Nine great games from 2022
Another great year in games is wrapping up. Here are some great ones I played this year.
Today, I’d love to write a comprehensive list of every game I’ve wanted to play that was released this year — I really would. But that’s not particularly practical, not least because there’s a joy in playing games I’ve already played. (Sure, I would almost always play a new game over one I’ve played before, for better or worse. But I recognize that’s not for everyone.)
That being said, I played some really great games that were released in 2022, and I’m here to talk about a few of those. I’ve already talked about a few others, and I’ll include some of those at the bottom.
Maybe in a decade I can do a retrospective on the year, having played more games. Or maybe I should consider doing a retrospective for 2021 next year. I don’t know — you tell me! Whenever I do it, though, I can guarantee that I’ll have played just a fraction of the games released in the year. There are just so many games being released these days, and I don’t think there’s any possibility I’ll be able to play them all. Unless you have some means of time travel I can try out. Hmm.
Without further ado, and in no particular order, here are nine games I played in 2022 that I really enjoyed.
Azul: Queen’s Garden
Another Azul game? Why not! Azul is every bit a “modern classic,” and as a result, it’s seen three games spin off of the original. They all feature a similar drafting mechanism and tile placement, but each game manages to feel like a different game. Not wildly different, of course, but certainly more than just variations on a theme.
Azul: Queen’s Garden, the latest in the series, tweaks the drafting just a bit, adding in garden expansions alongside the tiles. Think of it this way: Factories in Azul are each filled with four tiles, and you draft from individual factories. Queen’s Garden has just one ‘factory’ equivalent (a face-down garden expansion upon which the tiles are placed) to start, and another comes out the first time tiles from that face-down expansion are drafted. That new expansion piece (also face-down) gets four more tiles. You can draft from across multiple face-down expansion pieces, selecting for either color or symbol. However, you’re limited in that selection, as you can’t take more than one of any matching color and symbol pair.
You’ll earn points as you grow your garden, playing four rounds and earning points for different sets of symbols and colors each round. Because your garden grows, your scoring also grows over time — and while I always feel a little weird about starting with a tiny score (just a few points!) and ending with huge scores (100-plus scores are well-expected), there’s also some fun in the ramp-up.
Here’s the funny thing about this one: As far as Azul games go, there’s no better game than the original, and Queen’s Garden doesn’t hold up to the same level of scrutiny and won’t garner the same level of adoration. But I think Azul: Queen’s Garden is a pretty solid abstract strategy game, and that’s why it’s made my list.
Sound Box
I like games that feel like experiments in form — especially if they nail what they’re aiming for. Sound Box nails it, but it feels like a game that shouldn’t work as well as it does. The whole premise of this cooperative party game is that you’re going to gather a bunch of people around a table, make one person close their eyes, and then everyone makes a noise corresponding to a card assigned to them with a secret number token. After a short time — 13 seconds! — the player with their eyes closed will then inspect all the cards on the board (there are more cards than players) and figure out what sounds they just heard.
It feels like a game that shouldn’t work at all. You have 13 seconds to hear a cacophony of noise, then you have to guess what you just heard? It works, and it’s an absolute blast.
Paint the Roses
I love a logic puzzle. At any given point throughout the day, you might find me chipping away at an interesting Sudoku puzzle from Cracking the Cryptic (their apps are the best in the game), and little brain teaser puzzles are something for which I’ve always had a lot of time. Paint the Roses takes the core idea of a logic puzzle and wraps it up in a delightful Alice in Wonderland theme. The rather considerable difference between Paint the Roses and other logic puzzle games is the cooperative play, which I just adore.
In Paint the Roses, each player has a card in hand — a whim of the Queen of Hearts — that indicates a pattern you’re trying to communicate to the other players. That card shows two symbols or flower colors. As players work together to build a hex tile garden, each tile of which features both a symbol and a flower color, you’ll place tokens indicating anything that matches your pattern. Once your pattern is discerned by somebody at the table, the players’ score token moves forward — and further away from the Queen of Hearts, who is increasingly trying to chase you down.
Ghosts of Christmas
OK, so technically, this was released in 2019 in Japan as Time Palatrix, but this slightly weird trick-taker, in which you’re playing cards to the past, present and future, only just saw an English release this year from Allplay (formerly Board Game Tables). I’m counting Ghosts of Christmas as a 2022 release.
On your turn, you play into one of the three phases (past, present, future); the first player to play a card in each sets the lead suit, and subsequent players are obligated to play that suit in that phase, should they have some. After each player has played a card in each phase (in a three-player game, this will be nine cards played total), three different tricks are evaluated. The winner of the Past trick then sets the winning suit in the Present trick based on what card they played, and the winner of the Present trick sets the winning suit in the Future trick in the same method.
It’s a bit weird and certainly takes playing a hand to really grasp what’s happening. Where most trick-takers can be played relatively tactically, responding to what’s immediately in front of you with some long-term strategy sort of in the background, Ghosts of Christmas forces you to confront your strategy head-on while also balancing your tactical approach. It kind made my head spin a bit, so naturally, I loved it. I’ll take a weird game every day of the week, please.
Cat in the Box
If you tell me that a game features paradoxes, I’ll probably ask to play it. Cat in the Box features paradoxes, and I’ve got to say, writing about two kinda weird trick-taking games in a row is a real treat. (Although if I’m being totally honest, I didn’t write about them back-to-back. Sorry.)
In Cat in the Box, your cards feature only numbers — no colors or other suit indicators. When you play a card, you’ll declare its suit, playing a token to a communal research board. There are four possible suits, and once a number has been used for a particular suit, it can’t be used again. Simple enough, right? (I mean, it’s not really, but play along, would you?) Well, each number appears in the deck five times. And there are four suits. And if you can’t play a card, you’ll hit a paradox, and the round immediately ends. For all players.
Oh, and you have to bid on the number of tricks you’ll win that round — and if you the number you bid corresponds with the number of tricks you actually won, you’ll have an opportunity for even more points from the communal research board. As you play cards, you’ll indicate that they’ve been played on the board with tokens of your color, and meeting your bid exactly means you’ll get points equal to your longest contiguous connected set of tokens on that board.
Cat in the Box is weird, and it won’t make complete sense your first few rounds of play. But once it clicks, and you can see the potential paradoxes in your work — well, I’m not a scientist, but I’m going to say that this is exactly what being a scientist must feel like.
Four more games I’ve already written about
In "Six great games you can teach in five minutes or less, I wrote about Spots, a push-your-luck dice-roller that came out this year. It’s easy to teach, quick to play, and so clever.
Paperback Adventures is a deck-building word solitaire game — a combination that seems like it wouldn’t work, but trust me, it does. I wrote about this one in October: Paperback Adventures takes deck-building to a new level
Three Sisters is a thinky roll-and-write game. Here’s what I said about it in Five games for fall: “Check this one out if you like sitting down and puzzling out your best strategy while being limited in your action selection by a rondel.” What’s a rondel, you ask? Board Game Geek has the answer you’re seeking.
Star Trek Super Skill Pinball is a themed spin on Super Skill Pinball, which made my 2022 board game gift guide. I love both of these things, so it’s a natural fit.
Notes
Like so many people these days, I’ve joined Mastodon. Follow me there if you’re interested! I’m @matt@tabletop.social — at least for my gaming thoughts.
Sorry to drop this on you on a Thursday — holiday and travel preparations meant I was always pushing this one a bit. I actually meant to take some nice, shiny photos of these games. I’ll get to that at some point next year. (Ha!)
Next week, I’ll have a retrospective of this very newsletter in 2022. I might also talk about some other things — favorite movies I watched this year, maybe? I don’t know.
I hope you all have a very happy holiday season! A special thanks for joining me in this newsletter — without people reading, I certainly wouldn’t have published as many issues as I have.