I’ll have mini-reviews of lots of games in the coming days, but this is a sort of wrap up post, just quick thoughts on the Geekbuzz and Fairplay lists.
The big news on the last day is that attendance topped 200,000 for the first time. The attendance is turnstile attendance, and the initially reported number is 209,000.
Here’s the (final?) top 20 games on the Geekbuzz list:
- The Magnificent
- Trisgmegistus
- Aquatica
- Barrage
- It’s a Wonderful World
- Bruxelles 1897
- Cooper Island
- Glen More II
- Ecos
- Terramara
- Black Angel
- Maracaibo
- Azul: Summer Pavilion
- Underwater Cities: New Discoveries
- Last Bastion
- Teotihuacan Late Preclassic Period
- TEAM3 Pink
- Escape Tales: Low Memory
- Fast Sloths
- Sanctum
And here’s the final FairPlay list. To make it required 30+ ratings with an average of at least 3.5 stars (out of 5).
- Die Crew
- Crystal Palace
- Marco Polo II
- Azul: Summer Pavilion
- Barrage
- Carnival of Monsters
- Res Arcana
- TEAM3
- Dinsaur Island
- Kitchen Rush
- Rune Stones
- Cartographers
- Cooper Island
- Terramara
- Palm Island
So there’s not much overlap!
The following games had good ratings for Fairplay but not many votes: Alubari, Aquatica, Chicago 1875, Glen More II, Pictures, Steamopolis, Trismegistus.
The Geekbuzz list seems to the better list based on what I saw on the ground.
That’s it for my coverage from Essen. My flight leaves in an hour! I’ll be back in coming days with lots of mini reviews of games I’ve played.
Thanks for all the reports to all opinionated crew. Die Crew was the highlight for me – it’s always great to find a hidden gem that wasn’t expected. Also, I think the fair play list has the better games, despite the geekbuzz being ones people might have bought more of. Both lists useful though.
Chris, people with Geekbuzz cards from SPIEL ’19 can continue to thumb and de-thumb titles for now.
The presence of Kitchen Rush and Dinosaur Island on the Fairplay list highlights the German-specific nature of the voters as both of those games were released in 2017, but only in 2019 were German versions released from, respectively, Pegasus Spiele and Feuerland Spiele. That said, I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised by that bias given that the fair takes place in Germany!
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Thanks for the coverage, Chris – I’ve enjoyed following along, and am pleased to see that Barrage, Cooper Island, and Maracaibo managed to stay on the list(s) throughout… it makes me feel more ‘in tune’ with public tastes than I ever expected… lol