough to be able to really say anything about that with any form of conviction. But as said, it's fun. And sometimes that's enough.

12. Foundations of Metropolis
Is this cheating as well? I mean, Foundations of Metropolis is a 2024-release, but apparently, it's more of a retheming of Foundations of Rome than a true reimplementation. I don't know, I've never played Foundations of Rome. I've played Foundations of Metropolis, though... and it's good. Some people seem to think that it's mindbogglingly great or something like that, but... I don't feel that strongly about it. Maybe it's because I was expecting something different. This isn't really a city-building-game. Oh, it wears the skin of one, but it's lacking the elements that make those things the most fun. No, it's almost an abstract strategy game, where you have your array of pieces and you try to find the best way to place them on the shared board and/or upgrade the ones you already placed into ones that are more valuable at this point in time. And it's good. I am kind of surprised that this doesn't include a negotiation-aspect (which Foundations of Rome apparently had, if you included some variant or mini-expansion or something like that), because that seems like something this game could absolutely use, but at the end of the day, not having it isn't a dealbreaker. I like it. I wonder about its longevity, because there's very little variability in the game as it is, but the mechanisms are strong and the whole thing is easy and quick enough to just play it every now and again, even if the theme is lacking.

11. Paella Park
It's kind of the other way around with Paella Park, another game where I'm cheating a bit, because it was released in December of 2023, but I don't think it was logistically possible for someone in Germany to play it before the beginning of 2024. In it, the mechanisms aren't especially strong (they also aren't bad or anything like that, they are... serviceable, I'd say), but the theme does make up for that quite a bit. It's a game in which you try to spend a day at a slightly gross theme park and make the most of the time you have and it's absolutely fascinating to me how well you can immerse yourself in that theme, despite the fact that the actual process of riding an attraction usually boils down to a push-your-luck-decision, a spin of the weird spinner and then marking a couple of things on your scoring sheet (and also maybe on one of your opponents', if the spinner told you that you puked on somebody... it's a thing in this game). Paella Park is capital-F Fun and unique enough to for me to gladly overlook its shortcomings, just because there's nothing else like it out there. If you like weird, idiosyncratic indie board games, you've got to check this one out. It's... one of those.

10. Let's Go! To Japan
On the other end of the spectrum, we've got a big, professionally made (I'm not saying that Paella Park isn't, but... there's a notable difference in quality) blockbuster-game from my favorite publisher AEG ("Aus Erfahrung gut" or what?) and Josh Wood, designer of the fantastic Santa Monica. Let's Go! To Japan isn't as great as Santa Monica, but nobody really expected this, right? NOBODY. I'm serious! But yeah, it's good. An interesting drafting-game that gives you a lot to think about and juggle, while still remaining easy and intuitive to play. Ironically enough, it's lacking the geography and sense of self that I would have thought a game about travel would have, if it isn't played with folks who really get into the flavor of the game, it can become a rather soulless symbol-matching-activity fast. But it's still quite good. I might even buy the German version when it comes out this year. Although it's by Schwerkraft and Schwerkraft suck big time. Ah well, we'll see.

9. Wild Gardens
Here's a game with a shitton of personality: Wild Gardens, probably the most peaceful game by Isaac Vega to date. Then again, I haven't played Keystone: North America, but I'm sure it can't be more peaceful than Wild Gardens, which is just such a nice and amicable game of walking around in circles, foraging ingredients, cooking delicious looking meals and feeding them to likeable people, animals... nature spirits? Things like that. It's a charming game and also a very fun one, that might be a bit restrictive when it comes to different paths to victory, but it's nevertheless a game that is easy to like. Also they put a shitton of effort into the solo-mode. Just in case that's something that appeals to you. It doesn't really appeal to me, but... I've had fun during the two solo-games of this that I played. So yeah, this has some flaws, but I for one would take a slightly flawed but charming game with personality over a perfectly balanced, soulless product of a game ninety-nine times out of a hundred.

8. Harmonies
Harmonies was the latest game that someone (I can't recall who) tried to sell to me as the Habitats-killer. Harmonies was also the latest game to fail at making good on that promise. I don't think Harmonies set out to dethrone Habitats, though. It's far too abstract for that. But it's a surprisingly neat little game of drafting, pattern-building and... I don't know, disc-placement-efficiency? Where you try to reuse patterns that you have already built to complete the requirements of cards you take later on. And also try to compartmentalize your player board in such a way that you manage to get everything you want onto it and then maybe leave some more space to just score points by building things on that board. It's a neat game that is almost good enough to overcome its absolutely lackluster commitment (or rather the lack thereof) to any tangible theme whatsoever. Almost.

7. Stonespine Architects
The first 2024-release that I played... actually turned out to be one of the best ones. Who would have thought? Jordy Adan returned to the world of Ulos and created an interesting little drafting-game where you build your own 4x4-grid of dungeon-rooms. Stonespine Architects isn't perfect. Sometimes luck of the draw (or a lack thereof... and also maybe "luck of the draft") hoses you hard. Sometimes things just absolutely don't work out and you were doomed from the start without knowing it. But it's such a quick game that this probably doesn't matter all that much. Also the whole market-phase, where you buy fitments for the rooms you already built and then at some point pass in order to take a new goal, is absolutely fascinating. As mentioned a couple of times, I'm not really a drafting-guy. I like the mechanism fine enough, but too few games actually do anything worthwhile with it. This one does something worthwhile. Check it out!

6. Harvest
Yes, Harvest is a reimplementation of a game that is already seven years old at this point in time, but a) I've never played that and b) a quick scan of the rules of both games tells me that they are different enough to consider this a new game altogether. And it's a good one. A quick, easy and intuitive, yet hauntingly beautiful worker-placement-game with a couple of really good ideas and just a general relaxing, cozy atmosphere. It's a shame that the production was somewhat bungled, with a couple of misprints and stuff, especially considering how much money this raked in, but... maybe they'll rectify the biggest blunders with the upcoming expansion. Also maybe that'll make the eponymous harvesting a bit more prominent and the buildings a bit more interesting, because these were my other two major gripes with the game. Well... "more major than anything else, but not really that major", I guess. Anyway, I really like Harvest, it's a lovely little game.

5. Comic Hunters
Yes, I'm counting this 2020-release as a 2024-game. What are you gonna do? Unsubscribe? Pah. Go on, make my day! But yeah, despite the fact that Comic Hunters was originally released in Brazil in 2020, it took until 2024 for the rest of the world (or at the very least the USA) to get a version of this sought-after game about assembling the best Marvel-comic-collections. So since it was virtually impossible for me to play this before 2024, I count it as a new release. And it's a really good one. Knowledge of Marvel in general is absolutely optional, this is all about the surprisingly well simulated process of buying, selling and trading comics across different venues, where every single one comes with its own minigame. The Spin Master version of the game is kind of shoddy, component-wise, which is really weird considering the weight of the IP at play here, and there's at least one really bonkers mistake in the rulebook, which shouldn't happen to a release like this. But aside from that, I don't have many problems with this game. It's a lot of fun and if you can find a copy, give it a try!

4. Galaxy Postman
I wasn't super-nice to Galaxy Postman back when I reviewed it, and yeah, I stand by everything I said. Some of the most interesting parts of the game are just flawed. The flavor-text is shit, the S.A.M.-cards could do with a major overhaul, the way you can unlock additional dice is stupid, because it's pretty much imperative to do so as soon as possible, what with the way you get rewards like mad for that. Also the artwork is... patchy, to say the least. But there's also a lot to like. The dice-allocation-action-system is really intriguing, the theme, space-exploration that doesn't end up with everybody shooting everybody else, but with peaceful parcel-delivery, is great and relatively well implemented (although as said, the fluff that would bring the whole thing to life more isn't great), the climax of the game, when all of the randomness of the exploration has been dealt with and you can really map out clever turns, is great. It's not a fantastic game, but it is certainly a good one.

3. Dungeon Kart
Yes, I did it. I played Dungeon Kart. Yesterday. Once. So maybe putting it this high on the list is a tad reckless. But yeah, I had a really good time with this one. It's basically Super Mario Kart but using the Boss Monster-IP. And while it's a light, easy, fun, kind of party-appropriate game, it's also far less random, far more controllable affair than the title and look would lead you to believe. There is no dice-rolling (well... a bit) and no random card-drawing (well... a bit), but instead, there's a robust and fairly detailed, yet also quite intuitive system at the core of this game, where you can accelerate or decelerate, turn once per movement, drift, maybe use some special abilities and generally need to plan how you're gonna move, instead of relying on luck or probability. AND THEN someone's gonna bump you into a situation where all of your careful planning goes to shit. But that's something you have to plan with as well. Imagine said that this existing makes Heat: Pedal to the Metal kind of obsolete. I... don't know if I would agree. They scratch very different itches. But this one scratches an itch that I feel far more often than the one Heat: Pedal to the Metal scratches, so that's good.

2. Windmill Valley
Most of the detractors of Windmill Valley call this a bog-standard, boring euro game, not unlike hundreds that come out every year. And... they might have a point. I wouldn't really know, because I don't like bog-standard, boring euro games and therefore usually don't play them. If many of those are like Windmill Valley, I should maybe overthink that inclination of mine in the future, though, because this is fun. Then again, a huge part of me enjoying this is the fact that I like the theme and think it fits the mechanisms quite well and also that the game looks lovely and is just fun to play and these things very rarely hold true for these other bog-standard, boring euro games. But yeah, Windmill Valley is nice. Yes, it's a bit of an "...and the kitchen-sink"-design with not one, not two but three quasi-rondels, network-building, multi-use-cards, emergent variable player powers, resource management and so on and so forth. But it's also a generous game where you aren't railroaded down any path, but are free to just do stuff that sounds fun to you and try to make the most of it, with a surprising amount of (indirect) interaction and a cool action-upgrading-mechanism that... doesn't really feel like engine-building, but there's some nice comboing going on here. I like it. And the recently announced expansion improving on the trading-aspect of it sounds neat as well.

1. Slay the Spire: The Board Game
Look... this wasn't an easy choice. Not because Slay the Spire: The Board Game isn't good or anything like that. But mostly because I feel like I haven't even started to scratch the surface of the game. And... I probably won't do so any time soon. I've played Slay the Spire: The Board Game twice. Both times just the first act, so I haven't even begun to see the content in the game. It was just the wrong time for this game, coming in shortly before our son was born, which meant that my main-gaming-and-basically-sole-coop-partner E. wouldn't have a ton of time to play stuff with me and with solo-gaming not really being my cup of tea (because I like good tea, HAH! GOT 'EM!), this has mostly been sitting on my shelf. So for a while, I've debated where I should put this. I haven't even written an "On the table"-post about it yet. Because I - remember, Mr. You Should Absolutely Review Games After Playing Them Once - didn't really felt all that qualified to talk about it at length, so if that was the case, then how could I accurately judge where on this list of games, order absolutely flawlessly and objectively, I should put it? I knew that I had liked my two plays of it very, VERY much. But yeah, can I give the title of "best game of the year" to a game that I hadn't played all that often and that held so much content that I hadn't even checked out yet? Turns out... I can. Because I just did. Yeah, I don't have any deep insights about Slay the Spire: The Board Game or anything like that. But I do know that I had a lot of fun with it thus far and I know that out of all of the games on this list, this is the one that I want to play more of the most. And if that's not a sign of quality, then I don't know what is. So yeah, I don't know when that'll be the case, perhaps I'll have to wait another twelve years until L. is old enough for this, so that I can play the fuck out of it with him. Or maybe I'll bite the bullet and rope Schaaf into a "campaign" of this when he returns to this neck of the woods. We'll see. Anyway, best game of 2024. Fight me.

So that's the rundown of the 42 best games of the year 2024. Which one was the worst one? Let's find out together in the next segment. Because here's the...

Worst Game Released In 2024

See? My choice of Earth last year wasn't in order to be a contrarian. It's just a really fucking bad game. This year, the worst game of 'em all wasn't such a high-profile release, though. It was a little... err... "game" called Green Glass Door and while BGG doesn't credit him as the author, it was apparently designed by Ralf zur Linde, the guy most well known for Finca. Green Glass Door is apparently based on some sort of social media trend (the cover helpfully tells us), which works a bit like Visitor in Blackwood Grove. Someone gets a category and then they say "I go through the green glass door and I take with me: a hamster". And then the other people take turns going "I go through the green glass door and I take with me: a rat" or something like that, and the person who knows the category tells them whether the object they are taking passes through or not. Instead of "trying" an object, you can also try to guess what the category was and when you do so... I don't know, you get a point? Everybody gets a point? This is apparently also a cooperative game, so... how does this work? But yeah, if you read that description above and thought to yourself "Wow, I could also not buy this and play it with a piece of paper and a pencil... Heck, I wouldn't even need that, I could just come up with something in my brain", then congratulations, you probably won't be scammed out of 12.95€ by publisher moses. Verlag GmbH. Well... I mean "scammed" is a hard choice of a word, I guess, because you do get a box with a bunch of cards inside if you decide to buy Green Glass Door. The contents of these cards is mostly fucking stupid and bad ("types of soup"?!?), but I can confirm that cards are involved. So... yeah, don't get this. It's not worth it.

And... yeah, with these nice closing remarks, we're through for today. Those were all of the board games of 2024 (that I played), plus some more. All in all... 2024 wasn't a great year for board games, I'd say. Then again, it also wasn't a terrible year. Even the worst ones on this list, I could hardly be mad about. It was just mediocre through and through. Which happens, I guess. I mean... it happened in 2021 as well. Maybe it's a thing that'll just happen every few years, right? Here's a picture of a Teddy Bear toasting to a thoroughly mediocre year for board games:

Great. Next part of this will be the look ahead. I don't know when I'll publish that, probably not two days from now, because that's a "Top Five Thursday"-Thursday and while I don't have a topic yet, I plan to do something then. Also tomorrow: maybe an "On the table"-post. Or a "You are wrong!"-post. About which game, you wonder? Well, you'll see when it happens. It's not that spectacular, though. Anyway, see you soon!