After 306 new games for the year, doing the rules/video for Speakeasy (the imminent #307) broke me. That’s it. No more. I couldn’t watch it in one sitting, my mind kept wandering, rule after rule after icon after icon after bonus action after bonus action. Enough. No more 20+ page rule books. I’m going to go back to light and easy for a while and recuperate a little. I’ll enjoy the game of course. I’m just a bit over how much pre-game investment you need to make for every big game that comes along now. The price we pay.
New-to-me games played recently include …
ALMA MATER (2020): Rank 1186, Rating 7.3 – 3+ designers (you know my theory!)
Everyone was doing similar things each round – buy resources from each other (so the money went round and round) and spend resources on students and professors for powers that minimise the resource buying burden in future. Repeat for 6 rounds. It has the driest of themes which is promptly forgotten because it’s just abstract Euro resource juggling. There are different powers each game which requires some assessment re scoring strategy. Then max out your strategy. But there aren’t enough strategies to provide a substantially varied experience. It feels explored after a play.
Rating: 6
CIRCADIANS: FIRST LIGHT (2019): Rank 888, Rating 7.5
The dice you roll determine what worker placement spots they can be placed on. There are only 7 rounds. If you have a plan but you don’t roll the numbers needed (and which match the resources you have to spend), or your preferred spots are taken before your turn comes, well, do something else and make the best of it (which is nice in its own right) but don’t fault me for not investing in the game after sucky rolls on multiple turns leads to falling off the pace. It means a fair bit of downtime while plans are made and re-made. And re-made. The game is mostly about choosing when to lose dice for the big point spots vs gaining replacement dice to keep the resource income ball rolling. That’s the bit that will pull people back, but to me it feels like it’s going to play similarly each time.
Rating: 6
DISTILLED (2023): Rank 284, Rating 7.8
You get to fulfil one contract (ie liquor recipe) in each of the 7 rounds – aim for something, buy the ingredients/items from the display, fulfil. Money is tight, planning is important. There are hard decisions re sacrificing VPs because you desperately need enough money to buy next round’s stuff to keep the ball rolling. And here’s the part that rubs me the wrong way. You shuffle all the cards you’re using to fulfil your contract, discard 2, and you only fulfil if you still have enough ingredients. Thematically brilliant apparently, but it gripped me with sighs and whatevers each time. Mitigate with extra ingredients and having an inferior contract available if you lose a key ingredient, but it sure makes life easier if you get lucky. And that moment each round was enough to undo all the other good stuff for me.
Rating: 6
GALACTIC CRUISE (2025): Rank 210, Rating 8.4 – 3+ designers (just saying)
Big barrier to entry on the rules teach and the game length. There’s a ton of actions to do but how to get “big” points is opaque (on the first play) because there are so many variables defined during setup that the rules can’t really outline it. It turns out everyone has to do much the same thing but it takes forever, an hour or two of various actions, to set up your points engine (ie the launch). Execute it as many times as you can and then everyone can compare who took best advantage of this game’s setup. Which definitely rewards replay. But turns are long, downtime high, and it’s a lot of this, that, this, that to get to the fun part and I lost my ability to care before I got there.
Rating: 6
KATHMANDU (2024): Rank 6221, Rating 7.2 – Feld
I sighed when the unfurling indicated yet another race game along a terrained track but I put my trust in the designer and was rewarded. Each turn choose one of your dice. That’s how far you’re moving. Normally you choose based on the terrain you want to land on because it offers a card, or a tile, or flipping a progress token, or some such. But sometimes you need to choose the die based on its colour because you need that colour’s token to progress or to buy that card or that tile. Life is wonderful when the two coalesce but most turns require a sacrifice one way or the other – and that’s the game, making the best of what’s on offer. Each turn provides a nice little decision of how to max and what to let go, do I race for end-game points or do I go slow and hoover up the points here, and it comes with lots of variants to explore. I enjoyed it.
Rating: 7
SALTFJORD (2024): Rank 1316, Rating 7.9
Sturdy Euro. A turn is to take a die from the common pool and activate the various resource and action spots in your 6 by 6 grid for that die’s row/column. An important part of the game is adding buildings to your grid to provide more resource and action spots that suit your strategy so that each die gives more bang for your buck. It’s tempting to take fishing actions to collect tokens for points and resources, but it’s hard to go past selling resources for crates as these not only give points but give end-of-round bonuses as well. The other action is to move up the fixed tech trees asap to make the other actions more productive. It’s solid and interesting, happy to play again, but any longish game where you end up doing this or that because that’s what left you (re the dice) doesn’t always spark replay sensibilities for me.
Rating: 7
STEPHENS (2024): Rank 4874, Rating 7.1
After reading the rules, I couldn’t see where the game was. But it all comes together nicely and it surprised me on the upside. Part of the game is buying cards and assigning them to a cube-gathering spot that grant a bonus each time a cube is collected (which will give you stuff on other player turns, yay). These also unlock helpful special effects which helps drive strategy. But while you’re doing that, you’re not collecting income cards (prioritise girl!) nor are you collecting contract cards (VPs!) or the cubes to fulfil them. It’s simple game-play but the decisions aren’t always easy, especially when taking something helps others. It’s a very cube-pushy Euro that would usually jade me up but there’s enough of interest here to say yes if someone wanted to explore.
Rating: 7
VERSO (2025): Rank 17024, Rating 6.0
You’re building a tableau of cards (they come in 3 colours numbered 1-6), aiming to build a 3 x 3 grid (each colour has its own row) for bonus points, but primarily banking consecutive runs within a colour. Most of the game is simply drawing a card, the twist being that if you’d prefer a different colour/number, you can flip it but must accept whatever’s on the other side. If you already have that card/number, lose your turn. Random. Then, whenever someone banks a run, their neighbours must flip their rightmost card in that colour and move it to its new row – it may be good, it may be bad, it will be random. At least the deck runs out quickly to end the game.
Rating: 5
Thoughts of other Opinionated Gamers:
Mark Jackson: While I don’t disagree about the hill one has to climb rules-wise and first-play-wise for Galactic Cruise, I’ve found it to be worth the effort. Games with experienced players are moving MUCH quicker (thanks to the excellent graphic design) and I’m enjoying it immensely.
What you find off-putting in Distilled I think is charming (the distilling process card removal) and on-point thematically. I’d encourage folks who haven’t tried the game to give it a go – you may have the same reaction as Alison but it was my favorite “new to me” game of 2024.
I also like my one (and only) play of Kathmandu – I’d like to try it again.
Larry: I agree with Mark about Galactic Cruise. There is indeed a lot of stuff going on and the teach ain’t short, but I thought it was excellent and earned a much treasured “I Love It” rating from me. I was hugely impressed by the game’s production, given that it was a first-time effort from the publishers and designers. It’s currently my Game of the Year for 2025, but I’ve yet to sample the Essen titles, so that could obviously change. But I’m certain GC will wind up one of my top games of the year.
I’ve never played Saltfjord, but I have played the game it was derived from, Santa Maria, and like it a lot. The latter’s theme made the new game necessary and I’ll be curious to see if I find the changes in Saltfjord an improvement on the original game. But the heart of both games is the dice action selection system, which is excellent, so I expect I’d continue to enjoy the new title.
I’ve also never played Distilled, but I could see being annoyed at the distilling card removal system just as much as Alison is. Since the theme does nothing for me, it sounds like a good game for me to avoid.
Finally, I’d like to check out Kathmandu one of these days. It’s definitely lighter than my usual preference, but the mechanics sound interesting and it’s the kind of game that Feld usually excels at.
Doug G.: Shelley and I have played three of the above recently, enjoying Kathmandu, Stephens, and Verso.
Kathmandu, as Alison says, was a pleasant surprise. It is lighter than many Feld games, but worth checking out if you missed it when it first hit the shelves.
Stephens, which is now readily available from Capstone Games, made both of our Top Games of 2024 lists last year. It plays quick, but has some nice depth as you race to develop your engine and fulfill contracts before Napoleon’s army invades.
Verso is quick and light and rather random, but fun with 4 players building their tableaus or banking their points. The fact that you affect the players on either side of you makes it a bit better.
Tery N: I agree with Alison’s assessment of Alma Mater. I really wanted to like it, but it just felt too dry, even though it includes lots of elements I normally enjoy.
I am not a fan of Distilled, and I don’t understand why people love it so much. The basic actions and the idea of the game are all great, but that random discard of 2 cards kills me; work hard to get the ingredient you need, only to have it randomly discarded. Aside from that being annoying, it doesn’t feel thematic at all and I was just frustrated the whole time every time I played it.
