11 great games from 2015
Let's take a look back at the games from a decade ago.
If you’ve been around board games long enough, you’re likely to have thought for some time about the formative years in your gaming: the big releases, the perennial favorites, and the ways you explored gaming.
Few years have impacted the way I’ve experienced board games like 2015 did. It’s the first year that I really felt like I had a strong grasp on the new releases, rather than simply glomming on to new games. But more, I think we can establish 2015 as a formative year for the gaming hobby. There are games released in 2015 that have seen long-term success, and there are games released that shifted the direction of games moving forward. Some have even broken into the main-stream market — and we all know how hard that can be.
Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 was as close to revolutionary as we’ve had in games in a long time. Codenames attracted mainstream attention. 7 Wonders Duel demonstrated that two-player takes on established games didn’t need to be a gimmicks.
These games demonstrate those things and more. There are, of course, games from 2015 that didn’t make this list. It’s usually that I just haven’t played any number of those, because like all of you, I have only so many hours in my day. We’ll talk about some of those games at the end — the ones I’d like to play but simply haven’t yet. I’ll also mention some games that I liked but did not love.
Let’s get to it.
7 Wonders Duel is a two-player spin on the well-established 7 Wonders (Antoine Bauza, 2010), and there’s much about it that I still enjoy. The premise — that you’re building a great city — holds strong, but the iconography is cleaned up (a common complaint about the original, especially at the time), and the game’s been tweaked in some key ways. In a drafting game like the original, you’re seeing only a portion of the cards at any given time, and they’ll rotate from player to player. In 7 Wonders Duel, you’re drafting from a pyramid in which some cards are visible and some aren’t — but both players have an equal understanding of what’s there — and you’ll both know that if you reveal a card, you might be opening up an opportunity for another player. Designed by Antoine Bauza and Bruno Cathala, illustrated by Miguel Coimbra, and published by Repos Production.
Bad Medicine is a party game about running the marking arm of a pharmaceutical company, which, well, is that something you want to be doing? It works, though. You’re basically pitching the cure for an ailment, but you’ll be forced to explain one of the drug’s side effects. As with all party games, this really depends on your group. While this one is very much out of print, you can still find used copies out there, and there’s long been this idea that the game will be republished at some point. I hope it is, but until then, you can also pay a small fee to buy the print-and-play files from the designer. Designed by Gil Hova, illustrated by Scott Hartman, and originally published by Formal Ferret Games.
Between Two Cities is the rare sort of game that takes Reiner Knizia-style ‘worst-of-your-scores’ scoring and turns it into a full game. You’ll be building two cities, one with each of your neighbors, and you’ll score points for your lower-scoring city. The scoring in the game is fairly straightforward, with the varied tile types each having their own scoring method. Maybe you’ll build a city with a lot of parks. That sounds nice. The whole point is that you’re having to balance your cities as equally as possible, because if you do great with the neighbor on your left, but you fail the neighbor on your right — well, you’re in trouble.
Broom Service, the winner of the 2015 Kennerspiel des Jahres prize, has one of the more clever mechanics I’ve seen. You’re playing as a witch flying around, getting ingredients, and delivering potions around a map. Each round, players one-by-one decide if they’re going to perform a ‘brave’ or a ‘cowardly’ action in one of four roles. For each role, the cowardly action gets an immediate reward, but only one player gets to perform the brave action — and it’s the last player to have chosen it. You won’t know if players have selected the same role as you, so you’ll be trying to wager whether another player will take the action from you. It’s very cool. Designed by Andreas Pelikan and Alexander Pfister, illustrated by Vincent Dutrait, and published by Ravensburger.
Burgle Bros is one of my favorite cooperative games, and I think it holds up pretty well over the last decade. It’s themed around a heist, and you’ll be navigating three four-by-four tile grids as you try to crack safes, take the loot, and escape the building out the top floor. There’s a sequel that does some things better, but the original still holds strong for me. (There’s a second sequel coming soon, too. Exciting!) Designed by Tim Fowers, illustrated by Ryan Goldsberry, and published by Fowers Games.
Codenames is a major success: Last year, estimates had the game at 15 million units sold, a number that puts it in rare territory. (As a point of comparison, Catan has sold 40 million copies according to its publisher, while Carcassonne has sold upwards of 12 million copies. Rare territory, indeed.) It’s a team game where one player from each team acts as a spymaster guiding their team toward certain words in a grid by giving a simple one word clue. It’s the sort of game that’s already made itself a staple for many hobbyists, and it’s easy to see why: It’s quick to teach, compelling to play, and it’ll make you feel clever when you do well — but not because it’s a game that puts you in difficult positions to escape. Designed by Vlaada Chivatl; illustrated by Stéphane Gantiez, Tomáš Kučerovský and Filip Murmak; and published by Czech Games Edition.
The Game is a cooperative game in which you’re trying to play number cards in order — but it’s not The Mind (Wolfgang Warsch, 2016), which came a year later. Rather than playing to one pile, though, you’re playing to four. On your turn, you’ll play at least two cards from your hand. You get to communicate, too. It’s a cool game, and I sometimes think it’s a little bit of a shame it got grouped up with The Mind. But also, I think it’s a real shame that they called it The Game — but I guess I haven’t forgotten the name, so maybe it’s a moot point. Designed by Steffen Benndorf, illustrated most recently by Jason D. Kingsley and Kwanchai Moriya, and published by Pandasaurus Games.
Monikers is basically a concrete implementation of the traditional party game Celebrities. It’s played on teams, and for each team, one person will be describing or imitating, one-by-one through a series of cards, a set of celebrities or otherwise well-known individuals — in the first round, at least. In the second round, you can use only a single word to do the same thing and with the same set of cards. The third round is where things really get going, and you can only use charades. It’s a great time. Designed by Alex Hague and Justin Vickers, illustrated by Cécile Gariépy and Alex Hague, and published by CMYK.
My Favorite Things is a trick-taking game that’s also a party game. Rather than using cards with a specific rank, you’ll write a ranked list of your favorite things in a given category, as well as one least favorite thing. Each player’s cards comprise a suit, and you’ll pass your cards to another player, so they’re basically operating with a set of assumptions about what your favorite things are. It’s a really cool game that you need to play to grasp, and it uses trick-taking to put together a really interesting social experience. Designed by Daiki (Nilgiri) Aoyama and ぺぺR; illustrated by Daiki (Nilgiri) Aoyama, Archie Edwards and Hinami Tsukuda; and published by Play For Keeps.
Mysterium is a cooperative game in which one player takes on the role of a ghost communicating their murder, and the rest of the players are mediums attempting to deconstruct the meaning of surreal dreams, which take the form of art cards basically like the ones from Dixit. (Perhaps these skew a little creepier, but I don’t know. Dixit’s kinda creepy as-is.) Designed by Oleksandr Nevskiy and Oleg Sidorenko; illustrated by Igor Burlakov, Xavier Collette, Oleksandr Nevskiy and Oleg Sidorenko; and published by Libellud.
Pandemic Legacy: Season 1 created some of the gaming experiences that I’ve held to most strongly in the last decade. I’ve played a lot of games in that time, but I can say definitively that Pandemic Legacy is a game I still think about regularly. We played with some friends of ours, and I still remember vividly my friend’s reaction at a certain mid-game event that I won’t spoil. (Why won’t I spoil it? Because that game holds up. I think, at least. I’ve been a little tempted to find a group and give it another go. Maybe I’ll report back at such a point.) This game expanded on the already-great Pandemic, bringing new mechanical twists to the experience. Designed by Matt Leacock and Rob Daviau, illustrated by Chris Quilliams, and published by Z-Man Games.
Honorable Mentions
Arboretum is a tense card game in which you’re collecting trees. It’s very cool, but I don’t remember enough about it to write fluently, so in the honorable mentions it goes. Designed by Dan Cassar; illustrated by Philippe Guérin, Chris Quilliams and Beth Sobel; and published by Z-Man Games.
Cacao is a tile placement game about harvesting ceremonial cacao, and while it’s generally pretty simple, it has a really cool worker tile idea. Designed by Phil Walker-Harding, illustrated by Claus Stephen, and published by Z-Man Games.
Celestia is a little bit of a push-your-luck game in which you’re pushing your luck against the game, but also against your opponents — will you keep going in an airship, knowing the odds of success decrease the further you go? Fun stuff. Designed by Aaron Weissblum, illustrated by Gaeten Noir, and published by BLAM!
Duos just came out as part of CMYK’s Magneta line, but it actually was originally released in 2015 by Schmidt Spiele as Team Play. It’s a fun little team game that I wrote about just last week.
Flick ‘em Up! is a disc-flicking game set in the old west. I think it’s very neat, but I’m also terrible at flicking. Designed by Gaëtan Beaujannot and Jean Yves Monpertuis, illustrated by Chris Quilliams, and published by Pretzel Games.
Isle of Skye is a real great tile-placement game with bidding, but I haven’t played it in nearly nine years. (Wow. I feel old.) Designed by Andreas Pelikan and Alexander Pfister, illustrated by Klemens Franz, and published by Lookout Games.
Lanterns: The Harvest Festival is a tile placement game where you try to complete patterns to earn bonuses and colors — but whenever you place a tile, each player receives a card of the color facing them. That’s a really cool idea, and I think the game holds up well. Designed by Christopher Chung; illustrated by Christopher Chung, Alexey Kot and Beth Sobel; and published by Foxtrot Games.
Potion Explosion can be summarized in two words: marbles colliding. It’s a nice little set collection game.
Qwinto is a spin on the great dice game Qwixx (Steffen Benndorf, 2012), and while it doesn’t quite hit the highs of its predecessor, it’s still a solid Yahtzee replacement. Designed by Bernhard Lach and Uwe Rapp, illustrated by Oliver Freudenreich, and published by Pandasaurus Games in the United States.
Raptor is a two-player game pitting velociraptors against scientists. I haven’t played it in seven years, so I think I’d like to refresh myself on it. Neat game, if my memory serves me well. Designed by Bruno Cathala and Bruno Faidutti, illustrated by Vincent Dutrait, and published by Matagot.
Seas of Strife makes the list as an honorable mention, because this edition came in 2023. The 2015 release, Strife, was later republished in 2018 as Texas Showdown. The rules have changed a bit over the years, so I don’t feel comfortable evaluating it as a 2015 release — but I do feel super comfortable evaluating it as a 2023 release, and it’s a really fantastic trick-taking game. Designed by Mark Majors, illustrate by Beth Sobel, and published by Rio Grande Games.
Spaceteam is a real-time cooperative card game that will have players yelling nonsense words at each other in an effort to fix a space ship.
Take the “A” Chord is a trick-taking game with card ranks that rotate in strength — sort of like a circle of fifths. It very much precedes the recent trick-taking trend — and it’s still great.Designed by Saashi, illustrated by Takako Takarai, and published by Saashi & Saashi.
T.I.M.E. Stories is an interesting cooperative narrative game, and for a time, it had incredible momentum among gamers. The first game is still well-regarded, but the individual expansions for the game can be a little hit and miss. It’s almost a precursor to the great escape room games that followed. Designed by Peggy Chassenet and Manuel Rozoy; illustrated by Ben Carre, Vincent Dutrait, David Lecossu and Pascal Quidault; and published by Space Cowboys.
Viticulture Essential Edition is a worker placement game about growing grapes and turning them into wine. It’s a clever, involved game, and I’d like to play it more in person. I’ve played it a bit on the app, though. Designed by Jamey Stegmaier and Alan Stone; illustrated by Jacqui Davis, David Montgomery and Beth Sobel; and published by Stonemaier Games.
Thank you, as ever, for joining me at Don’t Eat the Meeples! I hope you’ve had a good week. It’s been a good one here, though the only game I played in person this week was Flip 7, which remains a great push-your-luck game. What about you — what have you been playing?
I didn’t realize Raptor was released that long ago! We were given it as a Christmas gift in 2020. We started out playing as two teams of two—it being dinosaurs, my kids were extremely interested but too young to play on their own. Now they’re old enough and know the game well enough that it’s one of the ones they often pull out to play before school.