Five days. Seventy-five plays. Seventy games that were new to me.

Yeah, that’s a lot of games. But thanks to our fearless leader (Dale Yu) and BasementCon, I had a wonderful time playing many of them. (Well, a number of them… and some others that are destined for Mark’s Isle of Misfit Games.)

Unless otherwise noted, these are FIRST impressions… I only had the opportunity to play most of these games a single time with a physical copy and one to four of my Opinionated Gamer friends.

If you’re interested in my Essen (well, post-Essen) impressions from 2018, 2019, 2020, and 2022, you can find them at the following links. (I’m not sure why I didn’t do one of these in 2021.)

• Mark’s Bundle of 2023 Essen Game Thoughts
• Mark’s Bundle of 2022 Essen Game Thoughts
• Mark’s Bundle of 2020 Essen Game Thoughts
• Mark’s Bundle of 2019 Essen Game Thoughts
• Mark’s Bundle of 2018 Essen Game Thoughts

For those of you who haven’t read a lot of my reviews, they may give you a better insight into my board game tastes and what I’m likely to enjoy. (Which, of course, may or may not line up with your choices. Your mileage may vary.) I’m also linking to OG articles about the games when they are available.

Revisiting My Thoughts/Rules from the past couple of years

I had some thoughts (well, rules) in response to the Essen 2022 extravaganza of games. In 2023, I commented on those thoughts. So this is year three – and sadly, very little has changed.

• 2022: Publishers should have their rulebook and components blind playtested before approving for print.
  • 2023: Still true. I don’t care how desperate you are to make Essen, doing a substandard job of getting the game published may well keep us from enjoying your game.
  • 2024: 100x yes… whether it was badly organized rulebooks, misprinted components, tiny player aid cards that required a magnifying glass & a strong light, or even rulebooks that were printed too large to fit in the box without being rolled down, it’s still an issue.
• 2022: Good iconography and clean presentation are more important than being artsy… not everyone has perfect eyesight and/or hi-tech lighting around their state of the art gaming table.
  • 2023: Yep.
  • 2024: My eyesight is not getting any better – and that’s particularly true when you’re using a dark-colored graphic against a black background… or a yellow wooden piece printed with a white font.
• 2022: If your game is going to take 2+ hours of my life, it needs to tell a story and/or help me tell a story. I do not want to do mechanical stuff over and over to harvest points for that long.
  • 2023: Evacuation did this brilliantly this year. Planta Nubo, not so much.
  • 2024: SETI has an excellent arc to it, as did Stephens.
• 2022: Stupid and fun is still worth playing. I will excuse a lot of weird design choices and even unclear rules if I’m having fun. If I’m not having fun, I don’t feel particularly charitable.
  • 2023: Yes. Yes. 1000 times yes.
  • 2024: Example: there’s a prototype of an upcoming game we played that almost had me in tears from laughter. I’m buying it as soon as it becomes available.
• 2022: More people should take the chance to play with folks like Dale, John, Ryan, and James. It was a great weekend.
  • 2023: Also true.
  • 2024: Very true. What a great gaming group to get to hang out with!

My Seven Favorites

• 3 Chapters
  • Played 2 times over 5 days
  • We played with pasted-up cards (as there isn’t an English version available… yet!), but it’s a great mix of drafting, trick-taking, and combo-building with a fairy tale theme. And it’s short enough to play again almost immediately.
• Fishing
  • A wonderfully intriguing trick-taking game where you draw your next hand from the tricks you’ve taken… and the players who didn’t take many cards instead draw from a pile of cards with escalating numbers and powers. My words cannot possibly describe how clever this design is.
• Hot Streak
  • The aforementioned prototype designed by Jon Perry – a chaotic racing/gambling game due to be released in spring 2025. I’ll be first in line to own this.
• JinxO
  • It’s a “match game” where you score points for having the same answers as other players – but the structure of the game and the 3×3 board where you write your answers (and where the positions of those answers affect your score) makes it substantially more enjoyable.
• SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
  • The longest game we played this weekend – and still, it’s living rent free in my head. I love the combination of exploration and area control, along with the wide variety of ways to accomplish your objectives. I’m not sure adding a fourth player to the game would have made it better – it seemed incredibly solid at three players.
• Spy Guy Pyramid
  • This newest entry in the Spy Guy series of games doesn’t have an entry on BoardGameGeek yet – but it was an absolute hoot in the “Where’s Waldo? with a timer” vein. The 3D pyramid (plus all the little ways the game hides some of the pictures) is very cool. It looks like a kids game – but worked fantastic with four adults.
• The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-Earth
  • I’m a big fan of 7 Wonders Duel, so I was a little curious on whether I’d enjoy this stand-alone spin-off. I shouldn’t have worried – the designers made a number of tweaks to the original game system to highlight the theme… and then complemented that with a really classy production.

Games I’d Be More Than Happy to Play Again

• Canopy: Evergreen
  • The box art gives the vibe of “hey, Cascadia won awards and sold a bunch of games, let’s go that way” – but the drafting gameplay was a lot of fun and not reminiscent of Cascadia at all. (I’m already on the record as thinking Cascadia is just ok.) I think it would be a great family strategy game – maybe not someone’s first “Euro” game, but an excellent stepping stone into things with more variety & decision-making.
• Cat and the Tower
  • Though I’m unsure of how well the thin paper walls and floors will hold up over time, this cooperative stacking is lovely to look at and difficult to do well. The assignments required to complete the game make it even trickier.
• Chu Han
  • Tom Lehmann has another great game on his hands – this time a two-player shedding game with a variety of special powers. The game is also packaged with a travel tuck box so you can carry it with you easier.
• Don Quixote: The Ingenious Hilgdago
  • Beautiful presentation and an obvious love for Cervantes’ novel combine in this relatively short simultaneous blind bidding game.
• Gardlings
  • Take the bag-building/push your luck elements from The Quacks of Quedlingburg and marry them to a tile-laying mechanic to find your purchasing power… and, as derivative as that sounds, it works really well. Plus, the game actually has tiles named Pity Pigs… how can you not love it?
• Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs
  • Played solo
  • I played through a couple of adventures at the beginning of Buttons & Bugs – and I quite enjoyed the stripped-down version of Gloomhaven. This would be an awesome travel copy of a dungeon crawl – it easily fits in a corner of a suitcase and doesn’t need extra stuff.
• Kathmandu
  • The newest entry into the Stefan Feld city series of games… which is less about a city than about a journey to a city. My initial impression is that it plays like a more gamer-y take on The Quest for El Dorado… but that the gamer-y elements don’t overwhelm the system. I’d happily play it again. (Note: I felt pretty positive vibes about Marrakesh in this series… and I still really want to try Nassau – his “second take” on my old favorite, Rum & Pirates.)
• King of Tokyo: Duel
  • By adding some elements to the game (two separate “tug of war” tracks for Fame & Destruction, ways to add special effects to those tracks as you buy mutations), this is actually an enjoyable dice-chucking 2 player game.
• Moving Day
  • Simple but enjoyable drafting game about moving to a new apartment with help from your friends.
• Pixies
  • The art is adorable – and the gameplay focuses on drafting and hate-drafting into a 3×3 tableau. Great filler game.
• River Valley Glassworks
  • The only game I’d played previously (as I own a copy)… it has some of the same feel as Azul but the scoring is more interesting. There’s a box of variant scoring rule cards that I think will extend the life of this game and allow folks to craft exactly the experience they want.
• Roaring 20s
  • Dinosaurs in flapper dresses – yep, it’s a theme, alright – coupled with a clever take on auction games. Similar to For Sale, you take the weakest card when you drop out.
• Stephens
  • I’ve seen Stephens listed as a “heavy” game – and, granted, the size of the rulebook and the odd-looking player boards certainly reinforce that feeling. But once you’ve made your way through the rules, the game itself is not that difficult to play. Playing well is another thing entirely. Kudos for the thoughtful UI design – for all that was going on, it was pretty easy to check board state and make decisions on what to do next. (Not good decisions, mind you – but that’s a “me” problem.)
• Superstore 3000
  • I regret not getting pictures of the delightful little acrylic customer bits in the game. As for the game itself, it’s a quick-moving “draft & build” kind of game with some puzzle-y elements (how to do I create a super-mall where all of the customers can actually get where they want to go?) along with some racing elements.

Games I’m Willing To Play

• Adulthood
  • Played solo
  • Yet another take on the classic “The Game of Life” genre. Solid design with great illustrations – but draft display has a tendency to clog.
• Beutezug
  • Dice game about thievery – in other words, you’re the thieves – that was fine but ran just a little longer than needed.
• Boxtop Pinball: Haunted House
  • Thematically cute and smartly designed to all fit back into the box… but I’d rather be playing Tumblin’ Dice. (Of course, I got my pristine copy of the original Tumblin’ Dice from a thrift store for $5, so I could be slightly prejudiced.)
• Burger Slam
  • A member of the “I Doubt It”/quick recognition family with a hefty burger ban marker you’re supposed to hit/grab.
• Cahoots
  • Cooperative UNO… and more fun than that two-word description sounds.
• Castle Combo
  • Another 3×3 grid drafting game… while it’s perfectly fine, I enjoyed Pixies a lot more.
• Combo Up
  • A re-release of Krass Kariert, it has a lot in common with Scout but I think I may like this version more. (Basics: can’t rearrange your hand, play combos to shed cards and create better combos in your hand)
• Cook Islands
  • Old skool Euro design of exploration and “whoever gets there first gets more points”. It’s fine.
• Dungeon Kart
  • I’d have loved this game back in my college days – particularly because we’d have played it enough times to reduce the time sink of playing & getting rules right. It doesn’t move quite fast enough to make the silliness work.
• Galileo Galilei
  • Some nifty mechanical ideas (the telescope “rondel” for each player, the tracking of comets) are here, but the game doesn’t feel like it has an arc beyond the building of power to take on bigger stargazing projects (and fend off the inquisitors).
• Mesos
  • Neolithic drafting game with a clever aging of cards mechanic… safety tip: don’t let one player (aka Ryan) get all of the guys who give you discounts on buildings.
• Mini Dinosaur
  • Light filler about racing dinosaurs – plays quickly and easy to teach.
• Quando
  • Another shedding game – this time with double-sided cards. Worked surprisingly well
• Rebirth
  • We only played the Scotland side of the game board, so this is 50% of a quick preview. It’s yet another solid Knizia territory claiming game with elements of Samurai and some of his other games in the mix. The production is lovely but the size of the castle pieces can block your view of certain parts of the board… and we ended up tipping over castles to show when they were “locked” for a particular player.
• Rolling Realms Redux
  • Played solo
  • A clever roll’n’write design with a lot of variability – both in the box and when you add in the multitude of other sets to the game.
• Runemasters
  • Played solo
  • Tower defense cooperative game with limited amount of special powers. Actions are dice activated and re-rolls are somewhat limited. (Things got dicey down near the end, but I managed to pull out a win on the easiest level.)
• Snowcrest
  • Played solo
  • More 3×3 tableau building, mixed with resource management. I really need to play it again with multiple players – the solo game uses a timer system that changes the dynamic of how you play.
• Spectacular
  • Played solo
  • Typically, I’m a big fan of zoo-building/animal habitat games. This one was solid but not particularly compelling. (Note: my opinion is an outlier – lots of folks really like this game.)
• The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game
  • Evocative art and a thematic campaign make this more interesting than the first cooperative trick-taker, The Crew. A definite buy for LotR/trick-taking fans.
• The Yellow House
  • Van Gogh & Gaugin are the theme… the game play is pretty abstract, though.
• TREOS
  • The thematic idea (of getting your luck back as a fantasy adventurer) is fun, but the gameplay isn’t quite up to that. I’d play it again, but I’m in no hurry.
• Upcake
  • A push-your-luck game that uses roll’n’write to track your progress against the other players. Didn’t look like much, but we had fun with it.

Games I Wasn’t All That Excited About

• 3 of a Kind
  • Word matching game using questions and adjectives… I’d rather be playing JinxO.
• Yokai Hyakkiyako
  • Tableau building with anime vibes… just didn’t grab me.
• Bable
  • Incredibly clever game design about frustrated communication… but I spent the majority of the game confused. At one point, I attempted to order JN using a phrase I knew (or should have known) he didn’t recognize – felt a little like an American tourist adding “o” to a word and saying it slower & louder to a native speaker. “Rap-ee-do! Rap-ee-do!” Sheesh.
• Capybara Cookie Club
  • Fun theme – but just a Knizia shedding game with special powers.
• Choconnect
  • Nice theme – made me a bit peckish – but it’s an abstract placement game cleverly disguised as a box of chocolates.
• Die Trodler aus den Highlands
  • After reading the rules, I wasn’t sure if this would be a neat pick-up-and-deliver game or a train wreck. It was neither – more of a “so, that was a game” kind of game.
• Fifty Fifty
  • A member of the “better than Uno” family – but only just. (Better than Uno, that is.)
• Flower Fields
  • Drafting flower tiles a la Patchwork and bees to activate them… solid game but not really my thing.
• Polaris
  • Some UI issues (some of the moon phases on cards are REALLY hard to read across the table) and rule ambiguities didn’t help this game of stargazing.
• Saer
  • Bluffing game with Viking theme… actual resources are limited enough that your choices are pretty constrained.
• Sideboards
  • 7 Wonders-ish draft combined with card placement. Neos does the “build a row” card placement better.
• Space Bureau
  • The pieces of the game design (exploration, drafting aliens to activate stuff on your board, etc.) all seem to work – but it didn’t feel like it added up to an enjoyable game.
• Torii
  • Very attractive but very abstract. Not my jam.
• Tranquility: The Ascent
  • Played solo
    • Cooperative tableau building game. Nothing wrong with it – but not my thing.
• YRO
  • Another game where UI issues complicated the game (tracks without adequate space for counters, a misprinted board, etc.). The actual gameplay reminded me a bit of Pixel Tactics.

The Island of Misfit Toys Games

• Aqua ROVE: Results-Oriented Versatile Explorer
  • Small solo card game that fell completely flat for me.
• Blast Track
  • We actually spend more time arguing over the badly written rules than playing the game.
• Candy, Spider, Leopards
  • No, this is not a list of things from one of my nightmares… but the game was not particularly fun.
• Concilium Urbis
  • Aggressively off-putting art coupled with irritating split & choose mechanic. Don’t need to play it again.
• Context
  • Freeform Codename-ish cooperative game that is way too dependent on the four initial axis cards to make for a consistently good experience.
• Dinky Dungeon
  • First, not a great name. Second, not a good game. Take that where winning depends on you drawing the right card at the right time.
• King’s Coalition
  • Take Fantasy Realms/Marvel Remix and then try and complicate it. (And do a poor job of writing/organizing the rulebook to make it even trickier to understand.)
• Ninjan
  • RPS: the card game. ‘Nuff said.
• No Thanks (2024)
  • New version adds special action cards to bid on… but you don’t need them. (Honestly, I burned out on the original game 15+ years ago, so I may not be the best judge. OTOH, I won our one game of this, so YMMV.)
• Rumblebots
  • Evidently, the assignment was to take Challengers and make it more complicated and keep people from having to get out of their chairs. Hard pass.
• Sail or Die
  • If you like naked butts in your art design, have I got a game for you. (The best part of the game is in the picture above – the shark piece.)
• Stamp Swap
  • Gorgeous production, but hard to read across the table. This is a big problem when the core mechanic is an Andromeda-like “choose another players offer”.
• Vamos Dia
  • Trick-taker with weird twist. We played many much better trick-taking games (and I’m not a particularly big trick-taking fan).