Our 10 Favorite Games of 2025

Our finalists for Game of the Year (in alphabetical order) are Alibis, Emerald Skulls, Galactic Cruise, Hot Streak, Ito, Kinfire Council, Light Speed: Arena, Lightning Train, Please Don’t Burn My Village and Spooktacular. Each description below includes a link to our original review.

Alibis

This cooperative word-association game feels a little bit like some of the other titles that have come before it—Codenames, So Clover!—but then adds a twist that has quickly made it one of our favorite games in the genre. Everyone gets to come up with a clue at the same time, and you’re building a word puzzle collectively that everyone gets to solve. The fantastic supervillain artwork is just the icing on the cake.

Read the full review.

Emerald Skulls

Roll them bones! Emerald Skulls is a press-your-luck dice game, but what makes it a stand-up-and-cheer game is the fact that you can bet on other players on their turns. Do you chicken out if it means somebody else will profit? Place your bets!

Read the full review.

Galactic Cruise

Arguably the heaviest game in our top ten (both in gameplay and physical heft), Galactic Cruise isn’t weighed down by overly complex rules. This highly thematic Euro game is deep in strategy, but very accessible with great components and a wonderfully integrated theme of galactic tourism. 

Read the full review.

Hot Streak

What happens when four off-brand mascots attempt to run a race across the field? Pure chaos: they run into each other, get turned around, and sometimes leave the field entirely. But if you can predict their actions, you can cash out on your bets. 

Read the full review.

Ito

This tiny box party game is great for sparking conversations about which superpower is the best or what everyone considers scary. The trick is figuring out where each clue fits on a scale from 1 to 100, and the real trick is that it’s less about rating things objectively but more about figuring out everyone’s intentions.

Read the full review.

Kinfire Council

In the other Kinfire games you play as the Seekers, the dungeon-crawling heroes sent out on missions. Here, you play as the city council, in charge of managing a city with too many competing needs (and a bit of a cultist problem), and the Seekers are just one of the workers that you have at your disposal. Government bureaucracy has never been so compelling!

Read the full review.

Light Speed: Arena

This remake of James Ernest’s fast-paced space laser battle is one of the best examples we’ve seen of an app-assisted game: the gameplay is still fully analog, and the app handles the tedious scoring (and also allows for some much more complex options).

Read the full review.

Lightning Train

The latest game from previous Game of the Year winner and mutli-nominee Paul Dennen lives up to his reputation. Combining the age-old game of building train lines with an interesting new bag building mechanic, this game is sure to please railfans and strategy gamers alike.

Read the full review.

Please Don’t Burn My Village

Bribe the dragon to protect your village. But be careful–the dragon only wants the latest shiny thing, so your valuable bribe today might be worthless tomorrow. Set collection and market manipulation combine in this fast, easy-to-learn game that nonetheless surprises with multiple layers of strategy. 

Read the full review.

Spooktacular

In most horror games you’re trying to run away from or defeat the monster…but in Spooktacular you are the monster! You’ll play as one of 20 different B-movie monsters, vying against your components to gobble up the most humans. This tongue-in-cheek game is quick and easy to learn, and with each monster having different abilities, there’s a ton of replayability. 

Read the full review.

How We Pick Our Finalists

The GeekDad Game of the Year is an award given annually to the game we have enjoyed the most in the previous year. Qualification is dependent on a number of factors: first (and probably the biggest filter), the game must have been reviewed on our site. Additionally, we must have recognized the quality of the game in the review and noted the game as a “GeekDad Approved” game, worthy of our big, shiny metal thumbs-up.

Second, the game must be accessible to most families—a bit of a nebulous identification to be sure, but roughly a game should be one that most families would be likely to play on a weekend afternoon. This would typically rule out very heavy strategy games and very light fare. That’s not to say we’re not heavily enamored with some of those games, we just have to be more selective as we narrow games down. We usually do include at least one heavier game for the strategy fans, and it’s fun to have a lighter party game, but that’s generally what we’re looking for.

Third, we also keep an eye on content, and games that have themes, language, or art that we deem inappropriate aren’t going to make the cut. The family game category, as you traditionally think about it, is a good place to start, but it’s not absolute. We recognize that families might consist of adult children or older teenagers, as well as very young children. As a result, our sweet spot covers a very large area. That said, we’re more likely to go with PG content than something that would be R-rated.

Fourth, in the past, a game we select as a finalist must have come out in the prior year and be currently available in wide release in the US. There are some really great games that you just can’t get your hands on, and we’d rather give you a list you can use, not just one that gives you FOMO.

It’s worth noting that occasionally we put a GeekDad Approved seal on a game we enjoyed even though it wasn’t published in the 12-month window—these do not have the year designation on them and are not eligible for Game of the Year.

Fifth and finally, we love games that have fresh takes on old mechanics, offer great components, or otherwise have a special something that will get everyone to the table. As we narrow down our list of GeekDad Approved games to just 10 finalists, we try to include a mix of genres, game weight, game length, and themes, though it’s always hard to fit everything!

Our Timeline

As noted earlier, any game that was widely released in the US in the prior calendar year was eligible, although we give ourselves a little time at the beginning of the year to wrap up reviews.

Since the beginning of this year, we’ve been wrapping up reviews of a few more GeekDad Approved games from last year, and discussing which ones might make it into the top 10. In early-to-mid April, we’ll be meeting up to play through our ten finalists and decide on a winner, which we’ll announce shortly after.

Our Approved Games for 2026

Here are all of our Approved games for the year:

Alibis
Emerald Skulls
Flip 7
Fliptoons
Galactic Cruise
Hot Streak
Ito
Kinfire Council
Light Speed: Arena
Lightning Train
Magical Athlete
Memoir ’44 Refresh
Metal Gear Solid
Mezen
Please Don’t Burn My Village
Shards of Infinity: Saga Collection
Spooktacular
Vantage

The Fine Print

We realize that we can’t get to every game that is released each year. For that, we apologize. There are only a handful of us and we have day jobs. But we are trying hard to review as many games as we can.

To be completely transparent, when we identify a game as GeekDad Approved, the publisher is notified and we provide a logo noting the approved designation that they are free to use without any obligation. However, for any game that we select as a finalist or as the winner of our Game of the Year, we request a small fee for the use of that logo and designation; again, there is no obligation to participate, nor do we consider the likelihood of a publisher paying when we narrow down our list.

We ask for this fee since we believe the award provides a benefit to the publishers who decide to use it, but also to offset administrative costs of running a big website and travel costs involved with a number of us getting together to play the finalists games and make a decision on the overall winner. We’re bloggers. Financially, it’s a losing proposition—in a big way. We’re just trying to offset that a little.

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As members of the Din’Lux council, you must work together to address the city’s needs—but sometimes personal ambitions pull you in other directions.

In “Reaping the Rewards,” I take a look at the finished product from a crowdfunding campaign. Kinfire Council was originally funded through Kickstarter in April 2024 and was delivered to backers in the fall of 2025. This review is based on my Kickstarter Tabletop Alert, updated to reflect the finished game.

What Is Kinfire Council?

Kinfire Council is a worker placement game for 2 to 6 players, ages 14 and up, and takes about 90 to 120 minutes to play. It retails for $74.99 and is available in stores and directly from Incredible Dream Studios. (The Winds of Change expansion is also available for $34.99, and there’s a $49.99 upgrade kit that includes wooden tokens, neoprene mats, and an illustrated lore book.) I think it’s possible to play this with younger kids if they’ve played worker placement games before, as long as they have the patience for a longer game. (My 11-year-old played it with us but had to quit early because it was her bedtime.)

Kinfire Council was designed by Kevin Wilson and published by Incredible Dream Studios, with art direction by Katarzyna Bekus.

Kinfire Council Components

Here’s what comes in the box:

• Status board
• 3 Dual-layer city boards
• 18 Cultist chits
• 2 Cult Leader chits
• Cult of Altan bag
• Threat board
• 5 Lighthouse Site sheets
• 6 Worker sheets
• 6 Councilor sheets
• 35 Threat cards
• 35 Research cards
• 40 Decree cards
• Lighthouse Tracker board
• Lighthouse Progress token
• Speaker’s Medallion (start player marker)
• 14 Threat tiles
• Hidden Threat tile
• 12 Sentry tokens
• Cult Score marker
• Cult 50/100 Score marker
• 6 Seeker standees (1 per player)
• 54 Influence tokens (9 per player)
• 30 Worker chits (5 per player)
• 6 50/100 Score markers (1 per player)
• City Coffers bowl
• 25 Food tokens
• 25 Common tokens (stone)
• 25 Rare tokens (crystal)
• 25 Magic tokens
• 50 Coin tokens
• 20 Trouble tokens

The illustrations in the game are in the same style as those in the other Kinfire games, and I really like this diverse take on fantasy characters—there are humans, elves, dwarves, and revenants. The worker tokens have individual character portraits on them, and many of the characters appeared in Kinfire Chronicles so if you’ve played that you may recognize some of them.

The Councilor sheets remind me of bookmarks—they’re the same height as the worker sheets, and depict the six Councilors of Din’Lux. The front of the sheet has the game-pertinent info with the Councilor’s ability, and the back has a portrait, a biography, and a little of that character’s play style.

The six player colors each have their own icon as well—you can distinguish the influence tokens (which have a lantern on the front side) by flipping them to the back side if needed. The workers themselves are identified by their portraits and standees, pictured on the worker mats; that may not be quite as easy to distinguish from a distance but I like that every player’s components are visually distinct.

The Seekers are workers with some special abilities, and also happen to be the six characters featured in Kinfire Chronicles and the Kinfire Delve series. In those games, they’re the protagonists, but here they are just one of your Councilor’s workers. The standees are the same type as in Kinfire Chronicles, but with a different portrait, so if you own both games, you can also mix and match them. I also like the fact that the standees have a front and back portrait … except Feyn for some reason. I don’t know if this is a misprint—I actually only noticed this when I stood them all together to take these photos!

The city of Din’Lux is built on a hill, and the game uses the storage trays to literally raise up the city boards so that there are three levels. It makes for a nice visual, but it’s also important because the higher levels have taxes when you send workers there, so it makes it easy to see at a glance what level any given location is on. The city boards are also dual-layered boards: the numbered spaces are sunken so that the worker and cultist chits can slot in nicely, and each location is also a double-sided tile that fits into its space. The tiles are left in the board when you store it, too.

The only problem with this setup is that it means you can’t use the handy storage tray as a resource tray while you play the game—you’ll have to pile up all the tokens somewhere on the table (or else, I suppose, keep picking up Tier 2 of the city and try not to knock over any Seekers that might be standing there). This particular tray is also a little weird—the six wells for the resource tokens work fine, but there are four larger wells that are just sized a little oddly for the rest of the components, meaning that you have to make some odd combinations of different components to make everything fit.

There are so many locations and abilities and actions you can perform, so the game uses a lot of iconography throughout. The one thing I don’t quite understand is why there are two versions of each icon, one in color and one in black and white. This has sometimes led to some confusion for new players, especially when they see one version of the icon in one place but don’t recognize the other version in another location.

How to Play Kinfire Council

You can download the rulebook here.

The Goal

The goal of the game is to score the most victory points by the end of 5 rounds. However, if the Cult of Altan has the highest score at the end, the Cult Conspirator, the player who has the most influence with the cult, will win instead.

Setup

Set up the status board and city boards, with all the location tiles turned to the basic side. Shuffle the research cards and the decree cards and place them in the indicated spaces on the status board, as well as the skill tiles. In the City Needs section, place 1 food in each of the top three spaces of the track. Place the various resource tokens nearby.

Set up the threats: shuffle the threat deck and place it and the threat tokens near the threat board. Draw the top 3 cards of the threat deck and set them face-down as a Hidden Threats stack without looking at them. Place the cultist tokens in the bag.

Shuffle the 5 lighthouse sites and place them in a stack next to the lighthouse track, and turn the top site face-up.

Randomly pair the worker sheets with the councilors. Choose a starting player and give them the medallion, and in turn order each player selects one of the sets. Give each player the matching Seeker and worker tokens—the number of workers each player has is based on player count. Everyone starts with 3 coins and 4 influence tokens on their sheet—the remaining influence tokens are set aside in a supply.

The cult starts with 0 points, the first player starts with 1 point, the second player starts with 2 points, and so on.

Gameplay

The game takes place over five rounds and each round has three phases: Sun’s Rise, Day’s Light, and Night’s Fall. Sun’s Rise is when you draw decrees to vote on, and the cultists show up. Day’s Light is the bulk of the game, when players take turns placing their workers. Night’s Fall is when you check the status of the lighthouse and the city’s needs.

Sun’s Rise: Draw 2 decree cards and place them face-up near the board. Players will be able to vote on these throughout the day—the decree with the most votes will pass.

Then, draw 3 cultists from the bag and add them to the hideout, and then resolve all the cultists in the hideout (including any that may have been placed there during the previous round) in numerical order. Cult leaders are unnumbered red tokens and are resolved last. Each cultist will go to its numbered spot and block that location, and will also affect the threat board.

On the threat board, there are three spaces marked 1–6, 7–12, and 13–18. If the spot corresponding to the cultist has no threat card, draw a threat card and place it there. If it already has a spot, add a trouble token to the card. If there are enough threat tokens to meet the number in the top corner, then the threat is triggered: follow the effects and then discard the threat card.

To resolve a cult leader, first add a threat card or trouble token to all three slots on the threat board. Then, put the cult leader token in the spot at the bottom of the board. If both leaders have been drawn, then the cultist bag resets: return all cultist tokens from the discard area on the board as well as any cultists that players have arrested back to the bag, along with the cult leader tokens.

Day’s Light: Players take turns placing their workers and Seeker on the various spaces to take actions. Your Seeker is a special worker that can go outside of the city (to the threat board and the lighthouse site), but can also be placed inside the city like the other workers. In general, you may not go to a location that is occupied, whether by another worker, Seeker, or a cultist.

Choose a worker from your board and place it into an empty space; if you go to one of the higher tiers in the city, you’ll need to pay taxes to the coffers, in the little bowl. Then, you may either use the effect of that location, or arrest an adjacent cultist (taking the token and placing it into your personal supply). Some locations have multiple effects—if so, you only get one of them.

Locations may give you resources, let you make various trades, or draw research cards, which are one-time-use cards. Some locations let you vote: you may place an influence token from your board onto one of the available decrees.

There are also locations that will train the worker you sent there—there are 6 different skills that will let you avoid paying taxes, place workers even in occupied spaces, and so on. Some spaces will give you cult influence—you place your influence tokens in the cult space on the board, and the player with the most influence there is the Conspirator.

At the bottom of the board there are a few locations that have a rectangular space next to them—these are not numbered and any number of workers can go there. One of them, City Planning, lets you upgrade locations, flipping them to the more powerful side and giving you points. Place one of your influence tokens on the upgraded location—you are now the patron of that location, and when other players use the location, you gain the patron bonus. (For instance, in the photo above, the orange player will gain a research card any time another player uses this location.)

Outside of the city, you can thwart threats by sending your Seeker to a location on the threat board and paying the required resources shown at the bottom. You immediately score the points shown on the card, and take the card itself—some places will let you trade threat cards for other benefits.

After placing a worker, you may optionally run an errand, like paying for one of the city needs or sending a supply shipment to the lighthouse. To meet a city need, you place an influence token next to one of the needs, and then pay the required resources to the supply. You’ll score points for meeting city needs at the end of the day.

To help build the lighthouse, choose one of the options shown on the site, which lets you build 1, 2, or 3 tiers at different costs. Spend the resources shown, place an influence token next to the tier that you paid, and then move the lighthouse tracker up that many spaces. The more of the lighthouse is built, the more points each floor built is worth, and the fewer points the cult will receive.

Night’s Fall: Resolve the city needs. For each row on the track, if there is an influence token next to the need, then it has been met and that player gains 2 points. For each city need that has not been met, draw a cultist from the bag and place it into the hideout area—it will be resolved during the next day. Then, return influence tokens to players.

Resolve the docket: the decree with more votes passes. If there is a tie, the first player (with the medallion) chooses which decree passes. There are a few different types of decrees that do different things when passed. Laws stay in play for the rest of the game and are placed nearby. Orders take effect and are discarded. Elections are awarded to the sponsor—the player with the most votes on the card—and give that player a special bonus. Crisis cards will trigger if they are not passed, usually with some sort of bad consequence. Influence tokens used as votes are returned to players.

Then, every cultist still in the city will trigger again, adding threat cards or trouble tokens to the threat board.

If there are any damage tokens on the lighthouse, move the tracker down one space for each damage. If the tracker is ever moved below the bottom of the track, add one threat card to the hidden threats stack.

Score for the lighthouse: the number left of the current level of the lighthouse is the point value for each floor that you’ve built this round. The cultists score the number to the right of the current level. Then, return all of those influence tokens, draw the next site card, and reset the lighthouse tracker to the bottom.

Everyone retrieves all of their workers and Seeker, and the medallion is passed to the next player.

Lastly, the city coffers are emptied (due to government waste) and returned to the supply.

Game End

The game ends after the fifth day. Cards that grant points at the end of the game are resolved now.

Then, reveal the hidden threat cards—the cult gains all of the points shown on those cards.

The player with the most points wins. If the cult has the most points, then the player with the most cult influence wins (but if nobody has cult influence, then the cult wins and all players lose).

Ties are broken in this order:

• The cult wins ties.
• Most patron influence from upgraded locations.
• Most unspent resources.

Kinfire Council is GeekDad Approved!

Why You Should Play Kinfire Council

Imagine this scenario: a strange phenomenon sweeps across the globe, wiping out countless people, devastating cities, and leaving a completely changed world. People struggle to survive; a solution is devised that seems to hold back the darkness and provide at least a little safety, though it isn’t foolproof. The government promises to provide this safety measure for more communities—though it’s a slow process, hampered by high costs, a shortage of workers, and bureaucracy. Oh, and there’s also a cult who decides that all of this protection goes against divine will, that the true path is to embrace the darkness.

Such is the setting of the completely fictional world of Atios —totally unlike our own, right? Okay, I don’t know that the Starless Nights were intended to be a metaphor for COVID, but this game feels like it could embody any number of metaphors. Unlike Kinfire Chronicles: Night’s Fall, where you play as the intrepid heroes venturing out into the darkness and fighting mutated beasts and the aforementioned cultists, in Kinfire Council you play as the bureaucrats. It’s less about battlefield tactics and more about taxes and errands and addressing the various demands of the city. As the Councilors of Din’Lux, you are all (mostly) agreed that the lighthouses need to be built and the cultists should be stopped, but you also have your own agendas. You want the credit for ushering in this new era for Din’Lux, and if that leads to a little infighting on the council, well …

Back in November 2024, I wrote about the campaign game Kinfire Chronicles: Night’s Fall: it alternates between phases where you explore the city of Din’Lux (and some other towns) and skirmishes where you play tactical battles against various enemies. I played through the entire campaign with two other friends, and we all had a really great experience—we liked the way that your character’s backstory is gradually revealed, and the way that the fights and encounters are woven into the larger narrative. There’s an interesting mechanism the game uses to “remember” decisions that your group has made over the course of the game because sometimes they have consequences down the road. And then we played through the whole campaign again with the same friends plus a new member of the party, so we could try out the other characters and take different paths from the first time we played.

Since then, Incredible Dream Studios has released a few more titles set in the same world of Atios: Kinfire Delve, a compact cooperative dungeon crawl that is mostly just a deck of cards and some dice. Each box pits two of the six Seekers from Kinfire Chronicles against increasingly challenging bosses, and if you have multiple copies you can mix and match them or combine them to play with more players.

Some parts of Kinfire Council will feel very familiar to anyone who has played a worker placement game: you have a limited number of workers and each one can only do one thing per round, and spaces are limited. You’ll often be trying to guess where other players are planning to go, because maybe you want to get there first. And, of course, most of the placements are in service of some combination of gathering needed resources or spending those resources to accomplish some task (and get points, of course).

But there are lots of little tweaks that set Kinfire Council apart, too. The Councilors themselves have special abilities: Hierophant Selen is not above dipping into the coffers; Guildmaster Leera can send any of her workers outside the city; Talos can spend research cards as a wild resource. You start with one special worker—your Seeker—who can go outside of the city to a few special locations. Moreover, each Seeker has a special ability—the guard can enter a space with a cultist and arrest them and use the location; the scholar can take research cards in place of another resource. So right from the start, there’s a bit of asymmetry, and you have to figure out how to make the most of the random pairings of Councilor and Seeker.

On top of that, you’ll be able to train your standard workers as well. Each of the six abilities that the Seekers have are traits that can be learned (at a price!) by going to certain locations. It can feel costly, sending a worker to a location just to train, because there are only 5 rounds. However, it can really pay off when you need to use a location that somebody else has taken, or you’re short some coin to pay your taxes, or you really want to get a jump on arresting some cultists.

The cultists themselves are also an interesting feature with multiple effects: they show up at random and take up spaces on the board—so annoying!—but they also contribute to the threat cards, which have various effects from damaging the lighthouse to increasing the city needs. They can even damage a city location, which becomes unusable until somebody takes an action to repair it. On the one hand, you want a few cultists around because you can arrest them and then turn them in for various rewards. On the other, if you don’t manage to clear them all out of the city before nightfall, then they get closer to triggering those threats.

Then there’s the decrees. There are generally just two to choose from, though there are effects that can add more. Thematically it’s a little funny that you’re not voting yes/no on each decree independently, but rather the decrees are competing with each other and only one can win each day. (Look, there’s only so much legislation we can deal with each day, okay?) Elections provide benefits to the person who stuck the most votes on it, but crises can have some seriously bad effects if you don’t pass them. Sometimes that can present a real dilemma between city needs and personal wants. I mean, sure, this decree means that the city will need a bit more money every day, but isn’t it worth it so that I get more research cards so that I can be of even more help to the city? What’s more, getting votes usually requires you to go to specific locations—which means you’re spending an action to vote rather than, say, fighting off that wyvern that’s threatening the city.

In some sense, it feels a bit like a cooperative game, where there is an overarching goal (build those lighthouses!) and lots of little fires to put out (arrest cultists! meet the city needs!). And you really don’t want the city to fall apart, so there is some amount of collaboration that happens—we often discussed whether somebody was planning to deal with a particular threat, because you don’t want people wasting their actions collecting the same things, and then having other city needs go unmet. But the individual scoring means that you don’t always do what’s best for the entire group, and it really did feel a bit like being on a city council with a bunch of other overly ambitious people. Maybe you have good intentions for the city, but today you really just wanted to do some more research and you didn’t get around to voting at all.

The Conspirator role is another interesting wrinkle. Certain locations let you gain cult influence, and whoever has the most influence with the cult is the Conspirator and will win if the cultists score the most. It’s a dangerous game, though: in most cases, you can retrieve your influence tokens from spaces on the board when needed, like giving up a patron bonus because you need the token to vote. Cult influence is never returned to you, though, and your total supply of tokens is limited, so gaining influence in the cult has an opportunity cost. If you get into a competition with other players to be Conspirator, then you better be pretty certain that the cult is going to win! So far in the games I’ve played the cult generally hasn’t been scoring as much, so we haven’t used the Conspirator mechanic as much—it would probably take some more deliberate (and obvious) sabotage. It does look like the Winds of Change expansion beefs up the cultists, though, so I’m looking forward to seeing how that affects the game.

I’m really enjoying the Atios universe as a whole. I like the concept of multiple different games set in the same world, with each one adding a bit more to the story. The games also have some fun overlap: the character cards from Delve can be used in Chronicles as an alternate portrait, and the Seeker standees in Council can also be swapped with those from Chronicles in case you want to change up their outfits. While playing Kinfire Council, we recognized a lot of the locations and characters that we’d encountered in Chronicles, and we even saw some threat cards based on things from the Delve series.

Ultimately this is a game that makes good use of its setting to tell a story—while playing it, I often felt those tensions between what I wanted for myself and what I knew was probably best for the city. There were times when nobody got around to building the day’s lighthouse—maybe the cultists were particularly active and we had to deal with some threats, or maybe we were too busy training our workers for the next day. It’s the sort of game that causes a good sort of discomfort because it helps you see the way that bureaucracy makes it easy to pass the buck and make an issue somebody else’s responsibility. It’s eye-opening, and yet it’s also a fun game to play, to puzzle out your next move.

Kinfire Council has an impressive table presence, a compelling story, and engaging gampelay. I’m happy to give it our GeekDad Approved seal! If you enjoy worker placement games, or you’ve always wanted to see what it was like to be a city councilor, this is a nice entry point into the world of Atios.

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Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of this game for review purposes.

Develop mastery and unlock the power of the Infinity Engine.

In “Reaping the Rewards,” I take a look at the finished product from a crowdfunding campaign. Shards of Infinity: Saga Collection was originally funded on Kickstarter in the summer of 2023, and was delivered to backers at the beginning of 2025.

What Is Shards of Infinity: Saga Collection?

Shards of Infinity: Saga Collection is a deck-building game for 1 to 6 players, ages 13 and up, and takes about 30–45 minutes to play. It retails for $60 and is available directly from Stoneblade Entertainment. Shards of Infinity was initially published in 2018 and was followed by several expansions; the Saga Collection is an all-in-one box set that incorporates the existing expansions, with some tweaks and rebalancing.

Shards of Infinity: Saga Collection was designed by Gary Arant and Justin Gary and published by Stoneblade Entertainment, with illustrations by Aaron Nakahara and Yoshiharu Nakahara.

Shards of Infinity: Saga Collection Components

Here’s what comes in the box:

• Game Board
• 6 Player mats (Kickstarter edition)
• 6 Player cards
• 160 Center Deck cards
• 60 Starting Deck cards (15 per player)
• 30 Destiny cards
• 12 Relic cards
• 86 Boss Battle Campaign cards
• 6 Hero cards
• 7 Boss cards
• 6 Health/Mastery dials
• Boss Health/Mastery dial
• 12 Hack tokens
• Shadow of Salvation Campaign book
• Saga Achievement Tracker (with stickers)

The Kickstarter edition included 22 promo cards; some of these are the foil versions of the hero and boss cards. What I’ll cover in the review is primarily what is available in the retail edition of the game. (The Kickstarter edition also has the text “Kickstarter Edition” printed in foil on the cover and across the center board, though honestly I could do without that.)

Unlike most of the games I review for GeekDad, this one was not sent to me by the publisher—I backed it on Kickstarter myself, and did not actually get photos of everything before I started playing through the campaign, which means that I can’t show you how everything was organized when it first arrived. The cards are divvied up into five “chapters” that you can play through that gradually add what was originally new content from the various expansions. Although you could just open up everything right away (particularly if you were already familiar with the expansions), the saga campaign is a way to play through the various chapters and give players a chance to digest the new rules before adding more. The Saga Tracker includes various achievement-type tasks to complete before opening the next pack of cards.

The Battle Book is a smaller, separate book that is used for the cooperative campaign, which is unlocked along with Chapter 3. This was originally included in the Shadow of Salvation expansion.

The main game board is a double-sided tri-fold board, with spaces for the center deck, a banished area, and the six center row cards. One side of the board has an additional panel for the cooperative campaign mode, and the other has a panel for the Ingeminex, which are unlocked in Chapter 4. I do like the fact that I can fold over the Ingeminex panel to make the board a little smaller for the first three chapters, when the extra panels are unnecessary. (The original game did not include a board at all—really you just need room for the deck, a banished cards pile, and the six center row cards.)

The player mats are just cardstock—again, not entirely necessary, but they help you organize your deck and discard pile, as well as providing a limited amount of space for your champions. They do have character stories on the back. The retail edition just uses the hero cards to track who is who instead of these mats.

The health/mastery dials are wide and rectangular, with two digits for each. These are a big improvement from the original game, which had a single dial for each number, going up to 50 for health and 30 for mastery, making for a very large tracker for each player. Although the trackers are basically identical, they do have a different shard colors to match the player colors. (The boss’s health dial goes up to 90 instead.)

One of the primary reasons I backed this was that the original games and expansions came in smaller boxes and there was no really good way to combine them into one box, particularly with the really large player trackers. I liked the idea of having a one-box solution, though unfortunately there wasn’t a way to get just the box and storage and use my own existing cards. The box insert works pretty well, but the one thing I find odd is that the large foil cards are underneath all of the health trackers, and unless I’m playing a 6-player cooperative game I wouldn’t typically need to remove all of them—but, as I said before, those large cards are also mostly decorative and I usually don’t even use them. (I don’t know how everything is stored in the retail edition, where you’ll use the large hero cards instead of the mats.)

How to Play Shards of Infinity: Saga Collection

You can download a copy of the rulebook here. There are a few different play modes in the game, including solo and cooperative modes, but I’ll explain the basic gameplay (Chapter 1) first.

The Goal

The goal of the game is to eliminate all the other players.

Setup

Place the gameboard in the center of the playing area. Shuffle the center deck cards and place them on the space provided, and then reveal the top six cards to form the market.

Give each player a starting deck of cards, a hero card (or mat), and a health tracker set to 50 health. The first player starts with 0 mastery, the second player has 1 mastery, and so on. Shuffle your own deck and draw 5 cards.

Gameplay

On your turn, you may take actions in any order: play cards, acquire cards, use your focus ability, attack.

Most of the cards you play are “Ally” cards—you place the card in an area called the play zone and do its effect. Most cards will generate gems (currency for acquiring new cards) or power (for attacking), but there are a host of other effects as well.

Unify effects will give you bonus effects if you have other cards of the same faction, and Dominion effects have bonuses if you play a card from each faction.

Champions are cards that will stay in play, and they can be exhausted once on each of your turns for their abilities. Champions also have health, and will stay in play until another player attacks them or uses an effect to destroy them, at which point they go into your discard pile.

Some cards have mastery threshold bonuses: if you have reached a mastery level shown on the card, then the card has a stronger effect. Of particular note is the Infinity Shard, one of your starting cards: if you have 30 mastery, it gives you infinite power, which means you automatically win by defeating everyone else.

To acquire a card, you pay the gem cost (shown in the top right corner) and place it into your discard pile. Mercenary cards—outlined in red—can be fast-played: pay the cost and use the card’s effect immediately as if you played it from your hand. At the end of your turn, fast-played cards will be banished from the game. The card market is refilled each time a card is acquired or fast-played.

Each turn, you may “focus” once—spend 1 gem to gain 1 mastery.

You may use attack power to attack other players or their champions. To attack a champion, you must use enough power to match its total health, because damage does not carry over from turn to turn. You may attack players at the end of your turn, using whatever power you have remaining, and you may split up the damage among players however you chose. Some cards have shield icons on them—if a player is attacked and they have shields in their hand, they may reveal them to reduce damage by that amount. (Shields cannot be used to protect champions.)

At the end of your turn, discard all the cards in your play zone, as well as any left in your hand that you chose not to play. Unspent gems and power are lost. Draw a new hand of five cards.

Game End

If you are reduced to 0 health, you are eliminated from the game. The game ends when there is only one player left, who wins!

Continuing the Campaign

As you play Shards of Infinity, you can mark achievements on the saga tracker as you play. While it’s not required (and you can certainly just add all the expansion content in immediately), the tasks are a way to make sure that you’re familiar enough with the rules of the game before you add some more rules. For instance, to unlock Chapter 2, you just need to complete 4 of the 8 possible tasks, ranging from “Win a game with 30 mastery” to “Have 3 or more champions in play at one time.”

Chapter 2: Visions of the Future adds the relic cards. Each of the characters has two relic cards; when you reach 10 mastery, you choose one of them to add to your deck, and the other card is banished. They provide two different approaches to playing that character and are what introduces the asymmetric player powers to the game.

Later chapters unlock the warping ability—fast-playing non-Mercenary cards—and the Shadow of Salvation cooperative campaign. You’ll also meet the Ingeminex, enemies that will appear in the center deck and attack all the players. Finally, the last chapter is the Destiny expansion, where characters will gain destiny cards that give unique abilities—if you win, then you lock that destiny card to your character, with the ultimate goal of claiming 3 destiny cards.

Shards of Infinity: Saga Collection is GeekDad Approved!

Why You Should Play Shards of Infinity: Saga Collection

As I mentioned in the components section, I bought Shards of Infinity myself through the Kickstarter campaign. What I didn’t say earlier is that this is a game I like so much that I’ve bought it twice. Back when it was first released, I didn’t have the opportunity to review it, but I was curious about it and picked up a copy at my local game store. Over the years, I ended up buying all of the expansions for it, but I was never entirely satisfied with needing several small boxes for everything. (The original health/mastery trackers were so large that I ended up having one box with cards, and one with just the trackers, and then a third for some of the expansion content that didn’t fit in the first two.)

So when Stoneblade announced that they were making an all-in-one box set, I was thrilled. Of course, I would have preferred an option to get just a box to put all my existing games into, but a combination of factors made it logistically impossible—card tweaks, a 6th player, and some improved components. I sold off my old set and have been enjoying the new version, working my way through the saga.

Shards of Infinity owes a lot to Ascension, which was first published in 2010 and has spawned several expansions, as well as a spin-off tactics game. Ascension was, after Dominion and Thunderstone, one of the earliest deck-building games, and I think the first to use a center deck rather than the market stacks. Ascension essentially featured two currencies—runes and power—which were used to recruit cards and attack enemies, but the fact that all of the cards were mixed together in the center deck could lead to disappointing turns. If you had a lot of runes but the center row was filled with monsters, you felt cheated. Likewise, if you had a lot of power but there were no monsters in the center row, you had to make do with fighting the ever-present cultist (who wasn’t worth much).

Shards of Infinity still has those two currencies, but now the enemies you fight aren’t in the center deck—they’re other players, and their champions. If you have a lot of attack power, there’s always something to hit. Of course, it’s still possible that you have a lot of gems and there are only cheaper cards in the market, but it’s less likely that you can’t spend anything at all. That’s just one of the ways that Shards of Infinity takes the lessons learned from nearly a decade of Ascension and makes some tweaks that I think really improve the experience.

The faction colors in Shards of Infinity will also be somewhat familiar to fans of Ascension. Each one has its own sorts of strengths: Undergrowth (green) tends to focus on healing, Homodeus (yellow) relies on a lot of champions, Wraethe (purple) does a lot of damage and lets you banish cards. Even though your character represents one of the factions, you can still recruit whatever you want, but the unify effects mean that there are benefits to specializing. Meanwhile, the dominion effects pull you in the other direction: what are the odds that you can get at least card of each faction?

The mercenaries are a mechanic that felt new to Shards of Infinity. In most deck-building games, you put new cards into your discard pile, and you’ll have to wait until you get all the way through the rest of your deck before you get to shuffle them in—and then maybe they’re at the bottom of the deck. If you see an effect that you really want right away, mercenaries give you that ability. The downside, though, is that you only get the effect once, because you don’t get to keep the card. Still, sometimes that’s worth it, getting a powerful effect without diluting your deck.

I like all the various modes of play included in Shards of Infinity: the cooperative mode, which uses the battle book, is its own mini-campaign where you’ll play multiple rounds, choosing a boss to fight each time. The destiny mode is also its own campaign, ideally played with the same group of players as you compete to lock in your destinies.

If you like deck-building games, I highly recommend Shards of Infinity, whether you go for the original base game or the all-in-one Saga Collection. If I’d reviewed the original back in 2018, I definitely would have given it our GeekDad Approved seal then, so consider this a long-overdue award!

For more info, visit the Stoneblade Entertainment website.

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Get ready for a high-speed space battle: with only seconds to place each of your ships, take aim quickly and try not to hit your own ships!

In “Reaping the Rewards,” I take a look at the finished product from a crowdfunding campaign. Light Speed: Arena was originally funded through Kickstarter in the spring of 2024, and was delivered to backers in the summer of 2025. This post is based on my original Kickstarter Tabletop Alert, updated to show the finished product.

What Is Light Speed: Arena?

Light Speed: Arena is a fast-paced battle game for 1 to 4 players (up to 6 with optional expansions), ages 8 and up, and takes about 5 to 10 minutes to play. It retails for about $25 and is available through online retailers and some game stores, though stock may be low. (There should be a new shipment arriving in the US in early March.)

Light Speed: Arena was designed by Tom Jolly and James Ernest and published by Tablescope, with illustrations by Marco Salogni. It is based on Jolly and Ernest’s 2003 game Light Speed, but with some tweaks to the rules and a new app-driven scoring system.

Light Speed: Arena Components

Here’s what comes in the box:

• 4 Mothership tiles
• 32 Spaceship tiles (8 per faction)
• 6 Asteroid tiles
• 4 Corner tiles

So far there are two mini-expansions. Each includes:

• 1 Mothership tile
• 8 Spaceship tiles
• 2 Asteroid tiles

You’ll also need a mobile device running the Light Speed: Arena app, unless you also spring for the Analog Downgrade kit, which includes rubber bands, rulers, and scoring tokens so you can calculate the scores manually.

The asteroid tiles are double-sided and about as big around as a can of soda. Each one depicts an asteroid on one side, and then a “sponsored” side on the other with the name of one of the in-game sponsors like Drift Cola or Destiny Ammo.

The ships come in 4 factions, which are distinguished both by color and style: the red ships look like they’re inspired by farm equipment, with a space barn for a mothership. The green ships have curved wings, while the blue ships are all very boxy. Each ship has a different combination of green, yellow, and red lasers, shields, and batteries, and the four factions all differ from each other as well. The art style is a little cartoony but slick, and it works well with the theme.

The tiles are small squares (slightly larger for the motherships) and are a nice size for handling, which is good because you’ll be shuffling them and then placing them on the table quickly.

How to Play Light Speed: Arena

The Kickstarter page has links to download a draft of the rulebook and a demo print-and-play (which includes access to the beta version of the app) if you’d like to give it a try yourself. The solo mode was not included in the prototype, so my review will only cover the multiplayer version.

The Goal

The goal of the game is score the most points by mining the asteroids, destroying other player’s ships, and protecting your own mothership. If there are sponsored asteroids in play, there are also ways to earn bonus points.

Setup

You’ll need an area roughly 30″ by 30″ to play. Mark the corners of the play area using the corner tiles.

Give each player a mothership and a set of ships of one faction. Place two asteroids near the middle of the arena, and each player places their mothership near themselves, about 4″ in from the edge of the playing area. Everyone shuffles their own stack of ship tiles.

Gameplay

Set up the mobile device nearby and start the game on the app—it will give you a countdown for each turn (the default is 10 seconds per turn, but you can adjust it in a range from 3 seconds up to a full minute).

Each turn, everyone simultaneously places the first ship tile from their stack into the playing area. You may play your ship anywhere as long as it’s not overlapping another tile, and when the timer buzzes you must leave it where it is and draw your next ship tile.

After the last countdown, the game ends and it’s time to score!

Game End

Take a picture of the entire playing area using the app, which will scan the picture and identify all the tiles. After making sure it counted all the tiles correctly, you can proceed to scoring. The app does the scoring for you, playing animations and showing where you gained or lost points (or you can also skip to the final scoring), but I’ll explain how scoring happens.

The ships fire in number order from 1 to 8, and all ships of the same number are considered to be firing simultaneously (though the app will play each one individually). Green lasers do 1 damage, yellow lasers do 2 damage, and red lasers do 3 damage. Shields subtract one point of damage from the laser. You must actually hit the ship illustration itself, not just the ship tile. Each ship (and mothership) has a number of batteries, indicating how much damage it can take before it is destroyed.

• Each time one of your ships damages another ship, you score 1 point.
• If a ship is destroyed, the player who did the most damage to it gets points equal to its full strength. (For a tie, nobody gets the bonus points. Your own ships give you negative points.)
• For each damage you do to an asteroid, your ship gains 1 mining point—but you only score for those if the ship survives until the end of combat!
• If your mothership survives, you score 4 points.

The player with the most points wins!

Sponsored Asteroids

Once you’re familiar with the game, you can flip the asteroid tiles over to play with the sponsor bonus points. Each asteroid adds its own twist:

• Nova Snipe: Any hit (to any ship or asteroid) delivered from at least 28cm (4 asteroid tiles away) gives you 2 bonus points.
• Photonbright: The 5 surviving ships closest to this asteroid at the end of the game will score 3 bonus points each.
• Drift Cola: You get 2 bonus points for close shaves: delivering a hit with a laser that passes through one of your own tiles without hitting yourself.
• Destiny Ammo: Whenever this asteroid is hit, it shoots a laser of the same strength in a random direction.

Faction Powers

Each of the factions has its own power, which you can optionally turn on in the app.

• Amboom (green): When you shoot a ship that was damaged on a previous turn, you instantly destroy it and collect the bonus points.
• Solspear (yellow): Your red lasers pierce the first target they hit and continue through.
• Agronauts (red): The first hit each of your ships takes is ignored, along with all other damage done during that same turn.
• Retroblast (blue): If your ship is damaged, all of its lasers do double damage.
• Black Hole (black, from the expansion): After firing, any nearby enemy ships that were not hit by this ship take 1 damage.
• Glyphon (pink, from the expansion): Lasers that pass through a tile without hitting the ship will still do damage, though Glyphon does not get the credit for the damage.

Light Speed: Arena is GeekDad Approved!

Why You Should Play Light Speed: Arena

Shortly after I was introduced to games like Settlers of Catan and Ticket to Ride and Carcassonne, I discovered the rabbit hole of BoardGameGeek, and one of the things I loved to do was look for games that had unusual mechanics and gameplay. At the time, a lot was new to me, but even then there were some games that really stood out, that felt like nothing I’d ever played before. One of the titles I discovered way back then was this little game called Light Speed. It was from Cheapass Games’ Hip Pocket line—tiny games that literally fit in your pocket, and sold in a little baggie without tokens and counters, which you provided yourself. It probably cost me about $5—less than what I eventually spent on glass beads and tokens to go along with the various other Cheapass titles that I added to my collection.

Some of the things that set Light Speed apart for me were the simultaneous play—you didn’t take turns, but everyone just played at the same time—and the way the entire table was the playing area. There was no board, no grid: you played your cards at whatever angle you wanted, and that determined the direction of your lasers. It was fast-paced, with games often lasting less than a minute once we were experienced, and I loved navigating that fine line between speed and accuracy. Play too quickly, and maybe you end up shooting your own ships; play too slowly, and you don’t get all of your ships on the table. (In the old rules, you just played at your own pace and the game ended when somebody placed their last ship.)

Of course, the play time lasted about a minute or two, but then the scoring took a lot longer. We used a cut rubber band to check the aim (as suggested by the instructions) until I eventually got a cheap laser level that I’d use to project the laser lines, which was a lot of fun. The small cards would get crowded with the glass beads I used for damage tokens, sometimes making it hard to see the lasers. And, of course, if somebody bumped a card while moving tokens around, that could make the difference between a hit and a miss. Even so, Light Speed was one of my favorites, and I was always up for a round or two.

Cut to 2024, nearly 20 years since I first picked up my copy of Light Speed: I happened to see an ad on social media for an app-assisted game called Light Speed: Arena, and it looked oddly familiar. I looked it up and saw that it was, indeed, a new version of Jolly and Ernest’s game, but with a technological twist: now, instead of manually tracing each laser and checking for hits, you could just take a photo of the play area with your phone and let it do all the scoring for you. Could it be? I sent a message to the folks at Tablescope and they were happy to send me a prototype set to try for myself.

The rules have been tweaked a bit from the original but Light Speed: Arena still preserves the feel of the original. It’s lightning-quick (though you can adjust that in the settings!) and still a tightrope walk of speed and accuracy. But being able to just snap a photo of the playing area and have it do the scoring? It’s like magic. While you can just skip to the scores, the app does a great job of making the scoring entertaining, too. You can turn on the commentators, who will pop up to make snarky comments when you shoot your own ships or praise a particularly good shot. The app pans from ship to ship and automatically zooms in and out to show you the lines of fire and how many points each player is earning. (You can have it autoplay, or you can set it up so that you tap to “collect” your points.)

It really is the best of both worlds: the actual play is still analog and old-school, and the app just handles the tedious part that was necessary but not as much fun. (Though if you prefer the old rubber-band scoring method or you don’t want to use a device, the Analog Downgrade kit has you covered, too!) While the app does add some bells and whistles that aren’t strictly necessary (like the sound effects and animations), its primary benefit is actually doing the work that you want it to do without replacing the tactile gameplay. The tiles are much easier to handle (and less prone to warping) than the old Hip Pocket cards, and the illustrations are an upgrade from the original as well.

It’s also extremely customizable: you can play with or without the sponsored asteroids that introduce new rules. You can adjust the timer for playing the spaceships, or you can even just play without the timer at all and just upload a photo at the end, if you wanted to make your own turn-based variant. The faction powers are all individually toggled, so you could let less experienced players use their powers and the more experienced players just use the basic ships. You could even change the number of ships each player has in their supply.

I like all the variety that the asteroids provide. I particularly like the Nova Snipe, trying to set up long-distance shots (and sometimes missing spectacularly). My son was able to make use of the Drift Cola to score a lot of bonus points, in one case passing through two of his own tiles before hitting mine! And for those who just like a bit of random destruction, Destiny Ammo just adds some extra firepower to the field.

The faction powers are fun to play with, though it’s the one thing that I’m not entirely sure is balanced. I looked over the four factions included in the prototype and they have a different makeup of lasers, ranging from 29 to 35 total damage points across the fleets. I assume that the difference is made up by the faction abilities, but does that mean some fleets have advantages when you’re not using the special powers? The abilities also have different difficulty levels: knowing that your red lasers can pierce, or that you get instant destruction on anything that has been damaged already is a little easier to take advantage of. Dealing double damage if your ship has already been shot is a bit trickier, because you may want to shoot your own ships to trigger that … but it makes it more likely your ship will just get blown up before it even fires! The red faction’s ability to ignore damage seems extremely powerful, though it’s entirely defensive and generally doesn’t help the red player score more points. That said, I haven’t noticed any single faction winning more often than others—and the game is so fast-paced that you won’t even really care. If you’re really concerned about balance, just play several games and rotate factions each round!

As you may know, I normally do not award the GeekDad Approved seal to unpublished games, because I want to see the finished gameplay before I make my final determination. In this case, I felt that Light Speed: Arena had already surpassed my expectations even in its prototype form. Since receiving the finished copy and using the finished app, I’m even more certain that this deserves our seal of approval. Between the prototype and the finished copy, I’ve played Light Speed: Arena 50 times, and never tire of introducing it to people.

I’m also really impressed with the finished app: with the beta version, I’d occasionally have to retake the photo because it was missing a spaceship or two in the count, and I’d have to try a different angle to avoid shadows or glare. With the finished app, I don’t think I’ve ever had to retake a photo, even when we were playing in a dim hotel lobby or in a room that had a lot of glare from overhead lights.

If you enjoy real-time games (and space lasers!), don’t miss this fantastic revival of an old favorite.

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Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of this game for review purposes.

Whodunnit? Match the alibis to the suspects—the odd one out is the true villain!

What Is Alibis?

Alibis is a cooperative word game for 2 to 6 players, ages 10 and up, and takes about 20 minutes to play. It retails for $19 and is available in stores or directly from the publisher.

Alibis was designed by Yusuke Sato and published by Allplay, with illustrations by Albert Monteys.

Alibis Components

Here’s what comes in the box:

• 13 Suspect boards
• Perpetrator board
• 91 Word cards
• 13 Suspect cards
• 6 Deduction boards
• 6 Alibi tiles
• 6 Dry Erase markers
• 48 Heat tokens

The suspect “boards” are just large cards that show various cartoony supervillains, standing in front of a mugshot background and holding up a sign. The artwork on these is fantastic and they’re all original characters, all the more impressive because they’re not really necessary for the gameplay. They’re just to help establish the theme, but in the actual gameplay you don’t refer to the character designs at all, just their numbers. Some of the cards are larger and some are smaller, mostly so that the center row (when using all the cards) has an odd number. Each suspect has a matching small card, and there’s also a large card (the perpetrator “board”) that has a question mark on it.

The word cards are pretty similar to Codenames: small cards with the word printed both right-side-up and upside-down so that they can easily be read by everyone around the table. The cards are sized to fit on the mugshot illustrations.

The alibi tiles are small rectangular tiles, mostly blank with a small mathematical symbol in the top corner. The deduction boards are square tiles that have all 13 suspects in a grid, with a small space to write a symbol next to each one. These tiles are glossy so you can write on them with the included dry erase markers.

The heat tokens are simple cardboard tokens.

The whole thing comes in Allplay’s standard small box size, a little big for a pocket but still quite compact. Fitting everything into the box nicely can be a little bit of a challenge but it is possible.

How to Play Alibis

You can download a copy of the rulebook here.

The Goal

The goal of the game is to remove as much heat as possible within 3 rounds.

Setup

Lay out the suspect tiles based on the player count, and place the perpetrator board nearby. Make a pile of heat tokens based on the player count. Return the rest of the suspect tiles and heat tokens to the box, as well as the small suspect cards that aren’t in play.

Give every player an alibi tile, a deduction tile, and a marker.

Gameplay

At the start of each round, place a word card on each suspect board. Shuffle the suspect cards and deal two to each player, and place the last suspect card on the perpetrator board face-down. (Suspect cards should be kept secret from other players.)

First, each player will create an alibi: look at the two words on your suspects, and think of a one-word alibi that ties those two words together. Ideally, you want an alibi that does not relate to any of the other suspects in the grid. Your alibi must relate to the meaning of the words and not their position in the grid, the illustration of the villain, or the spelling of the word. (For instance, you can’t use the alibi “six” if both of your words have six letters.) You may not use any words or parts of words that are present in the grid.

Once everyone has written an alibi, you share the alibis with the other players. (The rules say to do this one at a time, though we often just reveal them all at once.) For each alibi, you secretly mark on your deduction board the two suspects you think best match that alibi, using the little mathematical symbols. Don’t forget to mark your own as well! The one leftover suspect is the one you think is the perpetrator—mark that with a P.

Finally, you reveal and score all the alibis. Each player reveals their two suspects, and checks if anyone got both suspects correctly. If any other player got both suspects, the team removes 1 heat. (Maximum 1 heat per alibi, no matter how many players got it right.)

Then, reveal the perpetrator. For every player who caught the perpetrator, remove 3 heat.

Game End

The game ends when there is no more heat, or at the end of the third round. Otherwise, reshuffle the suspect cards, lay out new word cards, and start another round.

At the end of 3 rounds, check how much heat is remaining in the pile, and check the chart in the rulebook to find out your ranking, from Unimpressive Underlings to Marvelous Masterminds.

Alibis is GeekDad Approved!

Why You Should Play Alibis

[This portion contributed by Rob Huddleston]

Codenames was our GeekDad Game of the Year in 2015, and it’s become one of those games that serves as a sort-of template for so many other games. In fact, I’d bet big publishers now hear pitches like “it’s Codenames but…” all the time.

And there’s no question that Alibis was inspired by Codenames. But it’s much more than a simple reskin. It takes the template and does so much more with it.

First, there’s the cooperative element. Rather than teams working against each other, in Alibis you’re all working together. Of course that’s hardly unique, either, but with word games like this there’s so often an element of trying to come up with a clue that will simultaneously help some players and hinder others. But here, you have to come up with a word that will always help, and in many ways, that’s so much harder. In one game we played, my two words were “vault” and “glasses,” which would have been hard enough on its own, but “rob” was also out on the grid, so I couldn’t use anything that might relate to a bank vault because every one would naturally lead to “rob.” In a non-cooperative game, that becomes easy–I would want my competitors to be lead astray. But I lost count of the number of times someone at the table would reveal their word by saying, “I apologize in advance…”

While the theme of Alibis isn’t clearly spelled out, I don’t see that as a real hindrance. We know that we have a lineup of what appear to be cartoon super villains, and we know that we’re trying to find the one who did … something, I guess. Are we the good guys hoping to arrest the bad guy? Are we the bad guys hoping to point the figure at someone else so we get away with it? Who knows? But also, who cares? The art gives the game a nice table presence (we don’t just have a grid of cards with a words on them) and it makes it a bit easier to figure out which words you are supposed to have if you can associate it with a picture and not just a number. If the theme is a bit loose but its implementation makes the game easier to play and even a bit more fun, then I’m good with it.

I recently saw a series of posts from someone I follow on Instagram about a new cooperative game that they were looking at and their big complaint, right off the bat, was that the game was too easy. There’s a fine balance designers have to find with cooperative games between making the game so easy that it isn’t worth playing, but not impossibly hard so that it isn’t fun to play. I’m not sure Alibis has that completely figured out–we didn’t come close to winning any of the times we played–but I am convinced that the game makes it so that it doesn’t matter. If I’m going to invest hours playing something, I want to know that I can win. But if I’m going to spend 15 or 20 minutes playing a game where I’m having so much fun that it doesn’t really matter, then I don’t care so much about the goal.

And that leads to the real charm of this game. Of course all of us play boardgames for a lot of different reasons, but social interaction has to be way up there on the list. And games like this, where you’re all working together but will naturally be spending a lot of your time laughing, a lot of your time teasing your friends for their horrible clues, and all of your times genuinely having fun.

[And now back to Jonathan H. Liu]

As Rob mentioned above, Alibis really couldn’t exist without Codenames. But just as various games have expanded upon the deck-building foundation of Dominion and (in my opinion) improved the gameplay, I think Alibis is a fantastic twist on the word-association genre. One of our family favorites is So Clover!, another title that has some similarities to Codenames; like Alibis, it also involves coming up with one-word clues that link two keywords at a time. Each player is creating their own puzzle (4 clues for 8 keywords), and then once they’re done, everyone else tries to fit together the puzzle. But there, each player’s puzzle is entirely independent from everyone else’s.

The genius of Alibis is that we’re all building a puzzle together. The best way to identify the perpetrator is if you also manage to solve every player’s hint. It is possible, of course, to get the perpetrator because you just swapped two suspects between two players, but quite often one mistake can mess up your whole board. Unlike Codenames, where the clue-givers know ahead of time who the assassin is and can work to avoid that word, nobody knows who the perpetrator is until the end, so you don’t know which words are more important to set apart.

I first heard of Alibis when fellow GeekDad Alex brought it over for a game night—it was a brand-new copy, and I enjoyed it so much that I asked to borrow it for OrcaCon, a small game convention in Seattle. Over the course of the weekend, Alibis got played so many times that by Sunday evening two of the pens had run out! (That’s not a knock on the pen quality, by the way—it’s to show how many repeat plays there were.) So I owe Alex a new copy, but that’s okay because now it means I have my own—which I’ll be getting some new pens for shortly.

If you like wordplay and you’re looking for a great cooperative games, put Alibis on your wanted list.

To pick up a copy, visit the Allplay website!

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The Founder and C.E.O. of Galactic Cruise is retiring in a few years, and looking for his successor. His company offers travelers extended space vacations, but with the comfort of a luxury cruise. As a supervisor, you will build shuttles, satisfy Galactic Cruise guests, and also help the company thrive by enhancing the company network, inventing new technologies, and growing the workforce. Can you impress the board of directors, and become the new C.E.O. of Galactic Cruise?

In “Reaping the Rewards,” I take a look at the finished product of a crowdfunding campaign. Galactic Cruise was originally funded through Kickstarter in April 2024, and was shipped to backers starting in February. It is now available to order at retail. This review is based on my original Kickstarter alert, updated to reflect the final product.

What Is Galactic Cruise?

Galactic Cruise is a variable setup, worker placement game for 1-4 players, ages 14 and up, and takes about 90-150 minutes to play. It’s now available to purchase from the Allplay store online or from your favorite games stores, and retails for $118. There was also a recent Kickstarter campaign for a new expansion as well as a reprint of the game; the pledge manager for that campaign should open shortly should you wish to pledge.

Galactic Cruise was designed by T.K. King, Dennis Northcott, and Koltin Thompson, and published by Kinson Key Games, with illustrations by Ian O’Toole.

Galactic Cruise Components

The game comes with the following:

• Rulebook
• Main Board
• Marketing Board
• 36 Agenda Cards
• 9 Progress Track Tiles
• 3 Neutral Cubes
• 12 Action Tiles
• 6 Expert Worker Tiles
• 6 Company Goal Tiles
• 3 Company Goal Trackers
• 8 Technology Tiles
• 3 Neutral Developments
• 82 Money Tokens
• 60 Ad Tokens
• 48 Blueprint Tiles
• 3 Small Resource Trackers
• 15 Cockpit Tiles
• 1 Engine Tiles
• 5 Guest Bonus Tokens
• 2 Marketing Board Overlays
• 18 Cruise Tiles
• 36 Guest Meeples
• First Player Marker
• Reference Book
• 4 Player Aids
• 12 Large Resource Trackers
• 32 Upgrade Tokens
• 4 Starting Cockpit Tiles
• 4 Starting Engine Tiles
• 4 Player Boards
• 8 Worker Meeples
• 8 Expert Worker Meeples
• 36 Developments
• 48 Progress Cubes
• 4 Reputation Tracker Tokens
• 4 VP Tracker Tokens
• 4 100/200 VP Tokens
• 4 Cruise Consultant Meeples
• 15 Solo Cards
• 3 Solo Tokens

The first thing that you’ll notice when you open the box is a welcome envelope. Besides a letter thanking you for purchasing the game, there’s a lanyard, a themed badge, and importantly, a brochure with instructions on how to sort the game in the box and the included Game Trayz organizers.

One of the things I was immediately struck by when unboxing the production version of the game is the level of quality. In addition to the clean graphic design, all of the print materials and cardboard have a nice linen finish. Additionally, the cardboard is pleasingly thick and sturdy, as you can see:

The Main Board is double-sided. One side is for introductory games, and has several part of the board filled in with a static setup:

Whereas the other side of the board is designed for a fully variable setup, for once you’ve learned how to play the game:

The Main Board is divided up into 3 main areas, as if these were buildings on a company campus. They are, from left to right: Planning and Strategy, Headquarters, and Manufacturing. Additionally, there are tracks on the board for Victory Points and Reputation.

A secondary board is set up directly adjacent to the Main Board. This is the Marketing board, where players advertise and sell cruises to guests.

The Headquarters section of the Main Board is where you’ll be taking the majority of your actions. There are 12 Action Tiles, which are randomly set up in the designated spaces on the board. When you send your workers to one of the tiles, they’ll take 2 actions, many of which will be fulfilled on various spots on both the Main and Marketing boards.

The Workers come in the four different player colors, and are screen printed wood. 

There are also larger Expert Workers, which can be unlocked during gameplay.

Expert Workers get an additional ability, which is determined during setup by randomly placing one of the Expert Worker Tiles.

Players each have their own Player Board. This board tracks personal resources and upgrades, and stores developments until they are placed on the Main Board. There is also a Launch Elevator on the side of the board, which guides the player through the steps taken during the 5-second countdown to launching a shuttle. These boards are double-layered, with recesses for placing tokens and meeples.

Players will have access to four different technology upgrades throughout the game by taking the action of building a Development on a Technology Tile. These provide various ongoing advantages once available. The four upgrades are chosen randomly at the start of a game from a pool of eight tiles. Additional Technology Tiles are available in the two optional expansions in the Kickstarter campaign.

One of the main paths towards Victory Points during a game of Galactic Cruise is through building a shuttle and launching a cruise. Players each start with identical Cockpit and Engine tiles, but other tiles are available to purchase during the course of a game.

You can’t just launch a shuttle with a cockpit and engine, though. You must first purchase blueprints for various segments of a shuttle, and then use another action to build these segments into your shuttles. These segments will give bonuses if you have the matching Guest type onboard your shuttle.

As this is a galactic cruise company you’re running, you can’t take off without having tourists on your shuttle. There are three different types of Guests that you can recruit for your shuttle: Relaxing, Family, and Adventurous.

You must schedule a Cruise before you can launch a shuttle. When you match the Guest type to a destination on a cruise, you will increase your Reputation.

The Ian O’Toole artwork shines throughout, giving a nice retro feeling to this futuristic game. The wooden meeples and tokens are all satisfying to work with, and have nice screen printing to help differentiate the pieces, especially the two different types of worker meeples. And the Game Trayz organizational system really provides a fantastic way for organizing the components, and help to speed up set up and break down of Galactic Cruise. 

How to Play Galactic Cruise

You can download a copy of the rulebook here. You can also try out an intro game of Galactic Cruise on either Tabletop Simulator or Tabletopia.

The Goal

The goal of the game is to earn Victory Points by taking guests on cruises and accomplishing other company goals.

Setup

Main and Marketing Board Standard Setup

Place the Main Board in the center of the playing area, with the Marketing Board directly to the right of it. Shuffle the Agenda Cards and place them facedown beside the Main Board, then reveal 4 cards from the top of the deck and place them faceup on the indicated spaces of the Main Board.

Place the Progress Track Tiles that match the player count on the indicated spaces on the Main Board, returning unused tiles to the box.

Shuffle the 12 Action Tiles and randomly place 2 at each indicated location on the Main Board. Shuffle the Expert Worker Tiles and place 1 randomly on the indicated space. Shuffle the Company Goal Tiles and place 1 at random on the indicated space, returning the rest to the box. Place a Company Goal Tracker into each of the 3 bottom spaces of the Company Goal Tile.

Shuffle the Technology Tiles and randomly place 4 of them into the Technology Tiles spaces on the Main Board. Return the rest to the box after using the back of one of the leftover tiles to determine and place the Neutral Developments on the board, covering the Reputation Icons for the indicated spaces.

Create a supply of Money and Ads for the players.

Shuffle the Blueprint Tiles and place them faceup in a stack beside the Main Board. Take the top 5 tiles from the stack and place them on the indicated spaces on the Main Board.

Place a Small Resource Tracker of each type into the Storage Silo at the “2” level.

Setting aside the starting Cockpit and Engine Tiles, shuffle the remaining Cockpit Tiles and place a stack next to the Main Board. Take the top 4 Tiles and place them faceup on the indicated spaces. Do the same for the Engine Tiles.

Shuffle the Guest Bonus Tokens, and place one on each of the indicated spaces on the Marketing Board, sending the remaining tiles to the box. If playing with fewer than 4 players, use the Marketing Board Overlay to cover the top 1 or 2 spaces of the Marketing Board, depending on player count.

Shuffle the Cruise Tiles and randomly place 1 on each of the open spaces for player count. Place the remaining tiles in a facedown stack nearby.

Place all the Guests beside the Marketing Board, creating a supply. From that supply, take a matching Guest for each Destination listed on the faceup Cruise tiles and set them aside. Randomly place each of these, one at a time, in the Queue next to the Marketing Board, placing them in each of the 3 sections bottom to top, repeating until all of the Guests are placed.

Player Board Setup

Each player chooses a player color and then takes a Player Board, all components of their color, and a Resource Tracker of each type, and places them as shown in the above picture.

Place 4 brown Upgrade Tokens on the top 4 spaces of the Launch Tower, and the 4 grey Upgrade Tokens on the bottom 4 spaces.

Take 1 Starting Cockpit Tile and 1 Starting Engine Tile, and place them to the left of the Player Board.

Take 10 Money and 2 Ads from the supply, and 1 Agenda Card from the top of the Agenda Deck. Place 3 of your Progress Cubes above the Company Goal tile in the spaces matching your player color on the Main Board. Place the rest of your cubes near your Player Board.

Place your VP Tracker at “5” and your Reputation Marker at “0” on their respective tracks on the Main Board. Place your Cruise Consultant onto the Marketing Board.

The player who most recently went on a cruise or vacation will be first player and take the First Player Token. In clockwise order starting with the first player, set your starting Reputation: 0/1/2/3.

In reverse order, place 1 Development for free from the left column of Development on your Player Board onto the Main Board in an area where no Developments are currently present, gaining a Reputation.

Also in reverse order, take a Blueprint Tile from the Main Board, and place it beside your Player Board in one of the indicated spaces. After all players have taken their tiles, slide all remaining Blueprints to the bottommost available spaces, then refill the empty spaces from the Blueprint stack.

Gameplay

Starting with the First Player, each player will take a turn, going clockwise in order. On average, a player will usually get 20 turns.

On a turn, a player will first Advance Shuttles, and then do one of the following: Assign a Worker, Launch a Shuttle, or Call a Meeting. Finally, you will check if you Accomplish a Company Goal.

1. Advance Shuttles

If, at the start of your turn, you have shuttles in space, you will advance them to different stops until they return to Earth. Move your Pilot 1 space forward on the Cruise Tile. There are 3 different types of stops: Destinations, Days in Space, and Returning to Earth.

Destinations

If you have an Upgrade Token on your Engine, you may place into onto one of the Upgrades on the Destination that you’re currently on, unlocking that Upgrade. You may not have more than 3 Upgrades on any Destination.

You may also score each Guest on your shuttle once per Destination by paying their Ad cost: 1 Ad if the Destination matches the Guest type, 2 Ads if not. Guests scores are equal to 3 VP, +1 VP per Upgrade Token at that Destination.

Day in Space

For each Guest, gain one matching bonus as listed on the Marketing Board for each matching icon in the shuttle.

Returning to Earth

Your worker, which was acting as the shuttle pilot, returns to the Break Room on the Player Board. Gain 1 Funding Bonus out of the 4 different options listed in the top area of the Launch Tower on the Player Board. The Cruise Tile is then returned to the bottom of the Cruise stack, and the Guests are returned to the supply. The Shuttle that has returned may now have segments built into it, or be launched again.

2A. Assign a Worker

Place a Worker on a location. You may Bump another player’s Worker, in which case that player returns their Worker to their Break Room and immediately gains a Funding Bonus.

After placing your Worker, you may take up to 2 actions with that Worker. You may take actions from the two at the space where it is placed. If you have a Development connecting to an adjacent location, you may take either or both of the actions at that adjacent space. If an opponent has a development at an adjacent location, you may use the actions from that space, but you pay that opponent a sum based on your current Reputation. The higher your Reputation, the less you will have to pay.

Here are the 12 different actions you can take:

• Build a Development. Choose one of the leftmost Developments on your Player Board, and pay the cost listed at the bottom of the column from which it was taken. Then place that Development either on an open space in between the buildings in the Headquarters, or under one of the Technology Tiles. You may never place a Development in an area where you already have one. Placing a Development on a Technology makes it free for you to use, but other players who don’t have Developments there must pay you if they want to use it.
• Hire an Expert Worker. Pay the cost associated with the Expert you are hiring from your Player Board, and move them to the Break Room. Expert Workers function as regular Workers, but gain the ability of the Expert Worker Tile.
• Gain Supplies. Purchase Resources and/or Ads with money.
• Acquire Blueprints. Take up to 2 Blueprint Tiles from the display on the Main Board. Players may hold a maximum of 5 Blueprints.
• Build Shuttle Segments. You can build segments from Blueprints previously acquired, or directly from the Main Board. Building from the Main Board requires additional Reputation and Money, in addition to the cost listed in the top left of the Blueprint. Players are restricted to building a maximum of 3 segments per shuttle, and 3 shuttles total. Once a segment is built into a Shuttle, it may not be removed or replaced. Segments show a half a Cabin on the tops and bottoms of their tiles, and must combine with other tiles to make whole cabins, which are required for guests.

• Acquire New Shuttle. Choose a paired Cockpit and Engine Tile set from the Display on the Main Board. Then refill the board from the stack. If the end of the game is reached and a shuttle has not been launched, you will lose 5 Victory Points.
• Gain Resources. Take up to 3 resources of any combination from the Storage Silo. Reduce the level of the chosen Resource Trackers in the Silo, and then increase the respective Resource Trackers on your Player Board.
• Refill Silo. Discard an Agenda Card from your hand to increase 1 chosen Resource in the Storage Silo to its maximum. Gain 1 Money for each step the particular Resource was raised, along with exactly 1 Reputation.
• Schedule a Cruise. Take your Cruise Consultant and place it next to a Cruise that has not already been scheduled. Then choose 1 Upgrade Token in the Launch Tower on your Player Board, and immediately gain the bonus printed on it. Then flip it over.
• Advertise for a Cruise. Choose any 1 Cruise with 1 or 2 empty Guest Spaces on it. Choose Guests from the Queue, paying the Ad costs associated from the area of the Queue you take the Guests from, and place them on the selected Cruise. Then, for each Guest placed, gain 1 Money per Destination on the Cruise, and 1 Reputation if the Cruise includes a Guest’s preferred Destination.
• Draw Agenda Cards. Draw 2 Agenda Cards into your hand. Draw from the faceup cards, or spend 1 Reputation to draw from the top of the Discard pile. The text of an Agenda card will explain when it may be played. Agenda Cards may alternatively be used as the Resource shown on the bottom left corner of the card.
• Refill Agenda Cards. Gain any bonuses shown on the empty Agenda Card spaces, and then discard any remaining Agenda Cards. Refill all 4 Agenda Card spaces.

A quick note regarding resources: once per turn at any time, you may also reduce your Reputation Tracker as far as you would like, gaining all the bonuses of one type of resource that you cross over.

2B. Launch a Shuttle

One of your options during a player turn is to place one of your Workers to launch a Shuttle. In order to launch a Shuttle you must have:

• A Cruise scheduled
• An available Shuttle with 1 or more Cabins
• Access to enough Resources to launch
• Guest(s) pre-sold or Last Minute Sale

The leftmost space on your Player Board is the Launch Elevator. Place a Worker on the lowest space of the Launch Elevator. There are 5 steps to launching your Shuttle, representing a 5 second countdown. As you move your Worker up the Launch Elevator, there are icons representing the actions you take on each step of the countdown:

• 5: Assign and Board. Take your scheduled Cruise and place it above the shuttle you would like to launch. Return your Cruise Consultant to the office on the Marketing Board. Then, place guests into Cabins. Each Cabin can hold a maximum of 1 Guest. Guests can be pre-sold, bought from the queue at normal price, or taken from the supply at the cost of 4 Ads each. If you don’t have enough room for a pre-sold Guest, you lose 2 Reputation.
• 4: Place Progress Cube. Take a Progress Cube from your supply and place it onto the next available space on the Progress Track. The Progress Track is the timer for the game.
• 3: Pay Resources. You must pay: 1 Food per Guest in the Shuttle, as well as 1 Food for your Pilot. 1 Oxygen per Shuttle Segment in the Shuttle. 1 Fuel per Fuel Icon listed on the Cruise Tile. These resources can come from any combination of your Player Board, Agenda Cards, and paying Reputation.
• 2: Score Cockpit. Score VP based on the criteria listed on the Cockpit of the Shuttle. If it is the first time launching the Shuttle, flip over the tile so that the “-5” is no longer showing.
• 1: Load Up. Remove the Upgrade Token that was flipped when the Cruise was scheduled, and place it on the Engine Tile of the Shuttle being launched.
• 0: Lift Off. Place your Worker, who is now the Pilot, into the Cockpit of the Shuttle.

After launching, you will add a new Cruise Tile to replace the one you used during launch. Then, Guests move down in queue, and new Guests are added from the supply.

2C. Call a Meeting

Recall all your Workers from the Main Board and place them into your Break Room. Gain a Funding Bonus for each “open hand” symbol covered. You may then take just one action from a location that has at least one of your Developments connected to it.

If you have no Workers in your Break Room when it’s your turn, you must Call a Meeting on your turn.

3. Accomplish Company Goal

Each game, there are 3 different Company Goals, as shown on the Company Goal Tile. If you meet or exceed the current goal as indicated by the Company Goal Tracker, you have accomplished that goal. Then do the following:

1. Remove your Progress Cube from above the goal that was accomplished, and place it on the Progress Track. A Wing in the player’s color is revealed.
2. Advance the Company Goal Tracker for that goal one notch higher, increasing the goal’s threshold for other players.

You may only accomplish each goal once per game.

Progress Track Scoring

When the final cube is placed into sections 1 or 2 of the Progress Track, the track is filled, and an Annual General Meeting is held. At this time, players score VP equal to the number of Progress Cubes they have in that section, times the number of Wings in their player color revealed on the Main Board.

The player currently with the most Reputation is considered to have one extra cube for scoring purposes.

Game End

The end of Galactic Cruise is triggered when the final cube is placed into section 3 of the Progress Track. Play continues with players finishing out the current round, and then a Final Round is played.

For the Final Round, everyone retrieves all their Workers from the Main Board and gains Funding Bonuses. Then, in turn order, everyone takes 1 final turn.

Finally, in turn order, any shuttles that are on Cruises get advanced one final time to any remaining stop on the Cruise, with all steps of that stop being taken.

Final Scoring

Players score the following:

• 1 VP per leftover supplies: any combination of Resources, Money, Ads, Agenda Cards, and Blueprint Tiles.
• Progress scoring for Section 3 of the Progress Track.
• VP based on the highest VP threshold gained on the Reputation Track.
• VP pictured on each Shuttle Segment in your shuttles.
• VP shown on the rightmost empty column in the Development area of the Player Board.
• VP based on the criteria pictured on each Cockpit of your shuttles.

The winner is the person with the most Victory Points.

Galactic Cruise is GeekDad Approved!

Why You Should Play Galactic Cruise

If you read through the “how to play” section of this review for Galactic Cruise, then you’ll know that there’s a lot going on in this game. Kinson Key Games classifies it as a mid to heavy-weight Euro, and that’s pretty accurate. At a casual glance, the various boards can appear overwhelming, with all of the different game spaces and iconography.

However, once you start reading the easy to follow rules, you soon see the intelligence and elegance behind T.K. King, Dennis Northcott, and Koltin Thompson’s design. Even at its prototype stage, the rules are explained clearly, with multiple illustrations and examples to make sure that you can follow the flow of the game.

The basics of gameplay in Galactic Cruise are remarkably easy to pick up. On my initial game, all three of us were playing for the very first time, but we soon found ourselves right in the swing of things, and only rarely had to refer to the rulebook. All that iconography that seemed so scary at first is very clear and identifiable, thanks to the excellent graphic design.

As you can see from the rulebook above, the boards are laid out in a fashion that is easy to make sense of thematically. The lovely Ian O’Toole artwork is charmingly retro, while still reinforcing the theme of galactic tourism throughout. Little details, like having the launch elevator for the shuttles walk you through each of the steps of the shuttle launch, are one of the best examples of how well the theme works to reinforce the gameplay.

While easy to learn, Galactic Cruise is still a challenging efficiency puzzle. As with many worker placement games, you’re planning your moves several turns in advance. If you want to launch a Shuttle, you’ll have multiple steps to take before that can happen. Just go back and look at all the prerequisites to initiate a launch: there are 4 steps listed, and that’s just for a single shuttle. Ideally, you’ll manage to build and launch the maximum of 3 shuttles.

Speaking of shuttles, my friends and I didn’t fully understand the importance of getting as many cruises launched as you can. You would think that with the game’s title being Galactic Cruise, we might have gotten the hint! But cruises are a huge source for both Victory Points and Upgrades. And even though you spend a lot of resources to get a launch going, you will get some back during your stops in space. In that first game, I decided to try and get a small shuttle launched as soon as I possibly could, and that turned out to be the key to my winning the game. Rather than try to max out a shuttle on the first go-round, I got a simple 2-segment shuttle off the ground, and soon was reaping the rewards.

The Game Trayz are a welcome upgrade from the prototype I originally reviewed. There are also dedicated components and rules for a solo mode, the inclusion of which is often a must for many players.

If you’re looking for an involved worker placement game that just oozes theme, then you should definitely check out Galactic Cruise. And if you want to try out the gameplay yourself before committing, you can find playable introductory games of Galactic Cruise on both Tabletop Simulator and Tabletopia.

For more information or to make a purchase, visit the Kinson Key Games website.

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Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of this game for review purposes.

You’ve crash-landed on an alien planet, stranded far from your crew. What now?

What Is Vantage?

Vantage is a cooperative open-world exploration game for 1 to 6 players, ages 14 and up, and takes about 2 to 3 hours to play. It retails for $85.00 and is available in stores and directly from Stonemaier Games. The play time can vary significantly depending on player count and the choices everyone makes, so “2 to 3 hours” is just an average. Although the game is recommended for 14 and up, I did play with my 12-year-old, and for the most part there’s not really anything inappropriate as long as your kid has the patience for a long game.

Vantage was designed by Jamey Stegmaier and published by Stonemaier Games, with illustrations by Valentina Filić, Sören Meding, and Emilien Rotival.

Vantage Components

Here’s what comes in the box:

• 8 storybooks (7 Actions and 1 Book of Secrets)
• Book of Vantages
• Game board
• 6 Location Card stands
• 6 Morale trackers
• 6 Health trackers
• 6 Time trackers
• 12 Skill dice
• 20 Challenge dice
• 60 Boost cubes
• 60 Skill tokens (10 each in 6 colors)
• 45 Coin tokens (in 1, 2, 5, and 10 denominations)
• 413 Large cards
• 916 Standard cards
• 1 Spoiler Pack of cards

The cards aren’t pictured in the photo above because there are so many of them and they’re stored in the box during play. Along the edge of the box (both on the inside and outside) there are some indices so you can find the section of the card you need for the standard-sized cards. The three stacks of large cards are in the cardboard wells next to it, and during the game you stand them vertically so you can flip through them, card-catalog-style: the numbers are in the top left corners of the cards.

The game box itself has three vertical “drawers” along the edge (the green parts seen in the photo above): these are used to store the various dice, cubes, and tokens—I recommend keeping them in baggies inside the drawers, so that they don’t just spill out into the large card wells when you lift the drawers.

While I’ll show you a few of the cards throughout the review, I don’t want to show too much because the game itself is about exploration and discovery, so I don’t want to spoil things. A lot of fun of the game comes from wandering around the planet and learning what happens when you do things. That said, you can see some examples of the small cards above: these are the crew cards, which you’ll start with at the beginning of the game. Cards may have various spaces to place challenge dice (with icons indicating restrictions or bonuses), spaces for “boosts” (small silver wooden cubes), actions (marked with a color and icon), and some instructions about how boosts are gained or spent from this card.

There are other types of small cards—items, skills, animals, and more—that will be placed around your character card, and there are some other cards like missions and destinies that will be placed on the main board.

The large cards are mostly locations, featuring a large illustration, a small text description of what you see, and then (usually) six different actions you can take at that location, along with a compass rose for movement to another location. More on those later.

The game “board” is a thick cardstock mat, similar to some other Stonemaier titles, and is primarily used to track everyone’s health, time, and morale. There are also spaces for a few cards and the dice, mostly so you can distinguish the dice supply from the spent dice.

The dice are custom dice. Skill dice are standard sized with the six different action icons etched into them. Challenge dice are smaller black dice, and they include the health, time, and morale icons, as well as a dash and a return arrow.

How to Play Vantage

You can download a copy of the rulebook here.

The Goal

The goal of the game is to complete a mission, a destiny, or both, before any player runs out of health, time, or morale.

Setup

Place the board in the center of the table, with supplies of skill tokens, coins, boosts, and skill dice nearby. The pool of challenge dice should be 8 dice plus 2 more per player.

Setup continues with some randomization: you start with Location 000 on the Book of Vantages, where your ship is approaching the planet. Everyone gets a character card along with a matching skill token, and then places their trackers on the game board—”daring” is recommended for your first game, so everyone starts with 4 health, morale, and time. Then everyone rolls two skill dice, takes the matching skill tokens, and then consults the chart to get a starting mission, which is drawn and added to the game board.

Location 001, on the back of the Book of Secrets, has some additional randomization: everyone will get a different starting card, and roll two more dice to gain more skills and find their starting location. There are 126 possible starting locations, and 21 possible starting missions.

You’re allowed to describe your card to other players, but you aren’t allowed to show other players your location card. I think the idea is that you’re in communication with each other, but you don’t have a way to share visuals. You can only see the world from your own vantage.

Gameplay

On your turn, you get to choose one action to take. There are actions printed in lots of places: on your character card, on the mission card, on your location card, and on various other cards that you may accumulate over the course of the game.

There are six main categories of actions, represented by the six colors and icons: move, look, engage, help, take, and overpower. On a specific card, the action usually has a more specific word for what you’re doing in that context. For instance, on the card below, the move action is “steer” and the help action is “repair.” One important note is that you can only take one action per location card (unless the card says otherwise), so generally you can’t exhaust all the possibilities on a location in a single play. If you “hijack” this time, you can’t come back and “fish” here later—you’ll have to wait until the next time you play the game.

You must decide on an action, and then you look up the card number in the corresponding action book (or you can also use the online Rulepop site). That will tell you the action cost—in the example above, the “spy” action for location 433 is “Spy on the boat” and the “2” in the hexagon is the cost. You may spend skill tokens matching the action to pay for the cost, and other players may also contribute tokens toward this. (Thematically, it represents them sharing their expertise and knowledge with you.) If you don’t pay for the entire cost using skill tokens, then you roll a number of challenge dice to make up the difference.

Challenge dice that show health, morale, or time will reduce your levels unless they can be placed onto cards. Each die space on a card has some indications about when you can place dice there—some are tied to specific actions, some are tied to particular elements that are in play, and some require a specific symbol to be rolled on the die. If there’s a lightning bolt on the edge of the space, that means you can place dice from any player’s action; otherwise, the space can only be used on your own turn. After rolling the dice, players may distribute dice among their cards as applicable, and then the player loses health, morale, or time for any dice that remain unplaced (and then those dice are placed into the penalty section of the board). A dash means that the die does not cause any penalty, and the return arrow means the die can be placed back into the die pool without a penalty.

At some point the dice pool will run out: if you take an action and there aren’t enough dice left for the action you are taking, then the dice get refreshed. All of the dice—those on cards and those in the penalty section of the board—are returned to the pool, and then you take the dice you need. Refreshing dice opens up all of those spaces on cards again, which lets you take more costly actions without suffering consequences.

Moving to other locations usually costs 1 movement skill point, and you just go to the number shown on the compass rose in the direction you want to travel. However, if there is an asterisk instead of a number, that means travel in that direction may not be as simple as walking; there is a “depart” action book to look up the costs (and the thematic description) of traveling in those directions.

Game End

There are three ways the game can end:

• A player is reduced to 0 health, morale, or time.
• The players complete their mission—you may end the game, or keep playing to attempt to complete a destiny as well.
• The players complete a destiny: the game ends regardless of whether the mission has been complete.

There isn’t a scoring mechanism, but you can with with a mission victory, destiny victory, or epic victory (if you completed both).

Your mission is randomly determined during setup, and remains the same for the course of the game. Destinies may be gained throughout the game depending on actions you take (including completing a mission), and you may have any number of destinies in play.

Vantage is GeekDad Approved!

Why You Should Play Vantage

Vantage has the feel of a choose-your-own-adventure book, but with so many more options. There are almost 800 different locations to explore, and most of those have 6 different actions to take, and that’s not even taking into consideration the countless actions on all of the cards in the game, like items and missions and other things you’ll encounter.

The planet you’ve found includes all sorts of terrain: deserts, plains, forests, mountains, caves, swamps, and oceans. You might find yourself taking damage from cold or heat; you could suffer hypoxia at high altitudes or because you chose to dive underwater without any breathing apparatus. You may encounter strange animals or sentients made of one of the 12 different compositions (like fire or metal or sinew). There’s strange technology to figure out, people to fight or befriend, plants to smell or pluck or eat.

The rulebook explains how to play the game, but it doesn’t give you a whole lot of direction otherwise. There are some tips to get started like try to fill out your grid of cards, and just try things out to see what works and what doesn’t. It doesn’t even really explain a whole lot about the missions and destinies, or even how you get destinies. Every player has “Master,” “Buy,” and “Equip” actions on their character card—what do those do? When should you try them? The rulebook doesn’t say. It really feels like being dropped into a room full of weird gadgets and being told: “Okay, have fun!”

Back in 2021, I spent about 6 months playing through The 7th Continent with my son and a couple of friends. It’s one that I backed on Kickstarter after reading Will James’ write-up and getting to try the demo for myself. The game involves exploring a brutal environment, and you build out an enormous map of small square cards while trying to stay alive and figure out the various “curses” that each introduce specific tasks that need to be completed. (We played an epic game where we just mixed in all of the curses at once.) We really loved the element of discovery, of mapping out the space and gaining expertise, of figuring out puzzles and locating important landmarks.

Vantage gives me a lot of similar feelings to The 7th Continent, and in fact Jamey Stegmaier does cite it as one of many inspirations, though there are some significant differences. For one, you’re a little less focused on mere survival: you don’t have to constantly figure out how you’re going to feed yourselves so you don’t starve to death in the wilderness. It’s more sci-fi than pulp adventure novel. Although the locations do make up a giant grid map, it’s a little harder to visualize. Where The 7th Continent‘s cards literally fit together to make a top-down view of the mysterious continent, Vantage‘s cards are illustrations of the scene from your viewpoint and don’t piece together to form one large image. Plus, the fact that you are separated from your crew right from the start means that you’re all seeing different bits and pieces of the world, and it may take a while before you find out how the pieces connect. (In some games, your paths may never overlap because it’s such a big world!)

In the first two weeks after receiving Vantage, I think I played about 17 hours of it (with 13 different players), and I’ve played several more times since then. I loved falling onto a random spot on the planet and just diving into the exploration, and the wide variety of paths we could take. Minor spoilers here, but we had a player who went on long, meandering quests to track down a bandit hideout, another who spent most of the game studying magic and learning some ridiculously powerful spells, and yet another who was underwater for almost the entire session. We’ve dug deep into the planet, flown high into the skies, and encountered enormous elemental beasts. Some games went longer than they really needed to because players had just one more thing they wanted to do so we didn’t finish off a mission or destiny for a while.

The only thing that carries over from one game to the next is your own knowledge of what you remember. In that sense, there are boundaries to the unknown. It will take a long time before we hit those limits, but at some point it is possible to have visited everything and done everything—though there are places where the dice are used to introduce randomness, even in the directions you might be able to travel. The planet is the same each time you play; it’s just not likely that you’ll land in the same spot very often. I’ve seen the complaint that the static nature of the planet makes it less interesting, but given the sheer number of options, I personally don’t see that being much of a problem for a long time.

One issue we ran into, though, is the downtime when you have a lot of players. Since you’re each in your own location, it can feel a little bit like you’re each playing your own little game in your own little world. Certainly there’s a lot of interaction in terms of taking challenge dice from other players or spending skill tokens to help somebody, but your story is usually isolated from the other players unless your paths happen to cross. Each turn can vary wildly in length: if you’re simply moving east, then your turn is as short as paying 1 movement and drawing a new card, while somebody else might have an entire mini-game to play on their turn because they encountered some sort of challenge.

Vantage is definitely a game for those who are invested in all of those stories: if I care as much about what you’re experiencing out there in the desert as I do about the snow-covered peaks I’m navigating myself, then I’m having a good time even when my turns are short and yours are long. But if I only care about what’s happening right in front of me, then this may be the sort of game I’m better off playing solo instead. (And it does work solo, too! I just prefer playing with other folks in general.)

One other minor complaint I have is that the actions listed on the cards are not always detailed enough. You’re supposed to decide on an action before you get to look it up in a book and find out its cost, but there were definitely times where the single-word description was not enough to convey what the action was. I accidentally stole a boat once; another player shoved a person off a cliff. We’ve made our own house rule that you can ask for clarification to get the full-sentence description of an action if you’re not sure what it’s referring to. I can see that the cards look cleaner and more uniform with just the single-word actions, but it might have been nice to have a little more clarity in some cases.

I don’t know how long it will take to fully explore the world of Vantage, but it’s quickly become a favorite with several folks in my gaming groups. (If I weren’t always trying to play other games for review I would definitely be playing it even more!) I’m really looking forward to finding out what else the planet has in store. We’ve already discovered at least some secrets about the planet’s origins—no spoilers here!—but I know there’s a lot more yet to explore.

For more info about Vantage, visit the Stonemaier Games website!

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It’s just a simple roll-and-move game … or is it?

What Is Magical Athlete?

Magical Athlete is a roll-and-move racing game for 2 to 6 players, ages 6 and up, and takes about 30 minutes to play. It retails for $29.99 and is available for pre-order from CMYK, expected to ship in late November. At its core, it is rolling a die and moving, so that part is easy for young kids to learn; the character powers will require a bit of reading and may benefit from some adult help when weird situations arise.

Magical Athlete was designed by Takashi Ishida (and updated by Richard Garfield) and published by CMYK, with illustrations by Angela Kirkwood. (Magical Athlete was originally published in 2003 from Z-Man Games; this edition has some rules tweaks and all-new art and components.)

Magical Athlete Components

Here’s what comes in the box:

• Double-sided Racetrack board
• 6 Wooden dice
• 4 Gold 1st Place tokens
• 4 Silver 2nd Place tokens
• 9 Bronze 3-point tokens
• 16 Bronze 1-point tokens
• 36 Racer cards
• 36 Racer meeples

CMYK is reducing plastic use in most of their games. This one comes with a paper band around the box exterior, and the meeples and tokens can be stored in the small paper bags provided. (There was a paper band around the cards but I recycled that and just store the cards with the point tokens.)

CMYK’s rulebooks often begin with a high-level overview of the game that takes several pages, with plenty of space for illustrations and not a lot of text. As you can see from the photo above, this section looks almost more like a picture book than a typical rulebook, and it’s an easy way to give everyone a sense of what they’re getting into. The illustrations by Angela Kirkwood are fantastic, with a 1970s vibe that reminds me of my childhood, and the racers are a diverse and fairly ridiculous bunch.

Also included in the rulebook are little bios about each racer, along with some details about their abilities if needed. We did run into some situations where something wasn’t totally spelled out, but the rulebook does provide a general guideline on how to deal with that, too—you just come to a consensus, and if there’s still a disagreement you just roll off to see who’s right.

The racer meeples are chunky and colorful (especially Huge Baby, seen above). It’s kind of an overwhelming number of meeples for a single game, and sometimes it can be hard to find the specific one you’re looking for in the big pile, but fortunately you only need to do that at the start of the game.

Each racer also has a corresponding illustrated card that shows its name, ability, and a little tagline, like “Keep Rollin'” for Sisyphus. Most of the time the background color of the card illustration matches the base color of the meeple, though we found one or two that weren’t the same.

The chunky wooden dice are simple and they go well with the rest of the components: each one is a different color and there are six so each player has their own die.

The wide game board is double-sided, with the “Mild Mile” on one side and the “Wild Wilds” on the other. Both of them are a 30-space track, but the Wild Wilds includes a lot of extra spaces that can move you forward or back, or give you point tokens. At the end of each track is a little podium space for 1st and 2nd place.

How to Play Magical Athlete

You can download a copy of the rulebook here.

The Goal

The goal of the game is to score the most points over the course of 4 races.

Setup

Set the point tokens near the board, set to the Mild Mile side. Stack the 1st place and 2nd place tokens so that the highest point value (also the largest token) is on the bottom.

Give each player a die. Players roll off to see who will draft racers first—the highest unique number goes first!

Shuffle the racer cards and lay out 2 per player. Do a snake draft—everyone in turn order picks one racer, and then everyone in reverse order picks another one. Then shift starting player to the left, and do it again, so that everyone now has 4 racers. Find the meeples corresponding to your racers, and put the rest back in the box.

The game will consist of 4 races, with each racer participating once. Everyone simultaneously selects one of their racers for the first race, and then places their meeples on the starting space.

Gameplay

On your turn, you do your “main move”: roll your die, and move that many spaces. Some racers have optional abilities that may happen before, after, or even instead of your main move. Your move may also trigger other players’ abilities as well. Once all the abilities have been resolved, it’s the next player’s turn.

If you trip (because of a space on the Wild Wilds or a player ability), you lay your meeple down, and on your next turn you just stand up instead of making a main move. Your ability can still trigger when you’re tripped.

Race End

The race ends as soon as two racers have crossed the finish line, and they are awarded the 1st and 2nd place tokens. Then clear the race board, flip it over to the opposite side, and everyone chooses racers for the next race.

The game ends after 4 races—the player with the most point tokens wins! (Ties are shared.)

Game Variants

If playing with 2 or 3 players, you can also use variant rules that give each player 8 racers, fielding two per race. You move both of your racers on your turn, in the order of your choosing.

Magical Athlete is GeekDad Approved!

Why You Should Play Magical Athlete

Okay, so if you’ve read the How to Play section, you may be thinking to yourself: “Wait, that’s it? This is just a roll-and-move game—how is that interesting, and makes that GeekDad Approved?”

Well, I’m glad (I pretended) you asked! Yes, Magical Athlete is a roll-and-move game, but it’s the racer abilities and the chaotic interactions between them that really makes this game shine. Each of the characters has a game-breaking ability. Legs can just choose to move 5 spaces instead of rolling. Banana trips everyone who passes it. Lovable Loser gets a point every time it starts a turn in dead last. There are racers that can move other racers around or slow them down, racers that give themselves a boost when specific conditions are met, racers that benefit when other racers are doing well. And everyone loves Huge Baby, who takes up an entire space so nobody can share it—the extra chunky meeple is such an over-the-top component.

There are limited choices to be made during the race itself—some characters have optional abilities (like rerolling dice) but for the most part once the racers have been placed on the board, it’s mostly a matter of watching things play out. In that sense, it is a lot like Hot Streak, another wacky racing game from CMYK: most of the strategic decisions take place before the race starts.

Here, the two decisions are drafting your team of racers, and choosing which racer you use for each race. The rulebook advises you to save your best racer for last, since the last race is worth the most points. But the “best” racer in each game really depends on context. A lot of abilities depend on what other racers are doing! Unlike most team-building strategy, you’re not actually looking for 4 racers who work well together, because your own racers won’t ever be on the board at the same time. Instead, you’re looking for racers who will synergize with other players’ racers … and then, ideally, figuring out when those racers will be on the track. As you play Magical Athlete, you’ll get to know the racers better and how their powers trigger, but with 35 total, there are so many combinations that it’s likely you’ll see a different mix each time you play.

Of course, with the 2- and 3-player variant rules, everyone controls a pair of racers for each race. That gives you a little more opportunity to pair up racers, and makes it a little more strategic. It extends the game a little, but it still plays pretty quickly.

What I love about this is that you can take this approach, trying to outguess the other players, but you can also just choose racers based on vibes, and then sit back and watch how the races unfold. Younger kids can get in on the fun really easily, rolling dice and moving and watching for opportunities to use their abilities. It’s the sort of game that young kids can play with grandparents and everyone in between.

Since both Hot Streak and Magical Athlete are from CMYK, I’ve had friends ask me which of the two is better, and it’s been hard for me to decide. What makes both of the games fun is watching a chaotic race and cheering for your chosen racer while absurd things happen on the racetrack. Hot Streak is a bit more strategic because the racers’ movements aren’t totally random: you have some information about what cards are in the deck, and you also get the opportunity to put in a card to exert just a tiny bit of influence on it. Magical Athlete is easier to get up and running without having to explain much. While it may not be as deep, I think Magical Athlete is one that I’ll probably be introducing to a lot more people because it works with a broader range of players.

I did play the original 2003 version of Magical Athlete once, back in 2013. A friend of mine had a copy and wanted to show us this game that made roll-and-move worth playing again. The original version was a bit more complex: instead of just drafting racers, you started with a number of points and had to pay points for the racers. That added another layer of strategy to the game—how many points is this racer’s ability worth?—but I really like the simplification of the new version, which gets the race started more quickly.

If you like racing games and revel in a bit of chaos, check out Magical Athlete!

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Place your bets on your favorite off-brand mascot in this hilarious race.

What Is Hot Streak?

Hot Streak is a betting game for 2 to 9 (or more) players, ages 6 and up, and takes about 20 minutes to play. It retails for $49.99 and is available for pre-order directly from CMYK. (The first print run sold out and preorders should be shipping this fall.) The game is easy enough to teach younger kids though they might need a little help reading some of the cards until they learn to recognize them. This is the sort of game where the more, the merrier, but with large player counts (9 or more) there are alternate, somewhat simpler rules.

Hot Streak was designed by Jon Perry and published by CMYK, with art by Cécile Gariépy and figurines sculpted by Josh Divine.

Hot Streak Components

Here’s what comes in the box:

• Racetrack mat
• 4 Mascots
• 53 Race Deck cards
• 12 Side Bet cards
• 12 Mascot Bet tickets
• 6 Side Bet tickets
• “100ish fake money” (according to the rulebook)

First, a note about the box itself, because it’s a highly engineered box that serves both as the game’s container, a display piece, and an integral component of the game itself. The box is a long rectangle, with a clear plastic window on one side that shows off the four mascot figurines. The top of the box also serves as the race podium with first through fourth places marked, and the top lid has a magnetic flap: opening it reveals a shallow tray that holds the cards and money, and lifting out the tray gives access to the mascots. There are two plastic dials on the ends of the box and a strange yellow flap near the bottom edge: pulling on that edge unfurls a vinyl mat, marked with four lanes and some other icons, which serves as the race track.

The mascot figurines are excellent: large, colorful, and goofy. There’s Gobbler, a bear wearing a sports jersey; Mum, a queen wearing a crown and holding a scepter; Hurley, who looks like a hot dog but we’re told is a “bun banger”; and Dangle, a fish with a wide open mouth and what looks like an anglerfish lure with an eyeball on the stalk. One fun detail is that each of them has a tiny set of eyes peeking out somewhere because, after all, these are mascot costumes! I’ll note that Mum’s crown is incredibly pointy—mostly it’s an issue when I’m trying to snap it back into the plastic storage base because it’s hard to press down on that.

All of the betting tickets are cardboard tiles; for each bet there is a top, middle, and bottom, and they’re slightly different lengths so that you can stack them and still see the edge of each one.

The money is paper bills in $1, $5, and $10 denominations, featuring presidential-looking figures who have sports balls for heads. The paper itself is a bit thicker than Monopoly money and has a heft to it and some texture, but it can be easy for bills to stick together a little, just like crisp new paper bills—though I don’t expect they’ll wear the same way as real bills.

There’s a little open-top tuckbox for the cards. The race deck has cards that include one of the four mascots along with its movement, along with a few green cards that move all four mascots. (More details about those in the How to Play section.) The side bet cards look like a blackboard with a hand writing on it in chalk, and they’re all Yes/No questions about an event that may or may not occur during the race. The backs of the side bet cards show a big “YES” so you can flip it over if the thing happens.

The rulebook reminds me a little of the Daybreak rulebook (also from CMYK) in that it starts with several illustrated pages just giving a general overview of the game without getting into specific rules. There are fun illustrations of the racing mascots. Then there’s the actual rules of the game, and then some more supplemental material. There are silly bios of the mascots, and then several pages that tell you your “life outcomes” based on the amount of money you end up with at the end of the game. There’s a handy “Quick Start” guide on the back cover of the rulebook so that you don’t always have to flip through to look for setup details.

My only complaint about the rulebook is that it is very slightly too wide to go into the little box tray, so if you put it in the top of the box, one side falls in and then the other side sticks up just enough to interfere with the magnetic flap unless you’re very careful. The easy fix for this is that I put it under the tray, but now you can see it through the little window, sitting on top of the mascots’ heads. As meticulously as the rest of the game seems to have been engineered, it just seems like an odd thing to miss.

How to Play Hot Streak

You can download a copy of the rulebook here.

The Goal

The goal of the game is to have the most money after three races.

Setup

Give each player $10 and three random race cards.

Create the starting deck by taking the four “Recover, then 2” cards (one per mascot), and then adding a number of random cards based on the player count. These should be placed face up so everyone can see them. Put the rest of the race cards back in the box—you won’t need them.

Pull out the race track and place the four mascots on their designated spaces. Sort the betting tickets and place them in stacks next to the track. Shuffle the side bet cards and place it, question side up, next to the track.

Gameplay

The game will last 3 races. At the beginning of each race, players will snake draft—each player in turn order takes one betting ticket, and then each player in reverse order will take another betting ticket.

Each betting ticket can be played on its “safe” side or “risky” side. The risky mascot bets will award more money if the mascot places first, but less money if it places second or third. The risky side bets pay more money if you’re right, but cost you $5 if you’re wrong.

Then, everyone secretly chooses a card from their hand to add face-down to the race deck. Gather up all the race cards and shuffle it together.

First, “burn” (set aside) the top 3 cards from the race deck without looking at them. Then play the cards one at a time, moving the mascots accordingly.

If the card has a number, the mascot moves forward that many spaces. (Negative numbers move the mascot backward.) Some cards will let a mascot move and then swerve into another lane; some will have the mascot fall down or turn around and face the wrong way. Star cards move the mascot to the next available star in the direction it is facing.

If a mascot moves into an occupied space, it knocks over the mascot there (and continues moving if needed). If a knocked-down mascot would get knocked over again, it is disqualified and takes the lowest available podium space. Mascots who run out of bounds (either by swerving off the side or by running the wrong way off the end) are also disqualified.

Recover cards let a mascot stand back up and face the right direction. The green cards move all of the mascots, but there is no colliding (nobody falls down; they just share space) and no finishing (you can get up to the finish line but stop there).

If the deck runs out, shuffle the deck (including the 3 set-aside cards), and then fold the race track over to the next available white line. If any mascots are covered by the track, they are disqualified. Then burn 3 cards and play out the deck again.

When a mascot crosses the finish line, place it on the first available empty podium space.

When three of the mascots are on the podium, the race ends and you move the last mascot to the last available space.

Mascot betting tickets pay the amount shown if the mascot came in first, second, or third—last place gets nothing. Side bets pay out if you were correct. (Don’t forget that risky side bets cost money if you were wrong!) Pay everyone their winnings, and then return all the betting tickets to their piles and place the mascots back at the starting line. Draw a new side bet card.

Shuffle the race deck and deal each player 1 card from the deck, so that everyone has 3 cards in hand again. Then start another race as before.

For the third race, after you’ve taken two bets, choose one of them to count double and place it above the other one. Payments (and penalties) for that bet are doubled this race.

Game End

The game ends after the third race. Count up your winnings—the player with the most money wins!

The rulebook has “life outcomes” for each dollar amount from $0 to $100, so everyone can read those and find out what they did with their winnings.

Variants

The 2-player game has just a few changes—players get 4 cards in hand and choose 2 to add to the deck, and they get to pick 3 bets each race.

There’s also a variant for 9 or more players—instead of using the regular betting tickets (and money), you’ll just need pencil and paper and somebody to keep track of scores. Everyone simultaneously writes down 1 mascot to bet on and Yes or No for the side bet. Players will split the pots for each place and the side bet.

Instead of players adding cards to the race deck, you just build the full deck, and then between each race you randomly remove 3 cards and add 3 cards from the main deck, and then lay out everything again.

Hot Streak is GeekDad Approved!

Why You Should Play Hot Streak

The rulebook introduces Hot Streak as being “all about betting, racing, and screaming” and that’s a pretty accurate summary. Whenever I first bring out the box and get out the mascots, many players assume that they’re going to play as the mascots. Nope! The mascots are just going to run around wildly, and we get to bet on who we think will win (and of course cheer for our favorites). The fact that these are people wearing unwieldy mascot costumes works really well with the fact that they often run into each other, get turned around, or run off the field entirely—it’s chaotic!

However, even though the races themselves can feel kind of random, there are some boundaries to that chaos. First, you get a bit of a preview of the starting deck before all the betting starts. These cards are randomly dealt, so right off the bat the mascots aren’t on even footing—but the bettors are. You can all see if Hurley has several forward movement cards and Gobbler has a “Fall Down” and “Turn Around” in the deck, and let that inform you. And, of course, everyone has a hand of three cards so you have a tiny bit of control: you can try to sabotage a mascot by throwing in a negative card, or you can use your knowledge that you’re retaining a negative card to your own advantage.

The more players there are, the less information each player has, though. At 3 players, 15 of the cards in the starting deck are known, but if you’re playing with 8 players, there are only 10 known starting cards and the other 8 cards in the deck have been secretly chosen by the players. You’ll find out what they are soon enough, though!

I like the fact that there are a lot of options for the betting, like choosing to take a safe bet or a risky bet, as well as the side bets. There’s also nothing stopping you from placing both of your bets on the same thing (if it’s still available). Feel really confident about Dangle this race? Just go all in, and make them both risky while you’re at it! If there are a lot of green cards in the deck that move everyone, then you can usually expect it to be a quicker, closer race as everyone moves to the front (but can’t cross the finish line) with those cards. If you see a lot of negative cards or swerve cards, you can probably count on more collisions and mascot elimination.

The game does have a slightly different feel depending on the number of players, both because of the number of unknown cards in the deck but also because of the number of betting tickets there are. With 8 players, sometimes by the end of betting there will not be a lot of options, and players may end up taking bets on mascots they didn’t want, or taking the opposite side bet of what they think will actually happen. The upside is that you don’t lose any money unless you make your side bet risky and you’re wrong.

Even so, I do like the game with more players because of the excitement. When you’ve got a table full of people just eagerly awaiting each card flip, it’s a fantastic experience. Cheers of excitement when a mascot breaks away from the pack. Groans when somebody turns around and runs in the wrong direction. (Or the opposite, for players who were betting against them!) The mascots are just extremely entertaining to watch and I love when bizarre situations happen. In one race, we ended up with three mascots lined up in a row and I thought to myself, well, Mum (who was in the front) is going to get run over if either of the others move before she does… but then we drew a “-2” card for Mum and she backed up over the other two and knocked them both down! It was unexpected and amazing.

I’ve found that I just really enjoy betting games in general. Long Shot: The Dice Game, a roll-and-write game about horse racing, was our game of the year back in 2022. Ready Set Bet is another horse-racing game but uses a real-time element where players are slapping down bets while the horses are moving. Just earlier this year I wrote up Emerald Skulls, which lets you bet on other players as they roll dice in a press-your-luck game. Hot Streak is perhaps the quickest of these yet and the easiest to learn: it’s a little more luck-dependent but one that less-experienced gamers can enjoy too (particularly if you have at least one experienced person to guide the betting and payouts). It also just happens to be the silliest one, which has made it fun to play with younger kids too.

The one downside is that the unique box, as impressively engineered as it is, does not travel as well as a regular game box. Its odd shape means that it doesn’t stack neatly in your standard game-carrying bags (or on your shelf), and you have to watch that the knobs on the sides and the edge of the mat don’t get snagged on anything. I have taken it to game nights on occasion, but when I flew to visit family last month I didn’t want to risk sticking it into a suitcase for the trip.

If you like wacky mascots and a little bit of chaos in your game nights, I highly recommend Hot Streak! Visit CMYK to pre-order a copy.

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Halloween night, 1986. Movie monsters find their way off the silver screen and into an old, rundown theater, terrifying the moviegoers!

What Is Spooktacular?

Spooktacular is an area movement game with variable powers for 1-5 players, ages 12 and up, and takes about 45 minutes to play. Players will take the part of the monsters, trying to alternately scare or devour the patrons of the movie theater. The game is currently available to backorder from the Level 99 Games store, with an estimated in-stock date of September 30th and a cost of $60 for the base game.

Spooktacular was designed by T. Brad Talton Jr. and published by Level 99 Games, with illustrations by Javier Roa González.

Spooktacular Components

The game contains the following:

• 20 Monster Boards
• 39 Monsters
• 60 Guest Meeples
• Game Board
• 25 Basic Action Cards
• 62 Unique Action Cards
• Cloth Figure Bag
• 76 Tokens
• 9 Team Member Meeples

The game board represents the movie theater where the action of Spooktacular takes place. The “street” surrounding the board is the score track.

You’ll play as one of 20 different original movie monsters. Rather than miniatures, Level99 has opted for screen-printed meeples, giving them a cartoon style which look great on the table. Some of the monsters get multiple meeples, such as Regoo, a Blob creature that can create copies of itself.

Every monster also comes with its own player board, which gives you instructions for setup and gameplay for that particular monster. Monsters come in 3 different complexity levels: beginner, intermediate, and advanced, as noted on the lower left corner of each board. The boards themselves are thick card, with a linen finish.

On the flip side of the player boards are the movie posters for each unique monster. Just as much fun and care has been taken with those as with the game design itself, as you can see:

The movie theater “guests” that the players will terrorize are represented by small wood meeples that come in 5 different colors.

When getting placed into rooms within the movie theater, the guests will get randomly drawn out of the included drawstring bag. The bag itself is made from canvas, a higher-quality material than you’ll find in bags from most other board games.

There are several tokens included in the game. While many are unique to individual monsters, a few are common to the game. There are room locks for denoting rooms not used for smaller player counts, police cars that double as player score markers, and tickets that award a random number of points when a player has collected a set of guests in all 5 colors.

Every player will start with a common set of 5 action cards, as well as a variable number of cards unique to their particular monster. As with the player boards, the cards have a nice linen finish.

How to Play Spooktacular

You can download a copy of the rulebook here.

The Goal

The goal of the game is to spook and devour guests, and clash with other monsters to earn points.

Setup

Every player chooses a monster, and takes that monster’s player board, the monster’s figure(s), a set of basic action cards, the cards unique to that monster, and any tokens noted in the “setup” area of the player board. Shuffle the basic and unique cards to make a deck.

Place the map board in the middle of the table. Place locks into rooms depending on player count. Choose a starting player, and then assign score trackers from the first player on, going clockwise. Place score trackers on the starting space on the board.

Creates a pile of face-down tickets, 2 per player in the game. Return unused tickets to the box.

Put all the guests in the bag, then put a number of guests into the room equal to the number of doors in the room, minus one.

Starting with the first player and going clockwise, each player follows their monster’s setup steps. 

Gameplay

Once everyone has completed their setups, the first player takes their turn. Each monster plays differently, and so each of the monster player boards has a different set of Turn Steps to follow. When it’s a player’s turn, they follow the Turn Steps listed on their board in order.

Turns will often consist of a combination of playing cards from your hand, and using the unique abilities of your monster. 

There are a few actions common to all monsters:

• Move. Move your monster or other components from a room through a door to a connected room.
• Spook. For each door in the room your monster is in, choose a guest and move them through that door into a connected room. Then score 1 point per guest moved.
• Devour. Remove the guest(s) in your current room that you’re instructed to devour, and place them next to your player board. If, after devouring, you have a guest of each color, return the set to the bag and receive a ticket. Then, add 3 guests drawn from the bag to the room with the least figures.

Game End

As soon as a player reaches 50 points or the last ticket has been taken, the game end is triggered. Play out the rest of the round. Finally, reveal any tickets and add those to players’ scores. The player with the most points wins. If there’s a tie, victory goes to the player with the most tickets.

Solo Mode

There are rules to add an Automa (an AI opponent) to play against in a solo game, or even use as an additional opponent in multi-player games. Fittingly, the Automa is the killer robot Killtron. Setup and control of Killtron is fairly simple. The monster board is not used; instead, you create three separate decks of 3 cards each, and then follow the steps listed in the solo mode section of the rulebook to control Killtron, much as you would follow the turn steps for your own monster.

Spooktacular is GeekDad Approved!

Why You Should Play Spooktacular

If you’re used to reading game reviews here on GeekDad, you may have been struck by just how short the “Gameplay” section is for this review. But that’s a testament to how easy Spooktacular is to learn, teach, and play. Beyond a few basic rules, everything a player needs to understand how to play his monster is right there on their monster board, clearly spelled out. I only forgot one genreal rule the first time I played, the one about refilling a room after turning in a set of guests. But otherwise, gameplay has gone smoothly for all my sessions. And I appreciate that designer T. Brad Talton Jr. has also made things easier on the players with these monsters by indicating the complexity level for each one right on the monster boards, in order to help players choose the monsters they want to play. 

While the basics of the game are simple, there’s a ton of variety and strategy in the gameplay. Each of the monsters in Spooktacular has unique mechanics that will affect how players employ them in their games, which allows for a ton of replayability. The fairly short gameplay time means you can get in a few games of Spooktacular in an evening; just choose different monsters, go through the quick setup, and you’re good to go.

Spooktacular is a game just dripping with theme. The artwork by Javier Roa González really captures that B-movie aesthetic well, and there’s a lot of creativity in the designs of not just the monsters, but their movie posters. The art style for the monsters gives them a fun, family-friendly quality, enhanced by using wood meeples instead of plastic miniatures.

Because of the ease of play and the elegant design, Spooktacular is a great family game to pull out for Halloween. I think that kids younger than the listed 12+ age could certainly play the basic complexity level monsters. Some parents may find the “devouring” of guests to be objectionable for children, but you can also describe it as “collecting” guests instead, as set collection is exactly what you are doing with the “devour” action.

It’s hard to think of many negatives with Spooktacular. The one that really springs to mind is that I would have loved a monster board for Killtron specifically for his Automa, so players don’t have to keep referring to the rulebook for how to play him in solo mode. Of course, this is something that Level 99 could easily print up and add into their webstore or for future editions, for those that intend to play the solo mode. And the sheer variety of different monsters can occasionally lead to some imbalances in the gameplay, depending on how many players there are and which monsters are chosen. Thankfully, Spooktacular plays quickly enough that it doesn’t feel too bad when that latter case happens…and you can just play again, with different monsters!

Spooktacular is a fast-playing, easy to learn game that will see a lot of time on the tabletop, and not just during spooky season. It’s a game with asymmetric gameplay that brings a lot of variety and varying strategies, but is still very accessible for players. And it’s a lot of fun! While certainly not the first game I’ve reviewed where everyone plays as monsters, Spooktacular is so far the best. It’s a fantastic blend of game and art design that most boardgamers are sure to enjoy.

For more information or to make a purchase, visit the Level 99 Games website.

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Everyone wants to be the next big breakout cartoon—assemble the best cast of characters and find fame!

What Is FlipToons?

FlipToons is a deck-building game for 1 to 4 players, ages 10 and up, and takes about 15–30 minutes to play. It retails for $19.95 and will be released at Gen Con 2025, with pre-orders open now that will deliver in August. The game is a mix of deck-building and auto-battler (more on that below), and is pretty easy to learn, so the game is family-friendly but isn’t just for kids.

FlipToons was designed by Jordy Adan and Renato Simões and published by Thunderworks Games, with illustrations by Diego Sá.

FlipToons Components

FlipToons is entirely cards:

• 24 Starting cards ( 6 per player)
• 4 Fame cards
• 4 Reference cards
• First Player card
• Critic’s Choice card
• 53 Toon cards
• 5 Price cards
• Big Button mini-expansion:
  • 4 Big Button cards
  • 2 Axolotl cards

The bulk of the cards in the game are toon cards, done in the old rubber-hose style and depicting various animals. Each card has a rank and indicates how many are in the deck. Below that is a fame amount, and often some additional card effects. For the most part, the card effects are pretty easy to understand, but there is a section in the rulebook that provides further details about specific animal abilities.

The fame cards are a simple double-sided chart, two columns per side, numbered 1 to 40. The player reference card has a turn order on one side and an icon glossary on the other, but also includes an arrow at the top of the card—you use it with the fame card to indicate your current fame each round. Other cards are pretty self-explanatory: price cards just have a big number on them from 3 to 15 indicating the price of a card in the market, and there’s also a first player marker and a Critic’s Choice card that shows a “+3” on it.

If you order FlipToons from Thunderworks Games, you’ll also get the Big Button mini-expansion—I’ll explain how that works at the end of the “How to Play” section.

The whole thing comes in a box with a small footprint, just big enough to hold two decks of cards side-by-side, with a little extra room in case you sleeve cards or they come out with several more mini-expansions. I usually associate deck-building games with big boxes and hundreds of cards, so it’s always fun to see something like this that’s very compact.

How to Play Fliptoons

You can download a copy of the rulebook here.

The Goal

The goal of the game is to score the most fame in the Final Flip, which happens after any player reaches at least 30 fame.

Setup

Lay out the price cards in order. Shuffle the toon cards and reveal five cards below the price cards for the market—arrange them from lowest to highest rank so the lowest rank card costs 3 and the highest rank card costs 15. Set the Critic’s Choice card nearby.

Give each player a set of 6 starting cards, as well as a fame card and a reference card. The player who most recently watched a cartoon takes the first player card.

Gameplay

Each round has four phases: Flip, Check Fame, Market, and Cleanup.

Flip: The flip phase is done simultaneously by everyone. Shuffle all of your cards, and then play them out face-up in a grid: two rows of three cards each. Some cards have abilities that are triggered immediately when played, though none of the starting cards do. These could result in more than 6 cards being played. Once you complete the grid, you stop flipping cards even if you have cards left over. If you run out of cards before you fill your grid, you just stop. During this phase of the game, you don’t make any choices—you just play the cards in the order they come up.

Check Fame: Everyone checks fame simultaneously. Add up all of the fame shown on all of your face-up cards. Some card abilities will let you stack cards—all face-up cards count, even if they have other cards stacked on them. Mark your fame using your reference card and the fame card. If anyone generated at least 30 fame, the player with the most fame this round takes the Critic’s Choice card, and the next round will be the Final Flip.

Market: In turn order, each player gets two market actions, which can be used to hire or dismiss toons. To hire a toon, pay the fame cost shown above that card in the market. To dismiss a toon from your grid, pay 5 fame and then place it in your own personal “dismissed” cards pile. (You may only dismiss face-up cards in your grid; cards that have been turned face-down or that are still in your deck cannot be dismissed.) Note that unspent fame does not carry over to the next turn, so use it or lose it!

After both of your market actions, refill the market if needed, making sure to arrange all the toons by rank order.

Cleanup: Collect all the cards in your grid and add them to your deck, and reshuffle your entire deck. (In a 2-player game, you also discard the leftmost and rightmost cards in the market and refill.) If nobody reached 30 fame this round, pass the first player card clockwise and start a new round.

Game End

When a player has achieved at least 30 fame, the next round will be the Final Flip. The Critic’s Choice card, which is given to the player who had the highest fame during the round, is worth +3 fame in the Final Flip. The player who earns the most fame during the Final Flip wins!

In case of a tie, tied players collect all their cards and flip again. Continue until there is a winner!

Big Button Expansion

If you order FlipToons from Thunderworks Games, you’ll get the Big Button expansion included for free. During setup, give each player a Big Button card, and shuffle the 2 Axolotl cards into the toon deck.

Once during the game, you may push your Big Button (flipping it over to the broken side) to redo your flip phase. Shuffle your grid back into your deck and flip again.

The Axolotl is a Rank 26 card (the highest so far) worth 7 fame; when you hire it, you may immediately reset your Big Button if it has already been used.

FlipToons is GeekDad Approved!

Why You Should Play FlipToons

FlipToons hasn’t been released yet, but since I got an early copy back at the end of April, I’ve already played it over a dozen times. It’s a quick, snappy game that takes a popular game mechanic—deck-building—and combines it with one that may not be as well-known: auto battler. Auto battlers are games in which you make some decisions about how things are set up, but then there’s a portion of the game that just plays out on its own. Challengers! is another example of a favorite game that uses a similar mechanic—you add cards to your team, but when it comes time to play a match against another player, you both just play out your cards in order.

There are 25 different animals represented in the toon deck, and I like the variety of powers, which can make for some cool combos. There are a couple that will flip other cards face-down, nullifying them, but they usually provide a lot of fame themselves. The Rabbit can stack on top of face-down cards (and each other), giving you several cards’ worth of fame in a single grid slot, and the Bull gets an extra 7 fame if there are face-down cards. The Cat and the Tiger both get fame boosts based on how many cards you’ve dismissed—these can be particularly good with the Alligator and Snake, which will both dismiss cards randomly from your deck or grid. It can be a bit chaotic and unpredictable, but if you get that going early enough, those felines can be quite formidable. Several animals provide extra fame based on their positioning, so you’re hoping they turn up in the right place: the top row, the bottom row, the middle column, or next to particular animals.

As an example of how cards can combo in ridiculous ways, I set up the above photo with a whole lot of combos. We start with the Elephant, which flips the previous card face-down—but since it was the first card, it provides 7 fame with no downside. Next is the Monkey—if it’s in the top row, it moves up and creates its own row, leaving its original space open. Then comes the Turkey, which stacks on top of the previously played card so it’s also in that extra upper row. Then the Dragonfly, a starting card that can still be valuable because it awards fame based on unique adjacent cards. The Ostrich is next—only 1 fame, but the next card played stacks on it. That would be the Bull, which gives extra fame if you have any face-down cards. In the bottom row, the first card is the Eagle, which flips the next card face-down. Then come two Rabbits—they stack up on the face-down card—the Dragonfly is now worth 6 fame! Finally, there’s a Bear, which gives extra fame for every face-up card in the grid. Of course, it’s unlikely that you’d be able to get this exact build in your deck, and even if you did, the cards have to come out in just the right order, but you can get a sense of how different cards can synergize.

The cards are always arranged by rank in the market, so that the weakest card is cheapest and the most powerful card is the most expensive—but that does mean the specific price of any given card is not set. If you’re lucky, the market is full of high-ranked cards, and you could get a rank 20 Turkey for only 3 fame. If you’re unlucky, you might end up being unable to afford even a Rank 8 Camel because it has been bumped up to the higher prices. Dismissing a toon always costs 5 fame, so that’s always an option if there isn’t anything in the market that you want. And as with many other deck-building games, it also matters what you get rid of. If you hire a bunch of cards but don’t dismiss anything, then your fame levels can vary wildly from round to round, particularly if you’re only drawing a small portion of your total deck. And, of course, your starting cards are typically weaker and won’t provide as much fame or powerful effects compared to cards you can hire from the market.

I know that a lot of game publishers have made changes to their 2025 lineup due to the tariffs, with many of them looking for smaller, often card-based games that are cheaper to print and ship, so expect to see a lot more small games hitting the shelves this fall and winter. FlipToons is definitely smaller than most of Thunderworks Games’ titles, but it has been a big hit with my gaming groups and I’ve had a lot of fun introducing it to folks. I think it can be both a nice introduction to deck-building for folks who are new to that, as well as a refreshing twist on the genre for experienced players. FlipToons is on the simpler side: you make decisions about what goes into your deck, but you don’t have any control over the order that they’ll come out. Flipping out your grid of cards feels a bit like pulling the lever on a jackpot, and hitting that perfect combo is a thrill!

Visit the Thunderworks Games website to pre-order a copy of FlipToons!

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Calm your brain at this quiet lake.

What Is A Gentle Rain?

A Gentle Rain is a tile-laying puzzle game for 1 or more players, ages 8 and up, and takes about 15 minutes to play. It retails for $22.99 and is available directly from Incredible Dream or at your local game store. There is also a Bloom Edition that is a Target exclusive for $15.99; I’ll include a little bit about that in the Components section below. While the game is primarily a solo game, it can easily be played cooperatively by more players taking turns.

A Gentle Rain was designed by Kevin Wilson and published by Incredible Dream, with illustrations by Wiktor Kozyra.

A Gentle Rain Components

Here’s what comes in the box:

• 28 Tiles
• 8 Tokens

The components list is very short because it’s a small game, but they’re also nice components. The tiles are squares with cut-out corners, making them kind of shaped like plus signs, so that when you place four of them together there is a round cut-out where the corners would meet. The tiles are illustrated to look like a top-down view of a lake, with floating lily pads, fish swimming underwater, ducks floating on the surface, and so on.

The backs of the tiles also have some UV gloss that looks like little ripples on the water from raindrops.

On the edges of the tiles are larger lily pad halves with various colored flowers, matching the flowers printed on the round wooden disks. There are 8 different flowers, each with different colors and petal shapes. The whole thing comes in a small box—it’s not flat, so it wouldn’t fit in your jeans pocket, but it’s definitely small enough to carry around easily.

Target’s Bloom Edition replaces the wooden disk with plastic 3D flowers. They’re very cute, though it looks like there are only two different flower shapes among the eight colors. The box is also a different shape, with proportions more like a small book. Ultimately the difference between the two is a matter of preference, but I personally like the wooden tokens version that I have.

How to Play A Gentle Rain

You can download a copy of the rulebook here.

The Goal

The goal of the game is to place all of the flower tokens using as few tiles as possible.

Setup

Mix up the tiles and make a face-down stack, and then draw the first tile and place it in face-up. Set the flower tokens nearby.

Gameplay

Draw tiles one at a time and add them to the lake—you must place tiles so that the flower halves match. If the tile can go somewhere then you must place it. If it doesn’t fit anywhere at all, discard it and draw the next one.

Whenever you create a square of four tiles, completing the circular hole in the center, you may place a flower token. The token must match at least one of the four flowers surrounding that hole. If you’ve already placed all of the matching tokens, then you don’t place any additional tokens.

If you’re playing with multiple players, just take turns placing tiles.

Game End

The game ends when you’ve either placed all of the flower tokens, or you run out of tiles.

Your final score is the number of flower tokens placed plus the number of tiles left in the draw pile. (The maximum possible score is 21.)

A Gentle Rain is GeekDad Approved!

Why You Should Play A Gentle Rain

Okay, in my rules explanation, I did leave out a few instructions. Before the setup step, the rule sheet actually starts with “Get comfortable” and suggests making some tea, putting on some nice music, maybe getting into comfy clothes. This is a game that isn’t just about the play, but is about creating a relaxing atmosphere while you play. According to the website, Kevin Wilson designed A Gentle Rain at a time when he was having anxiety attacks and found that doing jigsaw puzzles helped him, and the game definitely has a bit of the feeling of putting together a puzzle. It’s a calm, chill experience as you draw tiles and look for matching flowers.

There is a little bit of strategy to consider if you’re really trying to increase your score, even though that’s not the main focus of the game. For instance, if you make a U-shaped hole, that’s going to be tougher to fill in because you’ll need to find a piece that matches on all three sides. On the other hand, if you do manage to do so, it’s an amazing feeling to draw exactly the right piece—and it completes two flower tokens at once. You also want to watch that you don’t create impossible-to-fill spaces: since each tile has four different colored flowers on its edges, you don’t want to create a spot that has two of the same color facing it. I also try to avoid making too many spaces with the same combinations, because you probably don’t need multiple spots for a blue flower next to a white flower.

There’s also the choice of which flower token to place, because you don’t want to get stuck completing a circle and then not having the right token to fill it—or not having enough tiles left with a certain color flower. Generally, I choose a token based on which flower halves have been used the most so far, but that’s not a guarantee.

There is, of course, some amount of luck involved in the order that tiles come out. Sometimes you might just get stuck making a long straight line because you keep getting things that just don’t match well or would create those impossible spots. Other times you may just draw match after match, creating your needed squares every other turn. Although each tile is unique, you won’t always get every possible combination of tiles—after all, with 8 flower colors, there are a lot more ways to arrange four of them than there are tiles in the game, which means that it’s quite possible to create spaces that can’t be filled simply because that tile doesn’t exist.

Whether you’re playing for points or just playing to occupy your hands, A Gentle Rain is the sort of game that you can just pull out and play without being too mentally taxing. You can play while listening to a podcast, or watching a show, or having a conversation with a friend. When Incredible Dream sent me a copy, I showed it to my wife, who generally doesn’t play a lot of tabletop games, and she immediately claimed it. It’s the one game that lives in our dining room instead of down in the basement game room—not only because it’s so compact, but because she’s taken to playing it as a way to wind down before bed or just when she has a free moment. It’s one that my kids have also borrowed often, and we often take it with us when we’re out somewhere where there will be a little bit of table surface to play.

If you like puzzles and you need a way to carve out a little chunk of calm during your busy day, I recommend giving A Gentle Rain a try! Visit the Incredible Dream website for more information!

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On the front of the card box for Flip 7 is the bold statement: “The Greatest Card Game of All Time!” Naturally, that’s going to make any gamer want to put the game to the test. So let’s see how Flip 7 lives up to the promise!

What Is Flip 7?

Flip 7 is a push your luck card game for 3+  players, ages 8 and up, and takes about 20 minutes to play. It’s currently a Walmart exclusive, with the 2nd edition of the game selling for $7.99 at Walmart stores or at Walmart.com. It will also be getting a wide release on May 1st.

Flip 7 was designed by Eric Olsenand published by The Op Games, with illustrations by O’Neil Mabile.

Flip 7 Components

There’s not a lot in the box: a deck of 94 cards, and a rules booklet. The cards are of good quality, and shuffle easily. The deck consists largely of numerical cards, with some special ability cards mixed in.

The numerical cards are numbered 0-12, and aside from a single “0” card, every other numerical card has the same number of cards in the deck as their value. So, for example, one “1”, two “2”s, three “3”s, etc.

How to Play Flip 7

You can download a copy of the rulebook here.

The Goal

The goal of the game is to be the first player to 200 points.

Setup

Either have a pen and paper handy to keep score, or you can use the web app. There are also printable score sheets if you so desire.

Shuffle the cards thoroughly, and choose a player to be Dealer for the round. 

Gameplay

In turn order, the Dealer deals one card face up to each player including themselves. If an Action card comes up during the dealing, it is immediately resolved, then continue dealing until every player has been dealt a card.

The Dealer now offers each player the option to “hit” (get dealt another card) or “stay” (exit the round and bank points). If you take a card, it is placed face up next to the one(s) you have already received. If you are ever dealt a numerical card that matches another card in front of you, then you bust and receive no points for the round. 

Play for the round continues in that fashion until everyone has either stayed, or have busted. At that point, every player that has not busted adds up their numerical cards, applies any score modifier cards they have received that round, and then notes their total for the round.

If you have 7 or more unique numerical cards after you stayed for the round, then you also “Flip 7,” and take an additional 15 points for the round.

The deck then moves to the next player in clockwise order, who becomes the Dealer for the next round.

Action Cards

There are 3 different action cards in the game, with 3 copies of each. Action cards can be played on any active player, including yourself. They are:

• Freeze! –  The player receiving this card banks all points they have collected, and are done for the round.
• Flip Three! – The player receiving this card must accept the next three cards, flipping them one at a time. Stop if the player can Flip 7 numerical cards, or the player busts.
• Second Chance! – Keep this card. If you receive a duplicate numerical card, you can discard that card along with the Second Chance! card. You may only ever have one copy of the Second Chance! card; if you receive a duplicate you must choose another active player to give it to.

Modifier Cards

Modifier cards increase your total score. There are 5 different cards in the deck that will add an amount to your total score ranging from 2 to 10, and 1 card in the deck that will double your score.

Game End

The game ends when one of the players reaches 200 points. The player with the most points, wins.

Flip 7 is GeekDad Approved!

Why You Should Play Flip 7

So, is Flip 7 “the greatest card game of all time”? Well, probably not. But is it really fun to play, easy to teach, and just a delight in a tiny package? Absolutely!

I have yet to play Flip 7 with anyone that didn’t thoroughly enjoy the game. My last play, with my girlfriend and her teenage daughter, resulted in more laughter from everyone than we’ve had together in quite awhile. They appreciated that they were able to learn the game from me in just a minute or two, and then we could focus on just playing and having a good time.

Flip 7 has simple gameplay, but that doesn’t mean it’s devoid of strategy. Knowing exactly how many of each card there are in the deck allows players to strategically decide when to take a card, and when to cash out on your points. It’s a push your luck game that you can definitely know your odds before you ask for another card.

The Action cards add dimension to the game, in a good way. They can save you, in the form of the “Second Chance!” card, or they can ruin your day, like when you’re on the receiving end of a “Flip Three!” card and you get a duplicate number card…on what would have been your seventh numerical card, like I did in one game. So not only did I not get that Flip 7, I ended up with zero points for the round.

Being a small card game, Flip 7 is easily transportable. Just throw it into a bag and you’re good to go! The price point is certainly worth mentioning too. With the costs of many board games rising not just due to inflation but because of the recent tariffs, it’s refreshing to see a game this good that comes in under $10, even after taxes.

Flip 7 includes a few non-playable cards that you can hand out to people that you think might like to play the game. I anticipate that I will pretty quickly hand those out, but mostly as reminders of the name of the game for people I’ve played it with, so that they can go out and get their own copies. 

Flip 7 may not be the greatest card game of all time, but it’s likely going to be one of the greatest card games in your collection. It works great as a filler game that’s super quick to get to the table on a game night, but is also enjoyable to play several rounds of if you’re at a party. It’s definitely well-deserving of being awarded “GeekDad Approved.”

For more information or to make a purchase, visit The Op Games!

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Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of this game for review purposes.

The game that got us all buzzing the most this year was Apiary, designed by Connie Vogelmann, illustrated by Kwanchai Moriya, and published by Stonemaier Games.

We’ll share our thoughts below on what we love about Apiary. You can also read my review here for a more detailed look at the game.

Jonathan H. Liu

Apiary is a game that just seems to click on every level: the gameplay is engaging, the artwork is top-notch, and the components are excellent, even down to the well-planned storage tray for the box. While it is one of the heavier games from our list this year, some of that weight is simply from the number of different things you can do, not that any given action is complex or difficult to grasp.

Although it is a competitive game, most of what you’re doing is building up your own hive, deciding what types of tiles to get and the best way to arrange them on your own mat. While it’s quite possible that somebody may take a tile that you’d hoped to get, there aren’t any direct attacks: your hive is your personal domain, and you can construct it however you like.

Connie Vogelmann took a common genre—worker placement—and introduced a small twist that really changes the nature of the game: any worker can be bumped out of the way so there’s no blocking, but if your bee gets bumped off the board, it returns to you at a higher strength. That means a couple things: first, that the game feels a little less confrontational overall. You never feel like you have no good choices on your turn simply because the spaces you wanted to use are occupied. Instead, it raises a new question: do you want to bump a rival’s worker and make it stronger for them?

Apiary is a great example of the way that a lot of simple actions can be more than the sum of their parts: the result is a game that has a lot of depth, and repeated plays will be rewarded with a better understanding of how all those little parts fit together.

Alex Hart

As someone who is constantly introducing games to new players, I’m always on the lookout for board games that appeal to an audience wider than the typical core gamer demographic, and Apiary, despite it being one of our more complex nominees, accomplishes that feat as well, if not better, than some of its other Stonemaier Games predecessors.

From a gameplay perspective, Apiary presents an accessible but challenging worker placement puzzle that feels like it values both timing and contrarian thinking equally. Sometimes, it makes the most sense to zig while others zag and gain advantages in a sector that other players are ignoring. And sometimes, it makes sense to grab a space that you know your neighbor is gunning for, just so they can bump you out and improve the value of your worker bee. Whichever you choose, the “bumping” mechanic makes sure that no action feels lost and that no interaction feels too spiteful – sure, there will always be moments when someone grabs the tile you were working towards for several turns, but with your newly-improved bees and a plethora of options, Apiary makes it easier than most worker placement games to pivot to a new target.

Another big selling point of Apiary for me was the theme. I’m the type of person who is constantly promoting games to others (I’ve even picked up a few shifts at my local game store so I could get paid to promote these games!) and I have found that games that have good elevator pitches make it to the table more often. Being able to condense your game into one sentence or less allows people to instantly wrap their heads around it and make a judgment call on whether it’s a game for them and I think Apiary has one of the simplest pitches of all: Space Bees! It’s amazing to me how many folks I’ve seen have a visceral response to that specific phrase and it almost always gets people wanting to know more. Ultimately, I think this is the goal of board game theming and Apiary does a wonderful job of  balancing that fine line between a pasted-on theme and something that feels gimmicky.

Apiary is a blast: it’s challenging, it’s puzzly, your decisions feel like they really have weight to them, and just like any good worker placement game, you can never do everything you originally set out to do. Despite it being overshadowed by some of the more flashy Stonemaier titles in recent memory, I think Apiary, with its wonderful mix of theme, strategy, and gameplay, deserves its place alongside Wingspan and Scythe in the Stonemaier Games pantheon. But regardless of how you rank it against the classics, one thing’s for certain: Apiary absolutely deserves to take home 2024’s GeekDad Game of the Year! 

Paul Benson

Bees… in… spaaaaace!

Yes, that’s right. Apiary grabs you right at the get go with a surprising theme that’s, let’s face it, quite intriguing. And one that plays out quite nicely using worker placement! The designer, Connie Vogelmann, could have chosen to make it a game about terrestrial bees instead of extraterrestrial, and mechanically the game would still work the same. For your exploration area on the board, you’d just be visiting different neighborhood yards instead of planets. But somehow, making them space bees just makes the game so much more attractive for the average player!

Speaking of attractive, that Kwanchai Moriya artwork is absolutely gorgeous. It adds to the atmosphere of the game, without distracting from the graphic design. It’s easy to see all the different spaces on the board, and read the symbols to know what actions you can take. There’s a lot of player agency in Apiary, but you don’t get overwhelmed or confused when you look at the board, even if this is your first time playing.

I know I’m certainly not the first person to say this, but one of the best things that Apiary brings to the table is the mechanic where you can upgrade the strength of your workers. As opposed to most worker placement games, with Apiary none of the spaces are ever blocked. Instead, you can bump another player’s worker (or even your own) either into an adjacent second space, or off the board completely. When they’re knocked out of a space, the worker bee grows in strength, which you indicate by simply rotating your bee to the next highest number, as you can see in the photo below.  Some of the worker spaces either give you bonuses if you have a level 4 bee, or even require your workers to be level 4, so this is a strategy that you’ll want to pursue.

Once a level 4 bee is bumped, it goes into “hibernation” and removed from the game, and you take a spot in the Hibernation Comb.  The hibernation spaces give you one-time bonuses, and may even give you extra points at the end of the game. The worker bee mechanic gives a nice additional puzzle for Apiary, as you’re not just focusing on your objectives while building the hive, but managing your workers’ strengths and deciding when to grow new workers to replace the ones that have hibernated.

This marriage of theme, artwork, and mechanics makes Apiary a truly engaging and satisfying experience. It’s a game with a lot going on, but it’s not difficult to teach and learn. But I should point out the one flaw that I found in the game. At our Game of the Year playthroughs, Jonathan pointed out to us that bees breathe through their abdomen, not their heads. That means that the helmet on the bee on the box cover art should really be on its body. But I’m guessing most of you reading this didn’t know that factoid (I certainly didn’t) so I applaud artist Kwanchai Moriya for putting that helmet right where most people think it belongs!

Rob Huddleston

Jonathan first introduced me to Apiary when we got together to determine the 2023 Game of the Year and I immediately fell in love. I bought my own copy that weekend, and have played it a bunch since then. In fact, one of the regulars in my gaming group consistently asks to play “bees in space.”

I like the twist it puts on worker placement games–rather than having a space blocked by a previous player, you can “bump” them, but at a price: you’re increasing the value and utility of that opponent’s bee, making for an interesting strategic choice. And, there are plenty of times when you are trying to play your own bees so that they will get bumped by others. 

I also appreciate that there are quite a few paths to victory, and that they can be largely shaped by your initial, random selection of your starting faction and hive mat. When we played in it last weekend, I got a board that awarded me a lot of Queen’s Favor, and so I adjusted my strategy, which normally doesn’t focus on that aspect of the game, to work towards collecting a lot of that. While hardly unique to Apiary, I do like games that both provide multiple paths to victory and give some kind of starting condition that should point a player to a particular path.

I also really like the look of the game. The design here is great. The plastic bees are cool. The Queen Bee mothership is a fantastic mini. And design of the boards and the tokens and all the rest are beautiful. It’s a really fun game to play that also has great table presence.

A well deserved win for a truly great game.

Once again, congrats to the Apiary team for creating our Game of the Year, and a round of applause for all of our other finalists for some excellent competition for the crown!

Gather ’round, inmates: Nargash the goblin invites you to join the best gambling ring in Kulbak Prison: time to roll them bones!

In “Reaping the Rewards,” I take a look at the finished product from a crowdfunding campaign. Emerald Skulls was originally funded through Kickstarter in July 2024 and was shipped to backers earlier this year, and is now available for purchase. This review is adapted from my Kickstarter Tabletop Alert, updated to reflect the final product.

What Is Emerald Skulls?

Emerald Skulls is a dice gambling game for 1 to 6 players (up to 8 with an expansion), ages 14 and up, and takes about 30 to 45 minutes to play. It retails for $24.95 and is available in stores and directly from Thunderworks Games. There’s also a Swindler’s Chest for $74.95 that includes a playmat, the 7-8 player expansion, and the standalone game Goblin Vaults. Although the box says 14 and up, you could play this with younger kids (I have!); the advanced betting cards can get a little tricky, but the standard betting cards don’t require quite as much math.

Emerald Skulls was designed by Steven Dast and published by Thunderworks Games, with illustrations by Diego Sá.

Emerald Skulls Components

Here’s what comes in the box:

• Skull board
• 4 Standard Betting cards
• 12 Advanced Betting cards (4 each Jackpot, Side, and Out cards)
• 10 Opposition Cards (for solo game)
• 6 Player Aid cards
• 7 Dice
• 12 Betting markers (2 each in 6 player colors)
• 24 Reroll cubes
• 84 Gear tokens (in 1, 5, and 10 denominations)

The box lid doubles as a dice rolling tray with an interior illustration: it’s a nice touch, particularly if your table doesn’t have a playmat, though it can make it a little harder for people across the table to see all of your dice.

The board illustration is made to look like a stitched-together piece of cloth with various patches sewn on for the central skull and some of the player references.

The dice are custom six-sided dice, showing stylized tally marks for the numbers 1 through 5, and a skull for the 6. The reroll cubes are small plastic green cubes: we figured they’re probably supposed to be boogers since they’re associated with the skull’s nose and the icon for them looks slimy.

The betting markers are rectangular wooden tokens, painted with a color and a player icon, about the size of a domino, but despite being pretty simple, they do make a pretty satisfying “clack!” when you stack them, and over the course of the game players are often racing to slap them down on to their bets.

The large player aid cards include a turn sequence on one side, and then a list of the “outs” on the other side. The top corner also includes the player color and icon so you can remember who’s who once all the betting tokens have been placed.

How to Play Emerald Skulls

You can download a copy of the rulebook here.

The Goal

The goal of the game is to amass the most gears, both by rolling dice well and by betting correctly on other players’ rolls.

Setup

Set up the skull board in the center, with the betting cards to the side, and a supply of gears and reroll cubes nearby. The supply of gears is based on the player count. Give each player the two betting tokens of their color as well as a player aid card.

Gameplay

Players will take turns being the Tumbler, who rolls the dice, and everyone else may place bets.

First, the Tumbler decides how many dice to roll for the turn: you get 3 for free, but may pay gears to roll up to 7 dice.

Players may place bets next to the betting cards before each roll, and bets are placed in real time rather than in turn order, so act quickly! Betting tokens are stacked on top of each other, with the earliest bets at the bottom of the stack, which will pay out the most if that outcome occurs. You may place both of your bets on the same location, in which case you’ll earn two of the payouts listed. (Some cards have two payouts and some have three—there may only be as many bets as there are payouts.)

After each roll, the Tumbler may choose any number of dice showing the same value, and place them onto the corresponding space on the skull board, but there are some restrictions. You may only place dice of the same or higher value as the highest die already placed; for instance, if you have already placed a 3-value die (on the nose), then you may not place any more 1-value or 2-value dice. Skulls are wild and may be counted as any value.

There is no limit to the number of 1s, 2s, and 3s (which represent bottom teeth, top teeth, and noses—for some reason goblins can have any number of noses, I suppose). There is a maximum of two 4s (the eyes) and one 5 (the emerald in the forehead).

Each time, after rolling but before placing dice, the Tumbler may choose to reroll in two ways: spend a reroll cube to take a die from the supply (if any) and then reroll all of the unplaced dice, or “pick your nose.” If you have any 3-value dice already placed on the nose, you may place your betting token next to the nose, retrieve one 3 die, and then reroll all of the unplaced dice. Note that you may only pick your nose twice (once for each betting token), and you may not retrieve skull dice for this.

After each placement, check if the Tumbler is “out.” There are five possible outs:

• Bust Out: the Tumbler was unable to place any dice legally from this roll
• Chicken Out: there are dice remaining, but the Tumbler decides not to roll again
• Gem Out: the Tumbler placed a die in the 5 slot (but has dice remaining)
• Run Out: the Tumbler placed all of their dice (but did not fill the 5 slot)
• Double Out: the Tumbler placed all of their dice, including one in the 5 slot

Each of these possibilities has different payouts (with Bust Out paying the Tumbler nothing), shown on the sides of the skull board. If you placed the gem, you will get paid for all of the dice, but if you didn’t, you will get paid only for the non-skull dice you placed. Higher dice values generally pay more, and the 3s give you reroll cubes.

The Tumbler gets paid first, and then the bets are paid out in the numerical order of the betting cards, with the earliest bets in each stack paying out first. The standard bets include two cards that encompass all five “out” possibilities, so at least one of those results will get paid. The other two cards include some jackpots (the purple sections), which can provide bigger payouts for both the Tumbler and the bettors. For instance, “Mad Nagarsh” pays out if the Tumbler reaches Gem Out and has only placed skull dice on the board; if that occurs, the Tumbler may choose the jackpot payout (5 gears per skull placed) instead of the payout shown on the board. Other jackpots include “Grim Grin” (Run Out with only teeth placed) and Emerald Skull (Double Out with a full skull: 3 teeth, 1 nose, 2 eyes, and 1 gem).

After paying out all the bets, players retrieve their betting tokens, the dice are passed to the next player, and a new round begins.

Game End

If the supply of gears runs out, even in the middle of paying out bets, the game ends immediately (and nobody else gets paid). The player with the most gears wins!

Advanced Betting Cards

The advanced betting cards are more complex, and allow you to bet against outcomes. Each of the advanced betting cards has two sides—many of them have a green “kicker” bet that offers an additional, spicier outcome. The number of cards used is based on the player count, but you’ll have some number of Jackpot (purple), Side bet (green), and Out (tan) cards.

One of the big differences in the advanced cards is that some payouts are affected by the number of opposing bets (indicated by the arrow icons). For example, the “Bite Alignment” shown above is a bet about how many teeth dice the Tumbler will place—more 1s or 2s. If you’re the first to bet they’ll get more 2s than 1s and they do, you get paid 2 gears, plus an additional gear for every opposing betting token on the other two options. (You can’t bet against yourself to increase your payouts.)

Some payouts require at least one opposing bet. “Nargash’s Woe” is a bet that the Tumbler will not gem out with all skulls—but the first payout is 2 gears times the number of opposing bets. So if nobody bets that the Tumbler will get Mad Nargash, then you get paid nothing even if you’re right!

Solo Mode

If you find yourself in solitary, don’t worry—you can still play against Vrax and Kur the Red, two gang leaders in the prison. Shuffle the opposition cards and give Vrax and Kur each 40 gears, with 80 gears in the supply.

Each round, after you’ve decided how many dice to roll, reveal the next opposition card and place Vrax and Kur’s betting tokens on the indicated spaces. Then roll as usual, and collect payouts.

The game ends when either the supply of gears runs out (as usual), or you’ve resolved the last opposition card. Your goal is to have the most gears when the game ends.

Emerald Skulls is GeekDad Approved!

Why You Should Play Emerald Skulls

Dice rolling! Press your luck! Betting on your opponent’s downfall! Emerald Skulls has it all!

If you read my original Kickstarter Tabletop Alert for Emerald Skulls last year, you’ll notice that this review of the finished game looks very similar, in part because very little was changed. Other than some slight graphics changes on the skull board—in fact, removing something I thought was a little weird at the time—there’s not a good way to tell my original photos apart from the new photos. I also really enjoyed Emerald Skulls at the time and was sad when I had to ship the prototype on to the next reviewer, and I’m excited it’s finally finished now.

I’ve always loved press-your-luck games: that temptation to just go one more time to see if you can score just a bit more before you quit… and then either you score the big payout or you bust and lose it all. I suppose it tickles the same part of my lizard brain that fuels gambling, though at least in a board game it’s not costing me actual money, right? And, of course, the feel and the clatter of rolling dice is always a fun way to experience that risk.

Emerald Skulls is a little more meaty than some dice games in terms of what you’re trying to roll: instead of busting because you rolled three shotguns or foxes (Zombie Dice and Chicken!, respectively), you bust when you can’t place any dice on your roll. And what controls that is based on how risky you’ve been in previous rolls, because placing higher on the skull has a bigger payout, but makes it more likely that you won’t roll high enough the next time. The thing is, you’ve always got at least a 1/3 chance that you won’t bust, because a 5 or a skull can be placed on the top tier, and then you’re done and you can’t take any additional risks. The more dice you have remaining, the less likely it is you won’t roll anything that matches—and 33% sounds pretty good, right? You’d think so—which is why I’m placing my bet on “Bust Out” when it’s your turn!

But in addition to climbing this ladder on the board, I like that there are optional jackpots that the Tumbler can go for. If you’ve got a lot of dice and you roll a lot of low numbers, you could go for the Grim Grin, getting 3 gears per die for just teeth (which usually pay out only 1 or 2 each). Another crowd favorite has been Mad Nargash, if you can Gem Out with only skulls placed—you earn 5 gears per die placed, and in this case it doesn’t matter if you run out of dice or not, so it allows some flexibility in how far you want to keep pushing your luck.

You want to roll even more dice? That’ll cost you, and keep in mind that you’re spending points to do so. Is it worth ten points to roll all seven dice? Maybe, if you can cash out with a big jackpot, but if you bust or only get a middling result, then you may have spent more than you earned.

Okay, so it’s a fun press-your-luck dice game—we’ve seen a lot of those before, right? What really takes Emerald Skulls to the next level is the betting mechanism. Not only do you get to take turns trying to score big while rolling dice, but you’re also engaged and active during other players’ turns as well. That one friend who plays it safe and just goes for a quick payout? Maybe place a bet that they’ll Gem Out—a quick way to finish your turn without using up all your dice. The other one who just can’t help taking all the risks? Definitely go for a bust—or even “Pick n’ Bust” if you feel they’re extra reckless this turn. Think somebody is going for a big jackpot? You can root for them, and get a little something for your trouble if they succeed.

Since the betting portion is in real-time, players have to make their decisions quickly. Bet wrong, and you get nothing. Bet late, and you don’t get paid as much even if you’re right. That tension between getting there fast and getting to the right place is a great part of the game, with players hovering around the cards to see what everyone else is going to do.

The advanced betting cards look pretty confusing at first and it can feel a little overwhelming looking at all the options when the game starts, but pretty soon you learn to see the patterns of how they work. What I like about these is the way that payouts are affected by the number of opposing bettors—if you go against the flow, you could get a much bigger payout! The advanced cards also offer more interesting outcomes, and let you bet for or against certain outcomes, making for more granular choices.

I’ve tried Emerald Skulls at different player counts, and although you can play with just two players, it’s a lot more interesting with at least three (and the more the better). With just two, you’re the only bettor so it’s very much a head-to-head Tumbler-vs-bettor contest. If you can cash out with even just a small payout while giving the bettor nothing, then that’s enough. With more players though, the others are betting against each other, which means that sometimes the Tumbler is not only deciding on their own payout, but also thinking about which bettor they’d rather get paid as well. If you know that one player will earn 10 for your “Pick n’ Bust” but the other will only get 5 if you Chicken Out, that can influence whether you take your next roll or not. Figuring out how to thread the needle to earn as much as possible as the Tumbler while paying out the fewest bets is a key tactic, and becomes much harder if there are more bettors. I’m really excited about the idea of going up to 8 players—it sounds chaotic and terrific!

The solo mode is decent, in that it simulates a 3-player game, so you do get a little more of that tension as the Tumbler, trying to balance the amount that the two rivals will get paid. But you only play as the Tumbler, never the bettor, so it kind of feels like only half of the game. I think it can make for a good practice in learning how to be Tumbler and seeing the options, but I’ll always prefer playing against other people (particularly so I can make my own bets, too).

If you love dice and gambling games, Emerald Skulls is a fantastic press-your-luck game that really shines at high player counts. Visit the Thunderworks Games website to order a copy!

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Disclosure: GeekDad was provided a copy of this game for review purposes.

Our 10 Favorite Games of 2024

Our finalists for Game of the Year (in alphabetical order) are Adventure Party, Andromeda’s Edge, Apiary, Bosa, Daybreak, Gnome Hollow, Last Light, Let’s Go! To Japan, Seaside, and Stonespine Architects. Each description below includes a link to our original review.

Adventure Party

This cooperative game is a perfect combination of RPG and party game. Roll your d20 in secret and narrate the outcome of your action in a scene, and the rest of your party tries to guess your number to score XP for the team. It’s fun for those who love getting into the storytelling, but it can also be great practice for players to dip their toes into role-playing without worrying so much about all of the rules and systems in a full RPG.

Read the full review.

Andromeda’s Edge

Probably the biggest game on our list in terms of box size, Andromeda’s Edge is the spiritual successor to 2021 GeekDad Game of the Year Finalist Dwellings of Eldervale. On your turn, you’ll do one of two things: either launch one of your starships to explore the galaxy, gather resources, and battle both fellow players and alien raiders, or return all your ships to your station, where you’ll use the modules you’ve collected throughout the game to generate energy, gain resources, and carry out additional actions.

Read the full review.

Apiary

Bees in space! Send your workers to explore planets and seed them with valuable resources, expand your hive, and recruit specialized bees. One unique feature of Apiary is the ways that the workers age each time you use them: their actions become more powerful, but after age 4 they need to hibernate, and you’ll need to start over with some new worker bees.

Read the full review.

Bosa

Build your own idyllic island community in this light but strategic card-based engine building game based on a real city in Sandina. Perhaps one of the last games from the amazing team at Prospero Hall, Bosa is an elegantly designed game that is also environmentally friendly, packaged in a small box with minimal plastic. So you can feel good about playing it while also having a ton of fun. 

Read the full review.

Daybreak

Work together to battle climate change, using a mix of technology, legislation, and community activism. Daybreak is a cooperative game from the designer of Pandemic, but with a hopeful outlook: fixing some things is possible, but it requires the nations of the world to look beyond their own needs so they can coordinate their actions.

Read the full review.

Gnome Hollow

This family-friendly tile-laying game has you competing with your fellow gnomes to cultivate mushrooms and collect wildflowers, in order to collectively maintain the enchantment that conceals your village. It’s a lovely game that definitely falls into the “cozy” game category, with its pastoral setting and non-confrontational gameplay. If you’re looking for a fun but relaxed time at the game table, then Gnome Hollow is for you.

Read the full review.

Last Light

This space-based 4X game uses simultaneous action selection to keep the game moving at a quick pace, as players explore a solar system, build up technologies and colonies, and battle over the dwindling light. Planets rotate around the sun, keeping you on your toes as you plot out your course, and unique alien civilizations give everyone a special ability to master.

Read the full review.

Let’s Go! To Japan

Who can make the most of their week in Japan? Plan out your trip, assigning activities to each day and earning bonuses when conditions are best. Match up different types of activities and you’ll experience daily highlights, and keep an eye on the number of times you need to take the train between Tokyo and Kyoto! It’s like a tour guide disguised as a game.

Read the full review.

Seaside

Collect the most disks in this quick press-your-luck game. The simple components—a bag of wooden disks—can go anywhere, including the beach! Each disk gives you a choice of two sides to play, and you’ll have to keep an eye on what the other players are trying to collect, too.

Read the full review.

Stonespine Architects

Craft the most devious dungeon and you’ll be rewarded with the position of Master Architect! Pick and pass cards to fill out your dungeon, trying to connect paths and meet the various requirements on your blueprints and the challenge cards. Fill your dungeon with kobolds and oozes, traps and treasures!

Read the full review.

How We Pick Our Finalists

The GeekDad Game of the Year is an award given annually to the game we have enjoyed the most in the previous year. Qualification is dependent on a number of factors: first (and probably the biggest filter), the game must have been reviewed on our site in the previous 12 months (though this year this was extended to account for the calendar change). Additionally, we must have recognized the quality of the game in the review and noted the game as a “GeekDad Approved” game, worthy of our big, shiny metal thumbs-up.

Second, the game must be accessible to most families—a bit of a nebulous identification to be sure, but roughly a game should be one that most families would be likely to play on a weekend afternoon. This would typically rule out very heavy strategy games and very light fare. That’s not to say we’re not heavily enamored with some of those games, we just have to be more selective as we narrow games down. We usually do include at least one heavier game for the strategy fans, and it’s fun to have a lighter party game, but that’s generally what we’re looking for.

Third, we also keep an eye on content, and games that have themes, language, or art that we deem inappropriate aren’t going to make the cut. The family game category, as you traditionally think about it, is a good place to start, but it’s not absolute. We recognize that families might consist of adult children or older teenagers, as well as very young children. As a result, our sweet spot covers a very large area. That said, we’re more likely to go with PG content than something that would be R-rated.

Fourth, in the past, a game we select as a finalist must have come out in those previous 12 months and be currently available in wide release. There are some really great games that you just can’t get your hands on, and we’d rather give you a list you can use, not just one that gives you FOMO.

It’s worth noting that occasionally we put a GeekDad Approved seal on a game we enjoyed even though it wasn’t published in the 12-month window—these do not have the year designation on them and are not eligible for Game of the Year.

Fifth and finally, we love games that have fresh takes on old mechanics, offer great components, or otherwise have a special something that will get everyone to the table. As we narrow down our list of GeekDad Approved games to just 10 finalists, we try to include a mix of genres, game weight, game length, and themes, though it’s always hard to fit everything!

Our Timeline

In the past, our award calendar worked on a roughly Q3 to Q3 basis—there’s always a little bit of fuzziness in release dates, particularly for crowdfunded titles that backers might receive first before it hits stores. Our reasoning at the time was that it would allow us to share our list of finalists—and, ideally, our winner—in time for year-end holiday shopping. However, it also meant that anything released in the last quarter of the year got bumped to the following calendar year, as well as the difficulty of organizing our playthrough weekend in the middle of a very busy holiday season.

Last year we made the decision to change up our calendar: eligibility now includes the entire year, and we gave ourselves a little time at the beginning of 2025 to wrap up reviews. This year it also includes some titles released in Q3 2023 because those had been slated for the 2024 list already. Despite that, this year’s GeekDad Approved list is a bit shorter than usual, in part because 2024 was kind of a rough year for many of us and we simply didn’t get to as many of the games as we would have liked to.

Since the beginning of this year, we’ve been wrapping up reviews of a few more GeekDad Approved games from 2024, and discussing which ones might make it into the top 10. In early April, we’ll be meeting up in Portland, Oregon, to play through our ten finalists and decide on a winner, which we’ll announce shortly after.

Our Approved Games for 2024

Here are all of our Approved games for the year:

Adventure Party
Andromeda’s Edge
Apiary
Bosa
Daybreak
Dune: Imperium – Uprising
Gnome Hollow
Last Light
Let’s Go! To Japan
The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth
Mycelia
Seaside
Stonespine Architects
Undaunted 2200: Callisto

The Fine Print

We realize that we can’t get to every game that is released each year. For that, we apologize. There are only a handful of us and we have day jobs. But we are trying hard to review as many games as we can.

To be completely transparent, when we identify a game as GeekDad Approved, the publisher is notified and we provide a logo noting the approved designation that they are free to use without any obligation. However, for any game that we select as a finalist or as the winner of our Game of the Year, we request a small fee for the use of that logo and designation; again, there is no obligation to participate, nor do we consider the likelihood of a publisher paying when we narrow down our list.

We ask for this fee since we believe the award provides a benefit to the publishers who decide to use it, but also to offset administrative costs of running a big website and travel costs involved with a number of us getting together to play the finalists games and make a decision on the overall winner. We’re bloggers. Financially, it’s a losing proposition—in a big way. We’re just trying to offset that a little.

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On a scale of 1 to 100 of things that make you happy, what would 37 be?

What Is ito?

ito is a cooperative party game for 2 to 10 players, ages 8 and up, and takes about 10 minutes to play (though that can vary based on player count and how much time you spend gabbing). It retails for $14.99 and is available in stores; Arcane Wonders is currently sold out but you can be notified when it’s back in stock. The version in this review is from Arcane Wonders, though there are previously published versions—this appears to take some of the rules of ito Rainbow from 2022, itself a variation from 2019’s ito.

ito was designed by Mitsuru Nakamura and published by Arclight Games with Arcane Wonders, with illustrations by Nadia Carrim.

ito Components

ito‘s components are pretty simple:

• Zero card
• 100 Number cards
• 50 Category cards
• 30 Player cards (3 per player)

The zero card has a 0 on one side, and on the other has “3 Promises of ito” to help set expectations: the main goal is for everyone to have fun, you can help other people think of ideas, and enjoy the different ways of thinking.

The number cards go from 1 to 100 and the cards are easy to read: a large number on a white background, with a little decoration at the bottom. The decorations are all one-line drawings that extend to both edges of the card, so that when you play all of the numbers in a line, it forms a continuous line across them, representing a connecting “thread,” one of the translations of the Japanese word “ito.”

Category cards are double-sided and there’s a wide variety of topics. Some are simply phrased like “Popular ____” and others are more niche, like “Good things to say with a special move or attack.” Most of the cards are yellow “Everyone” cards, but there are about a dozen white cards that are marked as “Family” topics that are a little more geared toward kids (“Flavors of ice cream that would be tasty”), and then a handful of black “Action” cards with things like “Most ridiculous dance (act it out!)”

Player cards are mostly solid color cards with a little thread decoration; each color also has a unique icon at the bottom to assist with color identification, which is helpful because there are multiple shades of blue, green, and purple.

The whole thing comes in a very compact box, almost exactly the size of the cards stacked side by side.

How to Play ito

You can download a copy of the rule sheet here.

The Goal

The goal of the game is to play all of your number cards in the correct order, using descriptive clues based on the category.

Setup

Set the zero card in the center of the play area. Shuffle the category cards and draw one at random (or choose one as a group).

Shuffle the number cards and deal each player 1 card secretly. Give each player a set of player cards. 

Gameplay

Each player should look at their number and compare it to the category, and come up with a clue that they think best fits their number. There is no turn order—you just play when you’re ready.

When you have a clue, you state your idea and place your card face-down on the table, with one of your player cards tucked underneath it so everyone can see whose cards are whose. Cards must be played directly next to other cards (including the zero) or can be inserted in the row, but you should not leave any gaps to indicate how far you think your number is from any existing cards. Your hint cannot contain numbers!

Players are free to discuss where they think cards should go based on the hints and can rearrange cards as long as everyone agrees.

Game End

Once everyone has placed their card into the line and everyone agrees with the order, reveal the cards one at a time starting from zero. If all the cards are in numerical order, you win!

In this example, it was pretty easy because we only had three numbers and they were all pretty far apart, but sometimes you’ll have multiple cards that are close together, and of course that’s more likely when you have more players.

Challenge Mode

For a bigger challenge, give one player 2 number cards instead of 1. If you win, add another number card the next round and play again. You win when everyone has 2 cards and you get all the cards in the right order.

(For a simpler variant, you can also just give everyone 2 number cards.)

ito is GeekDad Approved!

Why You Should Play ito

I received an advance copy of ito back in December, and it quickly became my most-played game for the month. Sure, it’s a very quick game, the sort where you’re likely to play a few times in a row, but it’s also a game that I was able to play with a very broad range of players, including the members of my family who aren’t normally as excited about games. My kids have been borrowing it to play with their friends, and it’s one that I’ve had just as much fun playing with my close friends as with strangers at a convention. I had more than one person from my gaming group who immediately wanted to buy a copy after playing it the first time—and then had to wait until January when it was actually released.

The idea of coming up with a clue that fits a number isn’t entirely new. Wavelength is perhaps the most similar to this: the clue-giver gets a category and a random target on a dial (basically a number from 1 to 100), and has to give their team a clue that helps them figure out the target. For the clue-giver, it’s an exercise in coming up with something that is 78% on the “sandwich/not a sandwich” spectrum, and for the guessers it is trying to figure out what number their clue-giver means when they say “Oreo cookie.” It’s a really fun game and leads to all sorts of wacky conversations, and the absolute thrill of hitting the target is amazing—but the one downside is that, as in many other clue-guessing games, there’s a good bit of downtime as everyone is waiting for the clue-giver to come up with something.

One of the things that makes ito shine is that everyone is simultaneously clue-giver and guesser. Everyone has a random number and is trying to come up with the clue, and everyone is also trying to figure out where their number is in relation to all of the other clues that have been given. Do I think Snickers or Twix are the more popular candy bar? What about Almond Joy—surely that’s lower, right?

The concept of ranking things is also not uncommon, and I feel like there’s been a slew of them just in the past year. Figment has you line up cards based on how much of a particular color is present; The Gang challenges the group to rank their poker hands; Mind Map challenges you to place random objects on a two-dimensional grid. And, of course, there’s the Timeline series of games where you’re trying to place events in chronological order (or other challenges like placing animals in size order). I think we just have this itch to categorize and rank things, whether it’s cooperative or competitive, and ito is one way to scratch that itch.

I mentioned earlier that one translation of “ito” is “thread.” The box mentions that another translation is “intention,” and that’s another important aspect of the game. It’s important to remember that you’re ranking the cards based on what each player meant rather than figuring out some sort of objective values. For instance, in one game the category was “superpowers you would like to have” and I had a 97. My clue was “the ability to pause time” because, frankly, that’s something that I always wish I could do. There was a lot of discussion about how that compared to other powers—but the goal is to figure out my number, not whether pausing time is objectively better or worse than flying or invisibility or anything else. There’s a lot of flexibility—you can revise your clues after hearing other people’s clues, and you can ask clarifying questions, too.

That’s important, because a lot of the categories are very subjective: what you consider scary or important or fun is going to be very different from someone else. If somebody says “spiders” for “Things that make you happy if you find them in your pocket or backpack,” you should probably check if they love spiders or hate spiders.

I’ve played ito with as few as 3 players and as many as 8 (I haven’t hit the full 10 players yet), and it has been a blast every time. Of course, it does get a bit harder when you have more people, so when we have fewer players we often play the challenge version or give everyone two numbers just to up the difficulty a bit. I like that it’s small enough that it’s easy to take with me, and it’s very easy to learn so you can get going quickly.

In the groups I’ve played with we’ve primarily used the yellow “Everyone” cards, though I have used some of the white “Family” cards with younger players. (So far we haven’t been brave enough to try the “Action” cards yet!) My groups have preferred the cards that are a little more descriptive or situational rather than the ones that are popularity scales, and there are enough that you can play several games in a row and change it up each time.

Although the publisher Arcane Wonders is currently sold out, ito should still be available in game stores and other online retailers. Just be sure to compare the cover image, or you’ll be getting a different version than what I’ve described here. The original 2019 Arclight Games edition rules are significantly different, but the 2022 ito Rainbow sounds like it’s pretty close.

If you’re looking for a game that’s a great conversation starter and can accommodate a wide range of player counts and player types, ito is a great option!

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Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of this game for review purposes.

In the summer of 1988, I discovered my favorite game for the Nintendo NES. This stealthy game let me take on the role of a secret operative as I infiltrated a secret base, used silenced weapons and gadgets, and uncovered a plot that could devastate the world I was hooked on Metal Gear right from the start. Unlike many other games, I played this one all the way to the end and beat it. Metal Gear left such an impression on me that 37 years later, as soon as I heard there was a board game based on the video game, I could not wait to get my hands on a copy of Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game. 

What Is Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game?

Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game is a cooperative stealth miniatures game for 1-4 players, ages 14 and up, and takes about 60-90 minutes to play. It’s currently available from your local game store as well as online retailers such as Amazon with a suggested retail price of $109.99 for a copy of the game.

Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game was designed by Emerson Matsuuchi and published by CMON, with illustrations by Jose David Lanza Cebrian, Marco Checchetto, Fabio de Castro, Max Duarte, Júlia Ferrari, Mathieu Harlaut, Saeed Jalabi, Sebastian Koziner, Kenneth Loh, Henning Ludvigsen, Aragorn Marks, and Francesco Orrù.

Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game Components

Here is what you get in the box:

• 5 Character figures
• 5 Boss figures
• 12 Guard figures
• 2 Carboard box figures
• 16 Double-sided tiles
• 4 Player dashboards
• 6 Boss dashboards
• 1 Guard dashboard
• 171 Cards
• 225 Tokens
• 1 Boss Tracker
• 1 Rulebook
• 1 Campaign book
• 1 VR Missions book
• 1 Codec book
• 15 Dice

Each character has their own figure. Players can choose to play as Solid Snake, Meryl, Otacon, or Gray Fox. Meryl has a second figure used when she is disguised as a guard. 

There is a player dashboard for each of the four characters. This contain all of the actions a player can take as well as their stats for health an defense as well as the amount of equipment they can take with them. Be sure to pay attention to their unique abilities listed at the bottom of the dashboard. Some of these allow you to inflict additional damage against enemies. The backside of the dashboard contains a biography of the character. 

Enemies are represented by figures as well. There are five reddish boss figures and 12 green guard figures in two different sculpts. All guards act the same despite the two sculpts. 

Each boss has their own dashboard similar to the players’ dashboards. These list the stats for the boss as well as details on how they act during a boss stage. Some have trackers on them as well. The green side of the boss dashboard is used for the VR missions.

The map tiles are used to create the many different maps for the various stages and missions. They are all full-color and double-sided. There are also some smaller tiles used for boss battles or to represent elevators and elevator shafts of small rooms attached to the large tiles. 

The player’s characters can use equipment. Some characters have starting equipment available to them while you can also unlock new equipment by completing the stages and VR missions. (You can also unlock one piece of equipment just by reading the back of the gamebox!)

The guards are controlled by the Guard order and reaction cards. Each stage will let you know how many order cards to use. The red cards are placed beneath the blue order cards. One of them is a game over card, so once you get to the red cards, you don’t know exactly when the mission will end, but that it is close. How these cards are used is explained in the gameplay section of this article. 

Just like the guards, each boss as their own deck of cards which describe the actions they take during their phase as well as how they react to your characters. 

There are also a variety of other cards including Otacon boss system cards, Otacon system cards, Boss stage reference cards, and reference cards for Meryl’s disguise as well as for hacking terminals. 

Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game comes with four different books. The rulebook contains all the instructions for playing the game and serves as a reference. The campaign book has instructions for setting up and playing all 14 stages of the campaign. In fact, for new players, you can get right into the game and play the first few stages without reading the rulebook. The campaign book teaches what you need to know and the first two stages serve as a tutorial. The VR missions book contains six stand-alone missions that are playable by 1-4 players. These are great ways to practice sneaking and once you clear each VR mission, you are awarded with new equipment you can add to your memory box. Finally, the Codecs book has text related to the codec text you may find on dashboards, equipment cards, boss dashboards and cards, and many other places. These codec texts help provide additional story information. 

The game comes with 15 dice in both black and white The white dice have the one pip side replaced with a ‘!’. This is used when checking for noise. Also, the “!” does not count as a 1 when rolling, so when considering combat, it is considered a miss that can’t be modified by a +1 or +2 affect. 

How to Play Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game

You can download a copy of the rulebook here.

The Goal

The goal of the game is to complete the objectives for a stage of the game. Some stages have optional objectives which can provide additioanls rewards if the players complete them. 

Setup

Setting up a game is fairly straightforward. Each stage has setup directions in the campaign or VR missions books. For this explanation, the setup and gameplay for a sneaking stage is provided. Boss stages are similar but have a few minor differences. Start off by positioning the map tiles as shown in the directions, placing character and enemy figures and tokens as shown. Next setup the player area. After players select which characters they will play as, they place their respective player dashboard in front of them and collect their 4 action tokens, 4 focus tokens, and their character attention token. They then take any starting equipment for their character and any memory box equipment that has been acquired in previous missions. Damage as well as KO’d and Dead guard tokens are placed near the map tiles. Finally, setup the guard dashboard by placing it near the map. Follow the directions in the setup for how many blue and red guard order cards to place above the dashboard along with the guard reaction cards. You are now ready to play. 

Gameplay

Player Phase

Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game is played in rounds. Each round is divided into a player phase and the enemy phase. During the player phase, the players take turns performing actions. They can take their turns in any order, but one player must complete all their actions before the next player goes. To perform an action, players take their action tokens and place them on actions on their player dashboard. Most actions cost one token but some cost two. The same action can be taken more than once, but the cost must be paid each time. For example, a player could use the sneak action four times to move four spaces. (All movement is orthogonal and never diagonal). At the end of their actions, if the player performed any action that has a Noisy icon next to it, they must perform a noise check by rolling one white die for each noisy action. If any of the dice rolled have an ‘!’ on it, then place the characters attention token underneath the player with the blue side up. This means someone heard you.  

Enemy Phase

Once all players have completed their turns, it is now the enemy phase. Draw the top card from the guard order deck. It is divided into three parts. Resolve the card starting at the top and working your way down. The top has an affect for the area. The second part controls any cameras on the map. The bottom area directs how individual guards move depending on whether the guard is in alert, investigate, or patrol mode. Many of the stages require the players to use stealth to achieve their objectives. They want to move around without the enemy knowing they are there because once they guards are on alert, they are all coming for you. Let’s take a look at the three guard modes.

During patrol mode, guards move the number of spaces shown in blue on the guard order card. If they come to a wall, they turn in the direction there is a pathway. If they can turn left of right, they follow the arrow on the card. If they are at a dead end, they turn around and walk in the opposite direction. At the end of their movement, they face in the direction they will move the next round. Finally, if they end their movement on a space with two arrows, they turn in the direction of the arrow on the card, even if they are not at a wall. When moving guards, always start at the top left space of a zone and then move guards in order from left to right across a row of spaces, then going down to the next row, left to right, and so forth. It is important to follow this order since guards towards the bottom of the map may cause an alert, but it will not affect those near the top until their next round since they have already moved for that round. 

If a player has made a noise and places an attention token on the board, the nearest guard will move along the shortest route to investigate it. They also move towards any KO’d or Dead guard tokens in their LOS (Line Of Sight). Once they move onto any of these tokens, they draw a guard reaction card and resolve it depending on what type of token they are standing on. Since players can move off of an attention token on a subsequent turn, by the time a guard arrives, the player’s character may be gone. If a guard ever moves so that a player is in their LOS, they immediately attack. Also whenever a player is in the LOS of a guard, place the red alert side of the attention token under the character. 

If an alert token is anywhere in the active zone, all guards are on alert. When they move, the all move towards the closest alert token following the shortest path. Once a guard reaches the space of an alert token, draw a guard reaction card and resolve it. Usually if there are no characters in sight of any guards, the token is returned to that player and if no other alert tokens are in the zone, the alert is called off and guards continue their patrol movement. 

Line Of Sight

Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game features a unique method for determining LOS. First it is important to note that all guards have an arrow on their figure that points in the direction they are looking. LOS requires two conditions. First check to see if the guard is facing either the row or column the player’s figure is in. If so, then draw an imaginary box that includes both the guard and the player. If there are any obstacles such as walls, locked doors, or objects with red lines around them, anywhere in the box, then there is no LOS. Otherwise, the guard can see the player. Cameras work similarly and the direction they face is determined by the camera token. Guards do not have LOS to players behind them or directly on their left or right flank. As guards move, check for LOS if there are player figures nearby. 

Combat

Combat is also fairly straightforward in the game. If you have LOS, then you can attack with ranged weapons. The guards all carry rifles and they only attack in this manner. The players have close combat attacks that require the player to be orthogonally adjacent to an enemy to attack. To resolve an attack, roll the number and type of dice listed for the attack. Guards always attack with two black dice. Players may attack with white and/or black dice depending on the type of attack. Weapons on equipment cards also have a space for an action token listed with the appropriate dice to roll. Each die represents a chance of getting a hit. You never add them together. Instead, compare the results of each die with the target’s defense value. If the roll is equal to or greater than the defense, then one damage is inflicted on the target. Place a damage token on the player dashboard if the player was the target or next to the guard figure. If a player or enemy ever receives damage equal to or greater than their health, they are Killed in Action. When a guard is KIA, place a skull token on its space and remove the figure. Players may try to knock out guards with close combat attacks. Instead of a damage token, give them a KO’d token. If they receive KO’d damage equal to their health, remove their figure and replace it with a KO guard token with side with two stars face up.  

Game End

The game ends when the players have completed their objectives or if any player is ever KIA or another failure condition has been met. 

Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game is GeekDad Approved!

Why You Should Play Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game

As I mentioned earlier, I was a excited to play Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game. However, I was also a bit apprehensive. Would the designer be able to create a fun game that was true to the original feel and theme. I have enjoyed games by the designer, Emerson Matsuuchi such as the Century series (Century: Spice Road, Century: Eastern Wonders, and Century: A New World) as well as HerStory.  I have also been impressed by CMON’s games. Yet a stealth cooperative game? The miniature figures are very detailed as one would expect from CMON as is the presentation including the organizer to keep all of the components–organized. On the topic of components, they are all great. I really like the artwork on the cards, dashboards, map tiles, and even withing the rulebook and other books.

While the rulebook is not that large, I really appreciated that the first paragraph in the rulebook told me to go to the campaign book to play the first two stages and then come back. Just like many video games will provide a few easy missions that teach you the game as you go, Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game also features something like a tutorial that walks you through the main rules over the course of two games. This gets players right into the campaign. Though the first two stages are only for one player, this provides the basics a player can use to teach others. Most of the stages can be played by two players and the final five stages can be played by up to four players. I actually like playing solo and controlling two or more characters so I can use their abilities together. However, when playing with a group, the VR missions are a great way to play and introduce new layers to the game. These are all stand-alone missions that focus on stealth. They can all be played with 1-4 players and the objectives become more difficult as you add more players. For an additional challenge, you can even swap out one of the guards with any of the boss characters. Not only do you unlock equipment for each VR mission you complete, you also unlock more equipment by defeating the bosses. The combination of the campaign and the VR missions provides not only hours of gameplay, but also different ways to play. 

Cooperative and solo games require a system for controlling non-player characters and Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game has one of the most user-friendly systems for doing this. The guard order and reaction cards provide some variety in the ways the guards patrol as well as interact with the environment. They guards don’t always move the same distance each round and they may turn different directions when they come to an intersection. Plus the double arrows marked on the maps provides another level of randomness. If a guard happens to stop on one of these, they will turn either right or left instead of continuing straight. This keeps players on their toes and several times my perfect plans were disrupted by a guard making a random turn and coming down a hallway towards me.  The guard cards also let you know when to spawn more guards and control which direction the cameras are facing. Unlike guards, cameras are always on and moving into their LOS causes an automatic alert. I am very impressed with the rules that control the enemies so they don’t take up a lot of the player’s time with complexity.

Another area where simplicity is a plus is LOS. In most games with miniatures, there are rules to determine if you can see the enemy and if they can see you. For many games I have played, this has been quite complex and I find myself frequently referring to the rules. Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game makes LOS extremely easy. I already described how LOS is determined. In reading online questions by players, I found that many were overthinking this concept. They were trying to bring in rules from other games they have played. I too found myself with the same issues at first. However, when I went back to the rules and read them as they are–without adding my own interpretation–I found them very refreshing. From that point on, I had no trouble with LOS and after a few games, it becomes second nature. Along those same lines, combat also benefits from simplicity. There are no modifiers to combat for cover or anything. If you can see the target, you can shoot at it. While some games benefit from more complex rules, the rules in this game let players focus on playing the game and experience the tension of trying to infiltrate a heavily secure facility without being killed. 

The more I play Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game, the more I like the game. In some ways the sneaking stages are like puzzles. However, there is no set solution because the patrols of the guards are always different. In addition, there are some cool ways to trick the guards. Players can use the knock action to place an attention token in their space and then move away. This can lure a guard away from their patrol and create an opening. Furthermore, the game is not easy. I played the first stage 3-4 times before I beat it. It also took me a few times to beat the second stage. I barely beat the first boss stage on the first try. This game works great for solo play. It also is a lot of fun with 2 to 4 players since you all have to work together. If one player triggers an alert, the guards all start coming at you. Though this can also allow other players to access areas formerly covered by guards before they moved towards the alert. In conclusion, I highly recommend Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game. For all the many reasons I have mentioned, this game deserves to be GeekDad Approved! I continue to enjoy playing it and introducing it to new people. If you like solo and cooperative games where the game is the challenge and not the rules, then be sure to add Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game to your game collection. 

For more information, visit the Metal Gear Solid: The Board Game page!

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Sam and Frodo desperately race to destroy the One Ring at Mount Doom, relentlessly pursued by the Nazgûl. Will you aid the Fellowship in defending Middle-Earth, or seek to conquer it as the forces of Sauron?

What Is The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth?

The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth is a tableau building, area majority, and set collection game for 2 players, ages 10 and up, and takes about 30 minutes to play. The game reimplements 7 Wonders Duel, but is far from a simple reskin of that earlier title. It’s available to purchase from the Repos Production store on Amazon or from your local game store, and retails for $34.99.

The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth was designed by Antoine Bauza and Bruno Cathala, and published by Repos Production, with illustrations by Vincent Dutrait.

The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth Components

Here’s what comes in the box:

• 69 cards
• 44 pawns
• 18 tokens
• 30 coins
• 7 tiles
• 2 boards
• 2 transparent elements
• 1 helpsheet
• 1 Rulebook

The main game board is a fairly compact map of Middle-earth. There are three win conditions in the game, and one of them is to have at least 1 Unit or Fortress in each of the 7 regions. 

The forces of the Fellowship have gold Units and Fortresses, while the forces of Sauron are grey. The wooden pieces are quite small but easy to handle, and have some lovely screen printing on both sides to add to the visual impact.

There are 7 Landmark tiles, which can be acquired through gameplay. These Landmarks match the regions on the game board, and each one allows for the placement of a Fortress at that particular region as well as various other one-time effects.

Another victory condition in the game is for either Frodo and Sam to reach Mount Doom (if you’re the Fellowship player), or for the Nazgûl to catch up to the pair if you’re playing Sauron’s forces. There is a Quest of the Ring track made out of 4 pieces: Two interlocking cardboard tiles, an acrylic overlay with Sam and Frodo printed on it, and a separate acrylic tracker with the Nazgûl. As Sam and Frodo progress towards Mount Doom, you slide the overlay along the cardboard tiles, and as the Nazgûl moves towards Sam and Frodo, you slide the acrylic tracker along the overlay.

The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth is played over 3 rounds, known here as Chapters. Each chapter has its own deck of cards.

It’s worth discussing for a moment how beautiful this game is. Vincent Dutrait is one of my favorite board game artists, and the illustrations here are a perfect blend of classical and modern design. If he was to do the artwork for an illustrated The Lord of the Rings trilogy, I would happily have those books on my shelf.

How to Play The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth

You can download a copy of the rulebook here.

The Goal

The goal of the game is to stretch your presence across Middle-earth, rally Races to your cause, or advance the Quest of the Ring in order to win.

Setup

Place the Central board between you and your opponent. Choose who will play Sauron’s forces and who will play the Fellowship, and take your respective Unit and Fortress pawns.

On the Central board, place 2 Fellowship Units on Arnor, and 2 Sauron Units on Mordor.

Assemble the Quest of the Ring track and place it below the Central board.

Create a reserve with the coins. The Fellowship player then takes 3 coins, and the Sauron player takes 2 coins.

Sort the Alliance tokens according to their backs. Shuffle each stack and place them facedown in the notches above the Central board.

Shuffle the Landmark tiles and place 3, faceup, on the table next to a facedown stack of the other tiles.

Sort the Chapter cards into their 3 decks, shuffling each deck separately.

Finally, arrange the cards from the Chapter 1 deck into the central play area according to the illustration shown both in the rulebook and on the side of the box, placing the leftover 3 cards facedown into the discard pile. Each chapter is set up differently; here are the three chapter setups:

Gameplay

Gameplay starts with the Sauron player, then alternates between players. 

On a turn, a player can either take a Chapter card or take a Landmark tile.

Take a Chapter card

You can take any of the available cards (any card that is faceup and not covered by other cards), as long as you pay any associated costs if there is one. You will immediately benefit from a card’s effect. Then either add that card to a stack of the matching color, keeping the effect of the card visible, or immediately discard the card to earn coins equal to the Chapter number currently in play.

There are 2 different types of costs for cards: Coins, and Skills. If Coins are required, pay the number of coins shown when taking the card back to the reserve. Skills are shown on Grey cards, and you must have the requisite number of Skills shown on the card in your tableau in order to take that card. If you don’t have all the Skills shown, you can still take the card, but must pay 1 coin for each missing Skill.

In the example below, to take that card, you must have 2 of the “Ruse” skill and 1 of the “Leadership” skill in your tableau:

There are 6 card colors in the game:

• Grey cards. These permanently provide 1 Skill per symbol shown, and each symbol may be used only once per turn.
• Yellow cards. These give you coins from the Reserve.
• Blue cards. Showing the One Ring symbol, these move your character along the Quest of the Ring track, one space per ring shown. If you move onto or past any bonus spaces on the track, you immediately take the bonus shown.
• Green cards. These represent the Races of Middle-earth that you can ally with. If you ever collect 6 different Race cards, you immediately win the game. Additionally, as soon as you have 2 matching Race symbols, you take the top 2 Alliance tokens, reveal them, and then choose one to take and one to return facedown to its stack. You may now permanently benefit from the effect of the token you have taken. Finally, once per game when you have 3 different Race symbols, you take the top Alliance token of those 3 races, reveal them, and then take 1 while returning the other two facedown to their respective stacks.
• Red cards. These allow you to place Units into the various regions on the Central board. Whenever Units enter a region with enemy Units, a conflict occurs and they eliminate each other on a 1 for 1 basis.
• Purple cards. These only appear in Chapter 3, and allow you to move Units into adjacent regions, cause opponents to lose coins, and remove enemy units from regions.

Beginning in Chapter 2, some cards will have a chaining symbol, in the upper right corner of the card. If that symbol matches a symbol on the left-hand side of one of the cards in your tableau, then you may play that card for free without having the required skills.

Once all the cards from a Chapter have been played, then the cards for the next Chapter are arranged in the central play area and play resumes with the next player taking their turn.

Take a Landmark tile

Much like with the cards, if you can pay the requisite costs for a Landmark tile, you may take that tile and immediately gain its benefits (which also include placing a Fortress into one of the regions on the Central board). Landmark tiles also cost you one gold for each Fortress you already have placed on the map.

In the example above, the Isengard tile allows you to place a Fortress on Enedwaith, discard a Grey card from your opponent’s play area, and move your character 1 space on the Quest of the Ring track.

Game End

The game ends immediately once one of 3 victory conditions is met:

1. Quest of the Ring. The Fellowship wins if Sam and Frodo reach Mount Doom, thereby destroying the One Ring. Sauron wins if the Nazgûl catches Sam and Frodo, reclaiming the One Ring.
2. Support of the Races. If you gather 6 different Race symbols on green cards, you rally support of the Races and immediately win the game. The Eagle symbol that is represented on one of the Alliance tokens may count as 1 of the 6 required Race symbols.
3. Conquering Middle-earth. If you have a Fortress and/or at least 1 Unit in each of the 7 Regions, you immediately dominate Middle-earth and win the game.

If none of these win conditions are met by the end of Chapter 3, then victory goes to whichever player has the most fortresses and units on the map. If both players have the same amount, then it is a shared victory.

The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth is GeekDad Approved!

Why You Should Play The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth

I’m already a Tolkien fan (see my reviews for LEGO sets of Rivendell and Barad-Dûr), so I was predisposed to already like the theme of The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth. What I didn’t know until playing it was just how well the gameplay and theme would mesh to create an eminently satisfying gameplay experience.

Much like its predecessor 7 Wonders Duel, there are 3 different ways to win the game. Each of these three ways is intrinsically tied into the events of The Lord of the Rings. Over the course of the trilogy, support of the races of Middle-earth are won, battles for domination are fought across the land, and Frodo and Sam try to get the One Ring to Mount Doom while pursued by the forces of Sauron – represented here by the Nazgûl chasing the pair across the Quest of the Ring track.

The Quest of the Ring track itself is simply yet elegantly represented. There is an inherent tension in the pursuit of the Nazgûl, as Sam and Frodo can only ever move towards Mount Doom, while the Nazgûl only moves ever closer to the pair. 

With three paths to victory, there’s a lot of consideration towards which cards to take on a player’s turn. It’s a delicate balance between pursuing your own path to victory while making sure your opponent doesn’t draw a card or landmark which guarantees theirs. In one of the games that I played, the key to my victory came from getting my first pair of Race cards, and then drawing the Eagle Alliance token. Then, when I took my fifth unique green Race card, the Eagle token acted as my sixth, giving me the win. Which was a good thing, as my opponent was getting perilously close to filling the map with their units!

The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth is quick to learn, and really does play in about the 30 minutes listed on the box. While there are a lot of symbols on both the cards and the Landmark tiles that may initially overwhelm a new player, they are easy to understand, and there’s also a handy reference sheet that explains every symbol and effect. The game is  swift to set up and put away, thanks in part to a simple yet effective insert in the box. With the speed of both setup and play, it’s easy enough to turn right around and play another game after you’ve completed your last.

There’s really just so much to like about this game. I’ve already gushed about the Vincent Dutrait artwork, which permeates every aspect of the production. The components are high quality, especially considering the affordable price of the box. And while I’m not going to go into detail comparing the two, rest assured that Duel for Middle-Earth is not 7 Wonders Duel with a thin veneer of Tolkien painted over it. While it incorporates some of the same mechanics as 7 Wonders Duel, this game stands entirely on its own, distinct in gameplay and theme.

If you’re looking for a fun, fast, and deeply thematic 2-player game that’s easy to get to the table, then definitely check out The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth. The gameplay is tense yet fun, and deeply satisfying. It’s one of those games that, whether you win or lose, you want to jump right back in for another match. The Lord of the Rings: Duel for Middle-earth is sure to hit my game table for years to come, and is well-deserving of the title of GeekDad Approved..

For more information, visit the Repos Production website.

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Plan out a trip to Tokyo and Kyoto, trying to experience all that the cities have to offer!

What Is Let’s Go! To Japan?

Let’s Go! To Japan is a card game for 1 to 4 players, ages 10 and up, and takes about 45 minutes to play. It retails for $49.99 and is available in stores and directly from AEG. The theme is about trip planning and is family-friendly, though it may depend on how much your kid is interested in Japan and/or the joy of putting together a schedule!

Let’s Go! To Japan was designed by Josh Wood and published by AEG, with illustrations by Chaykov, Kailene Falls, Toshiyuki Hara, Magdalena Pruckner, Erica Ward, and On Yamamoto.

Let’s Go! To Japan Components

Here’s what’s included:

• 160 Activity cards (80 Tokyo, 80 Kyoto)
• Round tracker board
• Round tracker token
• 21 Train tokens
• 20 Wild tokens
• 24 Research tokens
• 16 Walk tokens
• Scorepad
• 4 sets of player components, each including:
  • Player board
  • 6 Favorable Condition tokens
  • 5 Experience tokens
  • 1 Starting Train token
  • 1 Happiness token
  • 1 Stress token
  • 1 Mood token
  • 1 +12 token

The cards are all extra-large, making for plenty of room for the illustrations and a bit of text that wouldn’t be out of place in a travel guide. The game-specific parts of the card are at the top and bottom; when the cards are overlapped, only the top part of the covered card is relevant so it’s a nice way to remember that. The large cards do mean that each player needs a good amount of space on the table, though.

The player boards are tri-fold boards, mostly with a few different tracks, since your cards will be played below the boards. One nice decorative touch is that the backs of the boards have different colors and illustrations (taken from some of the activities). Player color doesn’t really matter in this game since everyone’s just playing on their own boards anyway, but it adds a little bit of extra personality to the game.

There are a lot of different tokens—they’re mostly all easily distinguished from each other, though the favorable condition tokens and experience tokens feature the same icons and are only slightly different in size. 

How to Play Let’s Go! To Japan

You can download a copy of the rulebook here.

The Goal

The goal of the game is to score the most points by planning activities on the most favorable days and meeting the requirements to experience highlights during your trip to Japan.

Setup

Shuffle the two decks of activity cards separately and place them within reach of all players. Place the round tracker board in the center and place the marker on the first round. Make a supply of the other tokens: train tokens, wild tokens, research tokens, and walk tokens.

Give each player a set of player components: a player board and all of the various tokens. The mood token (wooden disk) goes on the center of the mood track, with the stress and happiness tokens placed at the beginning of each corresponding track. The five experience tokens are placed at the 0 space of your board.

One player should mix up the six favorable condition tokens and place one on each day at the bottom of their board, and then everyone else should arrange theirs to match. Be sure to leave room to play cards below your player board. Set your starting train token and +12 token nearby.

Gameplay

Let’s Go! To Japan takes place over 13 rounds, with players creating a trip itinerary by placing activity cards below their player boards from Monday to Saturday. The cards may be placed anywhere in your itinerary (up to 3 cards per day), but once placed cannot be moved later. At the end of the 13 rounds, players then take their trips as planned, accumulating experiences and scoring points.

At the top of your board is a mood tracker—your mood goes up when you do things that are relaxing or inexpensive, and your mood goes down when you’re exhausted by crowds or strenuous activity, or when you’ve overspent a bit. Whenever your mood hits either end (with the sad face or happy face), move the appropriate tracker one space and then set your mood back to the middle. Your stress and happiness have penalties and bonus points at the end of the game.

Planning Trips

Each round, players will simultaneously draw cards and then play and pass cards as indicated by the round tracker board. For instance, in the first four rounds, players draw one card from each deck (Tokyo and Kyoto), and they will play one card into their schedule and pass the other card clockwise, placing it face-down at the top of that player’s board. Some rounds indicate that you pick up the passed cards instead of drawing from the decks, and in the middle five rounds you play two and pass two. Starting in round 8, you will pass counterclockwise instead.

As you place your cards, you generally want to group cards of the same city, because every time you switch between the two cities, you have to spend a train ticket. Also, you’ll get bonuses for matching that day’s favorable conditions, so there is an incentive to play matching cards on those particular days. Cards are placed overlapping so that the top section of each card is visible; only the last card of the day is fully visible, showing the highlight at the bottom.

If you don’t like any of your options, you may also “go for a walk.” Discard one of the cards from your hand, and then draw a card from either deck and place it face-down in your itinerary without looking at it. You immediately gain a research token. When that time slot arrives on the trip, you’ll reveal the card and decide whether it’s an activity you want to do.

Research tokens may be spent at any time to draw 3 cards, and then discard 3 cards.

Whenever you add the third card in the same day, you check to see how many of that day’s favorable condition icons appear on those cards, which can earn you an immediate bonus. You may only choose one of these bonuses (but you may take a lower tier than what you’ve earned):

• At least 1 icon: Move your mood tracker 1 space to the right
• At least 2 icons: Take 2 research tokens or 1 wild token
• At least 3 icons: Take 1 luxury train token or go on an extra walk

The “extra walk” option lets you draw a card from either deck and place it face-down as a 4th card for that day. This bonus walk does not let you take a research token.

Going on Trips

After the final round of planning, everyone will have a full itinerary, with 3 cards on each day (plus potentially bonus walk cards). Now, it’s time for everyone to take their trips and see how well they scored!

First, check for every time that your itinerary switches between the two cities, and place a train token there (even if the switch happens between days). You have one free train token from setup. Luxury train tokens, gained as a bonus, will give you 2 points and increase your mood when you use them. For all of the required trips that you don’t have enough train tickets for, you must take a regular token from the supply, placing it on the “lose 2 points” side.

Each player goes through their itinerary one day at a time, scoring the cards from top to bottom. For each card, if there are experience or mood icons on the top of the card, move the appropriate tokens to keep track. The cat symbol on the top right corner is points for that card.

The last card of each day has a highlight of the day bonus at the bottom. Generally, you will score bonus points or earn bonus experience if you have met the requirements already. If you earned wild tokens as bonuses during the planning phase, you may spend them at any time to get any 1 experience per token spent, which can help you fulfill those requirements.

If you have a “walk” card, you may reveal it, and decide which side to use. You may keep it on the walk side, which is worth 1 point and 1 increased mood, as well as 2 points for the highlight if it’s the last card of the day. Or, you may use the activity you discovered on your walk, in which case it scores as if you’d played it that way (but it also still counts as a “walk” in case that is a requirement for later).

Game End

Your score is as follows:

• Scores for each individual day’s activities
• Penalties and bonuses for stress and happiness
• Points for each of your experience tokens on your experience track
• Bonus points or penalties for train tickets
• 1 point per unspent research token

The highest score wins! The rulebook says ties are shared, though if you really want a tiebreaker you can count up the total earned experience.

Let’s Go! To Japan is a 2024 Game of the Year Finalist!

Why You Should Play Let’s Go! To Japan

According to the rulebook, Josh Wood (the game designer) had planned a trip to Japan with his girlfriend in 2020, which was canceled because of the pandemic. So, instead, they took their planning notes and turned it into this game about planning a trip, which is probably why playing it feels a lot like flipping through a tourist guide. Each card has a little description of the activity, and the rulebook also includes maps of Tokyo and Kyoto, with several highlights marked on each one.

Let’s Go! To Japan is sort of a programming game: you lay out all of your cards, and then you play through them in order to see how well you scored. However, in this game, there are bonuses to be earned even in the planning phase, by scheduling activities on days that are most favorable for them. For instance, maybe in your setup it turns out that Thursday is a great day for shopping—if you schedule shopping activities for Thursday, that may improve your mood, or give you a chance to get a luxury train ticket.

But those favorable conditions aren’t the only thing to pay attention to. There’s a range of points for the various activities, usually a balance between the number of experience points you’ll earn and whether it will increase or decrease your mood. But the big bonuses are in the highlights of the day, so you want to make sure that the last card of each day is something that you’ll be able to complete. Sometimes it’s something you work toward: you put in a card late in the week, and then hope that you’ll find enough things to fulfill the highlight by the time your schedule is full. But the early days of the week can be challenging, because if you choose a highlight that has a lot of requirements, you may not be able to fulfill that in only 3 cards.

There are a number of factors to balance out: getting your day bonuses during the planning phase, and earning enough experience for your highlights once you take your trip. When you do earn day bonuses, you may have to decide which ones you want, because chances are you’re not sure how many other bonuses you might earn. Research tokens let you dig through the deck to find specific icons; wild tokens give you specific experience points when you need them; an extra walk could be very valuable but is a total gamble—you can’t count on what icons may be on the card until you play out your trip.

On top of all that, you want to manage your trip so that you don’t go back and forth between the two cities too often—and then you don’t have to worry about using bonuses for train tickets. In one game I played, I managed to stay in Kyoto for the entire week, except for one quick jaunt into Tokyo to visit the Tokyo Metropolitan Government Building for some sightseeing.

That brings us to the card-drafting aspect of the game. When you’re learning the game, you’re probably mostly paying attention to your own itinerary, choosing whatever cards you think may be best for you and then just passing whatever’s left to your neighbor. But as you get a little more experienced, you’ll be able to take your neighbors’ plans into account as well. If your neighbor is all set up with food/drink cards in Tokyo, then maybe you don’t pass them one more and find a place in your own itinerary for it instead. This is particularly true when you decide to go for a walk, or after you use a research token—those are the only times when you’ll discard a card instead of either playing it yourself or passing it. If somebody is spending a lot of time in one city, pass them cards for the other city so they’ll have to figure out where to spend train tickets.

The setting for Let’s Go! To Japan definitely adds a lot to the experience. If the cards were simply gaining points for collecting abstracted colors or icons, you would still have the same types of scoring decisions to make, but the ending of the game would feel a bit more boring. Usually when we score the game, we have everyone describe what they did on Monday, and then move on to Tuesday together, and so on. It’s fun to see how the different players move through the cities or have shared experiences. In one game, two players just missed running into each other a couple times on the same day, because they both went to the same places but in different orders.

Overall, I’ve really enjoyed playing Let’s Go! To Japan: I enjoy the challenge of plotting out a rewarding schedule, the gamble of choosing a big-scoring highlight that I hope I’ll be able to fulfill, the logistics of making sure I have enough train tickets to get between the cities. Since everyone plays simultaneously, the turns are usually pretty short, but if you get stuck waiting on another player, you can spend the time reading up on the various locations you’ve put into your itinerary and admiring the illustrations. While I haven’t heard any announcements, it would not surprise me if there will be other Let’s Go! games in future set in other locations, but for now I’ll be planning my visit to Japan!

For more information, visit the AEG website.

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Disclosure: GeekDad received a copy of this game for review purposes.