Craft unique, transparent cards in this shedding game where you uncover ancient ruins and find treasure. On your turn, upgrade a card and play it. Upgrades can stack into wild, game-altering combinations (like a card that equals four 11’s!). You get to claim one card the entire game–how will you construct the perfect combo? Race to play your last card and score!
On the eve of the revelation of the winners of the SdJ award this Sunday, the nominees for a very different kind of game award have been announced. The Jogo do Ano is the Portuguese Game of the Year award, as determined by the game club Spiel Portugal. This award, which goes back to 2006, tends to focus exclusively on heavier games, which distinguishes it from most of the other annual game awards, which often feature lighter designs. For example, last year’s winner was Nucleum. Five games have been nominated for 2025; here they are, together with their designers and publishers:
Personally, I’m a little surprised that Stefan Feld’s Civolution didn’t get nominated, as this is the kind of game that the JdA often features. However, I’m quite pleased that they included Terminus, as I think it is an excellent game that has largely flown under the radar.
The winner of the JdA will be announced in October. Congratulations to the nominated designers and publishers!
A pen and paper game inspired by Tetris. Players draw shapes on their paper, folding it when a line is fully filled in. Use this to your advantage to fill out previously inaccessible lines!
Again, apologies to anyone who isn’t interested in shopping for new games right now – but there are a LOT of great deals on games today on Amazon Prime Day.
Below is a list of some of the ones that caught my eye. As a reminder, all of the links here are affiliate links and the Opinionated Gamers may generate a small commission from said links.
For this next list – here are some games that are on sale. If we have reviewed the game, a link to that review is also included.
In Pergola, players develop their gardens, grow new plants, and attract insects and small animals. On their turn, a player chooses one of the four available tools, picks the presented items, and arranges them in their garden. Then they perform the action corresponding to the chosen tool. Since players have a lot of freedom in arranging plants in their gardens, after fifteen rounds each garden looks completely different and scores differently. The player who accumulates the most points wins.
Alison Brennan: Game Snapshots – 2025 (Part 18)
One of the notable differences between normal gaming conventions and the Gathering is the number of high profile designers walking around and the relatively high proportion of prototypes on the tables be they works in progress, or close to final and being shown off to publishers, or being spruiked to build word of mouth. Well, the days of me fawning over designers are long over and to be honest I try to avoid playing prototypes. I don’t want to waste time on a half-baked idea needing serious tweaking, I don’t want to be responsible for ideas to improve things, I like playing with nice components, and I don’t particularly get a kick out of being ‘first’ to play something before it’s released.
However it seems almost inevitable that you’re going to be sucked into a few (because that’s what’s on offer as you’re wandering around) and I tried to tackle them with good grace and responsibility. The good news was that they were all decent, which probably isn’t that surprising given the track record of the designers there. Mind you, there was nothing that set my mouth frothing in anticipation either. And while some prototypes were a bit rough and ready, there were others that were indistinguishable from produced games so good were the components. Anyway, I felt I did my bit, helped shared the load, but I was always happy to get back to the ‘real’ stuff once done.
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