🎡 Ferris Wheel | Publisher: Rush by RoseArt Games | Designer: April Mitchell 👥 1 to 6 players | ⏳ 20 to 30 minutes | ⚙️ Tile placement and hand management I love when a board game gives me a little piece of history. Ferris Wheel Rush is set in 1893, and after my first play, I went down a completely unnecessary rabbit hole. I can now tell you way too much about the World's Columbian Exposition 🤓 The world's first ferris wheel is about to open, but all the carts are in the w

The new and shiny comes and goes. Games get hyped, played obsessively for a few weeks, and eventually find their way back onto the shelf while something else takes their place. Some games stick. I went back through our Top 50 Played Games from 2020 and was surprised by how many of them are still games we genuinely enjoy playing today. Lost Cities, Quacks, Tiny Towns, Rummikub, Cubirds, Kingdomino, Welcome To…, Takenoko, Lucky Numbers, Sushi Go!, Stone Age, Everdel, NMBR 9, Wi

There's a good chance you've heard of Flip 7. The push-your-luck hit has found its way onto countless tables, introducing a lot of players to designer Eric Olsen. But while Flip 7 may be the game that put his name on the map, it's only one part of a growing catalog of clever, approachable games Every designer has a starting point. For Eric, it was 2020. The world had slowed down and he was home with his kids. Their table was covered in odds and ends, half-finished creations,

Icing on the Cake by FoxMind Games 👥 2 to 4 players | ⏳ ~10 minutes per player ⚙️ Abstract, tile placement, “I cut, you choose” drafting If you have ever dreamed of building the ultimate cake without getting flour all over the kitchen counter, Icing on the cake brings that sweet vision right to the table. You are dividing up displays of cake cards, drafting layers, and covering them in icing and toppings to build the highest scoring slice. ⚠️ Warning: this game will want you

High Society by Reiner Knizia 👥 3 to 5 players | ⏳ ~15–30 mins ⚙️ Auction and bidding Reiner Knizia has done it again. High Society is a thirty-one-year-old classic that feels fresh off the press. The game got a reprint by Allplay in English and is available in Japanese and Korean via Playte Games, and it is small enough to take anywhere. I think this is old enough to be called a classic, although with the new print, you could have fooled me The game is fast. It is brutal. I

If you had a time machine, which game would you give to your younger self? My answer is easy. I would hand myself a copy of Jump Drive I was hesitant about this game. It sounded complicated and it was space theme. Not my jam, but I was wrong. I'm glad my friend pushed to teach it. After we played it, we played it again and again. When I got home, I immediately told my wife about it, and we ended up at our local store. We purchased a used copy and got the expansion, you know.

I honestly thought Habitats was a brand new release. The artwork is gorgeous, the table presence is beautiful, and everything about the production feels modern. My only complaint? I desperately want the little wooden jeeps to have wheels that actually turn 😅 As we were learning the rules, I kept thinking, This feels a lot like Nova Luna. I was convinced Habitats had taken inspiration from Nova Luna or Sagani. Then someone pointed out that it was actually the other way around

We have a bird. His name is Maverick. And let me tell you, there is a certain type of person who visits our house and immediately assumes that because we have a feathered friend, they have the right to handle him. They do not! People see a bird and think, “Oh, I want to hold it!” But birds are not props for amusement. If you don't know what you're doing, you are probably going to get bitten Which brings me to this new party dexterity game that arrived on our doorstep as a rev

I saw Floristry and immediately wanted to play it. Then I learned it needed an app, and I was skeptical. I prefer my board games to be, well, board games. I have a strict no phubbing rule at the table, but thankfully, this isn't a case of everyone staring at their phones. The phone stays between the players, the app does one very specific job, and then you get back to playing. I hate to admit it, but the app works. More importantly, it doesn't distract from the game. It creat

Getting deeper into this hobby usually starts with a gateway game. For us, that was Carcassonne. It was the game that got us interested in board games beyond the basics. Then we decided to try being actual board gamers. It was the week before lockdown and Wingspan looked pretty. We couldn't figure out the rulebook 🙈 Enter Rodney Smith (thank you for existing!). Looking back, the rulebook isn't bad. But when you're brand new to modern board games and everything you've ever pl

DNUP is new, the art and typography are top notch, the box is bright green, and it is durable. Sorry, newer games that come in a UNO style box. They don't last, and I hate having to 3D print replacements or shove new games into deck boxes. Playing DNUP made me think about three other games sitting on my shelf that scratch a very similar itch. So let's talk about them Card shedding games are pretty much what they sound like: you're trying to get rid of all the cards in your ha

When my wife and I were brand new to board gaming, we tried the original 7 Wonders and, honestly, it was a lot. The drafting, the iconography, the neighbor scoring. We were still figuring out what half the cardboard in front of us meant. On top of that, we mostly played at two players, so it didn't exactly become a regular. Then came 7 Wonders: Architects The idea of taking that iconic universe, simplifying the gameplay, and making it work beautifully at two players immediate

I got Paris: La Cité de la Lumière for Christmas a few years ago. We played it once, put it on the shelf, and apparently decided that was enough. Then I stumbled across a video featuring the game. Suddenly, I remembered that little box sitting on the shelf and thought, Wait. We own that So I dusted it off and brought it to our date night. Social media is constantly pushing the next shiny new release, but sometimes it does something even better. It reminds you about the games

I follow a few hashtags on Instagram (my handle is @kacoplays) and #TopicTuesday🎲 prompt really stuck with me: Do more options on the shelf make it harder to choose what to play? I don't think so. Then again, I might not be the best person to answer because I track everything Plays? Tracked H index? Tracked Acquisitions? Tracked Games in shrink? Also tracked There was a point when we realized we had games sitting in shrink longer than we'd had Elphaba. That's when we knew we

Zooloretto is a game with a clever twist on spatial planning and drafting. On the surface, you’re placing cute animal tiles into enclosures to build the most charming zoo on the table. But beneath that peaceful theme lies a surprisingly cutthroat game of tile drafting and push-your-luck decisions. Even though it's nearly twenty years old, it doesn't feel dated at all and still delivers an awesome experience every time it hits the table 🎲 Zooloretto published by Rio Grande Ga

Gen Con has a habit of making my birthday and holiday shopping lists months earlier than planned. Every year my social feeds fill with new releases, demos, and games that suddenly jump to the top of my wishlist If you're not familiar with it, Gen Con is the biggest tabletop gaming convention in North America and the longest running tabletop gaming convention in the world. What started in 1968 as a small war gaming convention has grown into one of the largest celebrations of t

I'm a sucker for games that do something fun with their components, and Beer Mug Dice is one of my favorite examples. The dice are chunky little wooden beer mugs that either land standing upright or flop onto their side. It's such a simple gimmick, but it gives every roll a little extra excitement. Add in a tiny box that's easy to toss in a bag, and I was all in 🎲 Beer Mug Dice published by 25th Century Games and Playte Games 🏛️ Designed by: Andreas Schmidt | 🎨 Art by: Wan

When people think of word games, Scrabble is usually the first one that comes to mind. It definitely is for us. As much as I love word games, it's also why a lot of our friends don't. Eventually someone gets stuck staring at the board, trying to squeeze a tiny word into an impossible spot while everyone else waits. You end up spending more time looking for a place to play than actually coming up with clever words Vocabularian takes a completely different approach. There's no

Though my cooking history suggests otherwise, Cook It! has taught me that confidence is apparently the secret ingredient to becoming a world class chef. This game will challenge you to think that confidence is the secret ingredient to becoming a world class chef. At its core, Cook It! is a party game about building ridiculous recipes and convincing everyone else they're brilliant. You'll draft random ingredients, occasionally throw a wrench into someone else's plans with an a

Every board game has to start somewhere. For first time designer and illustrator Ovi Nedelcu, it wasn't a childhood dream of publishing games or years spent filling notebooks with prototypes. In fact, before last year, creating a board game wasn't even on his radar. "I thought to myself, 'Huh, that seems easy enough,'" Ovi laughs, recalling a game design talk he stumbled upon. "And was I ever wrong about that" Looking back, Ovi admits that if he had known how much work goes i