I never feel ready to make a “top games of X year” list when the new year comes around. The odds of me playing a significant amount of new releases is fairly small. As you can tell from my Best New to Me Games of 2022 post, and the fact that only 2 games released in 2022 made that list, I don’t play games the moment they get released.
Halfway through 2023 and I finally feel like I’ve played an adequate number of 2022’s titles where I can make a list highlighting the bright spots of this gaming year!
10. Wingspan: Asia
Number 10 on my list is Wingspan: Asia, designed by Elizabeth Hargrave and published by Stonemaier Games. Wingspan: Asia is a stand-alone expansion to the very popular Wingspan. What makes this expansion a bit special, is that it contains everything that you need to play the game with just 2 players. It also includes a ‘duet’ board, which adds a bit of an area control aspect to the game. When you play a card that matches a feature on the board, you place a token of your colour on that spot. Many of the end of round goals that come in this expansion focus on your positions on this board. Some demand you have tokens on as many rows as possible, while others will reward a dominating force in the wetlands.
My biggest pet peeve with Wingspan: Asia is that the tokens you’re placing on that duet board are ying-yang shaped wooden pieces. However, only one piece can exist on each of the spaces, which makes me question, why use ying-yang pieces at all? They fit together perfectly! Surely that would serve some purpose, right?
Alas, it’s a minor gripe. Wingspan: Asia contains all the great engine building gameplay that you know and love from the Wingspan series. It’s a game that my wife adores, and I’m very happy to have a two player specific version to play with her.
9. One Deck Galaxy
One Deck Dungeon is a dice-rolling dungeon crawl adventure that I got mildly obsessed with when I picked up the app version. You pick a character, get a pool of dice, and throw yourself against various challenges, which in the end, will level you up, expand your dice pool, and culminate with a fight against a big boss.
One Deck Galaxy designed by Chris Cieslik and published by Asmadi Games is the space themed sci-fi follow-up. You embody a hero, facing off against a dangerous foe. You roll and re-roll your dice pool, and adjust the rolls with skills and abilities, trying to clear certain thresholds to bring the card into your fold, which will grant you new abilities, expand your dice pool, or upgrade your base, all in an effort to clear the thresholds that the foe has, before calamity strikes, and you are overwhelmed.
I really enjoy the tactility of rolling mitt fulls of colourful dice. One Deck Galaxy makes for an excellent solo game, with 5 heroes and 5 foes to test your mettle against, it makes for an excellent little package. I’ve only played a few times, but it’s currently sitting behind me at work, begging to be broken out during a lunch break!
8. Foundations of Rome
Designer Emerson Matsuuchi has quite a catalogue of games under his belt. From the Century line of games, to Specter Ops, to HerStory, and now, Foundations of Rome. What each of these games have in common is that they’re all reasonably light and quick. What makes Foundations of Rome stand out, is the lavish production that publisher Arcane Wonders put into this product.
Sitting at an impressive 17″ by 15″ by 14″, this massive cube will take up several spots on your game shelf, and catch the eye of anyone wondering by.
The game itself is fairly simple, on your turn you either claim a plot of land, take income, or, place a building down on the main board, assuming you’ve claimed adjacent plots of land. The buildings you build will either earn you income and points, or, provide you with citizens, which may inadvertently give points to your opponents if you’re not paying attention. There are also civic buildings, all of which earn points in different ways, based on the buildings they’re placed adjacent to.
Considering it’s much larger than average footprint and price tag, Foundations of Rome is a fast and easy game to play. Each player’s components are contained within their own custom plastic tray, making setup as easy as passing each player a tray of their preferred colour.
While I can’t fathom ever putting up the cash to own this box myself, I would happily play it whenever it’s available to me. Thankfully, our local board game cafe has a copy in their library, which may serve as a pull to get me in there more often!
7. First Rat
I don’t know where or when I became aware of First Rat, designed by Gabriele Ausiello and Virginio Gigli, and published by Pegasus Spiele, but the theme was immediately charming to me. Players take control of a colony of rats that are inspired by comics and fuelled by apple cores to build a rocket ship and blast off to the cheese moon.
The clever gameplay of First Rat starts by giving you two rats to control, and on your turn, you can either move one rat 1 to 5 spaces, or multiple rats 1 to 3 spaces. The caveat being that all the rats need to end their turn on spaces of the same colour. Each space gives you resources, and with some added bonuses of stolen backpacks and lightbulbs, your ability to accrue resources gets better and better as the game goes on.
First Rat has a great engine building feel. At the start of the game you’ll feel utterly accomplished when you manage to collect 3 cheese on a single turn, but come the end of the game, you might swing a turn where you could collect 9 to 20 cheese. The progression feels excellent. First Rat is also quick to play, and offers a variable side of the board, so you can mix and match the spaces, thwarting that one player who manages to find the optimum route on the first play. I’ve only played First Rat once, but I’m looking forward to more
6. Kites
I love real time games. If a game has a real time component, I’m instantly down to give it a shot. Kites, designed by Kevin Hamano and published by Floodgate Games, gives you 6 timers and a stack of cards, then tasks you with keeping all the timers going simultaneously via card play.
Each card has one or two colours on it. When you play a card, you must flip over the colours depicted on the card, then draw a new card. If any of the timers ever run out, you lose. If you manage to drain the entire deck and play all the cards from your hand, then you win!
Kites components – Image credit: W. Eric Martin @BGG
It’s straightforward, elegant, exciting, and kinetic. You’ll be anxiously looking at the red timer getting close to empty, play a card to flip it, then the next player will play a purple and red card. The anguish and stress that comes from trying to quickly parse your cards and which timer needs flipping, all while those timers are constantly draining, is simply delicious. I’m not sure how much staying power Kites has, I imagine once your group figures out the ‘flow’, it’ll move from exciting to just an exercise in flipping timers. But I really enjoyed the two times I’ve played Kites so far, and I won’t hesitate to introduce new players to this fun game.
5. Viticulture World: Cooperative Expansion
I’ve already talked about Viticulture World: Cooperative Expansion at length on this blog late last year. We bought it as a birthday gift for one of our game group members, as Viticulture: Essential Edition was one of his top 10 games of all time. And he loves cooperative games, making this expansion, designed by Mihir Shah and Francesco Testini published by Stonemaier Games, a no-brainer.
If you don’t want to read my full review, here’s the summary. It’s great. I enjoyed playing Viticulture World more than the competitive regular game. If you like coop games, and you like Viticulture, this is a must get!
4. Cat in the Box: Deluxe Edition
Most people have some kind of history with trick taking games. My mom had a game group where they would play Hearts into the wee hours of the morning. As I grew up, my family gatherings always included a game of Wizard. Many of the gamers I’ve talked to have a similar background, of a specific trick taking game being something that brings people together.
Cat in the Box: Deluxe Edition, designed by Muneyuki Yokouchi and published by Bézier Games, puts an out-of-the-box twist on the trick taking game formula. All the cards are black, and are suitless until observed. And by that, I mean, you need to declare what suit each card is when you play it. It’s fascinating that a trick taking game still works when you just, let people decide which suits they were dealt.
There are still rules, like, if you choose to not follow the lead suit, you are declaring that you have no other cards of that suit in your hand. And a big wrinkle in this game, is there are 5 of each card number, but only 4 can be played. If you find yourself in a situation where you cannot play a card, you cause a paradox and the round ends.
I am looking forward to getting my hands on my own copy and introducing Cat in the Box to my friends and family!
3. Akropolis
I spent a couple of weeks in Saskatoon in April, and while I was there I met up with Ryan Rau of Mista Rau’s Gaming to just chat and play a few games. He pulled out Akropolis, and knowing absolutely nothing about the game going in, I was floored at how much I enjoyed this game.
Akropolis, designed by Jules Messaud and published by Gigamic, is a tile laying game where you’re trying to build up your own city. Each of the tiles consists of 3 hexagons in a triangle pattern, which each hexagon depicting one of the various buildings. Each building scores differently, the blue buildings must be touching, the purple buildings must be enclosed, yadda yadda. When placing a building into your city, you can choose to build on top of other buildings. If you cover white buildings, you’ll get stone, and if you cover point scoring buildings, they no longer count for anything. But the buildings that end up on top, get better. A point scoring building on the third level scores 3 times, turning those useless quarry buildings into copies of the colours you want!
In addition to the vertical planning required for building a game-winning city, you also need to pick tiles that hold the stars. As each colour, building will be multiplied by the number of stars that you manage to collect. And in case you were wondering, each player only starts with 1 blue star.
I’ve played Akropolis a few times now, and it’s immensely satisfying. Placing the tiles in the exact right spot, overbuilding useless tiles with ones that generate tones of points, and denying your opponent any stars of the building they’ve been amassing since the start of the game are all simple joys. I would not be surprised if Akropolis ends up becoming a beloved tile laying game next to Calico or Azul.
2. Bullet⭐
I’ve already raved about how much I love Bullet♥︎ and the amazingly puzzly solo boss battle mode. The 2022 expansion, Bullet⭐, designed by Joshua Van Laningham and published by Level 99 Games, is literally just more of the same game. 8 new heroines and 8 new bosses, perfectly intergratable with the base game, there was nothing for me not to love about this expansion.
The new characters are a bit more out there. Their powers push the game system in new and interesting ways. Between Jane Doe, a half girl half deer detective who has three special bullets representing her get in your bag that you need to pull out to use, and Nawa, who has no actions or action points, but has persistent recipes that can be used endlessly (provided the bullet requirements are met). The pattern cards can move bullets, but with only 3 of those per round, things get dicey, quickly.
It’s difficult for me to articulate why I love Bullet⭐ and Bullet❤️ so dearly, but they spark something in my soul. An excitement that reminds me why I love board games. This is a ceberal puzzle that I don’t really feel in other kinds of games. I’m so happy with this expansion, as it just doubled my possibilities with this system!
1. Paperback Adventures
This one is kind of a cheat, as I got the opportunity to review a digital version of Paperback Adventures back in 2021. But, the game actually released in 2022. But Paperback Adventures is so much fun that I can’t help but put it as my favourite game of 2022.
Paperback Adventures is a solo roguelike deck building word game, designed by Tim Fowers and Skye Larson. In Paperback Adventures, you take on the persona of one of three heroes, the Damsel, Ex Machina, and Plothook, each with a unique deck of cards. A game takes place over 3 books, with each book pitting you against a minion and a boss. Each turn has you drawing 4 letter cards, which you add to a persistent wild card, and a vowel card, depending on the enemy you’re facing, and tasks you with making a word.
Once a word is made, you choose to show (or splay) either the left side of the cards, or the right side of the cards, revealing symbols that will provide you with attack, defence, and energy. In addition to these symbols, the letter on top will activate its special ability, which is the text in the centre. The downside, is that the top card will then be removed from your deck for the rest of the combat
It’s not hard to use all your letters, but it is challenging to get the right letter in the right spot. Adding into the challenge, you have the enemy attacks, your items, and skills that all need to be considered before you commit to your attack. Your health doesn’t automatically recover at the end of each combat, either, so taking wounds could mean disaster down the line.
As you defeat enemies, you’ll replace cards in your deck, upgrade cards, which has you flip them around in their sleeve to make them stronger, acquire macguffins and items that drastically improve your abilities, and challenge weird and wacky bosses, each with their own reward cards, offering a disjointed, but lovely vignette.
There are criticisms of the production, mainly that the trays that you use to track health, boons, and poison on are too tight. And it’s true, they are, but after a couple plays, the plastic gets a little worn in, making that problem fade into the background. Still, to address this, Fowers Games has made replacement components available to anyone who wants them.
Paperback Adventures is my favourite game of 2022. Every time I play, I’m caught off-guard with just how much I enjoy this roguelike adventure. There are some coop two player modes in the box, but I haven’t had the chance to give those a try yet.
And those are my favourite games from 2022! If you have some favourites or think that I’ve missed some great games, let me know in the comments below!
