Looking back at 2005 in board games
2005 wasn't the strongest year in games — the best was very much yet to come.
We’re hopping in the Wayback Machine today and traveling to a distant time in board game history: the year 2005. Yes, 20 years ago was a long time — especially in the internet age — even if it makes me feel old to admit it, both to you, dear reader, and to myself.
To say 2005 was different in board games would be a little bit of an understatement. Kickstarter was four years away from launching and a decade away from blowing up the board game space. Puerto Rico (Seyfarth, 2002) was perhaps the most popular hobby game. BoardGameGeek was growing in popularity, though the site was still a year away from launching the Golden Geek Awards. Forums were still the way to communicate online, and YouTube was only just coming online. Podcasts were just starting to enter the public mind, and Tom Vasel was really gaining steam with The Dice Tower.
It was a different time.
But 2005 is also a foundational year in board games: Those 2006 Golden Geek Awards? Those were for games released in 2005. We’re going to start today’s journey there.
Twilight Struggle (Gupta & Matthews, 2005), the war game that stuck at the top of the BGG games rankings for five years, made its mark on the Golden Geek Awards, earning the Best Two-Player Board Game award. A just prize, I suppose, but one that tells us a lot about the state of gaming. If you look at the slate of two-player games hitting the market today, you’ll see games that are bright and colorful, filled with stunning art and compelling themes. They tend to be pretty accessible, and Twilight Struggle is not particularly that.
Ingenious (Knizia, 2004) won the Best Family Game award, and while it’s still in print, it’s not one I’ve ever played. There was once an Ingenious app, but that time is long gone. The game itself actually underwent a name change, going by Axio for a time as a trademark issue prompted a rename. I’m not sure what changed that gave Knizia back the name, but a new edition in the last year has it back available. I’d actually like to play it.
Caylus (Atta, 2005) is a worker placement game that occasionally (and incorrectly) gets cited as the first in the genre, and while it’s certainly an early example, it’s still seven years removed from the game likely to have originated the idea, Keydom (1998, Breese). It features all the trappings of an early worker placement game: chunky wooden pieces in red, blue, green, and (surprisingly) orange; a Medieval theme; and this vaguely greenish-yellow visual hue. Is it great? I don’t know. But it got the Best Gamer’s Board Game award, so it’s at least got that got going for it. It also received the overall Board Game of the Year award, so that’s nice.
Incan Gold (Fauditti & Moon, 2005) won the Best Light / Party Game award, and it’s held up quite well — it’s a great push-your-luck game where you’re trying to escape an expedition with as much gold as you can carry, but the further down the path you go, the more likely it is that you’ll end up felled by a hazard. It is perhaps not a coincidence that the best ‘light’ game held up well — the list of nominees included some games that have held up really well, too.
A detour, then, to the nominees: No Thanks! (Gimmler, 2004), one of my perennial favorites, made the list. Tsuro (McMurchie, 2005), an excellent lightweight game about knocking your opponents dragons off a grid, holds up well today, too. Wits & Wagers (Crapuchettes, 2005) has maintained long-standing success. Shadows over Camelot (Cathala & Laget, 2005) is still a fantastic cooperative game with a hidden traitor option, though it seems a bit the odd one out in this list. The list goes on, but we won’t discuss every nominated game here in this detour.
From the awards, let’s turn to some of the games released in 2005 that have had staying power. We can see that some have had definite staying power and are still considered among the greats today. Others have dwindled — Twilight Struggle is no longer considered a must-play; Caylus has been supplanted by hundreds of worker placement games. In a very real way, 2005 feels like it was a transitional year in gaming.
Some particular highlights:
Ticket to Ride: Europe (Moon, 2005) was a slightly more complex spin on the classic route-building game, and for many, it’s the definitive version of the game.
Animal Upon Animal (Miltenberger, 2005) is still one of the definitive modern games for young children, and I try to keep a copy or two on-hand for times when we’re invited to a family birthday party.
Descent: Journeys in the Dark (Wilson, 2005) is one of the great dungeon-crawling games, and it got a second edition just seven years later.
And while we’re on new editions: Arkham Horror (Launius & Wilson, 2005 / 2E) reimplemented the 1987 game by the same name, as does Fury of Dracula (Hand & Wilson, 2005 / 2E) — down to the year. (Huh.) Twilight Imperium (Petersen, 2005 3E) has since been supplanted by a fourth edition.
But that’s sort of where my list starts and stops. I’m sure there are some real hidden gems that I simply haven’t played, but it’s just hard to find them from the outside looking in. The board game industry was still dominated by bland art and bland themes, and the best regarded games from the era were sometimes unnecessarily complex — there’s a reason there have been new editions for several of the biggest releases, each of which simplified the ruleset. Would I love to sit down and play these games? Absolutely. I’ve yet to play a Splotter game, and Indonesia (Kesselaar, Lipiński, and Moedt, 2005) might be a good option. Pickomino (Knizia, 2005) looks like a bit of a fun time.
The year’s not a total dud — but if you’re looking 20 years in the past, you’re going to see a gaming landscape that looks and feels very different. It all makes me wonder what we’ll think of 2025 in 20 years — will hobby games be even more ubiquitous? Will we look back at the games released today and see the rules as convoluted and clunky? I’m excited to find out, though I suspect we’ll have to wait a while.
Ah, 2005, good times. I played a lot of Carcassonne and Citadels then. St Petersburg was released in 2004 and was very popular, Nexus Ops was new in 2005, a reprint of For Sale that year made it widely available.
I remember then when Caylus came out it was a big deal at the time. I liked the idea but never really enjoyed it that much. It did feel like something new and different, though. I liked Caylus Magna Carta better when it was released.
That said, Keydom was such a limited release of 300 copies, it was much more likely for people to see/play Aladdin's Dragons, the newer version of it from 2000. I first played Aladdin's Dragons after worker placement games had been around a few years and I thought it was great. I picked up a copy later and still love it. But discussions of it being a worker placement game always lead to split opinions on it. It was considered a blind-bidding game at the time with the different values on the "workers" but it definitely feels like worker placement to me. In fact, I wish more worker placement games were more like it.