Last time I was a grumpy, old, curmudgeon. It was a change of pace that I didn’t necessarily enjoy. Turns out, I don’t actually like complaining all that much. So this week I want to highlight some games that I really love, that I think are woefully underappreciated.
A high-speed puzzle ‘SHUMP’ wrapped in the aesthetics of a futuristic magical girl anime, Bullet♥︎ is one of the slickest, most replayable games I’ve ever played, as evident as its placement as #3 on my top 100 games of all time list
It’s a real-time puzzle game, where you drop bullets onto a grid based on colour and number, trying to match patterns before your board fills up. Every heroine plays differently, and the combinations of Heroines and Bosses provide near-endless variety. It plays fantastically solo or with friends, and the real time rounds keep the game moving at a decent clip.
There’s nothing quite like pulling out the perfect bullet you need to complete a pattern just in the nick of time, clearing space on your board and sending a cascade of bullets flying at your opponent. That moment when the round ends, and they look at the mountain of wood you’ve sent their way, it’s just a pure delight.
2. Le Havre: The Inland Port
BGG Rank: #1,729
Le Havre by Uwe Rosenburg gets plenty of plaudits. It’s revered by many a Uwe fan, even sitting in Tom Vassel’s #1 spot in his yearly Top 100 Games of all time lists in 2020 and 2021. Myself, I think it’s okay. It’s a bit big and unwieldy in my experience, but a great game none-the-less. What I am enthuasastic about, however, is the 2 player only spin off, Le Havre: The Inland Port.
The Inland Port features a resource grid, with 4 trackers on it. Players alternate taking turns building or using buildings, which sit on your own personal dial. As turns go by, the dials spin, powering up each of the buildings. When using a building, you can use your own for free, or throw a franc at your opponent to use their building. The buildings are mostly just different ways of getting more resources so you can build more buildings, but the resource grid has a fun spatial element to it. One building may move your wood marker up and to the left, but it’s useless to you if the marker is already bumped up to the left side.
Now Boarding by Tim Fowers turns the stress and mundanity of air travel into an utterly delightful real-time cooperative experience. As always, featuring charming artwork from Ryan Goldsberry, and featuring a fast-paced, real time, pick-up-and-deliver framework, players are tasked with juggling angry passengers, unpredictable weather, and the literal ticking clock as they shuttle travelers back and forth across the U.S. What starts as a breezy morning shift ramps up quickly, with passengers piling up and the best laid plans unravelling in real time as new passengers and their destinations are revealed mid-round. The game encourages tight communication and flexible thinking, and yes, sometimes ejecting a passenger mid-route because someone more convenient popped up.
No game makes a table look cooler by the end than Tokyo Highway. It’s part dexterity challenge, part spatial puzzle, and part architecture simulator.
You’re stacking and stretching tiny wooden roads on top of pillars, aiming to sneak under or over your opponent’s highways to place your cars. There’s a magical moment in every game where the roads twist into wild, impossible shapes and the table becomes a miniature cityscape of gravity-defying construction.
It’s easy to teach, hard to master, and packed with tension. Plus, it’s the rare abstract game that tells a story—not with words, but with the shape of the board by the end of the game.
This solo word-building roguelike is what happens when a word game, a deck-builder, and a dungeon crawler walk into a bar and actually hit it off.
You’re building words to defeat a series of enemies, collecting power-ups, levelling up your deck, and trying to survive until the final boss. Each playable character offers unique abilities, which means your strategy shifts dramatically from one run to the next.
The progression is satisfying, the mechanics are sharp, and the design is downright clever. It’s not just “a good solo game” — it’s a great game, full stop. And once it hooks you, it really hooks you.
Final Thoughts
Not every great game gets the love it deserves. Some are too niche, too chaotic, too quiet, or just fall between the cracks of hype cycles and hotness meters. But these five games prove that sometimes, everyone else is wrong.
So if you’re the type of person who stops looking at board games if they’re ranked lower than 500 on BGG, give these underrated gems a try. You might just find your next favourite game hiding behind a bad rank.
Continuing on from last week, I’m going to look at the characters and bosses that come in Bullet: Palette and share my experiences as I played them! For playing these characters as heroines, I’m going to pit them against Hyper Mode from Bullet🍊, as I find she is the most vanilla boss to run up against. Her quirk is really just “Dump 20 bullets into your bag every round. Good luck!”. As for tackling the bosses, I’ll try to overcome them as Mariel Martin from Bullet❤️, as she’s one of my favourite characters to play as!
Bullet: Palette features four new characters that need to be mixed into a base game to play. The theme for this set is art, as the heroines fight with drawings, paint, sound, and… dice? I’m curious to see how Precursor Die fits into the theme here, but theme isn’t particularly important here. What I care about is how fun and interesting each of these characters are, so without further ado, here we go!!
Bridget Glenn
Right off the bat, a heroine after my own heart. Bridget Glenn is an author, with verdant green eyes and ink spilling over her pages as she writes characters to life. Each of the quotes on her patterns are wonderfully evocative of classic literature. Her quirk is that she can swap which column each colour falls into, and bullets can be moved to any space in a column matching its colour, giving a great amount of flexibility to how bullets can be moved.
I feel like Bridget would be more useful in the competitive mode where (if you have a keen eye and watch your opponent), you’ll have a much better idea of what colours are coming into your sight, otherwise her ability to move which column is getting bullets is not helpful defensively. Offensively, it’s awesome. For 2 energy you can swap column colours, then move a bullet of that colour from anywhere in your sight to anywhere in its column, allowing you to set up your patterns for maximum effectiveness.
I actually feel like Hyper Mode isn’t a great match-up for Bridget Glenn, as she excels at being able to move a bullet to any open spot on the board for just 2 AP, and that’s not really a power you need when you’re getting flooded with Hyper Mode’s bullets
Bridget Glenn cleared Hyper Mode on her second try.
Precursor Die
You know what you need more of in a push your luck game? More chance. If you find yourself agreeing with that statement, Precursor Die has you covered. At the start of each option phase, you roll a die. Some of Precursor’s actions are affected by the number you roll. Precursor’s actions are fairly weak, in that it costs 2 action points to move a bullet a single space, but one of those AP are refunded if you had managed to roll a 4, 5, or 6. Similarly, for 2 AP you can draw another pattern, or draw two and discard one if your die is on the higher side. For a single AP you can re-roll the die, and bringing the precursor part of the name into play, for one AP you reveal as many bullets from your bag as your die number, then return them to the bag, letting you know what’s on the horizon for you.
Precursor Die was much more difficult to use than Bridget Glenn, almost unfairly so. A lot of Precursor Die’s patters were 3 or 4 across, making it extra difficult to clear the edges of her sight. At least Precursor has the ability to move a bullet up, which is uncommon, but not rare, so it’s no consolation. Precursor Die is uninteresting and un-fun to play. I expected more with the die, like being able to better control bullets that match the number, or something. After 3 attempts that just made me feel frustrated, I doubt I’ll ever play as her again.
Shout★
I’m only tangentially aware of idol culture, as much as any anime fan can be without ever having engaged in that side of the fandom, mostly just from seeing Hatsune Miku’s face in ads, her cameos in various video games, and most recently, a Jaiden animations video detailing her obsession. Shout★’s quirk actually reminds me more of nonograms than anything else, but I digress. Each of her patterns have a ‘volume’ requirement, which just means the number of bullets in each column. This can be tricky to control, especially when your bullet bag is utterly full from Hyper Mode’s relentless onslaught. Thankfully, Shout★ has a couple of very useful abilities. One lets you have a +1 or -1 to each volume’s requirement for the next pattern, and the other lets you move every bullet in a single column, either left or right.
While tricky, and requiring careful planning, Shout★ proved her mettle and was able to clear Hyper Mode in a single try. I’m glad the battle ended when it did, though, as I don’t think Shout★ would have survived another round!
Zuri Kasango
The last of the heroines in Bullet: Palette is Zuri Kasango, the graffiti artist that looks like she was ripped straight out of Jet Set Radio Future.
I think Zuri’s whole quirk is really not ideal against an opponent like Hyper Mode. She doesn’t clear any bullets until the end of her Option phase. All of her patters are just bullet requirements. With a hand size of 1, Zuri needs to try and fufill the pattern of bullets in her sight. When she does, she discards her pattern and draws a new one. At the end of the option phase, depending on the number of patterns Zuri discarded, she gets to clear bullets from anywhere on her sight, up to a really impressive 14 bullets if you manage to fulfill 10 patterns.
When Zuri finally does get the opportunity to clear her bullets, every star she clears lets her throw another bullet into the centre, which can result in a full board clear. Zuri’s real downside is really that she just can’t clear bullets during the option phase, which means she does need to survive drawing her whole bag. If she survives, she’s devastating. But that’s a pretty big if.
I like Zuri’s glass cannon. I attempted Hyper Mode 4 time to no avail, but I’m quite keen to come back and try Zuri against other bosses!
Gamemaster Die
Unlike any boss before her, Gamemaster Die has no patterns, a single shield, but 18 shield slots. Each round in which her shield would break (which takes 5 bullets to do so), you roll the die and move the shield token along the dungeon path, and take whatever effect it lands on. Then, for the next round, the intensity is the sum of numbers on the places behind the shield token.
While the game can be over in as few as 3 rounds, provided you always roll a 6, the reality is that this is more of an endurance match than I gave it credit for. There’s no real way to rush the ending. As long as you clear 5 bullets, you’ll roll the die. Clearing more than that is just for fun. Gamemaster Die starts slowly, only adding 6 to 9 bullets in the first few rounds. But as you turn that final corner and get within striking distance of the finish line, suddenly you’re facing a barrage of 16+ bullets each round. Gamemaster Die never felt fair, all you needed to win in this scenario is just a bit of luck.
It took two attempts to clear Gamemaster Die. The first game saw Mariel kicked back to the dungeon spot 3 times before she was overwhelmed in 9 rounds, while the second game was over in the 4th round. Gamemaster Die is a fun boss to fight, if you don’t want the hassle of checking for boss patterns every round.
Shout ★ Live!
All of Shout ★ Live!’s (is that how you pularize that?) patters have the same effect. If you fail to achieve her condition, all your bullets for the next round have a +1. That can be brutal, but on the other hand, the patterns are really not that difficult to meet, at least for Mariel. Shout ★ Live! was a bit boring, with her two static quirks being all that there was to think about during the confrontation. There were no extra conditions to be aware of when a shield broke, which let Mariel dance around her conditions with relative ease.
One try is all it took to silence Shout ★ Live!
The Defacer of Tyranny
The Defacer of Tyranny is a true endurance battle. The goal is to outlast Zuri as her outlandish pattern requirements punish you by placing 5 extra bullets every time you fail to achieve them, and a shield breaks. Unlike most of the other bosses, all you need to do to defeat Tyranny is outlast her pattern deck, while completing some of the patterns and not taking a dozen bullets to the face.
On my first attempt, I failed 3 patterns in a row, which spelled disaster for my run. I was more cognizant of her tricks during the second attempt and still lost. But the third time, I… still lost. But only barely. The fourth time I stood up! Just kidding. I lost again. And again.
Mariel proved to be both helpful and absolutely useless when it came to specific patterns. Being able to leap her across the map was pivotal sometimes, but her inability to slide any bullet just a single space was crippling. I think it’s a testament to how much fun I was having losing, where I attempted this boss 8 times before I came out ahead.
The Loremaster
The Loremaster is a bit of a tricksy bag. On one hand, her patterns are relatively simple to achieve. On the other hand, she has regenerative powers, as in, if you don’t complete the pattern, she regenerates a shield. In addition, every time a shield breaks, she drops two more bullets into your sight, making a shield break just a little bit risky.
She was tricky, and once again, Mariel was both very helpful and frustratingly helpless with certain patterns, but overall, she was a great heroine to take on The Loremaster. It took three attempts to come away with a victory here.
Conclusion
Bullet: Palette features a diverse cast of quirks. From Bridgett’s ability to swap column headers, to Shout’s volume control, I thoroughly enjoyed diving into each one of the heroines, and their boss counterparts, with the exception of Precursor Die. I think Zuri was the bright spot for me in this expansion, both as a heroine and a boss. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Bullet: Palette if someone wanted to add just one of the 4 character expansions into the game. Each character felt unique and I’m more than happy to have them in my box!
Bullet Paw is one of the latest expansions to one of my favourite games of all time, Bullet❤️. While I’ve covered the original game here, and the standalone expansion, Bullet⭐, but I’ve never covered the 3 character expansions, Bullet🍊 and the freshly delivered Paw and Palette. So here I am to start to rectify this situation.
Bullet🍊, Paw, and Palette are all 4 character expansions that you can just mix in with any of the characters that you already have. And as before, every character is both a playable heroine, and a boss to overcome.
Today I’m going to look at the characters and bosses that come in Bullet: Paw and share my experiences as I played them! For playing them as heroines, I’m going to pit them against Hyper Mode from Bullet🍊, as I find she is the most vanilla boss to run up against. Her quirk is really just “Dump 20 bullets into your bag every round. Good luck!”. As for the bosses, I’ll try to overcome them as Mariel Martin from Bullet❤️, as she’s one of my favourite characters to play as!
Beethoven – Heroine
Initially, her patters look incredibly intimidating. Each one has 3 to 5 requirements of specific colours, but after some examination I noticed they’re actually quite friendly in specific ways. Like, the colours always make sense, if the pattern is 5 across, the red will always be in the first column, and the pink will be in the last. In addition, Beethoven’s patters clear 4 bullets instead of the usual 3, making her quite well suited to my specific scenario. Finally, while Beethoven’s ‘move a bullet left, right, or down one space’ costs 2 energy, she does have both ‘move a bullet once diagonally up or down’ and ‘swap two bullets on your board’ for one energy each. This swap does wonders for satisfying some of the cards to maximize the patterns’ effectiveness.
Beethoven overcame Hyper Mode on my second attempt in the 3rd round. I missed the pattern in the first round but accomplished it in rounds 2 and 3. Actually, I managed to bust 3 shields in the 3rd round for a big win.
Behemoth
I like that all of Behemoth’s patterns are references to all the other heroines from Heart and Star. With 20 patters, and very few requirements, Behemoth felt like a cakewalk compared to Beethoven. The quirk here is that Behemoth can remove patters from her discard to clear bullets either from the centre, or from her sight. If you’re sitting at the end of the round, a single bullet away from breaking that next shield, it’s an amazing tool to have in your pocket. Similarly, removing two patterns to clear any bullet from your sight, is wonderfully handy to fulfill the patters that require specific empty spaces, and you just have one annoying bullet in your way.
Behemoth cleared Hyper Mode on her first try, no problems.
Eluros
Emotions are the name of the game for Eluros. She starts every round happy, and when Edelmar is happy, every bullet is considered to be a 4. On one hand, 4’s are usually terrifying, but if EVERY bullet is a 4, then all of your bullets are going to clump up really nicely at the bottom of your sight. And leaning into that effect, Eluros’ patterns all require there to be a 2×2 clump of bullets to activate. Very handy. But when a row has 3 bullets in it, that means ANY bullet of that colour will hit you, which really highlights the push your luck nature of Eluros. You can discard a pattern at any time to change Edelmar’s emotions, which have a variety of effects. When she’s scared, getting hit by a 3 just tosses the bullet back into the centre. Angry Edelmar lets you clear a #2 bullet after using a pattern, and sad Edelmar lets you move #1 bullets to any space on the board.
Eluros fell to Hyper Mode 3 times before I chose to move on from her. I found it very difficult to effectively manage my emotions, and once the board got messy, it was much more difficult to trigger the patterns well. Not to mention, she’s constantly in a pattern deficit as you’re discarding patterns to swap emotions.
Whimsy
Alright, Whimsy is super weird. Moons, Milks, Cookies, a moon exists when a blue bullet is in the bottom row, while a cookie is a pink bullet with an even number, then the patterns are all ‘if a sun is next to a cookie, clear 3 bullets next to a cookie’, or, if milk and money have different numbers, clear 3 bullets in a diagonal line.
Wow, was that ever difficult to wrap my brain around. On the plus side, Whimsy’s ability to draw and cycle patterns was unparalleled, also, often the clear bullets’ ability was separate and distinct from the conditions on the card, so just because you used a cookie on the far left side of your board, doesn’t mean that the bullets you clear are connected to the cookie that fulfilled the condition.
Whimsy does seem powerful if you can grasp the fullness of her power, but I struggled with this heroine. Perhaps with more practise she’ll rise up my ranks.
Beethoven – Boss
Beethoven’s boss patterns are identical to her heroine, in that they are incredibly specific and challenging to overcome. Failing those patterns will deplete your AP, making the next round difficult. Also, Beethoven is dumping 15 bullets into your bag per round, almost as bad as Hyper Mode. On the plus side, you can pet the kitty, which gives you the opportunity to spend 3 AP to put 4 bullets from your current into the centre, taking the pressure off your board, but not contributing to breaking the next shield.
With only 5 health per shield, Beethoven gives you all the ammunition you need to take her down. Mariel made short work of this little kitty.
Chaos Incarnate
Following up on Whimsy’s Thingy’s, Chaos Incarnates patterns draw on the very specific bullet placements to create Milks, Cookies, Suns, Moons, and Dollars, and not having the specified Thingys in your sight causes extra bullets to be placed from into the centre. Furthermore, breaking a shield triggers all Thingys of a specific type to automatically hit you. Extra risky if you fail her pattern, as failure results in two bullets being placed in your sight with no opportunity to mitigate them.
Chaos Incarnate’s fills your bag with an increasing number of bullets every time her shield breaks, but it’s not an unmanageable number. There is a huge element of luck in satisfying her conditions, as sometimes it’s “An even number pink bullet with no star in the bottom row”, which can be really easy, if you happen to draw a pink 2. But when you pull 4 pink 1’s in a row, it’s mildly infuriating.
All that said, Mariel sorted out Chaos Incarnate on her first try. On to the next challenge!
Elurophobia
Elurophobia (fear of cats) features a ghostly silhouette from all four characters in Bullet: Paw, and all 5 of her patterns are nearly identical, with slightly different effects. First, she has a fear card that offers a restriction on a certain number every round. Afraid of Beethoven, for example, causes you to get hit every time you clear a 4, while Afraid of Whimsy makes it impossible to move 3’s for the round. Elurophobia’s patterns, on the other hand, are a boon. If you can make a 2×2 square on your board, then one of the numbers will clear an extra bullet, so long as that square of bullets persists on your board.
I think the real danger of Elurophobia is that every time one of her shields breaks, you’re forced to place an increasing number of bullets into your sight. In the final round, I broke her last two shields in one attempt, and just had to cross my fingers that I would survive the onslaught of 9 bullets getting placed in my sight. Thankfully, Elurophobia only took two tries to overcome.
Mems
And last, but not least, is the wordy Mems. Mems’ whole theme revolves around fears. Spiders, ghosts, and the like. All of her patters are utterly trivial to complete, but when they’re satisfied at the end of the round, something bad happens. And you can’t even be sure what bad thing is going to happen, because you flip over the next pattern and apply that effect instead of the one that’s face up throughout the round.
Mems slow rolls the game. With 6 shield per round, and only 7, 8, then 9 bullets coming in each round, it’s unlikely you’ll be able to shatter two shields in a single round. Thankfully, the two times I failed to avoid the pattern, the flip had something that didn’t affect me at all. I can see Mems being a challenge, but I got lucky and won on my first try.
Conclusion
Bullet: Paw adds 4 unique characters, each one special in their own way. I don’t think any of these new characters are an instant favourite, nor do I really dislike any of them (maybe Whimsy). I don’t think I’d be comfortable giving any of these characters to a new player, but that’s not why you buy an expansion to a game. I liked the unique spin each of these new characters brings to the game, but I wouldn’t say that Paw is a MUST-BUY expansion by any means. Really, if you’re a fan of the system and want to play with new toys, Bullet: Paw is a no-brainer. But if you are looking for something to breathe new life into this system, I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. Paw gives players more of what they already have, which is exactly what I want out of an expansion. Double bonus points if you really like cats, I suppose!
We’ve arrived at the cream of the crop. My top 10 games of all time. Serendipitously, this is also my 200th post on this blog! Nothing more to say, other than thanks for reading!
10 – Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization
My favourite thing about Through the Ages: A New Story of Civilization:
How deep and satisfying the puzzle is. I really cannot overstate how much I enjoy wrestling with the systems in Through the Ages. Now, it’s a game I’ve only played offline once, and it was tedious and took hours, but, I’ve played dozens of games online and on the app, and in those venues, the brilliance of this game shines through.
My favourite thing about Glen More II: Chronicles:
The tile roundel and being able to leap as far forward as you want allows for so much freedom in how you want to grow your village. Leaping ahead to get the best tile ensures you’ll get what you want but it allows your opponents to take everything that was left behind. Sometimes it’s worth it to claim that castle, but other times, slow and steady produces fistfuls of goods.
Yeah, that’s right. I have the OG Agricola where animals are cubs and resources are disks. My favourite thing about Agricola is easily the occupation and minor improvement cards that you get, and how drastically they impact every game. These cards are by far the reason why I prefer Agricola over Caverna.
The way they took the word building of Paperback and meshed it into a roguelike Slay the Spire-esque tabletop game is really fascinating. The mechanic of splaying your word left or right to get different icons, and choosing which card you want on top to trigger its ability, feels so satisfying. So many decisions to make on each turn, I am utterly in love with Paperback Adventures
The positive player interaction that I mentioned in Brass: Birmingham is here in full force. Weasling your way into the same province as the other players to benefit from their Prefect action. I love this peaceful economic game, and there are so many maps to explore, I never get tired to playing it.
It might be kinda silly, but I really love the fact that there are 3 ways to win. While achieving a science victory or military victory when playing against equally skilled players is incredibly rare, I love that they exist. And when one player makes a move towards one of the victory conditions, the other player is forced to respond. Commit too far and not achieve it, and you’ll have wasted a ton of precious actions, but still, the threat is palpable and exciting.
It’s fast, it’s variable, and it’s satisfying to build a functioning engine and goose it for fistfuls of points. So many other tableau building games wish they could achieve the level of satisfaction that Race for the Galaxy nails in just 30 minutes. Race for the Galaxy is my most played game on Board Game Arena, but that doesn’t mean I won’t play the physical version any chance I get!
The boss battle mode is just the perfect solo puzzle for me. It’s fast to set up, it’s wildly variable as each boss and each heroine have drastically different skill sets, and it takes less than 15 minutes to play. The puzzle is endlessly satisfying, and the push your luck element always has me on the edge of my seat. The expansions, Bullet⭐, Bullet🍊, Bullet 🐾, and Bullet🎨 all add more characters, and characters from any expansion can be mixed together, giving this excellent game almost endless variability.
No game has made me belly laugh more than Galaxy Trucker. From the moment I finish building my first ship until the final card in the game has been resolved, I have a stupid grin on my face, and when any ship gets cleved in two, my own included, I just feel giddy inside. A childlike sense of joy that comes from senseless and slapstick destruction makes me love Galaxy Trucker more than almost every other game I’ve ever played.
Everything. Okay, I know it’s a cop-out to say ‘everything’ to my favourite game of all time, but honestly, yeah, I love everything about Food Chain Magnate. The no luck strategy, the interaction that comes from all the players competing over the same customers, the way the economy seems dead for 5 rounds then BAM money starts flying all over the place. I love Food Chain Magnate with all my heart. My heart rate literally accelerates when I get to play it, and just thinking about playing it makes me salivate. I have a physical reaction to this game, and while my game group doesn’t share my level of enthusiasm, it does not deter my love for this masterpiece.
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.
