When is too much of a good thing… actually a bad thing?
It’s a question I’ve been turning over in my head a lot lately, and like most of my rambling blog posts, the question started with a board game.
On March 25th, Restoration Games announced the return of Star Wars: The Queen’s Gambit with The Lord of the Rings: The Kings Gambit. I saw this announcement immediately after I was listening to the Board Games Insider podcast where host Stephen Buonocore announced his co-designed game with Geoff Engelstein, The Lord of the Rings: Circle of Conflict.
Now, my wife and I have always been fans of the Lord of the Rings series. The books and the original trilogy of movies, mind you. We didn’t care for the Hobbit movies (although I found this fan-edit to be significantly more palatable), and we only watched a single episode of The Rings of Power.
But ever since Embracer group acquired Middle Earth Enterprises, it feels like a deluge of Lord of the Rings games have hit the marketplace. In just the past few years there’s been The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Trick-Taking Game,The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth, There’s The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship, You’ve got heavier titles like The Lord of the Rings: Foes of Middle-earth and The Lord of the Rings: Journeys in Middle-earth. And then there are others ,The Lord of the Rings: The Adventure Book Game, Exit: The Lord of the Rings, Spot It! The Lord of the Rings, and more! All these games circling the same source material, each trying to carve out its own little piece of Tolkien’s world.
At some point, I start to wonder: when does one of my favourite IPs being in a game stop being exciting and is actively hurting my intrest in it?
There was a time not so long ago when a new Lord of the Rings anything felt like an event. Maybe it was because releases were so spaced out. A movie trilogy in 2001, then a decade break before the Hobbit movies. I know that part of the reason was because so few people had access to the license, famously gate kept by Christopher Tolkien. But to go from a drip feed of Lord of the Rings content to the veritable deluge of releases that I’m seeing today, it causes a bit of an emotional whiplash.
I feel like that scarcity gave the games that did exist some weight. I have vivid memories of playing through the Lord of the Rings video games on the Game Boy Advance and the Nintendo Gamecube. Those games felt like they belonged. Like they had a reason to exist beyond simply wearing the skin of a beloved IP.
Nowadays, I can’t help but wonder if some of these games coming out NEED to be Lord of the Rings themed, or are they just slapping the name on because they know it’ll catch the attention of long-time fans? I received Lord of the Rings: Spot It for Christmas this year, and I’m sure that I never would have received that game if not for the LOTR name on the package.
I’m not trying to say that any of these games are bad, some of them are genuinely clever. But because LOTR games are no longer rare, they no longer feel special or unique. Which hurts my heart, just a little.
To be fair, there’s a very real upside to all of this. More games set in Middle-earth means more entry points into the hobby. A trick-taking game might appeal to one group. The narrative adventure that is Journeys in Middle-Earth will appeal to another. A quick, portable game like Spot It! might be the thing that gets a non-gamer to sit down at the table in the first place.
And there’s something comforting about a familiar setting. You don’t need to learn a new world, new characters, or new terminology. You already know who the factions are. You already understand the stakes. That familiarity lowers the barrier to entry in a way that original themes sometimes struggle to match, especially when it comes to High Fantasy, which has a tendency to copy Lord of the Rings anyway, in a way that makes them feel generic.
With that context, having a wide spread of games tied to the same IP is beneficial. It increases the chances that someone will find a version of that world that clicks with them mechanically. Not every game needs to be for everyone. But maybe there should be a version of Middle-earth for everyone.
But there’s a tipping point. And I don’t think it’s tied to a specific number of releases. It’s more of a feeling than a metric. A moment when I hear another game announcement and instead of thinking, “Oh, that’s interesting,” I thought “Of course there’s another one.”
And that’s when the cynic inside of me wakes up. These Lord of the Rings games are starting to feel less like a creative decision and more like a branding exercise. Because the real question isn’t whether a game is good. It’s whether the theme feels earned.
Does this game need to be set in Middle-earth? Does the design draw something meaningful from that world? Or could you strip away the names, swap in generic fantasy art, and end up with essentially the same experience? Is the only reason this is a Lord of the Rings game is so that long time fans like me will buy it?
And when those thoughts start popping into my head, I start to feel fatigue.
Even if each individual game is solid, even if each one targets a different audience, there’s still a cumulative effect. Seeing the same IP over and over again, across wildly different genres and weight classes, starts to wear down my sense of excitement. The same thing happened when Marvel really got their ball rolling. At first, a new Marvel movie was an event. It was an exciting thing to look forward to. First it was Iron Man in 2008, then Iron Man 2 in 2010, then Thor and Captain America in 2011, and Avengers in 2012. Now, there have been something like 17 movies and TV shows over the past 4 years. Absolutely exhausting, trying to keep up. I’ll be honest, after Infinity War and Endgame in 2019, I started ignoring everything Marvel.
And I’m worried I’m going to do the same with The Lord of the Rings.
I don’t think there’s a clean answer to when “too much” becomes too much. It’s not a total number of games. It’s not even a trend. It’s a feeling that creeps in when the connection between theme and design starts to feel thin, when the IP stops being a source of inspiration and starts being a marketing shortcut.
I don’t mind seeing more games set in Middle-earth. In fact, part of me enjoys it. It means the world I grew up loving continues to find new ways to exist. But I do find myself becoming more selective. Not because I’m tired of The Lord of the Rings, but because now I’m needing to mentally strip the LOTR theme off the game to decide if it’s an actually interesting game underneath the pretty wrapping paper. LOTR has stopped being a selling point for me, and is starting to be an active deterrent. This doesn’t mean I’m not going to buy any LOTR games in the future, but I’m certainly going to be more selective about them.
Every December, I scroll through everyone else’s “Best Games of the Year” lists and feel the familiar pang of jealousy. By the time those posts go up, I’ve generally only played about five titles from the current year. Hardly enough to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with anyone publishing a “Best of 2025” list.
But that’s okay. Being a little behind the curve has its perks. At the time of writing this post, I’ve played 110 games that were published in 2024, giving me some insight of which games actually endured the hype cycle. So instead of churning through hot takes, these are the five 2024 releases that climbed the BGG ranks this year, and what I think about them.
5 – Arcs
Arcs is one of those games where the praise and the frustration can live side by side. Designed by Cole Wehrle and published by Leder Games, it’s a tactical, trick-taking-adjacent space opera where everything, from its world-building to its action economy, feels flawlessly engineered.
As I wrote back in my review, “Arcs is a masterpiece. It’s a game bursting with so much variety, discovery, and depth, all crafted meticulously by designer Cole Wehrle. Every mechanic feels intentional… There isn’t an ounce of unnecessary bloat.”
And yet, “It’s just a shame that I don’t like playing it.”
For players who love being on their toes, Arcs is exhilarating. It’s a game about seizing fleeting opportunities, pulling the exact right lever at the exact right time, and surviving long enough to pivot when the galaxy turns against you. The Blighted Reach campaign expands the base game into a three-act space saga that rewards mastery and table commitment in equal measure.
But for players like me, who crave structure and control, Arcs can feel like being handcuffed to the whims of the deck. I don’t like being cut off from core actions entirely, just because I was dealt a hand of manoeuvre cards. And yes, I know there are ways to subvert a bad hand, it still feels more frustrating than anything else to me. But even I can’t deny how deftly it integrates narrative, tactics, and high-stakes decisions. Arcs might not be the game for me, but it’s unquestionably one of 2024’s best and boldest designs.
4 – Harmonies
Harmonies deserves all the praise it’s gotten so far. It’s a gorgeous spatial puzzle that’s both soothing and surprisingly demanding.
Designed by Johan Benvenuto and published by Libellud, Harmonies quickly became a darling of the 2024 awards circuit, earning a Spiel des Jahres recommendation and winning the Golden Geek Medium Game of the Year. It’s easy to see why.
To oversimplify it, imagine Azul crossed with Cascadia. In Harmonies, you’re building a landscape on your personal player board, creating harmonious habitats for the various animals that could call your board home. Each turn, you draft and place terrain discs, plan for animal patterns, and try to make everything fit together in a natural rhythm.
The cadence of Harmonies is calm, and the puzzle is satisfying. It’s a short, beautiful game that rewards smart drafting and spatial planning without really punishing you for mistakes, aside from lost opportunities. And while there’s precious little player interaction, that calm independence is part of its charm. Harmonies is a game for quiet concentration and tactile joy, not cutthroat competition.
3 – The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth
I love 7 Wonders Duel, much more than the full 7-player game from which it spun off from. And that’s the bias I held which I approached The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth, the streamlined reimagining from Antoine Bauza and Bruno Cathala.
Like 7 Wonders Duel, it’s a two-player card drafting duel, but this time, one player controls the Free Peoples of Middle Earth while the other commands Sauron’s forces. Victory can come from destroying or capturing the ring, conquering every region, or earning the allegiance of all six races.
Comparing it to 7 Wonders Duel, Duel for Middle-earth has been smoothed to a polished stone. All the wonky rules have been shaved off, everything is easier, and you’re able to calculate the cose for everything with a glance. The result is an elegant, fast-playing experience that evokes the tension of the original while being even more accessible.
That polish, however, comes at a cost. Because the game is smoother, it feels flatter. There’s less texture and depth to grab onto. You lose some of the crunchy engine-building and wild swings in resource costs that make 7 Wonders Duel so replayable. And yet, when my partner and I played Duel for Middle-earth for the first time, we learned it and knocked out two games within an hour and immediately wanted a third. It doesn’t replace 7 Wonders Duel for me, but it does make for an attractive 2 player game that I’d be happy to introduce to almost anyone.
2 – Slay the Spire: The Board Game
Slay the Spire needs no introduction to digital-deckbuilding fans, but the tabletop adaptation from Contention Games was one of the year’s most quietly ambitious triumphs. It managed to translate the tension, rhythm, and roguelike loop of the video game without feeling like a diluted knock off.
Each player pilots a unique character through a branching path of combats, upgrades, and relics, all while managing card efficiency and risk. What impressed me most isn’t that it’s accurate, but that designers Gary Dworetsky, Anthony Giovannetti, and Casey Yano understood the core of the game and didn’t just copy the digital game one for one. They took it as inspiration and created something that works amazingly well on the table without a computer managing the math in the background.
I convinced a friend to buy this for her husband, and while she was initially hesitant because she wasn’t a fan of coop games, they told me they played it almost a dozen times in the weeks that followed. And now both of them have been playing the app too, which inspired me to continue my ascension challenge as well.
1 – SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
There’s something poetic about a game that looks to the cosmos for answers, topping this list. SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, designed by Tomáš Holek and published by Czech Games Edition, became one of the most celebrated euros of 2024.
Given scant resources in this tight economy, you’re asked to stretch your actions as far as possible to build an engine to propel yourself to victory. There’s a lot going on in SETI, but the best thing I can say is that we finished our first play at a local café, and one of our players immediately bought a copy on the spot.
Any euro that inspires instant ownership speaks volumes. SETI strikes a rare balance of brain-burning complexity and cool, thematic immersion. You’re not just moving cubes to score points; you’re sending probes out to the far reaches of our solar system, chasing the thrill of discovery itself. And that spark, the sense of optimism and wonder that pushes people to explore the limits of space, well, I think we all need a bit more of that in our lives.
2024 was a great year for games, and these 5 games really showcase the strength of the board game hobby. Now that 2026 is here, I can’t wait to get started on all the great games that came out in 2025!
I’ve said this a lot in the past, but I don’t really play a ton of games in the year they come out. Between my impressive backlog and my unwillingness to go to any board game conventions, I’m usually a year or two behind when it comes to playing the hot new games. In fact, I usually do this list around July, but this year, I’ve been much more active on Board Game Arena, and more and more games are launching on BGA close to their physical release date. It also helps being on the Alpha test list, so I can play lots of games as they’re being added to the site, with the caveat that there may be bugs. ANYWAYS, I’m not here to talk about BGA, I’m here to run down my 10 favourite games that released in 2024 (so far)
Also, side note for myself. Next year I really need to complete this list before my kid goes on Christmas break, because, I was completely unable to get ANY writing done during the last 2 weeks!
Harmonies was incredibly popular when it hit the scene in March. Pitched as a cross between Azul and Cascadia, it felt like everyone was talking about this little game. Now, I’ve only had the opportunity to play Harmonies on BGA, but I can see why this game had everyone so excited.
Designed by Johan Benvenuto, Harmonies tasks players with building specific shapes in their personal ecosystems to satisfy the demands of the fauna cards. Each animal wants something different, perhaps a lion wants a mountian 3 discs high, with 2 plains discs adjacent, while the boar wants a tree thats only 2 discs high next to a 2 disc high building. The name of the game (literally) is finding the animals that can exist harmoniously, as each of their requirements compliment each other.
While luck plays a major factor in which discs are available to you each turn, and you’ll quite often be forced to take discs you don’t want or can’t use just to claim the few that you really need, Harmonies remains a calm, enjoyable experience. I really look forward to fleshing out my thoughts in a full review, once I can get a few more plays under my belt.
9 – Castle Combo
Another game introduced to me via Board Game Arena, Castle Combo, designed by Grégory Grard, Mathieu Roussel, is a fast, simple tableau builder about trying to squeeze the most points out of a courtyard of servants.
The cards you’re drafting come in two rows. The servants, and the nobles. All cards cost money to bring into your tableau, and once you take possession of the card and slot it into your 3×3 grid, they’ll offer some immediate benefits, as well as offer some end game scoring. After 9 rounds, you evaluate all the cards in your grid, and whoever has the most cards wins!
The artwork by Stephane Escapa is colourful and full of funny caractures, and the gameplay is so fast and butter smooth that it fits the role of ‘filler game’ perfectly. There are still satisfying decisions to make, as a lot of the end game conditions will depend on where each card is, and how many of the other tags are in the rows and columns next to each card.
It’ll remain to be seen if Castle Combo will stand the test of time, but it’s worth at least a dozen plays or so!
An area control and stock market game about the ever increasing value and presence of flowers was a bit of a surprise hit for me. Another BGA game, Stalk Exchange by Christopher Ryan Chan, gives players some hidden information that will inform their final score, then tasks players with swapping the flowers they have behind their screen with the ones that are able to go onto the board.
When flowers are on the board, they start off as bulbs, after a single turn if they have an open side, they grow into flowers. If a cohort of flowers are ever fully contained by the borders created by other flower varieties, they’re removed from the board, and the value of that flower goes up 1 spot for every flower token removed from the board. At the end of the game, you score your portfolio. But before you do that, the bubble bursts on the most valuable flower, its value gets cleaved in half.
Stalk Exchange is clever, quick, and simple to teach, making it a pretty appealing game. I’ve enjoyed the few plays I’ve gotten of this one, and if I can source a physical copy, I’ll be sure to push it onto my local game group.
7 – Wyrmspan
Building off the core gameplay mechanics of the massively successful Wingspan, Connie Vogelmann crafted a new game in which players hew homes for dragons out of caves, then entice those dragons into your sanctuary, all in the effort of building an engine by chaining together powerful abilities, and turning those abilities into victory points.
In classic Stonemaier Games fashion, Wyrmspan is a beautiful product. The art is lush and fanciful, the eggs are speckled, the components have a premium finish, it’s a wonderful production to hold in your hands. Gameplay wise, Wyrmspan is much more complex than Wingspan, there’s a lot more interactions between the dragons and caves and the resources you hold that players need to be aware of. The potential to craft a runaway combo feels greater in this rendition.
Personally, I’d be much more willing to play Wyrmspan over its predecessor, but I’d also be much more reluctant to introduce newer players to Wyrmspan, at the very least without the Wingspan background. It’s a great ‘next step’ game, where it has some familiar mechanisms to ease the learning burden, but offers a more satisfying gameplay experience.
6 – Draft & Write Records
A prototype was provided by Inside Up Games
I was fortunate enough to receive a prototype copy of Draft & Write Recordsto review from Inside Up Games back in the fall of 2023, but it was officially released this year, so I’m including it on this list!
Draft & Write Records by Bruno Maciel, is as the title indicates, a draft and write game. Each player gets a large sheet of paper and every round, they’ll draft a card from their hand, cross off the appropriate resource from their sheet, and pass all of their unchosen hands to the next player. After each hand of cards has been picked down to nothing, there’s a short weekend, where players evaluate goals, and play continues in this fashion until someone triggers the end of the game.
In 2024, Draft & Write Records came to Board Game Arena, and I decided to hop into a couple friendly tournaments for it, which ended up putting another 10 games of it under my belt. Draft & Write Records is the perfect async game, as on your turn you just need to quickly assess your board state and the few cards passed to you, before making your choice. And the combo-tastic nature of the game is really satisfying when you manage to stretch a single action into 5 or 6 resources getting crossed off.
5 – Nucleum
While I haven’t reviewed Brass or Barrage on this site (yet), I’ve touched on how much I enjoy Brass: Birmingham as it sits at number 18 in my top 100 games of all time list. Nucleum by designers Simone Luciani and Dávid Turczi has players erect power plants, build links between urban buildings, and completing milestones. Each player has asymmetric technologies, and throughout the game the action tiles you’re using to take actions are spent to establish links, giving the game a really great feeling of tension.
If I’m being really honest, I suspect that when I look back at all the games on this list, Nucleum will have the most staying power. That said, I didn’t like it more than Brass, so I’d be more inclined to return to that game if my group is in the mood to play a heavy economic euro game. Not to diminish how great Nucleum is as a game, it’s really amazing! It just has some close parallels that evoke similar feelings to other games that I already love.
4 – Fromage
Coming in right at the end of the year on BGA, Fromage was a really enjoyable euro game that played fast and offered intresting decisions. With simultainous worker placement, and 4 different scoring areas to play in, I had a really good time exploring this french cheese game.
I enjoyed it so much, I felt compelled to give this one a full review, which you can read here!
All 3 Kinfire Delve games were provided by Incredible Dream for review purposes
Are these technically expansions? They can be mixed with the previous Kinfire Delve games, but each box is stand-alone. While the core gameplay is the same between all sets, each character and boss are wildly different. Mixing characters to address specific challenges for each boss is a real treat.
In 2024 I transitioned to being a stay at home parent, and solo gaming suddenly became much more of a reality for me as my child napped during the day. My time with Kinfire Delve was a delight, and I’m very much looking forward to exploring the rest of the Kinfire universe, whenever that opportunity arises.
Another game that got the full review treatment, The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-Earth is a reworking of the 7 Wonders Duel system. Folding in both the Pantheon and Agora expansions, then streamlining the whole package down into something that is just a joy to play, LotR:DfME is an achievement of game design.
That said, when all is said and done, I find more fun in the 7 Wonders Duel experience, especially with the Pantheon expansion. I don’t mind the dozens of little calculations you need to do every time you want to buy a resource that you don’t have, and the engine building powers of the yellow cards is something I dearly missed in this new edition.
1 – Bullet: Paw & Palette
How dare an expansion take up the number 1 slot? Well, the answer is easy. Bullet remains one of my favourite games, especially the solo mode, and getting 8 new characters and bosses was a highlight of my board gaming year. Bullet: Paw focuses on animals, while Bullet: Palette puts the emphasis on heroines with an art pursuasion. I have indepth looks at both of those expansions, linked above, so if you want to read about those games specifically, please check out those reviews.
As for the new year, Bullet Cubed is coming to Gamefound with two more expansions, which means Level 99 Games is going to continue to get more of my money. Dang, I hate it when companies give me what I want!
And those are my top 2024 games. Soon I’ll have a couple more lists out, my top 10 best new to me games that aren’t from 2024, and my top 10 BGA games from last year. Let me know if you’ve played any of the games on this list, and what your favourite games of the last year are! See you again soon!
