It’s the beginning of April and now the dust has settled enough to look back at my game-discoveries from 2023, and do a write up of my favourites…

But first some key figures – courtesy of BG Stats and the BGG API:

• Half of my top 10 most played games of 2023 were new-to-me games.
• 43 of 97 games played where new-to-me.
• My H-index of the year dropped to 5! (From my regular 8ish.)
• Number of days with games dropped to 115.
• Estimated hours played dropped to 159.

(In table form, compared to previous years.)

Enough numbers, here’s my list of noteworthy new-to-me games from 2023. (As usual this is not really my favourite nine games, but rather a kind of optimal games library of games I played in 2023.)

Filler games

Skyjo is a modern classic (here in France at least), but a modern classic that I didn’t get to play before 2023. It’s a kind of abstract card based tableau-deconstruction game with an interesting drafting and some push your luck elements.

Favourite mechanism: The way you build your tableau by replacing face down cards with cards you chose. This leads to two things. First the thrill of revealing the card that the next player can get to place in their tableau, but also the push your luck element of leaving some cards unturned… (A bad strategy in itself, but one that I’ve seen paying off when revealing the cards and discarding whole columns!)

Sea Salt & Paper is a game that fell a bit flat for me when I tried it at the tail end of 2022. (I know, I’m cheating here, since these are supposed to be games I discovered in 2023, but I didn’t really discover it before 2023…) Then I retried some more and it grew on me. What felt like a too random game of lucky draws turned into a real tactical challenge. It’s the little things that make this game tick. What card do you discard? When do you activate the superpowers of paired cards? And do you wait with the card stealing (yes, there’s that) until the end when it can really damage someone’s game (The last game I played of it both my opponents had saved shark-attacks for when I said “Last Chance”!), or do you use it early to build your own game up… Rounds are fast and tense, but you can easily end up playing it a whole evening…

Favourite mechanism: The push your luck nature of the round ending – where players can decide when to end the round and what way they want the round to end leads to tense moments.

Gateway games

First gateway game out is Dorfromantik: The Board Game – a board game version of a video game that has always felt very board-gamey. Like in Carcassonne you are building a landscape of tiles, but unlike the old cut throat classic you’re doing it as a team. The game also uses the more interesting hexagons instead of boring old squares. This is a collaborative game that can lead to classic quarterbacking, as all information is open and discussion is encouraged, however, for some reason, it hasn’t been a problem for me so far.

Favourite mechanism: I like how the designers have translated the ever evolving random deck of landscape tiles with and without “missions” into two piles of tiles, with details on each mission dynamically added from a separate pool.

Both my favourite games in this category are colaborative ones, I notice. Sky Team is a collaborative game about landing a plane – as a duo of pilot and co-pilot. It is a dice placement game with dice rolls hidden from the other player and no communication allowed. Some placements are strictly for one player, and some of those are dependent on what the other player plays, some few ones are available for both players. Some require high rolls, som low, some not too far off your partner’s values. The game comes with lots of modules, like petrol management and wind, and many airports to land on – with varying difficulty.

Favourite mechanism: The meta game of communicating through the placement of dice is excellent – both in order of dice placed as well as what values are placed…

Gateway+ games

Planet Unknown - Lots of buzz around this game that “…innovates on the popular polyomino trend by allowing simultaneous, yet strategic turn-based play”. Simultaneous play makes this a great game for any player count.

Favourite mechanism: The round robin tile drafting mechanism is clearly both the gimmick and the hook of this game, It puts a whole new… spin… on (hate) drafting.

Earth was a game that received a lot of hype around its release on Earth Day here in France. It shares kind of somewhat some DNA from Wingspan. For example, it is a tableau builder with a nature inspired theme and a huge deck of unique cards. In Earth you create landscapes, grow flora, and score bonus points with fauna.

Favourite mechanism: Another thing Earth shares with Wingspan is that the order of cards in your tableau matters – and you activate cards of the same colour when you chose an action of that colour.

Solo games

Hadrian’s Wall has a lot of euro style elements from one of my favourite games of all time – Paladins of the West Kingdom, but mashed up with another favourite – Ganz Schön Clever. It is a flip and write and somewhat of a multiplayer solitaire, but/and I love it.

Favourite mechanism: As in most (all?) good random-writes, the cascading actions is the strong point of this game. I do this that trigger this that gives me a new resource that can be spent to do another action etc.

Enthusiast game

I got to play some great games in this, my favourite category in 2023, like Barrage, Blackout: Hong Kong, Civilization: A New Dawn, Hansa Teutonica, IKI, but two games stood out as the greatest.

Normally I’m firmly placed in the “rules not theme”-camp. Theme can be present and can help remembering a complex rules set, but it can be anything (well, almost) as long as the gameplay itself is a series of interesting decisions to take. In Darwin’s Journey, however, I must admit that it was the theme that talked to me first. (After studying the rules) I kickstarted the game (way) back in early 2021 – with an estimated delivery later the same year. Many (many) delays later it arrived in 2023. And, even with expectations sky high, it lived up to them!

Favourite mechanism: This is a tough one. I like the organic solution to the museum deliveries gives you money at the beginning of the game and rather evolution points later on is really elegant, but maybe my favourite is the fact that certain worker placement spots needs certain upgrades to your workers. This leads to excruciating decisions when… educating… your workforce.

And then, we finally get to my favourite game of 2023: Revive! This blog post explains how the designers basically sat down to create their “ideal game” – and how they ended up with a post-apocalyptic theme with multi use cards and tech trees!

Favourite mechanism: The card play with it’s multi-use cards and upgradeable machine slots! Voila!

So, there you have it. My “Ludoteca Ideale” of my 2023 discoveries… I can’t wait to get either of these ones back to the table! Now for some honourable mentions!

Honourable mentions (sorted alphabetically)

• 7 Wonders: Architects - Revisiting the 7 wonders of the world in a simplified, but still interesting Bauza game.
• Barrage - Cut-throat energy companies in a heavy euro. (Possibly the most stressful game I played all year.)
• Blackout: Hong Kong - Can’t go wrong with a Pfister game.
• Civilization: A New Dawn - The game that birthed the great action cards found in Ark Nova. A bit too much dudes-on-a-map for me, but great to have tried it,
• Deep Dive - Push your luck penguin diving game.
• Hansa Teutonica - The beigest game I played all year. A good old German design on a German map.
• Living Forest
• Marshmallow Test - a clever little twist on trick taking from Knizia where later tricks are worth more points than earlier ones.
• Point City - Point City is Point Salad, but with a city theme, but also a quite different game on it’s own.
• Splendor Duel - This two player version of Splendor is really great. Adds some more meat to the rather slender splendor.
• Sushi Go Party! - First time I got to try the party version of this classic game.
• The Guild of Merchant Explorers - revisiting some mechanics from Next Station London, but developing them into a… real… game.
• Ticket to Ride: Amsterdam - Simplified Ticket to Ride for when you have less time, but it works!
• Village Green - A point salad of garden management.
• Voyages - Print and play, roll and write about exploring oceans.

The games I look forward the most to play in 2024

• Great Western Trail: New Zealand
• Footprints - “Lead a stone age clan to the mountains before the land is flooded.” from a group of Norwegian designers.
• Pirates of Maracaibo - I really like Maracaibo, and this seems to be a reimagining from Pfister and co.
• Faraway - Lots of buzz around this towards the end of the year. (Spoiler: I have played it and it is a great little game!)
• The White Castle
• Nucleum - Diamant d’argent 2024 (after Darwin’s Journey) “Become the leader of the industrial revolution in an alternate timeline.”
• Evacuation
• Apiary - “Hyper-intelligent bees take to outer space to build, explore, and grow.”
• Karvi - “Viking themed game with a dice action track.”
• Through Ice and Snow - Another kickstarter with a theme I couldn’t resist (I was heavily into the story around the discovery of the Northwest passage some years ago with, among other things, The Terror (both the book and the TV-series are great!)) that should arrive in 20232024…
• Dead Cells — I’m very curious to see what Bauza and Maublanc manage to massage one of my favorite action video games of all time into…

From earlier years:

The Castles of Tuscany, The Search for Planet X, Under Falling Skies, Praga Caput Regni, Pipeline, Watergate, Cooper Island, Spirit Island, My Island, Isle of Cats: Explore & Draw, Gugong, Teotihuacan, Tiletum, Marrakech, Wayfarers of the South Tigris, Imperial Steam, Coffee Traders, Carnegie, Come Together …

Shelf of shame/opportunity

• Skymines! - I really liked my time in Mombasa from Pfister, so I’m curious to see how this re-theme has gone.
• Crystal Palace! - Still waiting for the perfect moment to get this to the table…
• The Nano9Games: Railways, City Planner, and Empire
• Expansions to:
  • Viscounts of the West Kingdom
  • Railways of the World
  • On Mars
  • Maracaibo
  • Paleo
  • Cascadia

Also, for reference, here’s my list from 2022.

Data

All new-to-me games played 2023

Data from ingress in table form