New-to-me games played recently include …

15 JOURS EN FRANCE (2025): Rank 21212, Rating 6.0

Your aim is to buy cards that give you the icons to satisfy objective cards (this many icons, most of this icon, 1 pt for each of this icon, etc). You get 15 eponymous turns. On each, either draw more objectives (like tickets in Ticket To Ride), get more money, or buy a card from the 8-card display. That’s it. Each objective you buy is one less turn to accumulate cards/icons. It’s fine for a 15-minute light affair as long as you’re ok with the result being determined by getting lucky (or not) drawing into synergistic objectives.

Rating: 6

BUILDERS OF BALDUR’S GATE (2025): Rank 11095, Rating 7.0

For those who love the thought of being a property portfolio development manager. Turns are the same throughout the game. Either pay money to build a property (building your income capacity and your presence on the board), do an action to either advance up benefit tracks or build fortifications to protect your properties from overdevelopment crises, or get income. But turns get longer and longer as the game goes on because buildings and income get more and more bonus effects to resolve. If you can’t engineer an income for favours (which are used for actions), life gets tricky. It was fine until I realised how much better everyone’s else’s start buildings aka income engine were compared to mine and I settled in for the long haul of repetitively doing the action-build-income loop with little hope of catching up.

Rating: 6

CITIES (2024): Rank 1029, Rating 7.3 – Finn / Walker-Harding

In each of the 8 rounds you’ll take one each of a scoring card, a 2×2 base tile, and things to place on those tiles – features or buildings. The question you’re continually faced with is, of the newly revealed sets, what is most important to me, and will it still be there on my next turn. Getting scoring cards that suit what you’ve already built can be a priority. Getting a base tile that allows you to build what you need to satisfy scoring cards is a priority. Getting unique features score well. Getting buildings in the right colours to satisfy scoring cards is a priority. There is also a different set of global objectives each game to give a starting direction until your score cards start to accumulate. It’s all very neat, works nicely enough, and is unapologetically classically Euro.

Rating: 7

COLORADO MIDLAND (2011): Rank 8641, Rating 6.9 – Bohrer

Get a random lot of cards representing destinations on the board. You have to play a card to the score queue most turns but a played card will only score if track is built to its destination by the time the card reaches the front of the queue. Everyone adds to the same track, so it’s a game of judging who’s going to drive track where, hold back those cards until it’s about to get there, and judging what destinations will never be reached and playing those early as non-scorers to keep your potential scorers for later. In effect it’s a guessing game. It goes fast enough at least and there are connectivity timing decisions to learn, but it is a bit repetitive (play a card, build track, repeat).

Rating: 6

DINOGENICS (2019): Rank 1032, Rating 7.6

Any Jurassic Park themed game where there’s a chance the dinosaurs will rampage if you’re not all over your fence building and your feeding has to be fun. It’s true worker placement – the tension is all in the racing for spots you need while judging what others will race for. There are different ways to get the card sets you need to build your dinosaurs, then build your fences, build your dinosaurs, get a goatload of food, and buy facilities for effects and points. There’s an event to plan for each round, some luck in your card draws and in your rampage dice rolls (if it gets to that). The downside is a slight rich-gets-richer feel – there’s advantage to getting good cards and jumping off to a great start – as you score your park EVERY ROUND, and having the highest reputation allows you to take first turn each round (which, as you’d gather, is rather important in a worker placement game). There’s no huge variety or mass replay but it is a fun game I’d enjoy playing again.

Rating: 7

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THE GAME MAKERS (2026): Rank 7002, Rating 7.0

I love how so much of the game is played simultaneously, moving on to the next resource getting turn when all players are ready. You get direction from your starting building effects and start cards. Resources are gained using a semi-Fromage system – the better the resource, the longer until you get your meeple back – which is nice to navigate. The crux of the game is whether to spend your resources on fulfilling contracts (the game ends when someone builds 12, so it’s kind of a race) or invest them in infrastructure to gain resources later, gain point multipliers, gain effects, etc, hoping there’ll be time for the investment to pay off.  I enjoyed the immersion and there are lots of different approaches I want to explore. Thumbs up.

Rating: 8

PAX TRANSHUMANITY (2019): Rank 2163, Rating 7.5 – Eklund

I just want to build cards from the display. But it’s an Eklund game. Let’s make it as difficult as possible with a ton of weird rules and obfuscations and precursor actions – get a worker, get money, research a colour, get money, worker, money, claim a card, money, build the card. Then start the whole cycle again for the next card. Sigh. Still, there’s a satisfaction in learning and understanding all the weirdness and getting on top of it. And then, oh, I can win the game on my next turn. A card gets revealed. Next player does something with it which changes the end-game scoring rules. The next player ends the game. Without a chance for response. Come last. I knew it was a Pax game coming in so I was expecting stupidity like this but it’s still a sour way to end a 2-hour game.

Rating: 6

UNCONSCIOUS MIND (2024): Rank 337, Rating 7.9

A truly head-spinning theme which immediately earns kudos. It provides two separate thrusts – acquire resources to satisfy contracts (ie cure clients) and/or acquire cards to meet public goals (ie publish books). Never ever play this with someone who suffers AP though. The game drives you to build a bonus effect engine on your player board – you’ll get to do up to 4 bonus effects after EVERY SINGLE ACTION. If you think that’s a downtime generator, choosing what bonus effects to take from the display and then where to place them on your board to optimise synergies – well, send me a text when it’s my turn. There’s a map you can walk around to get stuff in yet another way, which needs analysis to see if that’s more efficient than just doing straight actions. (Whilst considering which set of bonus effects are best this turn!). Regardless, I’m still curious to play again to see if I can do it better … despite knowing the downtime will drive me insane.

Rating: 7

Thoughts of other Opinionated Gamers:

Larry:  I got to play the prototype for The Game Makers last year and was quite impressed.  But I know I only got to skim the surface, so I’m looking forward to playing the published game to see how it all hangs together.

I have very little experience with Pax games, but the ones that I’ve played have all seemed like Alison describes it.  Massive chaos, all sorts of crazy rules, and very little guarantee of control.  No thanks.

Mark Jackson: I’ve been pumped about the release of The Game Makers since I first played the prototype back in 2024. Subsequent plays of the prototype have shown smart development from the Bezier team in both gameplay and UI. I’m glad I backed the Kickstarter and look forward to having my own copy in 2026!