My Island was the hotly anticipated 2023 follow-up to 2020’s eminently popular My City, both games designed by Reiner Knizia and published by KOSMOS. This review was 2 years in the making, as my first game of My Island was on October 28th, 2023, and the final game was August 9th, 2025. There were some significant gaps in time between games, which probably tells you how this review is going to end.
Just like in My City, My Island is played over 24 games, broken into 8 chapters. Each game introduces new rules that twist the game in different and interesting ways. The gameplay itself is similar, every player has the same pieces available to them. Each turn, a card is flipped, and all players need to fit the piece depicted on the card into their personal player board. My Island features a series of hexagon tiles that need to be placed in a dominos style; each tile you put down needs to have at least one hexagon touching another hexagon of the same type.
The tiles come in 2, 3, and 4 hexagon shapes, with the same element rarely doubled within a single tile. At the start of the campaign, you can only place your tiles on the beach, but as the campaign goes on, you gain the ability to adventure deeper into the jungle. Where you put your tile is up to you, within the placement rules, but efficiency is the name of the game. Clusters and connections score you points, while awkward gaps and poor planning come back to bite you.
My Island is 8 chapters long, each chapter broken into 3 episodes each. Every chapter brings in a new twist, perhaps some new pieces, or something gets placed on your player board, while each episode within the chapter offers a small change on the chapter quirk. Sometimes these twists add tension, but other times it’s just confusing, especially when a rule changes a rule from a previous chapter, but the rulebook says “all rules from previous chapters apply”. It didn’t help that each chapter would introduce 3 or 4 new rules, then each episode in that chapter would twist only one or two of those rules, making it really difficult to keep in your mind what still scored and what didn’t. In the end, we just ended up using the chapter scoring summary as our definitive list of what rules still apply.
As the list of rules grew, so did the opportunities to earn points. As I said, you have to place tiles ‘dominos style’. By that, I mean when you place a tile, at least one of the hexagons on the tile needs to touch another hexagon of the same type that’s already on the board. Then by the middle of the game, My Island is asking you to make clusters of 5 hexagons of the same type, along with green paths snaking through your island, all while trying to have houses on the beaches. Further still, you’re asked to have clusters of 8 tiles or more, while also surrounding certain objects with a specific colour, and have 4 different tiles around another thing, and have a path from the water to the centre of the board.
My City was a breezy, cozy experience. Games took 15 minutes, and while you were always chasing optimal tile placements, you were never really shutting yourself off from most of the scoring opportunities. My Island reminds me more of Calico. There are so many competing objectives and scoring opportunities, that every time you place a tile, you are progressing one of those opportunities, but closing the door on three others. I can’t tell you how many times we would put down our second or third tile in the game, and there would be a chorus of “oh no, I’ve already ruined everything” around the table. By the back half of the campaign, each game took in excess of 40 minutes, which is A LOT when you’re ostensively playing a ‘light’ tile laying game.
Something else to mention, with My City, it was easy to complete a whole chapter in 45 minutes. It was a great game to pull out after we finished whatever mid-weight euro was the main event for the evening. But with every game of My Island hitting 40 minutes, we would go months between single plays. We’d forget what rule episode 7 introduced, and how episode 8 twisted it, making it even more challenging to return to.
It’s kind of impossible to not compare My Island to My City, but that’s the path you choose when you create a spiritual sequel with a nearly identical title and gameplay mechanics. You’re going to get compared. My City was full of charm and whimsy. When someone won, it was good cheer all around, you could see how you could have done better, but hey, that was the luck of the draw. In My Island, my head was constantly in my hands, I was always trying to snap off a single hexagon so I could just finish that one damn cluster. I was stymied by the card draws, and quickly fell behind in victory points.
In the last two chapters of the campaign, you’re tasked with building 3 buildings, and filling up a portal track. In Chapter 7, you aren’t told what these elements do, just that you should probably do them. In the last chapter it’s revealed that each of those buildings you don’t build will cost you 2 victory points per stage you don’t complete. And the overall winner is whomever has the portal track filled up the most, then subtract the victory points you’ve accumulated throughout the entire campaign. When I play a legacy game, I’m always the person whos trying to complete the objectives first, even to the detriment of winning each individual game, so by chapter 8, I had already completed all 3 buildings. My opponents were a little taken aback, but in the end, it all came out in the wash. We all finished all 3 buildings, and all finished the portal tracks. But I can see that being really jarring for someone if they had completely neglected the buildings that weren’t fully explained in the previous chapter.
My Island was good, but not as great as My City. In My City I was excited to start every chapter, to unlock new polyomino tiles, to have some asymmetric tiles depending on who won a specific episode. In My Island, the most asymmetric you’ll get is that you’ll get to put a little sticker on some of your tiles that makes on hex count for 2 of the specific type. Not very exciting. I don’t know if the lack of excitement comes from the bar being set so high in My City, but regardless, I didn’t feel like My Island had as many unique and interesting ideas as the game that came before it. If you’re a die hard fan of My City and are thirsting for more Knizia tile laying puzzles, you’ll probably enjoy My Island. But for most people, I suspect they’ll find themselves missing the joy and simplicity of the game where it all began.
I always forget how difficult it can be to make these lists. A lot of these games I haven’t played in 15 years, so I’m really just relying on gut feelings and vibes at this point. But that’s kind of the fun of a blog, right? This isn’t necessarily an objective look at the best video games ever according to a harsh rubric. This is my heart, and sometimes, my heart is stupid.
80 – XCOM: Enemy Unknown
Year Released: 2012 | Platform: Playstation 3
XCOM: Enemy Unknown is widely regarded as one of the best squad-based tactical RPGs of the modern era. You command a team of soldiers, facing off in turn-based combat against an alien invasion. XCOM does a great job of building tension by having the government caught flatfooted by the invasion, so your crew are weak, ill-equipped, and low on resources to handle all the pressing needs, as well as having permadeath be a consequence for letting one of your squad members fall in battle.
One of my favourite tidbits is that the majority of players didn’t complete XCOM, so when XCOM 2 came out, the story picks up as if the aliens won the invasion and took over. Now you take the role of an underground resistance committing guerrilla warfare upon the alien overlords.
Overall, the superb tactical and strategic gameplay combined with the emotional attachment to the survival of your squad members makes XCOM a magnificent and memorable experience.
79 – No More Heroes
Year Released: 2007 | Platform: Nintendo Wii
Perhaps sacrilegious, but this is the only Suda51 game I’ve played, and damn does it drop with style. In No More Heroes, Scrawny Travis Touchdown leaves his anime nerd haven of a motel room after winning a beam katana and takes on a job to assassinate local villain. This earns him rank 11 with the United Assassins Association, and he just chooses to claw his way to the top.
The gameplay is pretty hack and slash, with plenty of references to general anime and wrestling fandoms. The humour is crass and juvenile, complete with the need to shake the Wii Remote in a furious up and down motion to recharge your katana, and the save game location being toilet stalls. It’s stupid, I wouldn’t really recommend anyone play it, as it’s kinda stupid, but it’s also fun. If Suda51’s humour and aesthetic appeal to you, you’ll probably dig No More Heroes, but if it doesn’t, then you wouldn’t be missing out on any kind of important cultural milestone by skipping this title.
78 – Mega Man Zero 2
Year Released: 2003 | Platform: Game Boy Advance
I always considered this to be my second favourite Mega Man game, right after Mega Man X, which you’ll see much higher on the list. Mega Man Zero 2 begins with Zero wandering, battered and close to collapse in a sandstorm. With only his sword and buster gun operational, he fights through the wave of baddies, only to collapse at the end of the first level.
Zero awakes in the new Resistance Base, where Ciel and her team repair Zero, equip him with some new gear, and he joins their cause while seeking out the baby elves.
Mega Man Zero 2 is everything I want from a Mega Man game. It’s fast paced, each of the weapons have their uses, as you memorize and get better at each level, you’re rewarded with various new armors and abilities, it’s just utterly satisfying to get really good at a game and be rewarded for it. Mega Man Zero 2 lived in my Game Boy for months on end, until I got an S rank on every mission, and could complete the game without taking a single hit. I have played some of the other Mega Man Zero games, but without the memory of all the levels in the back of my head, I feel less intrested in actually getting good at these ‘new’ games, instead choosing to just replay Mega Man Zero 2 over and over again. What can I say? I like feeling competent in my limited game time!
77 – Plok
Year Released: 1993 | Platform: SNES
Gosh Plok has such serious memories for me. On some level, I kind of miss the wild west of video games that existed back in 1993 when you could just make a wacky ass game like this. Plok is a side scrolling platformer about a… I don’t even know what Plok is, some kind of goblin? Either way, he throws his hands and his feet to attack his foes, if he loses them, they appear on clothes hangers somewhere else in the level. Giant presents are littered throughout the levels that transform Plok into a saw blade, a helicopter, a boxer, and so much more.
It’s bright, colourful, and crazy, everything that mattered to me when I was 5 years old. I never actually beat Plok, I should really go back and give it another play now that i’m all grown up.
76 – Fallout 3
Year Released: 2008 | Platform: Xbox 360
I came into Fallout 3 almost entirely blind. I was walking around the mall in Winnipeg, saw a cardboard cutout of the power armor pictured above, and said “hell yes”. I walked in, bought the game, went home, and fell in love.
Fallout 3 is a post apocalyptic first-person shooter that starts the players in an underground vault. As you progress through the introduction, you’re introduced to the tight group of people that live in the vault under the iron grip of the Overseer. Something goes terribly wrong, people die, your father disappears, and you manage to escape the vault. The first time you leave the cave that hides the vault entrance, and you look out at the blinding light of the wasteland, my jaw dropped. What follows is a haunting adventure through the “what if” future of humanity post nuclear armageddon.
Fallout 3 was my introduciton to the series, and I fell utterly in love with the series. Unfortunately, Fallout 4 was a bit to action/adventure for my tastes, and I’ve completely boycotted Fallout 76 due to the lifeless world upon launch to the $130 per year subscription fee. I’ve resolved myself to enjoying Fallout 3, and hoping for something better on the horizon.
75 – Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
Year Released: 2009 | Platform: PlayStation 3
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves is often described as a thrilling, cinematic experience, much like an action-packed summer blockbuster. The hero Nathan Drake is likable, every character has sharp dialogue, all in service of an epic story to create a narrative-driven adventure that hooks and engages you. At the time of launch, Uncharted 2’s visuals, audio, and score were all top-tier, making it one of the hottest games at the time.
The gameplay combines tense platforming in-between cover-based shooting sections. While the platforming is not particularly challenging, it feels exciting, especially when Nathan is dangling by one hand above certain death. The voice acting, storytelling, and plot set pieces kept me utterly engaged throughout the game’s runtime.
However, Uncharted 2 is very linear, with limited exploration compared to many other action-adventure games. It feels like the platforming just exists to transition between combat and cutscenes. Despite this, playing Uncharted 2 feels like a rollercoaster, blending memorable cinematic moments with exciting gameplay, making it (and the series) a perfect example of the “game as an experience” philosophy.
74 – Pokémon Diamond and Pearl
Year Released: 2006 | Platform: Nintendo DS
I distinctly remember picking up Pokémon Diamond after a vacation to Dallas. I was on the way home to my small village, we stopped off at the nearest Walmart (4 hours away), and I saw a huge banner on the side of the building. Internet wasn’t great where I grew up, and nerd media was nearly impossible to come by, so I had no idea that a new Pokémon game was even in development. At this point, I had played my Pokémon Sapphire to utter death. I hated Diamond at first, thinking it was inferior to Sapphire in every way. By the end of this generation of Pokémon, I accrued much more hours in Diamond than I ever did in Sapphire.
73 – Bastion
Year Released: 2011 | Platform: PC
Another one of my early PC games, as I built my first PC around 2012, and Bastion was still being highly praised at the time. The gameplay is action packed as you control The Kid wandering around a world that is being built and falling apart around him. What really hooked me in Bastion, was the dynamic narration. Beautifully voiced by Logan Cunningham, commentary and exposition came up in response to your actions. And the music is utterly enchanting, so much so, that it’s still one of my default OST’s to this day.
Supergiant Games has produced several fantastic games since Bastion (Pyre, Transistor, and their most popular hit to date, Hades), but this one has a special place in my heart. For so long, I was a console fanboy, but playing Bastion on the PC made me realize that I was missing out on so many great experiences. And for that, I thank it.
72 – Pikmin
Year Released: 2001 | Platform: Nintendo GameCube
This might be one of the most recent additions to my list. I somehow skipped over Pikmin in my gaming life, dismissing it as a game for children, right up until early this year when I borrowed Pikmin 1 and 2 for the Nintendo Switch. Once I actually got my hands on it and started playing, I was in love. A RTS game on a console, with cute charm and puzzles to overcome, I was kicking myself for not being a fan of Pikmin 20 years ago.
71 – Final Fantasy X
Year Released: 2001 | Platform: PlayStation 2
I’ve long been one of those insufferable snobs that firmly believe that the best Final Fantasy games are sprite based, and the series progression into 3D has made me very angry and is generally regarded as a bad move. But even more so, I believe Final Fantasy X marks a turning point as the ‘last good game’ before the series left what I really look for in a JRPG, behind (read, not MMOs or gambit systems that play the game for you).
I’m being a jerk again. Final Fantasy X follows Tidus as he is thrown back and forth in time as Sin destroys the world around him. He encounters Yuna, a young summoner who is about to embark on a pilgrimage to obtain the Final Aeon so she can defeat Sin once and for all.
Final Fantasy X is a beautiful tale, and I played it much later than I should have. I didn’t get a PS2 until the PS3 was well into it’s life cycle, so I had to circle back to enjoy this entry. I enjoyed the characters growth, the twisting story, and the gameplay where you get to watch the numbers go up, everything that really I look for in a JRPG, but it wasn’t as good as I wanted it to be. The cutscenes were beautiful, but some of the ingame graphics were rough. The music was amazing, but the voice acting had some truly awful moments.
Also, I find Blitzball to be boring.
You know, with all the above complaints, you’d be forgiven if you forgot that Final Fantasy X is number 71 on my FAVOURITE games list. It’s still a great game, but I just wanted it to be so much more. I know Final Fantasy is capable of creating some of the best JRPG experiences out there, and even when they miss, it’s still a good game. But I can’t help but feel twinges of disappointment in my heart when I think about Final Fantasy X.
I also never played X-2, and probably never well. Sorry!
Automobiles: Racing Season feels like a Monkey’s Paw type of expansion. It’s something you thought you really wanted, but when it comes to fruition, you’re left with regrets. You see, this expansion adds 3 more maps, and a Grand Prix mode where you carry over your cubes from race to race, plus individual player powers and in-between race abilities in the form of sponsors.
Now, I’ve already covered Automobiles in-depth (in fact, Automobiles was one of the first reviews I ever wrote), but for those who need it, here’s a quick rundown: Automobiles is a bag building racing game. Each turn, players pull cubes from their bags, and use those cubes to propel their cars around the track. The white, greys, and black cubes are straightforward and present in every race, they move you one space on their associated colour. The colourful dice have variable powers that you set at the start of the race, and do vary pretty wildly, offering some nice replayability, as a different set of cards will make your race feel quite different. The base game also came with 2 different maps for a bit more variety from game to game.
The new tracks and action cards that Automobiles: Racing Season adds can be folded into the base game with no concern for complexity or bloat. Even the driver cards are fairly simple in execution, now each player gets a player power at the start of the race they can use ones per turn. The real meat of the expansion comes in the season campaign.
The season campaign has players carrying over their bag of cubes from one race to another to see who can score the most points over a series of races. Players still pick a driver at the start of the racing season, but once the driver and action cards have been decided, they’re locked in place for the duration of the season. In between races, players can pick a sponsor to help modify their bag of cubes before going onto the next race. Some will prioritize removing wear cubes, while others will let you remove some and add others.
It sounds like everything I wanted in an expansion, but the more I’ve played it, the more frustrated I’ve felt with this set-up. Some of the player powers, specifically the ones that just let players draw extra cubes, feel a lot more helpful than others. Having the action cards being locked for the whole season make sense, but it rips the variability away from the game in general. If one player gets ahead in the first few races, it can be quite challenging to catch up to them.
Perhaps the worst part of all, is the limited nature of the cubes. I’ve found that more often than not, by the end of the first or second race, the majority of the cubes have already been bought, making it quite impossible to modify your racing strategy for future races. You’re stuck with the bag you’ve built, hope it works for all races. This also nerfs the between race sponsers, as the ones that give you a chance to get more cubes are simply less helpful than the ones that will clear the wear out of your bag.
I’ve been playing a lot of Automobiles on Board Game Arena lately, playing a season with each of the recommended action card sets, and some of them are really not geared toward this style of play. In one season, the purple cubes had the ability to remove up to 3 cubes, then add one back in. As I said before, every cube was purchased, aside from the useless yellow and the brown wear cubes, so each purple cube is taking 3 wear out and adding one back in. Near the end of the fourth race, all of our cars had more wear than would have been possible in a physical game, and ensuring that each car could only move one or two spaces each round.
I’m not quite sure how I’d recommend fixing this experience. Locking the action cards and carrying over your bag from race to race makes sense, and it should create a sense of momentum, but in reality, it just saps the variability away, making the 3rd, 4th, and 5th race in the season a dull experience of just running the bag you’ve built and trying to come in first. The mid-game sponsors are comparatively boring, and the driver cards are unbalanced, making it feel a little unfair for one player to hold the best one for 5 races in a row.
Perhaps most importantly, racing games have come a long way in the past 10 years. Restoration Games released Downforce in 2017, which gives players the ability to control all the cars with betting being the way for players to win, Thunder Road: Vandetta is ostensibly a race, albeit a violent one, and a race that ends with one car standing more often than a car passing the finish line. 2022’s Heat: Pedal to the Metal garnered a ton of praise the year it released, and one that I keep meaning to go back to. All of these games do a better job of instilling the feeling of a race, the feeling of momentum, and the excitement of that nail-biting finish
Automobiles: Racing Season ultimately feels like it’s a lap too long. The new tracks and action cards are excellent additions and easily worth mixing into the base game. But once you step into the marquee Season mode, the excitement sputters out. What should feel like a grand championship instead drags into a grind, where you’re stuck with the same bag for race after race, and your ability to modify it is totally diminished.
Automobiles remains a clever and underrated racing game that I’ll happily keep returning to, but the Racing Season expansion doesn’t add fuel to the engine. It’s the kind of expansion that sounds thrilling on paper, but when the rubber hits the road, it only makes me want to pack the new maps and action cards into the base box, and leave the rest behind.
A copy of Wyrmspan was provided by Stonemaier Games for review purposes.
Introduction
Wyrmspan is an odd game to describe. On the one hand, it’s clearly the spiritual sibling of Wingspan, the bird-collecting blockbuster that has brought countless people into our hobby. On the other hand, it trades the gentle avian charm for fire-breathing dragons and cavern excavation. I know I prefer dragons, but I’m not sure if my wife will agree.
I’ll admit, I was sitting on a bus at 7 in the morning shortly after my son was born when I first heard about Wyrmspan, and I let out an audible “pfft”. What I expected at that point was just a full art reskin of Wingspan, perhaps as a collectors item. What designer Connie Vogelmann has done, however, was create something that feels familiar enough to have the “-Span” name, yet is distinct enough to stand proudly on its own.
How to Play
At its core, Wyrmspan keeps the same rhythm as Wingspan. You collect and play dragons to your tableau, hopefully craft an engine, and watch as your combos grow more satisfying every round. But instead of happy little ecosystems, your tableau is a mountain cavern, and your first job is to excavate chambers and then entice dragons to come live in them.
On your turn, you’ll spend dragon coins (a new form of action economy) to do one of three main actions:
Excavate – carve out a new cave, opening up space for dragons and gaining a small bonus.
Entice – pay resources (meat, gold, milk, crystals) to bring a dragon into one of your caves.
Explore – send your pawn through one of your three caverns, triggering resources from your dragons and the spaces between them, effectively activating your engine.
Along the way, you’ll lay eggs, care for hatchlings, and advance on the Dragon Guild track for extra perks. Like in Wingspan, you’re aiming to balance resource management, end-of-round goals, and long-term scoring opportunities, but while the gameplay beats are all familiar, the finished product feels fresh.
Review
The production is everything you’d expect from a Stonemaier Games production. Thick cards, gorgeous speckled dragon eggs, and beautiful artwork that gives each dragon personality. I particularly appreciate that the dragon lore isn’t crammed onto 5 point text on the bottom of the cards themselves, but instead presented in a separate booklet, something that I spent a surprising amount of time flipping through between turns. It’s a nice nod to the theme, and if I can’t use an app to hear each birdsong in my tableau, this is probably the next best thing.
I really have to comment how Wyrmspan improves on some of Wingspan’s rough edges. In Wingspan, early turns could feel painfully slow as you scraped for food and cards, before really opening up in the second and third rounds. Here, the excavation system gives you immediate bonuses, and the Dragon Guild provides a trickle of resources to easily keep things moving. The action economy with dragon coins also gives players more direct control over how and when the round comes to an end. It feels less restrictive, less at the mercy of a bad food dice roll or stagnant card row. I also appreciate that you have a bit of control on when your round ends, in the form of the silver coins. Instead of a set number of rounds, you can choose to keep playing, although it gets crushingly expensive as you choose to do so. I enjoyed managing my silver, choosing to have a lean round so that my next one could be bombastic.
What hasn’t changed, is that like Wingspan, Wyrmspan is still largely multiplayer solitaire. You’ll compete for end-of-round goals, but the bulk of your attention will be mostly focused on nurturing your own cavern of dragons. Personally, I wish there was a bit more friction between players, but the payoff is that Wyrmspan remains friendly and approachable, even with these added layers of complexity.
And speaking of layers, I love the cavern exploration action. Getting bonuses from excavating caves, and bonuses from attracting dragons, turning those bonuses into playing cards, and then moving your pawn through chambers and triggering each dragon as you go is incredibly satisfying. In one game, I had a dragon that cached meat to gain a resource, the next dragon cached meat to gain crystals, and the next dragon paid a crystal to lay 2 eggs, who fed into another dragon who ate eggs for Dragon Guild points. Each dragon fed into each other wonderfully, and made running through that cavern exciting. Discovering those combos is what brings me back to a game time and time again.
Final Thoughts
Is Wyrmspan better than Wingspan? Not necessarily. Wingspan is simpler, cleaner, and more universally appealing. It’s still the game I’d pull out with new players, and it’s the one that has some expansions that improve on the base game quite a bit. Wyrmspan is the heavier sibling, offering more control and more opportunities to shape your engine in clever ways, but overall does require more commitment from its players.
For my collection, the two can happily coexist. My wife still prefers Wingspan for its comfort and accessibility, but I find myself much more drawn to the richer systems of Wyrmspan. And honestly, having dragons to look at instead of backyard sparrows doesn’t hurt.
If Wingspan invited us into the hobby with open wings, Wyrmspan pulls us deeper into the mountain, and rewards us with fire-breathing companions once we get there. I guess the only question remains, is how does Finspan compare?
A perpetual argument amongst ignorant anglophones in the board game community is how you pronounce certain game tiles. Orléans gets the or-LEENZ or OR-le-enh. Being a written medium, I don’t need to wade into this argument. I have the benefit of copy and paste, then everyone can read the word how they choose. My dilemma is if I include the accent over the e or not. Including the accent is technically correct, but leaving it off is almost certainly better for SEO. Is my goal with this blog to be seen, or is it more important to me to be correct? Bah, who’s even searching for Orléans these days, anyway?
Released in 2014, Orléans by designer Reiner Stockhausen hit the scene to critical acclaim, and was promptly nominated for the 2015 Kennerspiel des Jahres. Now, it lost to Broom Service, but I think that speaks more to the proclivities of the Spiel des Jahres judges, and less about the quality of the game itself.
Orléans is a bag building game. Players pulling worker discs from their sacks, then placing them on various work houses on their player boards. Once an action has all the necessary staff, players take turns activating those actions. Generally, they gain a new worker disc, and move up the corresponding track, gaining a specific benefit. Then, the worked workers are also tossed back into the sack until it’s time to draw again.
The actions you’re taking in Orléans are all fairly simple. You move a meeple around a board, dropping guild houses in each of the cities (hopefully doing so before your opponents). You’re earning coins, books, citizens, building new technology tiles, and eventually, sending your staff to the town hall, where they will go onto contribute beneficial deeds, and then… never come back to work for you?
Okay, the theme falls apart pretty quickly when you try to examine it closely. But what’s important here is that the game mechanics are solid. Each turn, you pull a handful of disks out of your bag, and you get to decide which actions you want to take that turn. Sometimes, you’ll be blocked out of an action because you didn’t pull enough blue fishermen. Other times, you’ll draw 4 of him, and get to do almost nothing anyway. I know that doesn’t sound like fun, but bear with me here. I promise it gets good.
The score track in Orléans features these development status spaces, which has the opportunity to multiply some of your endgame score (your guild halls + your citizens). I’ve already touched on the guild halls, just litter them across the province. The citizens generally rest at the end of each of the tracks, which means gunning for one of them is going to fill your bag up with one type of worker. Another way to earn those citizen tokens are for being the last person to contribute to a beneficial deed. In classic group project fashion, all the glory goes to whomever reads the conclusion, not whomever did the most work.
Orléans often feels like a race, you’ll nervously eye your opponents player boards trying to ascertain if they’ll be able to snag the bonus tile that you’re gunning for, or waiting for just the right moment to place your workers onto the beneficial deeds track. Remember, those workers won’t ever come back to your sac, but a well-timed placement can net you one or two of the coveted citizen tokens that multiply your development status.
On one hand, It’s hard to compare Orléans to anything else I’ve played because it feels so unique. Other bag builders (Quacks of Quedlingburg and Automobiles) don’t come close to the same feeling of strategy and engine building that Orléans offers. Crafting your bag to deliver you the perfect workers turn after turn feels satisfying. By the end of the game, you’ve built several new action spaces that only you can use, you’ve covered 4 worker spaces with gears so the actions have become way cheaper, and you’re pushing up on the end of each of the tracks. Orléans
There is such a sense of progression in Orléans. Your bag grows and shrinks, disks come in as you take actions and go up the tracks, and flow out as you commit them to the beneficial deeds. Your actions get stronger as you crawl up those tracks, making it feel like you’re making way more progress that you ever thought possible at the start of the game. That said, Orléans can be a long game, 2 hours or more in the higher player counts. It’s not terrible, but considering you’re kind of doing the same 6 actions/ manipulating the same tracks over and over, it can start to drag if players are ruminating too much on their turns.
It’s kind of fascinating to have such a luck element such as bag building in a strategic euro game. I feel like I should be frustrated by the handcuffs of only being able to take the actions based on the workers that came out of the bag. But that luck is what makes Orléans special. Also, it feels like there are several paths to victory, from having guildhalls all over the place, to running up on the tracks, to just amassing an impressive hoard of goods tiles.
Orléans is one of those rare Euros that manages to be both strategic and a little chaotic. You craft your bag and then just hope the right people show up to work. It rewards careful planning and punishes tunnel vision, offering a dynamic bag-building arc that’s hard to replicate elsewhere.
It’s not perfect. The theme barely hangs together, the rounds can DRAG with overthinkers, and at higher player counts it might outstay its welcome. But what it lacks in narrative flair, it makes up for in mechanical satisfaction.
For Euro fans who enjoy engine-building with just enough luck to keep things spicy, Orléans is a classic for good reason. It’s easy to teach, deeply replayable, and always leaves you wondering how you could’ve done just a bit better.
Let me preface this by saying I usually steer well clear of the entire horror genre. As a kid I watched the classics, and read my fair share of Goosebumps books, but in my teen years movies like Saw and Hostel absolutely sent me running from the whole vibe. So when I say I devoured The September House in two sittings and loved every psychologically unsettling moment of it? That should carry some weight.
Here’s the premise: Margaret and her husband buy a suspiciously affordable, beautiful Victorian house in the woods. Shortly after taking ownership, they realize it’s haunted. Oh bother. Except this is no slow-build ghost story. The house goes full Exorcist every September. Walls gush blood, ghosts appear, each of them more broken and gruesome than the last. Something unspeakable lives in the basement. Hal (the husband) nopes out after four years. Margaret stays. Margaret stays.
This is where The September House hooked me. Margaret isn’t your typical horror heroine. She’s older. Reserved. Gripping to her routine and rules like it’s a life raft. She’s flexible. She doesn’t scream when the walls bleed, she rolls up her sleeves and cleans the mess. I found her fascinating. Funny, even. She reacts to supernatural carnage the same way a tired parent reacts to a toddler’s tantrum: with quiet, unflappable endurance and a mildly exasperated expletive.
The horror of The September House isn’t just spectral. It’s deeply psychological. Margret’s 30-year-old daughter Katherine discovers that her father has left Margret, and is now refusing to answer her phone calls, she descends upon the house in the middle of September. Margret tries her best to reason with the poltergeists (called Pranksters), and shield her daughter from the supernatural horrors, going as far as to slip Katherine sleeping pills so she won’t hear the ethereal howling that happens every night. The September House becomes more about the lies we tell to keep our own sense of safety intact. About what we’re willing to ignore, to normalize, cope with, and even to cover up, if it means holding on to a version of life that feels bearable.
I laughed. A lot. Not because it’s slapstick or silly, but because the dark comedy is interwoven brilliantly. Margaret’s narration is deadpan, bored, and describes the events as utterly mundane, even when she’s casually dealing with flies coming out of a 90-year-old priest (Well that’s never happened before), or that one pesky prankster who bites if you get too close (You just need to respect his personal space).
But then, slowly, You’re starting to pull back the layers. The real horror creeps up on you, not through cheap jump scares, but through slow, dawning realization. You start to ask yourself: Wait, what actually happened here? What has Margaret been dealing with all this time? Why is she so good at following these rules? Are her descriptions actually happening, or is this all happening in her head? An elaborate story she’s conjured up to cope with something real and horrific?
Would I call it horror? Absolutely, the final act cements it. There are certainly memorably grotesque moments. But it’s also a fascinating subversion of the genre. It’s more of a psychological thriller with a horror coat of paint. I’m so glad I gave The September House a shot and didn’t let my horror aversion stop me. This book is going to stick with me for a while, not because of the blood on the walls, but because of the way it used psychology to show who the real terrors are.
