August 2025
Games I played for the first time this month, from worst to best, along with my ratings and comments.
Sabobatage – 4/10
So long as I have kids this age, it seems I’m destined to get roped into yet another take-that card game with cute art and wacky antics. Sabobatage is actually a few years old, possibly even predating my daughter’s obsession with boba tea. But it fits right with today’s crop of Exploding Kittens clones.
Your goal is to make drinks, which are three-card sets comprised of a tea, a topping, and a flavor. On your turn, you draw 2 cards, then play up to 3 cards. Once you’ve completed two drinks, you will draw 3 cards instead. Be the first to complete some number of drinks (based on player count and desired game length) and you win.
Some cards are clearly better than others. A boring tea card with no ability is obviously outclassed by tea cards that provide a benefit. A card that gets any other card out of the discard pile is useless on turn one but overpowered in the late game. Some cards make you miss your whole turn or ruin already-completed drinks. The philosophy of game design here is that balance doesn’t matter since the players will all target whoever is currently winning. This is the same paradigm that all such games follow. Yawn.
Sabobatage is not a broken game; it’s just a boring one. There are no strategies to learn, or clever tactics that arise. It’s not actively unpleasant to simply throw down a few adorably-illustrated cards each turn while you make conversation, but this is also really not the experience I want out of sitting down to play a game. On the bright side, after purchasing it at Gen Con, this did inspire us to stop at a little boba tea place outside Indianapolis which was quite delicious.
That’s a Question! – 5/10
That’s a Question! is a party game from Vlaada Chvatil, the mind behind some excellent party games, such as Codenames and Pictomania. But while those games are all about giving and guessing clues, this game is all about subjective opinions.
On your turn, you will pose one of three possible questions to a player of your choice. The options are “Which of these would you choose?”, “Which would you miss more if it ceased to exist?”, or “Whom do you consider worse?”. You will then choose two cards from your hand as the possible responses. Your goal is to create a question that is difficult to answer. So for example, you might choose “Restaurants” or “Google” for the “which would you miss more” question.
The player you posed the question to will secretly answer it, while the other players guess how they think that person answered. The answers are revealed, and points are awarded to players who correctly matched. As the person who posed the question, you get a point for each player who did NOT match, because this indicates the question must have been difficult. It is not possible for the person being asked the question to score any points.
There are some special chips as well. If you as a guesser feel confident that you’ve matched the answer, you can use your 3x chip to get triple points this round. On the other hand, if you think the question is very hard and few others will match the answer, you can use your ?!? chip to score points for wrong answers, just like the asker always gets. These are single-use chips, but you get another one about three times per game, so in practice you can use them more often than not.
My hope was that this game would generate some fun “get to know you” moments or even funny arguments afterwards. But in practice, the questions don’t seem to generate the kinds of laughs or thought-provoking discussions you might expect. Often everyone just kind of nods and goes, sure, seems reasonable. I think Whoonu delivers on this concept much better.
Ultimately, the idea for this game is better than its execution. The structure of the game itself seemed unpolished, with too many opportunities to use special chips (more than every other turn) and scores that well exceed the scoreboard. But worse, the questions themselves didn’t succeed at creating a fun or competitive experience. Willing to give this one another shot with a different crowd and see if my opinion changes, but for now I think it’s outclassed by other options.
Tricky Kids – 5/10
The trick-taking renaissance continues with this brand new twist on the genre. Tricky Kids provides you with a three-suited deck of cards, none of which have any numbers on them. In other words, the deck just 18 identical blue cards, 18 identical yellow cards, and 18 identical pink cards. So how do the numbers get there? Well, that’s what the dry-erase markers are for.
After the hands are dealt, each player must discard two cards, giving you some control over how many of each suit you have. After this, you will use your marker to write a positive integer on each card. The catch is that your total value cannot exceed 21. This is a painfully small amount, averaging out to only about 3 per card, though most players will opt for a couple zeros to maximize their values elsewhere.
The winner of each trick will score some points, though this amount varies in each trick based on the suit that was led. The point values are randomized before each round, but known in advance so that players can plan their number-writing accordingly. Consequently, having control of the lead is extremely strong and losing control of the lead can be devastating.
If you are long in one particular suit and get to lead, you might be able to take all the rest of the tricks while your opponents helplessly fail to follow suit. But on the other hand, if you’re long in one suit and don’t have the lead, you might never win another trick for the whole hand. That dynamic makes it very difficult to know whether to spread out your suits and numbers or lean in hard to lots of one suit and a few high numbers. Unfortunately, this seems less like a difficult decision than a total crapshoot.
I’m not sure how to play this game well. But more concerning is that I’m not sure there is a way to play this game well. It’s possible that I just haven’t played enough to understand the subtleties, but I have played a lot of trick-takers so I’m kind of skeptical that’s the case. If you like the idea of changeable cards in a trick-taking game, Cat in the Box does this concept much better.
Barbecubes – 6/10
Barbecubes is a simple dexterity game with a grilling theme. Using plastic tongs, which are smaller than the average pair of tweezers, players will attempt to place wooden meat tokens on the grill without having any meat fall through.
On your turn, you draw a card. It will depict a single type of meat as well as whether that meat must be placed onto exactly one or exactly two slats of the grill. Sometimes, it will also specify that you need to use your non-dominant hand. Using the tongs, attempt to execute this maneuver as specified. If you fail, you keep the card in front of you to indicate your failure. Fail twice, and you are eliminated. Last one standing wins.
The rules really couldn’t be simpler and there are no doubt countless other games you could compare this one to. Still, the charming way in which the tin it comes in is used as the base for the grill slats, the pixelated appearance of the food (hence, cubes), and the fast-playing nature all add a certain charm.
Barbecubes is far from an essential addition to your collection, yet it works well enough for what it is. Tuck it in your purse, bring it to a restaurant, and laugh and cheer at the misfortune of your opponents.
Gloomies – 6/10
In Gloomies, players take on the role of “galactic gardeners”, planting strange flowers and then picking them with adorable spectral assistants. The highest total score across both the growing and harvesting phases will be the winner.
On your turn, you will play up to three cards from your hand, each of which depicts a color of flower. These flowers must appear consecutively on the board. Then you will add a matching wooden flower token on top of each planted space, indicating that a flower is now growing there. You will score more points the more flowers you plant, but you are also granted whatever bonus is adjacent to the last flower you planted. For this reason, you may sometimes wish to plant less than three. Take a couple new cards and your turn is over.
Once the board is nearly full of flowers, the second half of the game begins. Now your turn will consist of playing cards from your hand to harvest the flowers. As in the first half of the game, you will score more points the more flowers you harvest. But you also may be seeking out specific flower colors to meet goal cards you’ve acquired.
Gloomies is somewhat abstract, yet I appreciate that it’s not really a brain-burner. For example, you don’t really need to plan your growing in the first half in light of your harvest in the second half. Just look for opportunities based on your hand of cards and the current state of the board. It’s far more tactical than strategic, which is a welcome change of pace from other similar games. (And let’s be honest, the design elements aren’t really breaking any new ground here.)
This is a peaceful-feeling game, despite some degree of player interactivity. Cute-little-ghost-guys-working-on-a-magic-garden is cozy and relaxing. The primary sin of Gloomies is that it’s a bit ho-hum. Not irredeemably so, but just in a way that might sometimes cause you to reach for a game with more excitement instead.
Oddland – 6/10
Oddland is an abstract strategy game that does its darndest to add a charming theme. Players will lay terrain tiles, then populate them with “odd” hybrid animals such as the cheetoise or pangeroo. Painted wooden versions of these animals are available as a separate purchase, strongly increasing the table appeal. Unfortunately there is no chance of fitting them into the box, a pretty serious annoyance.
On your turn, you will lay a “tile” (really a card), each of which is a 4×4 grid of various terrain types. In a departure from other games of this ilk, your tile is allowed to partially overlap other tiles, covering and negating the terrain beneath. In this way, the landscape not only grows over the course of the game, but changes as well.
After placing your tile, you then must choose one of your odd animals to place on it. (You have seven of these, so the game only lasts seven turns per player.) Each animal scores differently, but each animal also has several versions, allowing for variety from game to game. Many scoring methods relate to the types of terrain they are placed on or near, but because of the overlapping tile placements, this can be quite volatile; animals placed earlier in the game are far less likely to be big point scorers as there are more opportunities for the terrain nearby them to change.
Even as a two-player game, I found this volatility to be a negative. I found it difficult to make a clever play that couldn’t immediately be negated by my opponent. Some of this is just inexperience (or stupidity), but I do get the sense that this frustration would get even worse the closer you get to the maximum of five players.
Despite these complaints, it’s hard not to be charmed by aesthetics and even the mechanics of Oddland. Fans of games like Carcassonne or Cascadia will probably find similar enjoyment here, in a tight, fast-playing package. Though the learning curve is probably a little bit higher here, not in terms of rules weight, but in terms of tactics.
Tearable Quest – 7/10
I am a sucker for gimmicky games and Tearable Quest definitely fits the bill. In this game, players will each receive a sheet of paper with monsters and weapons printed on it. From this sheet, they will need to tear off pieces in just the right way to score points. Yes, this is a consumable product with 100 total sheets, with one per player per game being destroyed. Yet at a price point of only $9, this is a pretty reasonable value proposition.
The game is themed around fantasy monsters. In each round, a random monster will be revealed, and players will have two minutes to try to tear off as many of that monster as they can from their sheets, along with the matching weapon needed to defeat them. A torn scrap that has a weapon without its matching monster scores no points, but accidentally tearing too far and separating them is hilariously common at the game’s frenetic pace.
But ripping off too much isn’t the only pitfall. A scrap that contains even part of another monster it isn’t supposed to will also score no points. What’s more, the back of the sheet also has icons on it. Some of these are treasures, giving bonus points if they are included. But others are curses, giving a point penalty if even partially present on the reverse side of a scrap.
As strange as it sounds for an ephemeral 10-minute experience, there really are strategies to explore, not merely dexterity. Each game has a “boss monster” that can be scored in every round, and deciding how and when to prioritize these as opposed to the random monster for the round can be a fascinating decision. There are also optional bonus cards that can be used each round, with random additional goals to pursue such as fewest pieces torn or most total treasures scored. Having players plan an overall approach over three 2-minute rounds while also balancing tactical priorities within each round is quite an impressive achievement for such trivial game. Most importantly, it’s actually a lot of fun.
12 Rivers – 7/10
There must be something in the human brain that wires us to enjoy watching things roll down a hill. 12 Rivers isn’t the first game to take advantage of this, but it is perhaps the most satisfying from a tactility perspective.
At the start of each round, colored marbles are randomly placed at the top of the board, which serves as the ramp. Players will then take turns slotting their pieces into the channels below, allowing them to stop and collect the marbles that will eventually come rolling down. Placing higher on the board will guarantee certain colors, but costs cards from your hand. Placing lower gives fewer marble choices, but allows you to keep cards in your hand to activate special abilities.
Once all this placement is done, the gate is removed (like at the start of a downhill bike race) and the marbles come rolling down the 3D tracks, coming to rest where players have placed their slotted pieces. From top to bottom, each blocking piece is removed, with each removed piece entitling its owner to take one of the marbles that stopped there, leaving the rest to tumble lower.
Each color of marble has an inherent point value commensurate to its rarity. But marbles will also be placed onto villager tiles, each of which is seeking a specific combination of colored marbles to grant a point bonus. But marbles won’t score at all, even their inherent points, unless they are placed onto a villager, so getting villagers is also an important consideration. A villager can be taken in lieu of placing one of your pieces as a marble stopper. So each round contains some careful planning as well as jockeying for position with the other players, both for prime marbles and the best available villager tiles.
12 Rivers is a gateway-weight game with an appealing table presence. It’s hard to imagine it being anyone’s favorite game, but it’s also hard to imagine anyone being unwilling to partake. Highly accessible and perhaps even amazing to gamers who are not as experienced (read: jaded).
FlipToons – 7/10
FlipToons is a deck-building open-drafting game themed around old timey animation. Players will race to have a turn in which they generate at least 30 fame, a goal that will likely be achieved in only about 20 minutes.
Each player starts with their own identical deck, comprised of not-very-famous toons. Simultaneously, each player will flip six cards off the top of their deck and place them, in order, into a 3×2 grid. Many cards have specific effects based on where they appear (top row, next to a specific card, etc.) Players don’t have control of the placements though, which certainly keeps the gameplay moving, but at the cost of some tactical decision-making.
Each toon will have a fame value, and your goal is to generate as much as possible. Not only is the race to 30 fame the victory condition, but fame is also used as your currency to buy new, more famous toons to add to your deck. This has a spiraling effect, where players who are doing well at generating points are also best able to buy powerful cards. That would be a problem in a longer game, but the goal here is essentially to put yourself into said spiral.
As a fan of both deck-building and drafting, there is a lot here to enjoy. But I do think the game would be richer had it chosen to inject a bit more strategy (in the form of decoupling points from currency) or tactics (in the form of allowing the grid to be arranged as you choose). FlipToons delivers on what it sets out to do, but it really leans into how lightweight and fast it is. If you’re like me, you might prefer a bit more meat on the bones.
Nature – 7/10
Nature is a gateway-weight game about animals competing for resources and evolving new traits. The base game is simple (and inexpensive), but it bills itself as modular, with an experience that changes quite a lot based on which expansions you purchase for it.
Considering the base game alone, the structure is quite simple. You start the game with one species of animal. It is small (size 1) and has a small population (count 1). Then you get a five-card hand to enhance this species. Each card is a random trait that you can give to your species, or you can discard cards to grow your size or population count.
Once all players have done this, each species in turn will need to eat. Every food that your animals consume is a point (indeed this makes up the vast majority of your final score), so growing your population to be able to eat more food is a good idea. But food is limited and population that doesn’t have food to eat will starve to death, meaning there is risk in growing your population too high.
Larger animals will eat more food at a time, allowing you get a bigger piece of the pie before the smaller animals can. Larger animals are also better protected from hunters, or better hunters themselves. Hunters? Yes, you have the option to convert your species to a predator, at which point its food source is no longer the communal, limited food supply, but rather the populations of other species. In each round, each player will get an additional species to manage, which will place increasing demands on the food supply, which in turn will all but force some species to turn to predation.
Every one of these decisions from size of species, to population count, to which traits to use, to when to convert to a hunter is incredibly simple to grasp, yet has fuzzy implications that only become apparent as the game goes on and your own experience grows. At which point, it’s probably time to shake things up by adding new traits, event cards, or new food systems from the modular expansions.
I enjoy this design paradigm. I like being able to consider which modules are in play in a given game and how to adjust my strategy accordingly. But even without a single module in use, there is some of this same decision-making: the amount of food available each round is consistent within a given game, but randomized on a per-game basis, creating scenarios of brutal scarcity or harmonious abundance.
Nature’s base game is so simple that I think it doesn’t really hold up long-term without help from the modules. This has the unfortunate side-effect of turning a very affordable game into a rather expensive one if you insist on being a module completionist. Yet I have a suspicion that as I get to try more of these modules, Nature will actually go up in rating.
Shipyard – 8/10
Do you like rondels? What if I told you there was a game that has six of them, some of which are inside other ones? If you said yes to these questions, have I got a game for you! Shipyard pairs its many rondels with some open drafting and set collection for a surprisingly engaging game about ship-building.
As the owner of a shipyard, you’ll need to assemble the ship itself, power it via sails or engines, and staff it with crew members. Each of these elements can be acquired from one of the rondels, but sequencing these acquisitions can be tricky. Perhaps if you wait until your next turn, you will be able to get the element you need more cheaply. But if you wait too long, the other players will take all the good stuff. Both strategic and tactical considerations are present here, in nearly equal measure.
Once you’ve completed a ship, you will send it on a “shakedown cruise”, a term I learned just now for a ship’s first test voyage. You’ll score more points if your ship can travel faster and more safely, but either way you’ll get some points just for having completed the ship.
With so many elements to consider, much of your strategy will be executed by acquiring special power tiles that support your strategy. Want to build ships with only sails? Go ahead and take the power that makes your sails faster. How about powers that give you free crew members or let you advance farther along the rondels for free? Whatever your approach, there is some type of power to support it, and players can succeed with wildly different approaches.
Despite all of those positives, the common complaints about Shipyard are that it feels too dry and runs too long. And there is some validity to both points. This is an optimization exercise with only incidental player interaction which you will participate in for a solid two hours. So now some of you are cringing and others of you are salivating. I’m closer to the latter, and that’s probably the worst thing about me.
Shipyard likely can’t be fairly assessed after just one play like I’ve had. But my first impression is that there is a lot of depth here, and I’d like to play it again to explore a totally different strategy. I think the right group playing this on a regular basis would actually find themselves craving it more rather than getting bored of it, and that’s a mark of strong design.
Lightning Train – 8/10
Lightning Train is a newly-released bag-building train game. Players will compete to score the most points by building railways, completing the transcontinental railroad, delivering goods, and gaining income. In terms of complexity, it occupies a middle ground between gateway train games like Ticket to Ride, and meaty economic train games like Age of Steam.
On your turn, you will draw at least five tiles from your bag, but certain tiles do not count towards this total, allowing you to draw extras. Many of these tiles will be train cars of your color, which you will be able to place onto the board to complete routes between cities. Other tiles will give you point bonuses, allow you to build in specific areas, or provide money to buy more powerful tiles to add to your bag.
Unlike many deck-building and bag-building games, Lightning Train features very few ways to trash your chips. But that’s not to say there is no control over what you draw. Train tiles will be removed by being placed onto the board. They can also be placed into a holding area on your board indefinitely, only being removed in order to activate an ability. You also have control over the rate at which new trains are added to your supply, and there are reasons you might want to have many or few. There is a subtlety to this design approach; new players may not realize just how powerful the management of your chip placement is in controlling what chips you draw.
There are a few elements holding back Lightning Train from the greatness of Paul Dennen’s other designs (Dune: Imperium, Clank, Wild Tiled West). It has fiddly elements that make setup lengthy and certain actions unintuitive. The player aids are poor and there are some iconography issues. The pacing seems a bit off, sometimes ending before the transcontinental railroad is complete or the new action becomes available at 25 points. And kingmaking is a concern, especially with late-game deliveries.
Despite all of those blemishes, Lightning Train is a very enjoyable experience overall. It provides multiple paths to victory and seems to have a deep mastery curve built on relatively intuitive rules. I haven’t had much success on the scoreboard in the couple games I’ve played, but this has just made me want to try again. It’s a good sign when even your crushing defeats are still fun.
Kinfire Council – 8/10
Kinfire Council is the third of the “Kinfire” games, which are all set in the same thematic world. But they have little relationship to one another from a mechanical design perspective. This one is a competitive, mid-weight worker placement game.
The locations where your workers can be placed have three levels, with higher levels being more powerful, but costing more money to use. And when I say levels, that’s quite literal, as the levels are differentiated by their height on a three-dimensional board. This is a nice touch, adding both table appeal and practicality. And of course, managing your money is a fascinating layer to add atop the normal worker placement decisions. Not only that, but the workers themselves can also be upgraded with special abilities. This may allow them to share spaces with other workers, take higher-level spots for free, etc. This is an excellent structure, allowing for lots of tough decisions arising from simple rules.
There’s a twist as well. Locations will be blocked not just by other players, but also by randomly-placed “cultist” tokens. Sending one of your workers to an adjacent location will allow you to capture one of these cultists in lieu of the normal action of that space, but this feels inefficient. Still, if the players don’t manage to capture all the cultists by the end of the round, they will all suffer the consequences.
This is where the semi-co-op aspect of the game comes into focus. It’s not terribly likely that all players will lose via cultist victory (though it is possible). But if the cultists seem to have a shot, players can align themselves with the cult, helping them in their goals to defeat the other players. This is most likely to occur late in the game, once the strength of the cult has become more clear and the lagging players get a sense that this betrayal is their best shot at victory. It’s honestly good that this mostly happens late in the game, as the decisions become a lot less interesting as a betrayer player. And it’s quite possible no one will align themselves with the cultists at all.
Kinfire Council is a game that just does a lot of things right. Worker placements, resource management, upgrade decisions, player interaction, they’re all here and they’re all interesting. Fans of Lords of Waterdeep who are looking for a step up should probably consider this one.
Vantage – 9/10
Vantage is the current leader for my game of the year, and I say that after only a couple plays. Stonemaier delivers another winner, this time in the form of an open-world co-operative adventure game that is full of surprises and resonant narrative.
Each player is an astronaut who has taken an escape pod to the same planet. Having all landed in different locations, each player’s stories and discoveries will be different. Yet the co-operative aspect is maintained by allowing “radio contact” in which the player whose turn it is can describe what they see and ask for input, but cannot show the other players the illustration of their location.
Fascinatingly, while the locations are represented by cards, they are far from random. It would be possible to construct a full map of the world’s roughly 800 locations, each with at least six possible decisions to explore. And indeed, after making a choice, you will be forced to move to some adjoining location. This makes each player’s adventure feel like a connected story, rather than a simple series of unconnected events.
In similar games, like Tales of the Arabian Nights, the other players mostly just watch when it isn’t their turn. This has a certain entertainment value, but Vantage provides a very simple mechanism for the other players to be involved. Skill checks are made by rolling dice. The harder the skill check, the more dice are rolled, since the dice can only ever provide penalties. However, bad rolls can be mitigated by spending skill tokens or storing dice on your character board, and in many cases that can also be done during other players’ turns. This is extremely quick and simple in practice, allowing for personal investment in the other players’ adventures without bogging down the flow or compromising the decision-maker’s agency.
The skill tokens are also an inspired design choice. Instead of providing ongoing bonuses that constantly improve, they are a consumable resource. This creates tough choices about when to save them versus use them to help yourself or your teammates. But it also incentivizes choosing a variety of options over time, rather than, for example, “I always fight everything I see.”
This is one of my favorite genres of game, but one that, admittedly, may not appeal to players seeking out crunchy strategies full of careful calculation. Yet there are actual risk calculations and resource management decisions in Vantage, uncommonly so for the genre. This makes Vantage a best-in-class contender as well. I think its likely my rating will end up at 10/10 once I’ve had a chance to play it more extensively.
August is Gen Con! I demoed or heard pitches for some offerings that I didn’t play a full game of, but still got enough of a taste to share a few thoughts. These also are discussed from least to most interesting to me.
Temple Code – Lightweight deduction game with strong influence from Mastermind. Your guesses will either be wrong, right color wrong location, or fully correct. But it is a race between players to solve it first. Pass.
Hacienda – A remake of a game from about 20 years ago, but not one I’ve played. Abstract route-building, reminiscent of the vastly superior games Kingdom Builder and Through the Desert. Seems fine, but not my jam.
Catan: New Energies – Catan mechanics with the theme of Power Grid. Seems to add complexity without much actual payoff. Lots of random events get drawn, there is pollution to manage, etc. Most of this adds fiddliness without fun, near as I can tell. Prefer the original or Starfarers for sure.
Blind Jack – Dead simple party/trivia game. Guess a trivia answer (numerical), then take another question or not, trying to get closest to 21 without going over, ala Blackjack. If you get an early question you have no idea about, that injects a significant amount of randomness. Seems fine, gimmicky, not likely to really hook non-gamers as well as some alternatives.
Compile – A 2-player lane battler in the vein of Air, Land, and Sea, Hanamikoji, etc. I enjoy the variety afforded by the variable setups, but I don’t know what sets this apart from its competitors beyond that. Perhaps it is a little deeper, as an experienced player will absolutely wipe the floor with a newbie.
Forest Shuffle Dartmoor – It’s basically Forest Shuffle, so it’s great. But I don’t think it’s different enough to warrant owning both, so it feels a little pointless. The big selling point was special abilities on the starting cave cards, giving each player their own special power. But those are going to be released for the original version with the next expansion so…
Positano – A fascinating foray into broadly-appealing gateway games from a publisher mainly known for Red Dragon Inn, a take-that card game marketed to RPGers. Reminiscent of Phil Walker-Harding’s Cities, it’s a drafting game with great table appeal in the form of stackable plastic buildings. Plays 4, but can go to 6 with the expansion. Price seemed a bit too steep for a game of this weight, but the demo was quite enjoyable.
Storm Raiders – A Shem Phillips game released this year about fulfilling contracts and delivering goods across a harsh wasteland battered by storms. Would like to try this one, though rather disgusted at the approach to have the much nicer quality Kickstarter version no longer be available except on the secondary market.
Great Western Trail El Paso – I am a big fan of all the existing GWT games. This one seems shorter and more accessible while still retaining all of the interesting choices. Purchased, hoping to play soon and do a full review. |
