Boardgame Geek has just announced the nominees for their game awards for the 2023 calendar year, the Golden Geeks. As usual, these were determined by selections made by the BGG community. With 15 different categories, there are too many citations to list here, so we’ll just focus on the three Game of the Year (GOTY) categories, for Best Light Game, Best Medium Game, and Best Heavy Game. 10 games were nominated in each of these categories. It looks like the voters did a pretty good job this year and included most of the most notable games released last year. The final results will be announced on or around May 15. Here are the nominations, with each game’s designers listed in parentheses, followed by its publisher. Congratulations to all!
LIGHT GOTY
- Art Society (Mitch Wallace) – Mighty Boards
- Bonsai (Rosaria Battiato, Massimo Borzi, Martino Chiacchiera) – DV Games
- Faraway (Johannes Goupy, Corentin Lebrat) – Catch Up Games
- Knarr (Thomas Dupont) – Bombyx
- Nimalia (William Lievin) – La Boite de Jeu
- Point City (Molly Johnson, Robert Melvin, Shawn Stankewich) – Flatout Games
- Rebel Princess (Daniel Byrne, Jose Guerrero, Kevin Pelaez, Tirso Virgos) – Zombi Paella
- That’s Not a Hat (Kasper Lapp) – Ravensburger
- Thunder Road: Vendetta (Rob Daviau, Justin Jacobson, Dave Chalker, Brett Myers, Noah Cohen, Jim Keifer, Brian Neff) – Restoration Games
- Trailblazers (Ryan Courtney) – Bitewing Games
MEDIUM GOTY
- Apiary (Connie Vogelmann) – Stonemaier Games
- The Castles of Burgundy: Special Edition (Stefan Feld) – alea
- Distilled (Dave Beck) – Paverson Games
- Earth (Maxime Tardif) – Inside Up Games
- Expeditions (Jamey Stegmaier) – Stonemaier Games
- Forest Shuffle (Kosch) – Lookout Games
- Sky Team (Luc Remond) – Scorpion Masque
- Ticket to Ride Legacy: Legends of the West (Rob Daviau, Matt Leacock, Alan Moon) – Days of Wonder
- The White Castle (Isra C., Shei S.) – Devir
- World Wonders (Ze Mendes) – MeepleBR/MUNDUS
HEAVY GOTY
- Age of Innovation (Helge Ostertag) – Feuerland Spiele
- Darwin’s Journey (Simone Luciani, Nestore Mangone) – ThunderGryph Games
- Dune: Imperium – Uprising (Paul Dennen) – Dire Wolf
- Evacuation (Vladimir Suchy) – Delicious Games
- Great Western Trail: New Zealand (Alexander Pfister) – eggertspiele
- Hegemony (Vangelis Bagiartakis, Varnavas Timotheou) – Hegemonic Project Games
- Kutna Hora (Ondrej Bystron, Petr Caslava, Pavel Jarosch) – Czech Games Edition
- Nucleum (Simone Luciani, David Turczi) – Board&Dice
- Scholars of the South Tigris (Shem Phillips, SJ Macdonald) – Garphill Games
- Voidfall (Nigel Buckle, David Turczi) – Mindclash Games
