I haven’t had much opportunity for in-person gaming since COVID shut everything down. So this year has been mostly about exploring solo gaming for me. So far I’ve really enjoyed
Too Many Bones (tons of content, beautiful dice/components, very challenging)
Mage Knight (more of a score optimization puzzle than a win/lose deal, but plenty of tough/interesting decisions to make and puzzles to solve along the way. Rulebook is annoyingly in something like 4 pt font)
Aeon’s End (really fun solo/cooperative deck-builder, with seemingly endless content. I’ve already got more than I’ll ever need)
City of Kings (Fun exploration/combat puzzle game. Played through the stories twice, with different sets of characters. The leveling up is fun, but wish the characters were a bit more diverse/had more exciting special abilities to unlock)
The Reckoners (fun dice rolling solo/coop based on the books by Sanderson. Felt a little too easy solo with 3 characters, but looking forward to what the upcoming expansion will add)
Also waiting on Cloudspire (from same group as Too Many Bones) and Nemesis for more fun solo experiences.
I gave 7th Continent a try, but was very underwhelmed by the experience. I think I want more exploration/discovery from a game like this, vs strictly surviving. Got about halfway through the first mission, lost interest, and haven’t touched it since.
Other than that, I’ve mostly been snatching up deals on games I’m looking forward to playing once normal gaming finally resumes (Crystal Palace, Maracaibo, Cooper Island, …). Which can’t happen soon enough. I need my gaming!
I have been playing The Crew as well as Gaia Project. Very different ends of the spectrum. I have played many games of Aeon’s End and its pretty great. I have 3 of the expansions and have a long way to go before I beat them all.
On Friday I picked up Pandemic Legacy Season 0 but haven’t had a chance to start it yet.
I’ve gotten heavily into 18xx over the pandemic. The website 18xx.games has made it really easy to play a lot of great titles, though there are still a few games that my group plays with just a spreadsheet and a map website.
I’ve also become involved with the local podcast/streamer Heavy Cardboard, and played a couple of games on his youtube stream. So far it’s just been Age of Steam and a new kickstarter called Veiled Fate, but I think we are going to be doing some of the Bios series coming up as well. All three of the Bios games are great fun, if you can get through the brutal rule books.
Pandemic Legacy season 0 is shipping to me as we speak, so I’m looking forward to the last chapter in that trilogy as well.
Yep — only through the prologue and January. So far it’s interesting. Has a very pandemic feel like the other games did at the start, but the theme is hinting at it going in very different ways.
Played 1862 solo today. It’s an interesting challenge, and it does feel like you are playing 18xx with the way it forces the train rush and blocks some tiles. Came up just short of the minimum for the ‘lowest winning rank’ (9000) with 8737.
That’s Pretty Clever - I started playing this with the hubs and FIL. It’s like a more complicated Yatzee. Made by the same guy that created The Mind. It’s pretty fun to play (even with just 2 players).
Our rotation is mainly Mexican Train (racist!), Phase 10, Codenames, Farkle, Uno Flip (two-sided deck wherein hands and the deck and discard pile all get flipped when the Flip card is played), Coup, Loot.
Just played this tonight. My young kids really liked it as it’s easy enough for them to pick up. Qwixx is still a bit hard for them to do on their own.
