Growing up, I was a console gamer. I didn’t really have a game-worthy PC until after 2010, meaning I skipped over a lot of the old PC favourites, one important one being the Civilization franchise. That is to say, tech trees are not a part of my gaming background. I’m not ignorant to tech trees, but it’s not a mechanic that I’ve spent a significant number of hours with.
For the uninitiated, a tech tree is a hierarchical visual representation of the possible sequences of upgrades a player can unlock. Think, you have to invent Mining before you can invent Masonry. You need to discover both mathematics and construction before you can discover engineering. You need to learn how to walk before you can run type of thing. In Beyond the Sun, designed by Dennis K. Chan and published by Rio Grande Games in 2020, the entire main game board is taken over by this 4 tier tech tree, that players will crawl up, unlocking new actions and special abilities to give them an edge in their quest for dominance over the stars.
One of the first things that grabbed me was how Beyond the Sun uses dice. At the start of the game, your player board is packed full of inert crates. As the game progresses, those crates are unlocked into crew members, and later upgraded again into spaceships with power values ranging from one to four. All six resources in the game are represented by different faces of the same die. Instead of rummaging through a supply looking for the right ship, you simply rotate a die to the face you need. It’s elegant, intuitive, and I absolutely love it. It’s the kind of design choice that once you see it, you’ll wonder why any other game bothers with piles of chits when they could be using dice instead.
As I mentioned above, most of the real estate on the table is taken up by the tech tree board. Starting with the first four techs laid out face up, the rest of the tech slots are covered with blue advancement cards. Along the far left side of the board are the basic actions that everyone has access to, and on each player’s turn, they’ll take their little action pawn and place it into an available action slot, blocking it from other players. Simple worker placement stuff, really. Most of the actions revolve around researching other techs, deploying and moving ships around the planet board, or colonizing planets.
I really appreciate is how production works. At the end of every turn, you choose to produce either crew or ore. Production starts modestly, but can be improved by removing discs from the bottom of your player board. In many games, production is an action in its own right. An action that eats a full turn and often feels obligatory. in Beyond the Sun, it’s folded neatly into the rhythm of play. The result is a game that keeps moving, where turns feel productful and players are rarely left feeling like they’ve ‘wasted’ a turn while other players are zooming on ahead.
Each of the techs belongs to at least one of four categories, commerce, military, science, and economics. Each of those categories will generally feature abilites that cater to something specific, like military techs will generally revolve around ships and movement, while scientific techs will generally assist you in researching more techs. Many techs are a blend of two, perhaps offering the military heavy line of techs a much needed science boost. What’s most interesting is that the person who takes the action to research any new step of the tech tree, gets a choice of 2 cards to lay on the board, a tactical advantage for sure! Everyone who comes after them are just following in their footsteps. This makes the big tech tree dynamic and different in every game.
Running alongside the tech tree is the system map, made up of eight planets, four of which are represented by cards that grant special bonuses and can be colonized for even more bonuses. Gaining majority strength on a planet lets you place a production marker, increasing your income and sometimes triggering an immediate benefit. Of course, that control is fragile. If another player seizes the majority, your marker is kicked back to your board, and the sting of losing income is very real. Interaction here is indirect but sharp, and it’s often where the game feels most openly competitive.
If you manage to have the prerequisite number of ships on a planet, you can take a colonize action, which removes that planet from the board, and the ships you used to pay for it. That planet goes into your personal supply, with an additional income disc, and your ships get slotted back onto your player board. That might sound like a negative, but in reality it’s a boon. You see, when you take your crew income, you take one crew from every column that you’ve revealed along the bottom of your row, and if crew make their way back onto your board, you’ll probably be able to get all those spent ships back as crew with a single action or two. Yay for efficiencies!
By now, it’s probably clear that Beyond the Sun is a game of two halves: the tech tree and the colonization map. Neither is clearly more important than the other, and ignoring either is a fast track to falling behind. That said, the relationship between them isn’t always as seamless as I’d like. Advancing technology doesn’t always meaningfully enhance your spatial presence, and strong planetary play doesn’t necessarily open new research avenues. The systems coexist, but they sometimes feel like parallel paths rather than deeply intertwined gears.
In the end, Beyond the Sun is a game I adore. I love how clean the systems are, how the dice do so much heavy lifting, and how every turn feels purposeful without feeling bloated. At the same time, that split focus between research and planetary expansion can leave the game feeling a little disjointed, like two excellent ideas politely sharing the same table rather than fully embracing each other. Still, every time I play, I find myself thinking about the different paths I could have taken, different technologies I wanted to see come out, different planetary gambits might try next time. And that lingering feeling, that urge to come back and do it all again, perhaps just a bit better, puts Beyond the Sun in a rare position. A game that requested again and again, which is the best achievement a game could aspire to.
As of this month, my blog will be 2 years old, so I think it’s time I start looking back and revisiting some of the games I talked about in the beginning. As time goes on, our gaming tastes change and I feel value in looking back at what I was keen on, and how much staying power a game actually has. It’s one thing to say ‘this game is eminently repayable’, but how does it actually fare when the rubber hits the road? When put to the test against all the other games, and it no longer has that ‘new game shine’, does it come back? Did my interest wane? Here’s where we find out.
Now, not all of these games came out in 2021, but they were new to me in 2021. So, here we go!
#10 – Regicide
Designers: Paul Abrahams, Luke Badger, and Andy Richdale
What made it special: An engaging cooperative game that uses a standard deck of 52 cards.
Thoughts over 2022:Regicide came to Board Game Arena, and I played it about a half dozen times during my lunch breaks. It’s amazing how a game using a generic deck of cards can evoke strong feelings of tension and peril. I love the ebb and flow of cards as you crush through the royal family, sending each one to their grave.
Regidice is also on Board Game Arena, which is an interesting take on the Regicide system. I found Regidice to be a bit less interesting, but still fun none-the-less. Both games require that you maintain a sense of momentum. If you stumble and falter, you’ll be overwhelmed quickly.
#9 – Project L
Designers: Michal Mikeš, Jan Soukal, and Adam Spanel
What made it special: Polyomino puzzles plus Splendor-like engine building puzzle, with candy-like pieces
Thoughts over 2022: I played this once with my mom in May, and we both really enjoyed it. It’s a great little game with great production quality. The little pieces are super colourful, and satisfying to slot into the double layered tiles.
One thing to note, I had hoped to pick up the expansion(s) for Project L, but following the crowdfunding campaign of Kingdom Come: Deliverance, publisher Boardcubator announced they were shutting down. I don’t know what that means for the future of Project L, or the availability for expansions, but I suppose we’ll see!
What made it special: Cooperative trick taking with limited communication
Thoughts over 2022: During 2021’s Black Friday sale, I picked up the follow-up The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, and I found I enjoyed that version quite a bit when playing with a group that doesn’t gather together regularly. The Crew: The Search for Planet Nine is a game that I look forward to playing with my regular group as we plod our way through the quest book, but not one that I would necessarily pull out for a casual game night.
#7 – Cascadia
Designers: Randy Flynn
What made it special: A lovely tile placement, pattern building, hex grid, drafting game.
Thoughts over 2022: I haven’t revisited Cascadia since September 2021. I have played Calico a few times (which my mom said was her favourite game that she played when she came to visit) and I think I still prefer Calico, although it seems I’m in the minority.
Cascadia has received a lot of acclaim over 2022, including winning the prestigious Spiel des Jahres! Congratulations to Randy Smith and Flatout Games!
#6 – Beyond the Sun
Designers: Dennis K. Chan
What made it special: It’s a big, interesting tech tree! That changes every game!! That you get to control!!!
Thoughts over 2022: Beyond the Sun is another game that I keep playing on Board Game Arena, which is really exciting. I’m impressed with the variability of each game, and playing it again in person during Cabin-con was one of my highlights of the weekend!
I’m eagerly awaiting an expansion to Beyond the Sun to ratchet up the asymmetry and give us more excuses to return to this wonderful game!
#5 – MicroMacro: Crime City
Designers:Johannes Sich
What made it special: It’s Where’s Waldo, but you can follow people’s actions backwards and forwards through time! Everything is happening all at once!
Thoughts over 2022: My partner and I have played through MicroMacro: Crime City – Full House, and thoroughly enjoyed it. There’s no way around it, it’s exactly the same, just, more of what you’ve already seen. I just got game #3 in the series, MicroMacro: Crime City – All In. I do enjoy this system, and I continue to be invested, if only to see what the whole city will look like with all 4 maps stitched together.
What made it special: A tile placement, pattern building, hex grid, drafting game. BUT WITH CATS!
Thoughts over 2022: Calico remains one of my favourite pattern building tile laying games. It’s simple to play, but has sharp teeth that can make you regret the very first tile you place in your double layered player board. I like how bright and colourful Calico is, and the variety in the patterns you need to build and the objectives that are slotted right into your board.
I played Azul: Queen’s Garden in 2022, and halfway through reading the rulebook I looked up at my friends and said “This is kinda like Calico!”. That framing helped learn Azul, but as soon as we were done, I think we all agreed that we would much rather play Calico.
What made it special: One of the few legacy games we’ve actually completed.
Thoughts over 2022: The first few chapters of My City filled me with excitement and wonder. Just what would we be discovering in each of the envelopes. As the chapters wore on, mechanics came and went, the forest got cut back to make room for more tiles, and we delved too greedily and too deep.
In the end, My City was a great game, but the campaign ended on a whimper. No great climax, no revolutions to the gameplay, just small twist after small twist until the engine sputtered and finished.
I enjoyed my time with My City, but I just wish then ending was a bit more exciting. A bit more impactful. Nevertheless, I’ll be playing both My Island and My City Roll and Write as soon as they become available to me.
#2 – Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated
Designers: Andy Clautice and Paul Dennen
What made it special: Lots of discovery and humour sprinkled throughout the gameplay
Thoughts over 2022: Near the end of 2021, we played Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporatedfour times in a single day. Early on, it becaome clear that my goal wasn’t to win any specific games, but to hit as many story encounters as possible. I mourned when I failed to complete a goal before it’s time limit was reached and we had to read the ‘failure’ text.
Over 2022, Bigfoot chose to bow out of the campaign. Fair enough, he wasn’t enjoying himself, and our hobby time is too precious to waste on playing games we don’t like, even for the sake of the group. So Clank! Legacy has become the game we play when Bigfoot is unavailable to us.
We still haven’t finished it, but we’re close, I think only 2 plays remain. I’m hoping the campaign ends on a very exciting note, but playing a game once every three months makes it hard to remember the narrative continuity.
#1 – Bullet❤️
Designers:Joshua Van Laningham
What made it special: A very clever push your luck, puzzle-y, pattern matching game with an excellent solo boss battle mode.
Thoughts over 2022: Suzanne Sheldon said it best when she said “some games spark“. A spark game is one that captures both your mind and your heart. They feel fresh and excite you!
Now, I might be struggling with burnout, but sometimes, it can feel like board games sort of, blend together. Nothing stands out, nothing really elicits that joy that I felt when I was really getting into this hobby. Bullet❤️ is a game that sparked for me.
In 2022, I picked up Bullet⭐️ and mixed both sets together. This has become one of my go-to solo games. The evenings where I don’t really want to sit in front of a screen, or if I only have 30 minutes to kill before moving on to something else. Every character is unique, and each character doubles as a boss mode to crash against. I love exploring this puzzle and this system.
I did play the multiplayer game a couple of times, but found it a little lacking. It’s real-time and tense (which I love), but it’s extreamly heads-down. During the real time phase of the game, I have no idea what my opponents are doing. Not until I pop my head up and see the mound of bullets they sent my way.
If someone was equally enthusiastic about Bullet❤️, I wouldn’t hesitate to play it with them over and over and over again. Until that person makes themselves known in my life, I’ll be content with the solo mode.
Last year, my game group and I booked off an extra long weekend and congregated at a beautiful ocean side cabin. We then proceeded to shut ourselves inside for the entire weekend and gorged ourselves on board games.
The impetus of Cabin-Con 2021 was we felt like we had a backlog of big games that we couldn’t reasonably play during our weekly Wednesday gaming sessions. Add into that the Legacy games we want to play, but don’t prioritize over new experiences or old favourites, we figured setting aside a whole weekend would give us ample opportunity to tackle this backlog
Last year the big events were playing through 4 games of Clank! Legacy in a row, unboxing, learning and playing an Anachrony Infinity Pledge (which took us from 8pm to 2am), and playing through Oath for the first time (a brutal 5 hour experience).
While the inspiration of Cabin-Con was to play these bigger games, we all agreed that the most fun part of the con for us were the periods where we just played several small games in a row. No big commitments, games we already knew how to play and enjoyed. One evening saw us play The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine, Vikings, QE, Azul, and Project L, and we had an absolute blast.
Armed this this knowledge, this year we’ve decided to parcel out 4x 4 hour chunks on Saturday and Sunday and assign each chunk to a person. That person gets to pick all the games we’ll play during that period of time, then, in the after dinner portion of the evening, we’d just have easy, breezy open gaming, driven by group consensus.
Day 1 of Cabin-con had the group congregate at my house in the early afternoon, as we didn’t even get access to the cabin until 4pm. Now, you might ask yourself, why rent a cabin for the weekend if we all live close to each other? The answer is really that doing so gets all of us away from our daily responsibilities and allows us to really commit our time to the weekend. In theory we could all just gather at one of our houses but none of us have enough spare beds, and the separation from our daily lives is important for rest and relaxation.
Pandemic: The Cure
I’ve gone on and on about the Pandemic games. I reviewed vanilla Pandemicback in May when I actually caught COVID, and I reviewed Pandemic: Fall of Rome just a few weeks ago when I fell under the weather. Pandemic: the Cure is the dice game version of the Pandemic formula. This one is more abstracted than other entries in the series. Each of the (livable) continents is represented by a disc with a transparent dice pip. Die of various colours are rolled and placed onto each of the discs. These d6 don’t have the regular distribution of pips on them, the Red dice have two 6 sides, two 1 sides, and 1 4 side. The yellow, blue, and black die all have various die faces that make it more likely for them to appear on different continents.
The flow of the game is to have players travel to various continents, treat the diseases, which moves them from the continent disc into the centre ring, and then either take samples (which tie up your dice until you discover a cure), or, treat them from that centre ring back into the general supply.
Each character in Pandemic: The Cure have their own dice pools to roll as well. My character, the Contingency Planner allowed me to move dice from a continent onto the CDC board, which is how you pay for the event cards in the game. To win, you need to collect samples of the diseases, then after your turn, roll the disease samples you’ve collected and meet or exceed 13. Once a disease is cured, it’s much easier to treat, and players win the game once all 4 diseases are cured.
I haven’t played Pandemic: The Cure for years. My partner and I used to play Pandemic all the time, and this was a great way to vary the gameplay before the Survivor series had been announced. This version of the game is lighter, easier, and more prone to luck. Like every good game of Pandemic, you’ll be cruising along treating diseases, thinking all is fine in the world then WHAM all of a sudden cascading outbreaks are ravaging Asia, and Blue illness that has been slowly building on Sourth America is spilling over into the North America, and the situation is dire.
The big wrinkle in the game is that you can re-roll your action dice as many times as you want, until you use them. However, one of the die faces has a bio-hazard symbol which will advance the infection rate, and when you cross specific thresholds on the infection rate track, you’ll re-roll all the diseases that happen to be in the treatment area, and add in more cubes. things can spiral out of control incredibly quickly.
Speaking of quickly, this game is also extremely quick. With some luck you can have your first cure within a few turns. In the same breath, pulling 4 blue cubes and rolling all 6’s can cause cascading failures that will haunt your dreams.
I should return to Pandemic: The Cure soon for a deeper look. I enjoyed the experience quite a bit.
Barenpark
After the world succumbed to various virus outbreaks, we decided that instead of being health care professionals, we’d do better building our own Bear Parks. Barenpark is a polyomino tile placement game by Phil Walker-Harding. In Barenpark, you place tiles on your board, cover icons that give you more tiles, and proceed until someone has filled in their entire board. There are various scoring objectives, like having 3 or more pandas in your park, that decrease in value as people achieve it.
I love Barenpark, but something has changed. I’m suddenly very bad at this game. I don’t know what I’ve done, but as the end of the game approaches, I seem to have 8 1 or 2 square holes all over my park that I then need to laboriously take tiles and cover up. I think the short term goals overtake my long-term strategy just a bit too easily.
Arboretum
After Barenpark we packed up and migrated from my house to our Cabin. We unloaded, claimed beds, then promptly started playing games again, starting with Arboretum by Dan Cassar. I reviewed over a year ago, so you can check out that post if you want my full thoughts on the game. In this specific game I was allowed to collect every Maple tree, so I just, put them in a line! That single species scored me 17 points, which alone beat everyone else at the table.
It’s fun playing Arboretum and seeing the player to your left discard a card that you want desperately. They say “Don’t let him get this one!” But every other player prioritizes achieving their own goals over preventing other players from getting what they need. It’s a delicate balance, ensuring you’re doing whats right for your board, but not allowing other players to just run away with the game.
Sagrada
Sagrada was one of the first reviews I ever published on this site, and it still holds up to this day. In Sagrada players take turns rolling and placing die into their window grids, taking care to adhere to the die placement restrictions printed on their player mat, and following the sudoku-esque rules of not having of the same number or colour adjacent to one another.
In this game, I managed to complete my board, and I had a decent score from my secret objective, but I failed at getting the same colours in each of the rows. I ended up last with a score of 50 points.
Beyond the Sun
After dinner and a campfire, we launched into our first big game of the con. Beyond the Sun by Dennis K. Chan is a worker placement space civilization game in which the players are collectively discovering technologies and progressing the lengths of human knowledge during the spacefaring future. That may sound like a co-op game, but you’d be deceived! Beyond the Sun uses a a tech-tree to unlock worker placement actions, forcing players to research the prerequisite technologies before gaining access to the later abilities.
In addition to researching techs, there’s a sideboard where players are launching ships in an effort to control and colonize various planets. The challenge becomes holding onto control of the planet for a whole turn you can then take the colonization action! Our game saw a LOT of action on this board, each of the colonies were hotly contested. I tried my best to assert my dominance, but failed to research any of the final level technologies. The game ended with me narrowly missing the victory, 64 points to Bigfoot’s 66.
I really enjoyed Beyond the Sun. The variability is quite good with a wide variety of techs available, and the tech tree will build out different each time. This was only my second physical play, but it’s growing on me fast. I suspect it’ll debut in my top 100 the next time I redo that list.
Cartographers
I once called this “The best game I never played”, on the account that I played it a bunch on digital platforms. I’ve finally put my hands on a physical copy of the game, and continued to have a blast. I’m a little sad that my artistic skills leave quite a bit to be desired, but the gameplay is still fast, fun, and satisfying.
I actually like having the monsters in the deck, that little bit of engagement with my neighbours is just enough to make this exciting, and throwing a wrench in my plans makes for a more interesting game in my opinion. I do want to seek out the expansions to this game, as I find myself wanting more monsters, more goals, and more shapes to play with. I don’t want to change the formula, I just want more of it!
Karuba
To end the day, we played Karuba by Rudiger Dorn. Karuba starts by giving everyone the exact same puzzle and the same tools to solve the puzzle. The winner will be the player who can best utilize their tools to solve the puzzle.
One player pulls a tile randomly and announces it to the table. The other players find the same tile, and all players place the tiles on the board, trying to create paths to lead their adventureres to their designated temples, or discard the tile to move their adventurers along the paths they’ve created. The first player to get an adventurer to their temple earns 5 points, and everyone else who manages to do so after that gets diminishing returns. The game ends when someone has gotten all 4 of their adventurers into their temples, or, the stack of tiles runs out.
This is another game that we played a bunch during our COVID isolations. We played on Tabletop Simulator for a little over a year, and the scripted mod was so fast and easy to play that it became our go-to selection.
We played Karuba twice, I won the first game, and Bigfoot claimed victory over the second one. I tried to ignore a temple and instead placed a bunch of the gem paths along a single line, but I wasn’t able to collect enough points to win the second game. Sometimes I like trying out strategies that seem counter-intuitive to the spirit of the game, just to see if they’ll work!
2021 was a whirlwind of a year. The year began with a newborn in the household, we in BC were under heavy lockdown (in this case, heavy lockdown means no visitors) which continued until June!! My game group had been playing games via Tabletop Simulator since late March 2020 which gave us access to a ton of games that we wouldn’t have been able to play otherwise. Thankfully, come the summer we were allowed to gather again and we’ve been playing in person ever since, even including a Cabin-Con retreat!
This list will include several games that were not released in 2021, and that’s okay. This list is to showcase the best games that were new to me this year! While I am often a victim of wanting to play the newest games as they release, I do enjoy going back and finding the gems that I initially missed.
In 2021 I managed to get in 257 plays of 110 different games, 45 of which were new to me. Before I get to my top 10 games I want to mention that the ‘honorable mentions’ list is really strong. Q.E., Dinosaur Tea Party, Fantasy Realms, Forgotten Waters, Underwater Cities, The Isle of Cats, Lost Ruins of Arnak, Sheriff of Nottingham, Gods Love Dinosaurs, Under Falling Skies, and Lost Cities: Rivals. Most of these games are ones that I could classify as good, but I need to play more. Also, most of the games on the honorable mentions list were played digitally, which I’m sure influences how much joy I feel when thinking about them again. You’ll likely find some of these games hitting my Top 100 list the next time I put it together!
#10 – Regicide
Regicide by Paul Abrahams, Luke Badger, and Andy Richdale was the biggest surprise to me this summer. I heard that there was an intriguing and challenging cooperative game using a standard deck of 52 cards. If you have a deck of cards, you can play this game right now!
I’ll admit that while it’s billed as a cooperative game, I’ve mostly played it solo. Regicide also has a significant amount of luck involved to win, so it’s not uncommon to get a bad card flip and find yourself just hosed. I’ll also admit that I haven’t been able to beat Regicide yet… I’ve gotten to the final boss, but fell just short due to an aforementioned poor card flip.
While you can play Regicide with any generic deck of 52 cards, Badgers from Mars has released a specific deck with some thematic artwork that looks fantastic.
#9 – Project L
Project L is spatial relation Splendor. I love the polyomino puzzles, the engine building, the colourful acrylic pieces, and the striking minimalistic visual design. I won’t reiterate all of my thoughts and feelings about Project L here as I’ve already written about it in depth, but I will mention that Project L continues to hit my table with groups both new and well versed in the board game hobby.
#8 – The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine
I played a lot of trick taking games with my family as a kid, mostly games Phase 10 and our own variation called Sticks, but I really didn’t expect to love 2019’s The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine by designer Thomas Sing as much as I did.
Introduced to me at the end of a very long day during Cabin-con 2021, the whole group fell for this game hard. We played ~20 games back to back to back, just constantly going back for more. I’m kicking myself for not playing The Crew earlier; Otter kept bringing it to game night week after week and it just kept not hitting the table.
#7 – Cascadia
Cascadia by Randy Flynn is the Flatout Games darling child of the year. I’ve heard so many people talk so positively about this nature themed tile laying/ drafting game, and for good reason! Cascadia is a fun, light, attractive puzzle. Players draft ecosystem tiles and animal tokens and try to arrange them in perfect ways to earn the most points.
Cascadia is often compared to Flatout Games previous Kickstarter project Calico. While I prefer the latter, a lot of people report enjoying the easier, less restrictive puzzle of Cascadia.
#6 – Beyond the Sun
Beyond the Sun is a phenomenal game made even more impressive when taking into account that this is Dennis K. Chan’s first design. Beyond the Sun creates an analog experience for everyone’s favourite aspect of Civilization, tech trees. The big main board has several columns indicating the ‘level’ of each technology with lines going from left to right indicating each technology’s prerequisites. What makes this game interesting for repeat plays is that each level of technologies has a whole deck to choose from.
I’ve only played Beyond the Sun once, but I’m very excited to explore this game even more. I’m even looking forward to an expansion that offers some more asynchronous player powers, and am eagerly excited to see what else Dennis K. Chan has in store for us board gamers.
#5 – MicroMacro: Crime City
MicroMacro: Crime City by Johannes Sich is another game that I covered in depth this year. I played the demo and really loved the ‘Where’s Waldo?’ style gameplay mixed with a feeling of time passing. Being able to trace a criminal’s steps backwards through the city, or follow someone fleeing from an event like a bank robbery brought such joy to my wife and me.
I love that as you’re following the threads of one case you can start to notice other things going on in the periphery, things that you can make a mental note of something that you’ll probably need to come back to in a later case, but it’s not too obvious as to whats going on that you feel like you’ve accidently solved another crime just by stumbling upon a vital clue.
In my review I wrote that I didn’t plan on keeping the first game around, as it’s kind of a one and done game. I did recently pick up the follow-up game, MicroMacro: Crime City – Full House but haven’t had a chance to break it out yet. From what I read, we can expect two more MicroMacro: Crime City games in the near future, and some cases that will span all the maps. We’ll see if those work well, and just how fun it will be to try and manage 4 different maps spanning the entirety of my living room floor, especially now that my newborn has leveled up to toddler.
#4 – Calico
Calico by Kevin Russ came to Kickstarter in October 2019, and delivered partway through 2020. I didn’t really learn about it until early 2021. My wife and I were in a game store perusing their selection when Calico caught my eye and wouldn’t let go. I loved the charming, cozy kitten on the cover and I had heard from a friend that it was quite the puzzle. They weren’t wrong, I found my head in my hands for most of the playtime as I compromised and was forced to slowly give up some of the points I was hoping to achieve, unable to fulfill all (or any!) of the scoring objectives!
Most of my plays of Calico were solo when I posted my review in June. Since then I’ve introduced a lot of people to the world of Calico and found nothing but praise. The aesthetic is cute and charming, the puzzle is satisfying, and the replayability is excellent. I love that Flatout Games includes scenarios in the back of the rulebook, allowing experienced players to add on some additional challenges. I absolutely love Calico and look forward to playing it every time.
#3 – My City
I don’t recall much fanfare around Reiner Knizia’s tile laying legacy game My City when it released in 2020. I first experienced My City during Cabin-con 2021, after a brutal, grueling game of Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile by Cole Wehrle, and a very late night of unboxing and playing Anachrony by Dávid Turczi, Richard Amann, and Viktor Peter. My City was exactly the game we needed; light, easy to learn and play, fast, and very little rules overhead. We played 6 games back to back, and then another 6 games the next day. Most of the group at Cabin-con agreed that My City was ‘the game of the con’, meaning it was the overall favourite experience
My City takes only 15 minutes to play, and plays a lot like Rüdiger Dorn’s Karuba (which I talked about breifly here). Each player begins with an identical set of polyomino tiles. Each turn a card is flipped up and all players must place the tile depicted on the card on their board. You can (almost) always choose to pass instead of placing the tile, at the cost of a single point. After all players are ‘out’, the scores are counted and the highest score wins.
We took to this game famously. Since Cabin-con it’s been often requested, more as a game to finish off the night, rather than make it the objective of the evening. We all liked it so much that when Black Friday rolled around and Boardgamebliss.com had it available for $20, we all bought our own copies, eager to introduce our families to this game during the holiday season. While I haven’t finished the legacy campaign yet, and haven’t played the ‘eternal’ game (without the legacy components), I can wholeheartedly recommend My City, especially at the lower price point compared to most other legacy style games.
#2 – Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated
I used to own the original Clank! a long time ago, but traded it during a local math trade as it just wasn’t getting any plays in my group. It was light and easy to play but we found ourselves favouring other deck-builders such as Paperback by Tim Fowers or Super Motherload by Gavan Brown and Matt Tolman. Because my main game group tends to prefer playing a large variety of games, the push-pull tension of Clank! just didn’t resonate with us. No one wanted to be the person to snag the cheapest, easiest artifact and escape the dungeon, even if that was the best choice. We just didn’t want to ‘waste’ a play by getting in and getting out as fast as possible.
So colour me surpised when Otter found a copy of Clank! Legcay: Acquisitions Incorporated for sale, used. It was fully unplayed and in mint condition, so we bought it. I had my misgivings before diving in, but I found my misgivings to be totally unfounded. I had an absolutely blast making my way through Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated. We played 4 games back to back during Cabin-Con 2021, and another game shortly after.
Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated sprinkles narrative and discovery throughout it’s playtime, tasking players to reach certain spaces to access the next part of the story. It tickles my need for discovery just right. While the underlying game is still ‘just’ Clank!, I’m hopelessly excited for each new game. I immediately beeline to the next story section, eager to place stickers all over the board. Sometimes it pays off and I do very well in points, other times not so much! I have a blast every time and cannot wait to complete this adventure
#1 – Bullet❤️
I really didn’t know what to expect from Bullet♥︎ by Joshua Van Laningham and Level 99 games. No one I knew or trusted turned me on to the game. All I knew was that I liked Level 99 Games’ previous projects and that I enjoy the anime aesthetic.
What I found was an engaging action-packed, push-your-luck puzzle game, full of tense decisions. Now, I love real time games and I love puzzles so it’s absolutely no surprise that Bullet♥︎ appeals to me in the way that it did. Most of my time with Bullet♥︎ comes from the solo Boss Battle mode. I wrote about Bullet♥︎extensively here so I won’t rehash my thoughts too much. All I will say is that I continue to love Bullet♥︎ and I expect that if I can find a group to play this with more often, Bullet♥︎ will quickly climb up my list of top 100 games.
Thanks for reading my list of top games that were new to me in 2021. Let me know in the comments which games were new to you in 2021 and which ones you’re looking forward playing the most!
