Every year I play a lot of games, but rarely am I at the bleeding edge of the new releases. I don’t go to any big conventions, I rarely back crowdfunded games, and the bulk of my board game purchases happen through the local used market. A “best games of 2023” from me would be fruitless, as I really only played 4 games released in 2023. Instead, I’m taking this opportunity to highlight the 10 best new to me games I played in 2023. Here we go!
10 – Sea Salt and Paper (2022)
Image Credit: W. Eric Martin @W Eric Martin via BoardGameGeek.com
Starting off the list is a game that I played exclusively on BoardGameArena, and one that I wasn’t really a fan of to start. As I said in my review, after my first game, I felt like I had absolutely no control. That the game was all luck, and if you didn’t have any, you were absolutely toast. Thankfully the adorable origami art pulled me back in for a couple more rounds, because eventually Sea Salt & Paper opened up to me, and I’ve had some very enjoyable games over the past few months. Sea Salt & Paper by Bruno Cathala and Theo Riviere will be high on my list of games to pick up in the new year, assuming a copy didn’t make its way into my stocking for Christmas.
9 – Mists over Carcassonne (2022)
I’ll be honest, I actually thought I was ‘over’ Carcassonne. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy it, and it’s a great game to pull out with people who are just starting to get interested in board games. It’s a classic, but it’s not one that I was ever itching to play. When Mists over Carcassonne was announced, promising a cooperative spin on the classic gameplay, I was dubious. But I’ve had some real great experiences with competitive games turning into cooperative experiences (Viticulture World and Orleans come to mind).
I was quite surprised at how much I enjoyed Mists over Carcassonne. I wrote out my thoughts back in July, and while I haven’t dashed out to buy myself a copy, I find myself drawn to it each time I end up at my local board game café. Both my wife, and my game group expressed quite a bit of enjoyment with this game. I do like the scenario approach where rules and mechanics are slowly introduced, giving a real nice introduction to the game.
8 – Wandering Towers (2022)
A birthday gift from my mother in law, Wandering Towers, by Michael Kiesling and Wolfgang Kramer, has actually been fun for the whole family. I didn’t touch on it during my review, but my 3-year-old has become really excited to play with the stacking towers and hiding the wizards. I shuffle the wizards up, put them into various levels of the tower, and I make her guess which colour in on the next level down.
All of that to say that the toy factor for Wandering Towers is powerful enough to capture the attention of a toddler. The actual game is a joy to play, with snickering and giggles abound as a pile of towers falls onto your opponent’s head, and another two players move the whole stack. It’s very easy to lose track of where all your wizards have gotten off to, but that’s part of the fun. The reveal when the tower is lifted, and the piece you were so sure was there has gone missing. I adore this game, and I can’t wait to introduce it to my extended family.
7 – Applejack (2022)
I remember Jon Purkis of Actualol once said something along the lines of “If you want a game to have a high BGG rating, release it on Kickstarter first. If you want it to have a low BGG rating, release it on BoardGameArena first”, and I suspect that’s the case for Uwe Rosenberg’s Applejack. I adore this game, you can read my full review here for the details, but it’s languishing with a 6.9 rating on BGG.
Regardless of what the BGG users say, Applejack was a bright spot in my BoardGameArena experience this year. It had a slow burn, at first I dismissed it as being lucky, or pointless. But after half a dozen games, I started to see different strategies, and found so much joy in arranging my orchard to group the apple varieties together. I don’t own a copy of Applejack yet, but as soon as a copy hits the used market, I know I’ll swoop in to pick it up.
6 – Space Alert (2008)
Hey look, the first game that isn’t from 2022! Space Alert by Vlaada Chvatil is one of the games that I regret only playing once this year. A real time, cooperative, action queue game, players are trying to survive a 10-minute onslaught of threats before leaping into hyperspace and sailing off to victory.
Within my game group, I’m known as the ‘real-time’ fanatic, and I have a feeling that my friends are only middling on the concept. That said, everyone I played with enjoyed Space Alert, and I have no doubt that I would have any trouble getting it back to the table. Of course, the challenge with real time games is that everyone has to know all the rules before you begin, lest accidental cheating throw the whole game sideways.
Space Alert was full of tension and stress and great problem-solving. I love the chaos that real time games bring, and having a soundtrack blaring alerts while players are frantically debating how to deal with the threats, and therefore potentially missing crucial information, was just full belly laugh fun.
5 – Mechs Vs. Minions (2016)
Mechs vs. Minions has been one of my grail games since it was released in 2016. Another cooperative action planning game, but this time designed by Chris Cantrell, Rick Ernst, Stone Librande, Prashant Saraswat, and Nathan Tiras and published by Riot Games. And I mention the publisher here because the production is stunning. A big box full of minis, bright and colourful cards, and all for a very reasonable price.
The reason why this has been a grail game for me, is because shipping to Canada has been abhorrent. I was never willing to pay $80USD to ship a $95USD game. So when a used copy became available locally, my game group got very excited to finally dig into it. And it didn’t disappoint! The game is structured around various missions, with the first handful being a stripped down version of the game to get all the players used to the rules. Even those games were fun, as the action programming leads to chaos and when you can’t stop players from spinning around and around in the corner of the map, all you can do is giggle. We played 4 games of Mechs vs. Minions this year, and I can’t wait to play more.
4 – Switch & Signal (2020)
I knew nothing about Switch & Signal when I picked up a used copy early this year. But as I said in my review, I can feel the seed of train-love growing in my soul, and I didn’t own any train games. Switch & Signal by David Thompson is a cooperative game about moving trains to pick up goods in cities, then manipulating the signals and switches to get the trains to drop off the goods at port. Every round a card is flipped over that dictates where new trains span, which of the trains need to move, and the number of spaces each train moves is based off the roll of a die. Players need to anticipate where each train is going to go and which routes to open up, lest the trains run into a closed gate, or worse, each other.
I feel like Switch & Signal flew way under the radar when it was published in 2020, but that doesn’t diminish how great of a game this is. It’s fast and cooperative, meaning it’ll likely be making its way into my rotation of games that I use to introduce people to the board game hobby.
3 – Kites (2022)
Another real-time cooperative game, Kites by Kevin Hamano tasks players with keeping their kites in the sky, or rather, keep sand falling in all the timers. Players play a card from their hand, flip the timers corresponding with the colours on the cards, then draw a card to replenish your hand. The game ends when either the deck runs out (winners!) or if any one of the sand timers runs dry (losers!).
That’s the whole game. There are some advanced cards in the box if you want to get crazy with it, but the base game is so much fun on its own. There’s frantic card playing and timer flipping. Players are trying to communicate what they have and what they need, but information is constantly changing. Every time a timer flips over, everyone has to recalculate what’s the next most important task to tackle. I adore Kites, and will be forcing this game upon anyone who shows even a modicum of interest!
2 – Cat in the Box (2022)
Cat in the Box: Deluxe Edition was the surprise hit of the year. Everyone I’ve introduced it to has loved it. It’s a trick taking card game in which you declare what colour your cards are as you play them. It’s a concept that sounds like it shouldn’t work, and yet, I adore this game.
The hook of declaring your card suits is one thing. In Cat in the Box, there are more cards than should exist. There’s 4 suits, yet 5 cards of each number, meaning one of those cards can’t be played. The other hook of the game is avoiding paradoxes, meaning playing a card that has been declared to be impossible. This can happen if 5 cards of the same colour are played, or, if you’ve previously declared yourself to be void of a whole suit, but then are in a situation where that’s the only suit that could possibly be played.
Cat in the Box isn’t a game that I would use to introduce the trick taking mechanic to someone who’s never played it before, but it’s an amazing mind twisting treat for those of us who have a small history with trick taking. Cat in the Box is delightful and unique and has been a joy at my table all year long.
1 – Akropolis (2022)
I was introduced to Akropolis in the springtime, and it’s been a bug in my brain ever since. I posted a glowing review in August, and since then I’ve acquired my own copy of the game and have subjected it to my entire game group in addition to playing a dozen times on BoardGameArena
I’ve sold this game as Kingdomino meets NMBR 9. You have the scoring style of Kingdomino (you score the number of points for each colour, multiplied by the number of stars of that colour. And 0 stars means no points. That’s the law of maths) and the vertical gameplay of NMBR 9. The resultant game is one that’s easy to teach, and deliciously satisfying when you can manage to nail a huge score, generally by really maximizing your points in a single colour.
I don’t know exactly why Akropolis rose to the top of my board games of the year, all I know is that I love it, and I yearn to play it over and over again.
Thanks for reading my rundown of the best new to me games of 2023! I probably should have just named this list ‘the best of 2022 – a year late’, considering most of the games were from just last year! Either way, I hope you enjoyed this list, and let me know what your favourite gaming experience in 2023 was!
Have a happy new year!
