The results of the Golden Geek awards for the 2022 calendar year have just been announced. The Golden Geeks give Game of the Year (GotY) awards for three categories: Light, Medium, and Heavy. Here are the results, together with the designers and publishers:
Light GotY – Cat in the Box: Deluxe Edition (Muneyuki Yokouchi, Hobby Japan/Bezier Games)
Medium GotY –Â Heat: Pedal to the Metal (Asger Granerud/Daniel Pedersen, Days of Wonder)
Heavy GotY –Â Carnegie (Xavier Georges, Quined Games)
The Golden Geeks gives awards for other categories as well and here are the winners for those:
2-Player Game –Â Splendor Duel
Artwork/Presentation – Flamecraft
Cooperative Game –Â Return to Dark Tower
Expansion –Â Dune: Imperium – Rise of Ix
Innovative – Cat in the Box
Party Game – Ready Set Bet
Print & Play – Aquamarine
Solo Game – Turing Machine
Thematic Game – Heat
Wargame – Undaunted: Stalingrad
Best Podcast – This Game Is Broken
Best Board Game App – Everdell
Congratulations to all the winners!
I know “congratulations to the winners” is the appropriate response because they’re all great games, but I still feel like Wonderland’s War deserved a place at the table for one of those categories. That it got beat by Heat twice makes me look at both games and ask myself why is it I would rather play WW every time? And those deluxe coins making those clickety clack sounds is a ridiculously awesome presentation compared to the ridiculously cute presentation of Flamecraft. But I’ll forget about this soon enough because I cannot remember a single Golden Geek from last year.
I certainly would have been voting based (or at least heavily influenced by) the mass release version of games rather than deluxe (often via Kickstarter) versions. I haven’t played Heat yet so can’t comment on it.
Wonderland’s War does indeed appear to be a hard-luck loser, Jacob, as it finished second to Heat as both Medium GotY and Best Thematic Game and finished third in Artwork/Presentation. It’s Average Rating on the Geek is very strong, the same as Heat’s. It may be suffering from a bit of a recency bias, as it came out over a year ago and Heat was released at Essen. But a lot more people have rated Heat than WW, so that’s probably why it finished just short. So no wins, but a strong showing nonetheless.
BTW, just to refresh your memory, last year’s Golden Geek winners were pretty good: Ark Nova, The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, and Cascadia. Well worth remembering! :-)