Note: Games still under wraps not included.

Most Played

Age of Civilization (Jeffrey CCH)

Still loving this game. Apparently approximately 30 minutes is about the most I want to spend with any civ game, a category which now includes both Age of Civilization and Ancient Realm (Steven Aramini). But I will, apparently, spend a lot of time with it.

I still am so incredibly tickled by this game’s inclusion of Vietnam – which, I can’t see any other civ game ever bothering to do, because other civ games couldn’t care less about small countries. We don’t even merit existing in those games except maybe as territory to be colonized and exploited – not even as trading partners.

Yeah it’s pretty insulting.

Cursed!? (Jacob Haydel)

This is one of my most played games despite being rather new to my collection. It’s a very small footprint, very fast push-your-luck game that I fit into times when I can’t sleep or am waiting on food.

I highly recommend it, and you can find it on PNP Arcade or The Game Crafter. I hope to see more from Goblin Hour Games!

ExoShip (Kevin Sylves)

Part of the ExoVerse along with ExoBase (Mike Berg), this 18-card game boasts an impressive narrative arc despite its small size, and the puzzle it presents is excellent. Generation ships are not a common theme in board games, and that ExoShip manages the integration of theme and mechanics so well is remarkable.

Somehow ExoShip manages to communicate the paranoia of games like Battlestar Galactica (Corey Konieczka) and introduce an element similar to area control… in a solo card game with excellent table presence.

Note: this is not a small footprint game.

Dice Deck (Mike Berg)

Not a game, but a game system that’s proven to have a simple but elegant composition that lets game design blossom. I’m still – slowly – working on my own game for the system (Reel ‘n Deal, a fishing game), but there’s already quite a few high quality entries both finished and in progress by various designers!

Note: this is not a deck to replace dice.

You can find more information about Dice Deck at We Heart Games, including games you can play with it.

Palm Island (Jon Mietling)

An older in-hand game, I really love the Pacific Islands theme as well as it being, essentially, a resource management and engine-building euro in the palm of my hand.

With achievements that give you feat rewards.

And the ability to go multiplayer (coop or competitive).

And an expansion with characters.

I know that Palm Lab came out recently, but I will always prefer Palm Island personally over the steampunk “mad scientist” theme of Palm Lab.

Three Sisters (Ben Pinchback, Matt Riddle)

Brenoit on Discord recommended this game to me on a late night when I was deep in my sorrow about not currently having a farming game with a small footprint with a – well, I suppose, weight that I liked. Something that was about farming in a real world setting, with crops and all that, and not about trying to be the Best Fantasy Farmer in the World or whatever.

That was always what struck me about games like Agricola and Fields of Arle (both Uwe Rosenberg): they were about, I suppose, a country life of difficult work with the earth. Not romanticized but also not denigrated as boring – exploring an area that is quite complex, full of scientific and technological advancements, and incredibly important for human existence. Something almost every culture does, on a wide spectrum from enormous factory farming to smaller sustainable farming.

And the fact that they succeeded always felt validating. Farming is so important to the survival of humanity, yet when I mention it as a theme I find worthy, I tend to be met with shrugs.

And for me, I want farming with crops. Animals are fine and animal husbandry is part of agriculture – but crops are important and in real life a very difficult thing to manage. As anyone who has tried to grow tomatoes in the back garden can tell you….

I’m glad I gave Three Sisters a chance despite having burnt out on roll & write games years ago. Apparently there’s now a new breed of roll & write that brings in the aspects of heavier games that I just love.

Three Sisters – I love it. It’s the small footprint Agricola I was looking for (and, by the way, while I like Agricola: All Creatures Big and Small, it’s purely animal husbandry and no crops). It’s probably going in my top nine by the end of the year, and rather high in the rankings at that.

Wonder Tales (John Kean)

Wonder Tales surprised me quite a bit in its solo mode with the Rumplesteltskin AI, which turns it into one of the best card/tile placement solos I’ve ever played.

The theme of fairy tales comes out strongly with the unique ways the cards interact – everything from Goldilocks only scoring if not connected to any of the Three Bears, to the Big Bad Wolf posing scoring threats to multiple characters in multiple stories.

I’ve managed to win half of the time with the standard difficulty, and have moved on to the advanced difficulty – which I have yet to win.

Under Falling Skies (Tomáš Uhlíř)

This is the tricked-out version published by Czech Games Edition. It’s well worth the asking price, because the campaign it comes with is incredible and adds so much to the base game. I’m so happy to have this version!

The original game had difficulty adjustment available, and the published edition has difficulty adjustment in spades.

I’m still working my way through my first campaign, and once I’ve done so, everything will be unlocked for playing with the rest of the game proper. Adding scenario rules and one-use characters, different configurations for both the skies and the base (so many different base configurations!)… this edition is a legitimate party.

Skoventyr (Morten Monrad Pedersen)

If you recognize the name, excellent – he’s the designer of the automata for Viticulture (Jamey Stegmaier, Alan Stone), probably my favorite automata of all time. I’m glad to have a game he designed – and it is a stellar game, part of the InPatience line. As part of that line, the game of course comes with a couple expansions packed in the base game box – something the Oniverse series (Shadi Torbey; now also part of InPatience) often did that I loved.

I’ve yet to win on standard difficulty, as the strategy is on a bit of a steep curve, but I really like the theme, I love the difficult conundrum of how cards are paid for and how they’re used, and badger meeple.

(The badger meeple is what initially sold me on the game, to be honest!)

Legacy of Yu (Shem Phillips)

A well-done campaign that isn’t a legacy campaign, with a theme along the line of themes that I like (building a canal in this game is actually pretty close to farming in other games, in terms of pure vibes).

The writing is pretty good, and whether you do well or do poorly, interesting things keep happening to you. In fact, I think it’s best to have a campaign where you don’t do well all the time – you get to experience more than if you only won all the time.

Revisiting the Oniverse (Shadi Torbey)

It’s been too long for me (years) since I’ve played anything in the Oniverse. I had largely quit gaming, partly because I was getting too sick to play games and partly because harassment sucks.

Being able to come back to it has been wonderful – including discovering that more entries continue to be added, like Stellarion and Cyberion, as well as the upcoming reboot of Urbion. I was one of the few people to buy and play Urbion in its original tiny box printing.

So I played every game in the Oniverse and had a blast. Maybe at some point I’ll write about them. A lot of my writing does rather depend on not being sick, which is much more difficult than it used to be.

Little Bag of Tiny Footprint Games

I created a bag of tiny footprint games and I’m very proud of it. I even have a small box for any common components (like dice and cubes) needed. These games are ones that I can play even when I’m laid out in bed, especially if I have access to a tray slightly larger than an airline tray, plus access to a surface half the size of that.

You don’t really have much in the way of surface options when you’re sick in bed.

I actually tested a bunch of games to see if they would work, and here are the ones that have worked:

  • In-Hand Games
    • Dragons of Etchinstone (Joe Klipfel)
    • Fungi of the Phalanges Forest (Roshni Patel)
    • Handy Brawl (Igor Zuber)
    • Numbsters (Milan Zivkovic)
    • Palm Island (Jon Mietling)
  • Hospital Food Tray
    • Count of Nine (Scott Allen Czysz)
    • Cursed!? (Jacob Haydel)
    • Dice Squared (Mike Berg)
    • Gate (Jason Glover)
    • Grove (Mark Tuck)
    • Muses (Adam Taylor)
    • Rally Run, 9-Card (Clint Ghosn)
    • Tin Helm (Jason Glover)
    • Twin Stars (Mike Mullins, Jason Tagmire)
    • World’s Edge (Mike Berg)
  • Hospital Food Tray and a Half
    • Count of the Nine Estates (Scott Allen Czysz)
    • Gate, with the Gates expansion (Jason Glover)
    • Good Little Gardens (Matthew Dunstan, Brett J. Gilbert)
    • Ragemore (Bojan Prakljacic)
    • Ramen! Ramen! (Brendan Hansen; didn’t include the bowl cards)
    • Tides (Mike Berg)

And yeah… this bag came in handy several times this month, though that includes bouts of insomnia too rather than illness. I’m very glad I put the EBTFG (emergency bag of tiny footprint games) together.

I shall name it Elizabag.