New-to-me games played recently include …
DEWAN (2025): Rank 2780, Rating 7.4
A classic Euro feel. Collect terrain cards from the draft and then spend them to branch out from your start camp to build camps on terrain (and next to symbols) that match the contracts you start with and pick up along the way. With only one camp allowed per spot, there’s a bunch of race tension about whether you’ll get the cards you need in time to get that spot you want. Turns go quick resulting in a 45 min outing. Every map is different. There are scenarios to explore. It’s simple (and I suspect it might get a bit samey) but likeable.
Rating: 7
BAGHDAD: THE CITY OF PEACE (2025): Rank 5383, Rating 7.7 – Lopiano / Mangone
Solid euro. Each turn you play a card that has action symbols on it which, when combined with your previous 2 cards, define the strength of each action. You then move around to the next quadrant to do your desired action – collecting various types of tiles for different benefits or building stuff for points or ongoing benefits. Much of the game is working out which card to then add to your hand – are you chasing a specific action symbol for what you want to do next or the bonus effect it provides when it leaves the play area. And how often do you want to trigger river symbols that collect resources for building? This triggers downtime because you ideally need/want to know your next 3 turns to determine your best card take. Still, it’s engaging, the rules aren’t overboard, there’s a bit of interaction re what’s left you but there are always options, and I liked how you needed to work on your VP strategy from the get-go and not lose sight of it.
Rating: 7
DOZITO (n/a): Rank 27480, Rating 5.4
A twist on the inexorable Too Many Monkeys … and gets the same rating. Cards are numbered 1-12 in 5 colours. Draw and either discard or place it in its numbered spot in your grid. If you replace a face-down card, reveal it and go again. Repeat until you either discard or replace a face-up card. First person to complete their grid (which is agonisingly long getting the last needed number) sparks the last round, and then get points based on orthogonally adjacent groups of the same colour. Which is bananas random. Pass.
Rating: 3
GHOSTS GALORE (2026): Rank 9393, Rating 6.5
Draw a tile showing a path and various monsters and place it in your 3×3 grid. You score by connecting various doors and differently for each of the 10 or so various types of monsters (on a path, adjacent, most of, etc). Which is too many monsters to consistently be able to find tiles to max out whatever monster scoring strategy you’re trying so don’t over-invest emotionally. You can at least pass if you don’t like the tile you want, it gets added to the next player’s choice, and then try again when it gets back to you. It’s a plan-and-hope type of game which goes pretty quickly and has a nice trade-off decision each round.
Rating: 6
KEYSIDE (2025): Rank 5686, Rating 7.8 – Breese / Turczi
The game has 12 action spots. Everyone can gather on each. There’s a round of placement, then a round of actions. All overlayed by a complicated process of using coloured dice to trigger action placements and move up that coloured track for benefits (and potential follows by other players that forsake track benefits for being earlier in turn order later – an important decision). In the next phase, actions are triggered in turn order to allow you to screw over people who don’t have resources by picking the spots that require spending resources before they’ve had a chance to trigger resource collecting. What fun. Your meeples stay out on the action spots so by the third and final round everyone’s doing everything. The action spots also double up as end-game VP conditions so aim to max your meeples on the conditions you’ve specialised in. There are other places like markets and farms which I couldn’t be bothered learning about on the bridge too far theory. All the setup variety is pretty much a furphy – it’ll be the same game of get on resource gathering actions early next time. There’s too much complexity overlay to disguise an essentially simple game of screw thy neighbour which is too long at 2-3 hours.
Rating: 6
KODAMA: THE TREE SPIRITS (2016): Rank 1832, Rating 6.7
Build up continuous strings of the same symbols to score them over and over, whilst maximising your end-of-round bonus score. Either a high-scoring card (for you) will be in the draft on your turn or it won’t. The underlying mechanic is disguised by the virtual ‘card rows’ appearing thematically as branches on a tree. This isn’t enough to save an underwhelming game where the turns get longer as players count up potential scores from every card in the draft before claiming.
Rating: 5
RAILWAY BOOM (2025): Rank 2947, Rating 7.9 – Hayashi / Luciani
If you like meaty auction games, here’s one for you. Each round you’ll do four things – collect trains to hold what you collect, build track to collect things, buy tech cards, buy VP multipliers. Each of these four phases reveal a new set of things to buy and then they’re auctioned – players collect in bid order. Sometimes you don’t care too much, other times it can be vital. But you don’t know until that auction starts so it’s impossible to plan. Making it more chaotic, each auction is in a different currency so you can’t plan which one to maximise, you just need to variously build an income and collect each. If there’s a huge differential in value between first and fourth in a currency you’re not strong in, that can blow your game up. I’m also a little concerned with rich getting richer if this happens in early rounds. There’s also constantly new iconography to master with each auction which slows things down. Having been warned of all the pitfalls, the game still manages to draw you in, building your 4 income engines, managing risk, identifying opportunities, working out how to leverage your effects. It has a coolness about it.
Rating: 7
SNORKELING (2025): Rank 28936, Rating 4.7
Card shedder where you play 1+ cards to the discard pile matching colour or number and that gives you the right to play a card on someone’s score pile to lower their score by 1. If you clear your hand, you increase your score by 1. The round ends when one player has a 0 played on them, and if players are doing it right, each other player should be on 1 or at most 2 to even things out. Which can take a while and is king-makerly un-fun. The game then expects you to play until someone hits 12 which may take you the rest of the night.
Rating: 4
Thoughts of other Opinionated Gamers:
Larry: I liked Keyside, but it felt a bit overwrought to me. Maybe one or two too many things to consider, including assigning numbers to your dice, which is undoubtedly important, but which I still haven’t figured out how to use to give me an edge. I actually like that you can be screwed if another player triggers an action too soon; it means that you have to be very careful about timing things, which influences play a good deal. I’d play it again, but given that my play felt slightly overwhelming, I’m not sure I’ll be the one suggesting it.
Mark Jackson: Dewan was one of my favorite new games from Essen 2025… and subsequent plays this year (both in-person and on BGA) cemented that opinion.
Alan How: Keyside looks like a typical R&D game – well constructed and many ways to progress. But the game can be really nasty. Turn order and assessing where dice can fit and ships can reach are aspects that make the game more challenging. I’ve enjoyed it more as I played subsequent games, but newcomers can get nasty shocks if they are not pointed out.
I first played Dewan on BGA and then several times in person. All were very enjoyable and quick games (30 minutes), but had enough interesting decisions to engage the brain without hurting it. I’ve yet to try the team version.
Railway Boom is an excellent game and very similar to the original, but with updated components. It’s been good to see the new version and I’ve enjoyed games at 2,3 and 4 players. The clever bidding system sells the game, but the city location cards provide the challenges each round.
