12 great games from 2023
It's another great year for gaming. Here are some of the great games I've played this year.
Unless for some reason I come into an enormous windfall of money, I’m not likely to ever give you a list of “the best games” of a year, simply owing to the need to, you know, work. Of course, this is not a slight against those who can and do produce top 10 lists every year. It’s just not something of which I’m particularly well-suited. I’m not playing games at such a rate, and I’m not interested in a variety of others.
This is why I’m always delighted to bring you some great games each year. I’ve done it in 2022, 2021 and 2020, and I’m a bit surprised to see that the format has somehow changed every year. This is the most straightforward year on record, I think. I’ve got 7 games that aren’t trick-taking games, then I’ve got five more that are.
This is not intended to be and should not be taken as a ‘best of 2023’ list. There are so many games I still need to play and discover. I intend to do that throughout the year and give you a bit of an update. I’ve got some picked out for the next three or so months already, which I’ll talk about at the end.
Daybreak quickly became one of a go-to cooperative games online with some now-remote friends of ours, and with good reason. It has players taking on the challenge of our time (avoiding environmental collapse), and there’s a comfortable amount of depth and challenge within. Packaged as a tableau builder, Daybreak urges players to cooperate to solve the challenges in front of them, whether that’s sharing technologies, mitigating crises, or supporting global projects. We’ve played it enough asynchronously that I’ve started to really see how much more effective we are when we get into a room (even if that’s a Zoom room) and talk it over. Designed by Matt Leacock and Matteo Menapace.
Lacuna is a two-player area control game played on a large, circular mat with some stunning little metal pieces and a wide array of flower tokens. Oh, and it comes in a tube. I don’t own many games that come in a tube. (Just this one.) On your turn, you’ll place a piece somewhere between two identical flower tokens, collecting the two of them. That repeats until both players are out of tokens to place. From there, each flower is given to the player whose token is closest, and the player who has a majority of a majority of tokens wins the game. It’s a clever little thing. Designed by Mark Gerrits.
Viking See-Saw captures what I love about itten-published dexterity games, but it does it in an even smaller box than usual, and it does it with one of my favorite board game components: a big, purple Viking ship that lists from side to side as players place treasure on it. The conceit is simple: Place a treasure on the ship. If it tilts to the opposite side, you have to take a wooden chest to place later. The player who places all their pieces first wins, or if all the wooden chests are taken, the game ends immediately. It has all the verve and style of an itten release, and it feels like a nice step forward in their line. This is my favorite of their small-box Funbrick series. Designed by Reiner Knizia.
Wonder Bowling is my second-favorite Funbrick game because it features one of the strangest mechanics I’ve seen in a game. The box is the board (not that unusual — I’ve seen it before), and you hit the box with a little wooden mallet to knock over miniaturized bowling pins. (There you go!) It’s not so simple as just getting a strike and knocking down all the pins — your goal is to knock down all but one. It’s a weird little game, and I like it a lot. Designed by Susume Kawasaki.
Fiction takes the joy of playing Wordle in early 2022 and makes it a delightful board game in which one player gets to lie about clues. It’s a one-versus-all sort of game. Over a series of ten guesses, players attempt to guess the word of the round. Each of the five letters in each guess will be marked to indicate its correctness — but one of the marks could be a lie, and it’s up to players to figure out the lies so they can find the actual word. I love a word-based party game, and this is one I’m happy to have in the rotation. Designed by Peter C. Hayward.
Fit to Print features one of my favorite mechanisms: real-time tile placement. It’s a feature it shares with very few games, but the ones I’ve played, I’ve adored. I love the feeling of rapidly picking up a tile, trying to immediately evaluate its worth, then gathering it for later placement. Do I think I’m particularly good at this? No, I do not. In Fit to Print, you’re gathering tiles for a daily newspaper, picking up a mix of articles, photographs and advertisements. Once you’ve gathered an appropriate amount (which is complete guesswork, really), you can start laying out your newspaper’s front page. You’ll earn points for articles and photographs based on conditions on those cards, as well as potential randomly selected conditions. Over three rounds, you’ll total scores — but if you’ve earned the last points from your advertisements, you’ll end up folding the paper, and you are ineligible to win the round. Spooky how close it is to real life. Designed by Peter McPherson.
Gussy Gorillas features far more wild shouting than perhaps I prefer in a game, but the game is literally titled Gussy Gorillas. What more could I have expected? This is a negotiation game in which you’re trying to negotiate with your own cards — one initially, then potentially more — but you have no idea what cards you’re presenting. You only know what other people are willing (or aren’t willing) to offer you for your own card. And so it goes: Everyone’s holding up cards they’ve not seen, trying to either stave off a multitude of bidders, or to get somebody to trade you for your card. Maybe you’ll have to sweeten the pot with a second card you’ve never seen. There’s a bit more around scoring and what cards are worth, but the core conceit is just that. And with up to ten players at the table, this is a game with a ridiculousness that I’ve rarely seen matched.
Great trick-takers and climbers-and-shedders from 2023
I’ve played a lot of trick-taking games this year, but a good number of them were released prior to 2023. Part of that is the cycle of importing a game from Japan, where a number of those games were initially released. Part of that is simply because I have a number of games to play. I’ve got a long list of trick-takers to play from 2023, and I’m working on it. (We’ll revisit this. I promise. In fact, I’ll probably write something soon about trick-takers I played last year. January is review month, after all!)
Nana Toridori quickly became a go-to for its quick explanation and clever play. A spin on the game Hachi Train, which I haven’t played, this is a climbing game in which you’re trying to shed your hand of cards first. Following a player’s lead until somebody passes, you’ll play a set that is stronger, either in card rank (say a 2 was led, you could play a 3 or higher) or in number of cards in the set (two 2s would beat one 9, for example). There are two twists: You cannot reorder the cards in your hand, and you must play sets that are comprised of adjacent cards; and when you beat a set, you may pick up the cards from that set and place them in your hand. Designed by Toshiki Arao.
Sail is a two-player trick taker that pits players against the game, navigating choppy waters, rocks and a kraken looking to sink your ship. Reach the end of the map and you’ll win, but it’ll take some cunning — key to success is coordinating now just who wins what trick, but what suit with which they win. Designed by Akiyama Koryo and Korzu Yusei.
Enemy Anenome is a must-not-follow trick-taking game in which you’re trying to play the highest card among all played — or for not being able to play a card at all, or even for playing the lowest card. Rather than having to follow suit, you simply mustn’t follow suit. If you can’t not follow, you’ll place a card into your scoring pile. If you win the trick, you’ll place all the cards in the trick in your scoring pile. If you play the lowest card, you’ll take an anemone card, which will increase a later card’s value by 1. This is quick to learn and play, but there’s enough here to keep things interesting, too. That’s a hard balance to strike. Designed by Daniel Newman.
Ptolemy is one of three two-player games in this section (following Sail, and with one more to come), which is certainly not what you’d expect from the usual array of games of that ilk. I’d expect a 3 to 5 player count much sooner than I’d expect 2, but Ptolemy made its way on fair and square. It’s a bit of a weird one: You’re playing cards to attempt to move planets to higher altitudes than what other players have done. To do so, you’ll play planet cards of varying values, and tokens are then moved that value on a board, skipping over any planets in their way. They must finish at least as high as the last-played planet. There’s a bit more to it, but it’s a simple single-card climbing game. The literal climbing element is a nice spin. Designed by Geonil.
Hipparchus is a game that could have felt like a follow-up Ptolemy, largely owing to the ancient astronomical theme, but instead, it stands solely on its own merits. Following from Scout or Nana Toridori above (or even Bohnanza, a bit), you can’t rearrange your hand after its been dealt to you. There are only three suits (sun, moon and Earth), and none of the cards have values. One player leads with between one and three of any one of the suits (you must play cards in the sets present in your hand, and you can only split them apart if there are more than three cards in the set), and the other player must follow with the same suit but a different number of cards, following the same rules about sets in their hand. A round ends when a player is out of cards, and players earn points if they have the majority of cards for each suit — but interestingly, they earn points equal to the number of cards their opponent won. It’s a nice twist, and I really enjoyed the need to let your opponent win as many tricks as possible. Also designed by Geonil.
Five games I’m excited to play from 2023
I’ve played several solo rounds of Unmatched Adventures: Tales to Amaze, but I’ve yet to play it cooperatively, where I suspect it will shine a bit more.
Solani is a tile-laying game about the Navajo creation story in which you’re drafting stars to place in the sky
RUN is a game I’ve anticipated getting to the table for some time — I played it with Tim Fowers of Fowers Games, and I really enjoyed it then, but I need to play it at home (or at somebody else’s home. You know what I mean.)
Bacon is a four-or-six player climbing game from Haggis designer Sean Ross, and it might have gotten a play sooner had it not come out late in the year.
The Lord of the Rings Adventure Book Game appeals to me — I grew up on The Lord of the Rings, got super hyped for the movie trilogy as a teenager, got a bit weird about how successful it was (also as a teenager, which is not surprising for anyone), and have settled into loving it but not really diving into the extended canon. Anyway, I want to play this game, and it’s waiting for us.
Closing thoughts
For the first time in what seems like years, I haven’t played any of 2023’s “top releases,” at least when we’re considering, say, top 35 ranked games from the year. It’s not that I didn’t play plenty of releases from 2023 (though there are plenty more I’m excited to get to the table — stay tuned, hopefully). It seems likely to me that it’s more a case of two different paths diverging a bit.
I’ve written recently about how my gaming group has shifted, and that does play into these things. But as I browse through the top-ranked games of the year (by the notoriously flawed Board Game Geek rankings), the games that appeal to me strongly are shrinking. Engine-building worker-placement mid-to-heavy Euros? I’ve been there, and while I am always down to play a game in that rich vein, I’m now a bit less likely to seek one out myself. There’s obviously an audience bias there, as the heaviest users of BGG (at least in terms of the game-ranking system) tend to focus on heavier-weighted games. I don’t begrudge that, but there are so, so many gamers out there interested in games that are a bit more accessible and approachable. (Maybe I should be part of the solution and rank the games I play on BGG. Hmm.)
I do think there’s an issue that will raise its head a bit over the coming years, and that’s the role increased prices will play in changing the shape of the hobby. I was happier to spend $50 or $60 on a Euro that might not be exactly what I want than I am $90 to $120 — and I want to be clear here: That’s not about the games “not being worth the price.” There are myriad factors that play into the price of games, and I do not begrudge those. The cost of producing and shipping games overseas has fluctuated and generally increased. The production quality of games of that sort have increased, too.
What will all this mean for 2024 and beyond? I don’t know just yet. The hobby is very clearly growing. What will that mean for these rankings? For prices? For the games that gain the most attention? I’m excited to find out.