2024 in review
Taking a look back at another great year for board gaming.
Hello! Welcome to 2025, where you’ve been for a solid week now. Hard to believe, isn’t it? The ongoing march of games being released has continued apace, and it feels like 2024 had even more amazing games released than 2023. While I don’t know that the feeling is wholly accurate, I’d certainly say there are more good games released every year than the year before it, and that’s (I think) generally not a bad thing. It’s a thing that presents its difficulties, and those should be acknowledged.
It was once easy to find the best games released every year, or at least to find the games that were generally regarded as worth playing. Filtering through the noise was relatively easy, because there simply wasn’t that much noise. It’s a bit tougher now, but it’s also possible to simply find more great games, too. There are far too many to play in a given year, even if one were professionally dedicated to playing games constantly.
So, my look at 2024 comes with a caveat: I haven’t played that many games when you look at the grand scheme of things. I’ve played just an increasingly small fraction of the games released last year. I’m not ashamed of that, and I wouldn’t change it. I mean, I’d always like to play more games, of course, but you get the idea. There are so many games, and I’ll never play all of them. Take this list with the understanding that there’s more to discover and uncover, and I hope you have the opportunity to explore beyond what I’ve talked about here.
You probably even have your favorite games that I didn’t talk about here. Tell me about them! Next week, I’ll be writing about some games I haven’t played from 2024 that are on my list, and maybe you’ll help add some to my own list — you can help me discover something.
Well, let’s get on with the list. I’ll be focusing heavily on two sections, and I’ll touch lightly on two others. There’s absolutely more to come about 2024 through the next two or three months, so consider this a well-intentioned start.
Games for families
The Gang is, put plainly, cooperative Texas Hold’Em. It’s poker without betting. The goal each round is to figure out the relative ranking of everyone’s five-card poker hand, with ties broken by pocket cards. It’s a tremendous game that I wrote about it recently, so I’ll give you a link for that rather than ramble on more. I will say that I’ve only played it more since writing about it, and it’s just as fun an experience as the first time. Designed by John Cooper and Kory Heath, published by KOSMOS.
Panda Panda is a simple little set collection game in which you’re trying to collect specific groups of letters by discarding and drawing cards. More common letters are in larger-sized winning sets, and less common letters are in smaller-sized winning sets. It’s a neat little game that’s generally pretty accessible for younger players, too. Designed by Kaya Miyano, published by Allplay in the U.S..
Rafter Five was released in December 2023, but in Japan, and the earliest you could have played in the U.S. (without an advance copy, I guess?) would have been 2024. So a 2024 game it is. This is a dexterity game where you’re placing meeples on an ever-expanding raft made out of cards only slightly thicker than your usual playing card. The raft starts as the game box, and this is published by Oink in their classic box size — it’s definitely small. If you manage to place five treasure chests on the raft, you’ll win. Wildly fun game, but I’m sure bad at it. Designed by Mashiu and Jun Sasaki, published by Oink Games. Rafter Five plays 1 to 6 players.
River Valley Glassworks is a great family-weight abstract strategy game themed around animals collecting and selling glass. It’s a bit in the Azul mold — collect pieces, place them on your board, earn points. That downplays what a good game this is, though. I’ve played it loads of times on BGA and not-quite-loads-but-still-plenty of times in person. It plays quickly, gives you strategic options on your turn, and generally hits its marks really well. I wrote about it a while ago, if you’d like to read more. Designed by Adam Hill, Ben Pinchback and Matt Riddle; published by Allplay. River Valley Glassworks plays 1 to 5 players.
Spotlight is a cooperative game in the mold of Where’s Waldo and the German Wimmelbilderbuch — it’s a big ol’ picture in which you’re searching for specific things. It’s timed, and it’s cooperative, and most importantly, each player has this sort of mock flashlight that reveals only a small subsection of the picture at any given time. Each round, players count objects matching the given type. The closer you get to the actual number of matching objects, the safer you’ll be from losing. Designed by Hjalmar Hach and Lorenzo Silva, published by Horrible Guild. Spotlight plays 1 to 5 players.
Things in Rings is best as a competitive Venn diagram, and it’s one of the more unusual games of 2024. It’s packed in a small box with three pieces of cord, a big stack of object cards, and a slightly smaller stack of rule cards. Each game has one person as ‘The Knower,’ who is given the rules for the Venn diagram. The other players will, one-by-one, try to place object cards in the right places in the diagram. The first player to get all their cards placed properly wins. Weird game, and I love it. Designed by Peter C. Hayward, published by Allplay. Things in Rings plays 2 to 6 players, but you could probably play more than that, if you wanted.
Wilmot’s Warehouse is another interesting cooperative game that doesn’t quite fit the mold of games that have come before. You’re basically pulling tiles from a stack, looking at them, then placing them face-down on a grid. At the end of the game, you all have to remember what tiles went where. The premise is wildly simple — too simple to work, you’d think. “Is it just cooperative memory?” you might wonder. It’s not, though, even if it’s fundamentally, yeah, just a memory game. It’s about framing: The game tells you to tell a story or otherwise create some method of organizing tiles as you place them. It works. Designed by Ricky Haggett, Richard Hogg and David King, published by CMYK. Wilmot’s Warehouse plays 2 to 6 players.
More great games
As I figure out my favorite games from 2024, I’ll be talking about these in more depth, so expect to see them again. I won’t be talking about them in too much depth, so do look out for my further feelings in the next month or two.
Cascadia — Rolling Rivers & Hills — One of my favorite recent roll-and-write games. This has lots of expanding complexity as you play through the game’s different modes. Designed by Randy Flynn.
French Quarter — A dice-drafting roll-and-write game with two sheets you have to manage. It’s cool! Designed by Adam Hill, Ben Pinchback and Matt Riddle.
Harmonies — A smart abstract strategy game that hides a little bit of its depth under the surface. Designed by Johan Benvenuto.
Looot — Collect and place tiles on your board to meet a wide variety of goals you’ll also be placing on your board. It’s all about optimizing your tile placement, and it really scratches a nice itch. Designed by Charles Chevallier and Laurent Escoffier.
Nocturne — Animals casting spells. Some interesting puzzliness here. Designed by David Iezzi.
Stamp Swap — Collect stamps, earn points showing them off. A nice demonstration of the I Split, You Choose idea. Designed by Paul Salomon.
Tír na nÓg — Draft cards to (thematically, not literally) tell the best stories. There’s a lot of set collection in this small list, and this does it well. Designed by Isaac Shalev and Jason Slingerland.
Wyrmspan — A slightly more weighty sequel to Wingspan. The complexity added here works really quite well. Designed by Connie Vogelmann.
Small-publisher and self-published trick-taking games
2024 is the year in which I played a slew of indie games — games from small, independent publishers. Some of these were from Japan, others from the United States. Unlike most of my recommendations, with indie games, I’ll often try to provide a link to buy the game. (There’s no affiliate link or anything; it’s just that I want you to find the game.) I look forward to playing even more in 2025.
There’s an increased prominence of indie board and card games entering the market, in part owing to multiple self-published markets popping up: Indie Games Night Market at PAX Unplugged in Philadelphia and Game Market West in San Jose, in particular, featured a slew of designers selling their games for the first time. They didn’t go through traditional publishing channels. Three of these games were sold there, and while I didn’t attend, I was lucky enough to land copies of the games otherwise. Others here were published by small-run publishers, though most are still in their first print run.
None of this to talk about how ‘exclusive’ or ‘rare’ they are, but rather to highlight the beautiful games out there that aren’t getting broad attention and aren’t seeing publication from a traditional publisher. Most of these are still available out there, so do check them out if you’re interested.
A final note before the games: Some of these were released in 2023. Publishing and distributing games on your own takes time. I’m loosening my year restriction here, but only by a bit. Thanks!
Enemy Anemone has been a highlight of my recommendations for a long time, and it’s a great trick-taking game. It pulls off must-not-follow really well, wherein each player must play a different suit that’s been played. This is a simple game, but it has just enough of a twist to really work. Designed by Daniel Newman, published by New Mill Industries. Retails for $20, purchase from New Mill.
Gachapon Trick is themed around those delightful (and probably a little bit evil) toy vending machines in Japan — you know, the ones that end up wildly addictive? Those. This is a trick-taking game in which you are trying to collect sets of toys in various colors, and each variant of the toy costs money. You get those toys after winning tricks, at which point you’re given the opportunity to buy any toys played to the trick — and, most importantly, off the top of the deck. It’s a really delightful time, and it’s just a little bit addictive itself. Designed by Daniel Newman, published by New Mill Industries. Retails for $20, purchase from New Mill.
The Ghost Lift is a climbing-shedding game where you’re playing ghost cards to operate an elevator. The cards aren’t particularly nice — they’re flimsy and the corners aren’t rounded, so you’ll want to sleeve this one — but the play is charming. It’s a smart game, and each round plays pretty quickly. Designed by Ridge Gear, published in Japan by SMART500 Games. Import from Japan on Bodoge, retails for just ¥770.
Kansas City: The Trick-Taking Game is an interesting must-follow game in which you may upgrade your cards to a trump suit on the back of your cards. Only one trump card of each rank may be visible at any given time. You’ll earn points for winning a limited number of tricks, so you’re tasked with being judicious about when to flip cards to the trump suit and win tricks. Too few tricks won and you’ll not score many points, if any. Too many tricks, and it’s the same. Just right? That’s the trick. Designed and self-published by Chris Wray. Not available at retail, though Chris has previously said he’s looking for publishers.
Spring Cleaning is a climbing-shedding game that’s rapidly become one of my favorite in the genre. Using singles, sets and runs, you may play cards from your hand, but you cannot rearrange your cards at any point. If you can’t play a card, you’ll draw a card, then put a card out on offer in front of you. Those cards in front of players can be used when following melds, and they can also be drawn into your hand and placed at any point. I love these games where you can’t rearrange your hand, be it a great negotiation game like Bohnanza or a climbing classic like Scout. Spring Cleaning does some really great things. Designed by Jonathan Cox, published by Little Dog Games. While out of stock and no reprint is planned, copies are still available at Tricky Imports. Retails for $20. You can also play the game on Board Game Arena.
Tricky Time Crisis is a fascinating spin on must-not-follow trick-taking. In each trick, each player must play a different suit, but which is straightforward enough. The theme comes in strong here: Each suit but one represents a comic book superhero, and the other represents a supervillain attempting to destroy the timeline. In each trick, one player thus becomes the supervillain, and the superheroes combine their card ranks to determine a trick winner. It’s clever and unusual. Designed by Jon Barron, published by Baron Jon Games. Not available right now, with the Kickstarter for a sequel game having recently concluded. I’d anticipate copies of the sequel, Tricky Time Crisis: The Spawn of Time, being available following printing, and probably copies of this one, too.
More great trick-taking and climbing games
Again, I’ll be talking about a lot of these games in more depth, so you’ll have to wait for more detail. There have been loads of great trick-taking games released over the last year, and talking about all of them will take time. Maybe we’ll get there.
Call of Yeti — Trick-taking with bidding, but you might be forced mid-round to increase your bid. Also, cryptids! Designed by Yuichi Sakashita.
Crisps — An as-yet-unpublished climber in which each players add a card to their hand each trick. Designed by Shreesh Bhat.
Odin — A climbing game where your cards combine into a single multi-digit number, and you can play either cards of the same number or the suit. Designed by Yohan Goh, Hope S. Hwang and Gary Kim.
Seers Catalog — Climbing with special artifacts and a whip-smart end-game — once one player goes out, everyone with fewer than five cards scores points for the lowest card remaining in hand. Designed by Taylor Reiner.
VIVO — Rules change every trick, with restrictions ranging from one suit to four. Designed by LEO.
Xylotar — Trick-taking with face-down cards — deduction, induction and guessing all play a big role. Designed by Chris Wray.
Thanks for reading Don’t Eat the Meeples! Over the last year, you’ve helped my little newsletter grow, and I’m so happy to report that the reader base more than doubled over the course of 2024. I’m humbled by your desire to join me as I explore the world of board games. If there’s something you’d like me to write about this year, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
Here’s to a great year!
Another great small publisher game this year was Critical Care