One question I constantly see in board game forums is this: “What are the best travel-friendly board and card games?”  Whether you’re headed out on a business trip, visiting friends and family, or simply taking a vacation, it’s always nice to have something to entertain the group.  Yet board games typically come in huge boxes that don’t always fit in a backpack, purse, or suitcase with your other belongings.  This is the perfect time to have a travel-friendly board or card game that comes in a small package and/or takes up minimal space on a table.  

With those needs in mind, I’ve assembled a list of the Best Travel-Friendly board and card games for any occasion:

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Best Wallet Game – Sprawlopolis

 

Let’s get this one right out of the way.  Wallet games are perhaps the most travel-friendly games that money can buy.  One publisher, Button Shy Games, specializes in this type of bite-sized fun, and one of their best titles is Sprawlopolis or Agropolis.  This is a design we’ve recommended extensively between our Top 10 Quick & Easy Solo Games as well as our Top 10 Spatial Puzzle Games because it takes 18 cards and turns them into a delightful challenge best suited for one or two players.

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Best Standard Deck Game – Regicide

Even if you don’t own an official copy of Regicide, this is one that you can technically track down anywhere and everywhere because the design uses a standard deck of playing cards.  Then, all you have to do is download the rulebook and you are off to the races.

Of course, buying the official Regicide deck is a great way to support the creators for making a fantastic cooperative experience for 1-4 players where you struggle to take down the Jacks, Queens, then Kings.  This is one that comes with me to basically any game night because it slots so easily into my game bag and never fails to entertain for 10-30 minutes.

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Best Trick-Taking Game – The Crew: Mission Deep Sea, Ghosts of Christmas

 

Trick-taking games are a dime a dozen, and the cream of the crop always hits the spot at our table whether I’m playing with hobbyist gamers or non-gamers.  I’ll offer two suggestions here, both excellent and relatively new.  The Crew: Mission Deep Sea was just crowned as one of my Top 15 Games of 2021 for being an addicting crowd-pleaser where you work together to complete wacky round objectives.  Meanwhile, Ghosts of Christmas puts a twist on the formula by allowing players to play tricks into the past, present, and future in any order they wish; plus it’s the perfect game to take home for the holidays.

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Best Pub Game – Skull, Art Robbery

 

I constantly hear folks online asking about the “best game to take to the pub.”  My answer?  Skull.  Skull takes simple bluffing and makes it a riot of a time… whether you are inebriated or not.  Each turn is as simple as placing a disc facedown onto your stash or bidding how many of everybody’s discs you think you can flip without revealing a skull.  Just make sure your bartender doesn’t confuse the discs for coasters.

That said, many folks already own Skull.  So for those of you who want something new and fresh, my follow-up recommendation is Art Robbery.  This one features double-layered thievery—art robbers are splitting the loot with each other via forceful, sticky-fingered methods.  The card play is simple enough that there is no chance of overwhelming your brain, yet the gameplay features some clever twists and funny moments making it perfect for a casual, raucous atmosphere.

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Best Party Game – Insider, A Fake Artist Goes to New York

 

Need a small game for a big, boisterous group?  Look no further than Insider and A Fake Artist Goes to New York by Oink Games.  Oink Games are the masters of putting big, memorable moments into cute, tiny boxes.  Insider is their take on 20 questions with a twist: What if the 20-question limit was replaced with a sand timer, and what if one questioner was secretly a traitor who already knew the answer and wanted you to guess it without you noticing that they guided you to it so they can steal the victory for themself?  Meanwhile, a Fake Artist also has a traitor in that one person does not know the secret topic of the round and is trying to get away with artistic fraud and deception!  

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Best Table-less Game – Trophies

Portable party games are great for casual trips or gatherings, but what if your gathering place has no table to play upon?  In that case, your best bet would be something like Trophies.  Trophies is the simplest, most approachable game on this list, yet it’s also the loudest.  One player clutches a stack of trophy cards and displays one card at a time to the group—each card displays a single large letter.  The lead player then selects and reads aloud a category on the back of the deck such as “Something blue,” “Something slow,” or “Minor Ailment,” and the first person to call out a word that starts with the big letter and relates to that category earns the trophy card.  Once the deck is gone, the player with the most trophies wins.  Whether you’re the lead player judging and awarding the group’s words or a competitor wracking your brain for the first word that comes to mind, you’re bound to have funny time.

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Best 2-Player Game – Schotten Totten 2

This next recommendation is for those of you who think this list is starting to sound more like a party list than a travel-friendly curation.  Schotten Totten 2 is a recent release from one of the greatest 2-player (or any player count, for that matter) game designers of all time, Dr. Reiner Knizia.  Featuring asymmetric strategy, a delightfully zany theme of chickens vs. scotsmen, and characteristically elegant rules, Schotten Totten 2 is the excellent standalone sequel to one of the most widely revered 2-player games (Battle Line / Schotten Totten).  To top it off, the box isn’t much larger than a hen’s egg.

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Best Family Card Game – Startups, SCOUT

 

We’re back with more adorable Oink Games, namely Startups and SCOUT!  Both titles have been effortlessly approachable and addicting for my family members including siblings, cousins, parents, and more.  Both games possess the simplicity of evergreens such as Uno or Phase 10, yet they also provide a superior strategy and tension that will keep you satisfied throughout.  Startups is all about investing just a little bit more in companies than your opponents, while SCOUT sees players recruiting performers into their hand to help them put on a good circus show.

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Best Cooperative Game – The Mind, The Game, Hanabi

 

If your family or friends shy away from competitive settings, then perhaps a cooperative game is in order?  The Mind and The Game (yes, that is its title) are two peas in a pod of being games where players must collectively discard cards from their hands in ascending or descending order without saying anything.  It doesn’t sound like much of a game at all, but somehow it works and it’s thrilling!  Meanwhile, Hanabi is a beloved classic of holding your hand inside-out, meaning everyone can see your cards except you, and giving each other hints about the cards you can see.  Hanabi has had such an impact on me that it inspired the creation of our upcoming publication, Gussy Gorillas, which takes the inside-out hand concept and turns it into a competitive game of trading and bluffing.

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Best Social Deduction Game – Scape Goat, Durian

 

Speaking of bluffing, animals, and not seeing every card, Scape Goat and Durian have proven to be excellent games of deduction and deceit at our table.  Durian is another Oink Game, yet this one comes with a tiny bell and a whole bunch of fruit cards.  Every turn you and your fellow storefront apes must face a difficult decision: take another fruit order or tattle tale on an opponent?  If you think your fruit orders exceed your inventory, then you can call the boss with the ring of a bell and hope that your theory is right, because if you’re wrong then he’ll get mad at you instead!  Meanwhile, Scape Goat is all about throwing a fellow criminal under the bus without them even realizing it… the only problem is that poor sap might actually be you!

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Best Solo Game – Under Falling Skies

I fully admit that Under Falling Skies is the largest box and thus the least travel-friendly game on this list, yet I wouldn’t hesitate to toss it into my backpack or suitcase if I knew I’d have downtime for a great solo session.  This one has been featured a fair amount recently between my Top 10 Quick & Easy Solo Games as well as my Revisiting the Best Board Games of 2020.  To put it plainly, there is much to love about this solo game featuring difficult dice decisions and pesky alien invasions.

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Best Game to Take on Outdoor Adventures – Trailblazers

Now I could argue that Trailblazers also belongs in the Best Solo Game and Best Family Card Game categories, but today we’ll just focus in on its Outdoor Adventure compatibility.  When Ryan Courtney and I were initially hashing out the production plan of his puzzly card game, Trailblazers, we found ourselves facing two clashing possibilities.  On the one hand, Trailblazers could feature various modules or expansions that mix up the core gameplay and bring charming animal and traveler figures to the experience.  On the other hand, we could make a travel-friendly version that features purely cards and focuses on the rock solid standard mode gameplay.  The solution we settled on: Both? Both. Both is good.

While the Standard and Deluxe Editions of Trailblazers are best tailored for hobbyist gamers who want the most variety and content from a standard game box, the Travel Edition became our chance to really lean into the theme of hiking, biking, and kayaking with the packaging and material selection.  We’ve seen many creative packages for board and card games from button shy wallets and pseudo book covers all the way to banana pouches and stuffed monkeys, yet there is one type of package that I’m surprised has been largely overlooked by publishers up to this point.  To me, nothing says outdoor adventure and travel-friendly like a small clamshell case and carabiner, and thus our Trailblazers: Travel Edition was born.

Ryan admits that Trailblazers is his first published design that will appeal to casual and hobbyist gamers alike.  With the help of artist Seth Lucas, who as worked on everything from hiking patches to John Muir books, we knew we could craft a game fit for both friendly local game stores as well as national park gift shops.  

Beyond the ability to attach the Travel Edition to a backpack, we wanted to make sure the cards could hold up under endless plays and rigorous conditions.  So for those who buy the Super Travel or Deluxe editions of Trailblazers, your game will come with 100% PVC cards (durable, water-resistant, plastic cards).

So whether you want an affordable, portable game or a box crammed with content, you’ll be able to acquire the travel-friendly clamshell case, carabiner, and PVC cards via the Trailblazers Super Travel or Deluxe edition when our Kickstarter project launches this August.  You can subscribe to the Kickstarter pre-launch page here. And we absolutely need your help!  Bitewing Games is only made possible and kept alive by the support of backers and fans of our published games.   Thanks for your support!

Article written by Nick Murray. Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite, including the upcoming Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share experiences that, much like a bitewing x-ray, provide a unique perspective and refreshing interaction.

The post Best Travel-Friendly Board Games appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Next to legacy games, roll & writes, crowdfunding, polyominoes, and pasting the Marvel IP onto a game system, solo gaming is perhaps one of the biggest recent trends in the board and card game industry.  This can be attributed to several factors including COVID quarantining, strong sales for solo-friendly games, and more.

Personally, it’s taken a fair amount of time for me to really dip my toes in the solo waters.  I was playing multiplayer board and card games years before I ever tried a solo game.  For me, the very act of playing a tabletop game was a social event, first and foremost.  It wasn’t until tabletop gaming took on a bigger role in my life—when it became a regular hobby—that I was no longer able resist the pull of small, simple, critically acclaimed solo games.  I’m still not the type who has the motivation or energy to break out a massive, complex solo game just for myself, but I’ve rapidly discovered that quick & easy solo games often hit the spot.

As Bitewing Games will soon be publishing a quick & easy solo game of our own—Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney (which also plays up to 8 players)—now felt like the right time to investigate, assemble, and share my Top 10 Quick & Easy solo games.  At the end of this list, I’ll also be sharing more info about the Epic Solo Mode that Ryan has developed for Trailblazers.  But regarding all of these games, it should be clarified that when I say “Quick & Easy” I mean quick to play and relatively easy to learn/setup/tear-down.  I do not, by any stretch, imply that these games are easy to win or master.  The compelling challenge is often the best part of a solo game, in my opinion, thus all of these games offer that in some form or another.

Under Falling Skies

As a 20-40 minute game that is filled to the alien gills with juicy decisions, there is perhaps no better way to start this list than with Under Falling Skies.

Under Falling Skies first existed in 2019 as a 9-card print-and-play game, but it was so popular that publisher CGE decided to acquire the license and supe it up with a Kwanchai Moriya coat of paint, a pretty plastic ship production, and a heaping of variety across a campaign of unique boards and challenges.  The experience is a mix between Independence Day’s alien invasion and clever dice worker placement and manipulation.

The gameplay features tense decisions where higher dice values increase the strength of the space they are placed on, but they also accelerate the invasion of the alien ships in the column they are placed in.  The key to victory is balancing risky bonuses against careful defensive manuevers.  You can select your difficulty by flipping the invasion boards between their harder and easier sides, and the campaign offers a wealth of new wrinkles to explore so you’ll always be on your toes with the next challenge.

MicroMacro: Crime City & MicroMacro: Full House

What better way to spend a wintery evening than with a steaming cup of Hot Cocoa and a sprawling map of criminal mysteries?

I recently shared how MicroMacro is another perfect game for couples, but it’s also a great game to enjoy solo.  In a tantalizing mix of Where’s Waldo and murder mystery, MicroMacro challenges players to uncover the truths behind strange and inexplicable deaths.

We recently finished up the 16 wild cases of MicroMacro: Crime City and had a blast solving each and every one. The good news is that the standalone sequel—Full House—is simply more of a good thing.  You can learn more about why we love MicroMacro in my full impressions post.

Friday

Confession time: Friday is the one of a couple games on this list I haven’t played. Yet it still ranks highly among many solo gamers, thus it earned a spot here.  This deck building game has you helping Robinson Crusoe through treacherous island hazards as he prepares for a run-in with pirates.  Overcoming encounters will add more abilities to your deck, yet intentionally losing certain encounters can be a key tactic as well.

Super-Skill Pinball (Roll & Writes)

Most the the roll & write genre is the epitome of quick & easy solitaire games, so I picked my current favorite of the bunch to be on this list.  While roll & writes typically go up to 4 or 8 or infinity players, they also tend to lack any significant element of player interaction.  So the most interaction you’ll get out of many roll & writes is, “Can I roll the dice again, yet?” as you wait for an opponent to fill in a box.

When played solo, there’s zero downtime to Super-Skill Pinball, and you can roll dice and slide the silver balls as quickly as you please.  This design is all about simulating the experience of a pinball table, which it does incredibly well (aside from the speed and reflexes that are involved in real pinball).  Combos abound and tension ratchets up as you fight to keep your pinball from dropping down the center.  Best of all, the variety of tables (4 per game) keeps things fresh and interesting with unique themes and mechanisms including Gopher Gold Mining and disco Dance Fever.

Regicide

One of my favorite recent discoveries has been the brilliantly designed dungeon crawler cooperative game that exists completely in a standard deck of playing cards: Regicide.  Here, you’ll be taking on Jacks then Queens then Kings in a tight game of hand management.  Playing various suits grants abilities, and the aces known as animal companions come in handy as well.  Do yourself a favor and try one of the best card games to be invented in recent years.

The Search For Planet X

The Search For Planet X is one of our household favorite deduction games.  The production is everything I want in a deduction game: smooth, clear, useful, and pretty.  The icing on the cake is the companion app (something I’m not usually fond of in a tabletop game) that keeps the experience slick, quick, and flawless.  The race to figure out what lies in each sector—comet, asteroid, gas cloud, dwarf planet, or most importantly Planet X itself—is both challenging and satisfying.

Oniverse Games

The Oniverse is a solid line of solo games from mammoth publisher Z-Man featuring stylish art, simple rules, quick set-up, short playtime, compact boxes, and clever gameplay.  While there are now five games under this popular brand, I’ve only tried Aerion—the Yahtzee style dice management game.  But from that one game, I found there was plenty to explore between the compelling core loop and the six expansion modules.  For those who wonder where is the best place to start, many folks will point to Onirim and Aerion as two of their favorites.

Cascadia

The big-box titles from publisher Flatout Games tend to offer thinky puzzles with relatively low player interaction—meaning they tend to play similarly at all player counts.  Cascadia is their latest release that has taken the gaming world by storm, and many folks are saying it makes for a great solo experience.  Those who enjoy puzzly tile laying games will be right at home here in this design that celebrates the sites and creatures of the Pacific Northwest with lush art by Beth Sobel.  While it doesn’t venture into the solo rules, Kyle’s How To Play video shows us what Cascadia is all about in under 8 minutes.

Nusfjord

I recently shared my first impressions of a 5-player game of Nusfjord where I essentially said it’s a solid Rosenberg design, but not necessarily one I would play over A Feast for Odin, Agricola, or Le Havre.  Many commenters pointed out to me that Nusfjord is the type of game that really shines at 1-3 players.  I learned that Nusfjord packs a huge punch as a solo game that can be played in only 20-30 minutes.  If you can manage to get a medium-weight Uwe experience by yourself in that amount of time, then Nusfjord absolutely deserves a spot on this list.

Sprawlopolis/Agropolis

Of course I wasn’t going to forget about the quick & easy 18-card design known as Sprawlopolis (or its sibling Agropolis).  This critically acclaimed game has had a lot of mentions across our blog and podcast, including my Top 10 Spatial Puzzle Games.  So rather than retread the same ground, I’ll point you to two glowing video reviews from No Pun Included and The Dice Tower’s Tom Vasel.

Trailblazers—Epic Solo Mode… Playable TODAY on Tabletop Simulator

For Trailblazers, our next upcoming publication, designer Ryan Courtney had two core design focuses:

1. Maintain his high standard of satisfying puzzly depth, but make the rules as simple and approachable as possible
2. Develop compelling solo modes to make this a solo-friendly game as much as it is a family-friendly game

So Trailblazers is exactly the kind of design that fits the topic of quick & easy solo games.   I recently covered that first design focus of approachability, so today we’ll be exploring the solo features that have been on Ryan’s mind since day one.  But we’re not gonna spill the beans on all three modes today.  While the Standard and Adventurers Solo modes have their own exciting objectives that provide a distinguishing flavor, today we’re gonna talk about the biggest of them all: Epic Solo Mode.

Why is it called ‘Epic’ Solo Mode?  Well, the standard game will see you drafting and placing 24 trail cards and 3 campsite cards over the course of 4 rounds or 30 minutes. Epic Solo Mode, on the other hand, can last up to three times as long where you’ll be arranging up to 72 trail cards and 9 campsite cards into one sprawling monstrosity of trails and loops.  While that sounds like absolute insanity (and in some ways, it is), the mode is actually broken up into three separate stages.

Epic Solo Mode utilizes the Animals expansion (included in the standard edition of the Trailblazers), and animal scoring will be your sole focus for the first two stages.  The key to scoring big animal points is to have several unique animal tokens placed along a loop; but the catch is that a trail card with an animal token on it can never be overlapped (partially or fully) by another card, which limits your spatial flexibility.  I go into more details about how the animals expansion works here.  

Stage 1 is simply called “Epic Solo Mode” where if you manage to scrounge at least 30 animal points after 4 rounds of play then you win the mode!  But 30 animals points can be quite challenging to reach—it took me several attempts to finally beat this stage.  

Once victory is achieved in Epic Solo Mode, you can simply call it a day and pack it away as you rest on the laurels of your 30-minute triumph… Or, you can continue on to the first bonus stage called Springer Fever.  The objective of Springer Fever?  Build off of the foundation you’ve laid in the Epic Solo Mode and win Springer Fever by scoring 80 or more animal points from loops after 4 more rounds of play.  If victory is achieved, you may continue on to the final bonus stage, if you wish.  This is the stage that I’ve yet to overcome, although my last attempt was quite close.

If you manage to beat Springer Fever, then the final stage you may continue on to is Triple Crown.  Once again, you’ll build off of the foundation you’ve laid in Springer Fever, but this time you’ll aim to get a high score by scoring only the single longest loop of each trail type after 4 more rounds of play.  By breaking up loops, extending them, and reconnecting them, you’ll be able to get a high score!  Although animal scoring no longer matters, the tricky part will be that you still can’t overlap cards with animal figures placed on them from the previous two stages.

The challenge that Epic Solo Mode and its two bonus stages provide is one with a dizzyingly high skill-ceiling that will keep folks coming back for many sessions.  While it certainly isn’t an easy mode to take on, I’ve found myself learning and improving with each attempt, and that satisfaction of progress far outweighs my failures.  Over time, you’ll go from a short-term focus of lunging for easy animal points to a long-term focus of planning how to make the longest loops for Triple Crown.

This mode is one that has been thoroughly tested and played by Ryan’s play testers, and it is one that Ryan and Tim even turned into a gnarly challenge for themselves to hit 165 points in Triple Crown (the final stage).  They even recorded many of their attempts on Youtube with Game 12 being their final triumph.

While learning about Epic Solo Mode is all good and fine, the real fun comes from actually playing it which you can do RIGHT NOW.  That’s right, Epic Solo Mode is available for you to play on TableTop Simulator (a game/app which you can download from Steam).  Simply use this link to find the Trailblazers mod, click subscribe to download it to your TTS app, and then open TTS and find it in your Workshop.

Follow Trailblazers all the way to its Q2 Crowdfunding launch! Subscribe to the Bitewing Games newsletter where we’ll be teasing out more details, art, and components over the coming weeks.

Article written by Nick Murray. Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite, including the upcoming Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share experiences that, much like a bitewing x-ray, provide a unique perspective and refreshing interaction.

The post Top 10 Quick & Easy Solo Games + Play Trailblazers Epic Solo TODAY appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Note: This written post features only my top 10 Spatial Puzzle games, but the podcast episode includes my picks plus 10 more picks from podcast guest, Ryan Flaherty. If you want twice the Spatial Puzzle gaming goodness via an audio discussion between friends, then check out our meaty episode!

Before one becomes a dentist, or even enters dental school, a prospective dental student in the US must take what is called the Dental Admissions Test.  This exam is an absolute beast of a hoop that one must successfully jump through if they wish keep their dental career dream alive.  Many folks (including myself) take off several weeks to spend 6-8 hours a day cramming biology, chemistry, mathematics, and more into our brains in preparation for the great spewing.  For a couple months or so, this pursuit essentially consumes your life as you cram, take practice exams, and cram some more as though you are trying to pour more knowledge fluid into an already overflowing brain bucket while patching up the leaky holes all over.

Oddly enough, there is one part of this exam that starts to feel like a game.  It is a section known as the Perceptual Ability Test, or PAT for short.  As the title describes, this section examines your ability to mentally visualize things such as 3D shapes, acute angles, and more.  The reason this feels like a game is that rather than solve problems or recall memorized information, you are challenged to rank angles, match keyholes, visualize folds, count cube surfaces, and more.  The reason for the PAT is because dentists are constantly using mirrors, x-rays, and models to visualize, shape, and diagnose teeth.  Thus, the PAT material is not so much something you can learn or memorize to be prepared.  Rather, it requires a spatially minded brain and a whole lot of practice to master the challenging types of questions you’ll encounter.  In a sort of sick and twisted way, this PAT practice becomes the “fun” part of your studying routine, and a great way to break up the monotony of the science subjects.  Over time, It’s quite satisfying to nail these questions with increasing competence.

Much like the PAT (but in a far more entertaining form), it is also very satisfying to take on spatial puzzles in tabletop games.  These puzzles usually take the form of cards and tiles which can be aligned, arranged, and overlapped in an open space of endless possibilities.  Typically, these games will punish you for poor spatial arrangements and reward you for clever planning.  While some games are pure spacial puzzling, others implement this mental challenge into a larger game packed with many more mechanisms.

We’ve had loads of fun exploring many games that include spatial puzzling in their repertoire.  Many titles in t  his genre have proven to be deliciously addicting and widely popular.  We’ve enjoyed them so much, that it is with great excitement that Bitewing Games here and now reveals our next published game to be… a meaty spatial puzzler.  That’s right!  We’ve been working hard these past several months to plan and prepare our next game for you.  You can find our grand reveal at the end of this post.  And in celebration of that reveal, today we’d like to share our Top 10 Spatial Puzzle games.  If you, like us, are a fan of many of these games and their puzzly goodness, then our next offering might just be up your alley.

But we’ll save the details for the end.  As for now, let’s talk about our favorite, highly recommended spatial puzzle games in no particular order…

Patchwork / New York Zoo

Might as well come clean right up front… there is definitely going to be some cheating involved on this Top 10 list.  It will actually consist of 13 games plus more honorable mentions at the end!  The reason for this dirty trick is simple: there are far more than 10 excellent spatial puzzle games out there.  Plus, some titles share so much in common that it’s too hard to mention one without mentioning the other.  Thus, with this first pick, we split the spotlight between Uwe Rosenberg’s Patchwork and New York Zoo.

Those of you who’ve seen my Battle of the Polyominoes article likely predicted that these games would end up here.  Polyominoes are to spatial puzzle games as dogs are to house pets.  They’re like a gamer’s best friend.  There is something about fitting various shapes together on a square grid that we gamers can’t get enough of.  This won’t be the only polyomino pick on this list—far from it—so let’s talk about what makes Patchwork and New York Zoo special.

Coming from the same designer, Patchwork and New York Zoo both feature an engaging rondel for tile drafting.  The former is all about an economy of spending and earning buttons while managing time to maximize positive points and cover up negative points to beat your single opponent.  The latter is instead an economy of breeding… that’s right… breeding animals in their exhibits at the zoo in a race to be the first to cover your board entirely before 1-4 opponents.  In both cases, you can enjoy pleasant themes mixed with compelling decisions from the polyomino connoisseur himself.  Which one is better is up for debate, but I say you can’t go wrong with either (or both).

Galaxy Trucker

While Patchwork and New York Zoo both contain elements of time economics or racing to the finish, neither of them are actual ‘real-time’ games where you are rushing your arrangements and burning your brain into overdrive.  But if that’s what you are looking for, Galaxy Trucker has you covered.  This wild, wacky game has been around for many years, but it recently received a new coat of paint with some minor tweaks to the formula.  Either version is dirt cheap and loads of fun, but you’ll need to have a group who can handle a bit of a rules dump up front.

While this one isn’t as family-friendly as it wants to be thanks to a few too many fiddly rules, it still has a major payoff for those who are fully invested.  The game consist of two acts: first, rush to reveal and arrange square tiles into a jumbled mess of a space ship that contains guns, thrusters, energy, shields, storage, and more.  The longer you take to arrange and nitpick your ship, the faster the best tiles will be claimed by other players because during this act you are scrambling to build your ships all at the same time and the tiles are first-come-first-serve.  The second act sees you laughing, cheering, and moaning as you send your ships on a risky voyage ripe with perilous dangers and delicious rewards.  Ship parts and sections get blasted and blown off, and all you can do is just hang on and hope you survive the journey.

Factory Funner

Speaking of rushing to grab tiles while cooking your brain, Factory Funner is also split into two phases: the first phase consists of brief real-time drafting, the second consists of crunchy spatial efficiency.  The cool thing here is that you are free to use connectors and other helpful tiles to your heart’s content, but each extra piece you use costs a dollar from your score.  As you have to add a new machine each round, you can also remove old pipes and tiles to establish new connections between the machine inputs and outputs.

The new version of this game (releasing within the next few months) comes to us from publisher BoardGameTables.com and features zesty new art, a non-real-time drafting variant for those who don’t like to be rushed, and the addition of a sixth player.

Pipeline / Curious Cargo

Since we’re on the subject of pipes, we might as well chat about the ultimate pipey games from designer Ryan Courtney: Pipeline and Curious Cargo.  Ryan burst into the board game industry with the critically acclaimed Pipeline, a slick economic brain burner about buying, refining, and selling oil.  While worker placement, loans, economics, engine building, and contract fulfillment are all major parts of this design, one of the standout features of this game is the pipe tiles where players must make long, winding connections of pipe of the same color to help refine their oil.  Purchasing and arranging these pipes is a compelling part of the challenge, and these different combinations of routes across dozens of domino tiles was something fresh and new in the spatial puzzle genre.

People loved it so much that the creators followed Pipeline up with another domino spatial puzzle game in Curious Cargo.  While many expected Curious Cargo to be a pure, simple distillation of the pipe element from Pipeline, in reality Ryan took this follow-up design as a challenge to cram as much complexity into a small box game as possible.  What resulted was a title that has perhaps been a little more polarizing in the industry.  This head-to-head shipping and receiving game contorts your brain with its even more difficult spatial challenges.  It demands much flexibility and adaptation from players as they draw tiles out the bag and must figure out how to best use those frequently less-than-ideal draws.  But I stand by my final statement in my review of this title: “Despite the emotional cuts, bruises, and occasional broken bones that this design doles out, I’ve found Curious Cargo to be one heck of a satisfying game.”

Azul

Let’s step away from the brain burning puzzles for a moment to talk about a few lighter options.  Azul mixes tile drafting with just a hint of spacial puzzling.  The sequence and location tiles added to your board is the core element of scoring, and it’s a challenge that comes into conflict with the dwindling drafting options of each round.  It’s just as important to be able to predict what tiles others will claim as it is to smartly plan your own moves.

Azul is one that ranks highly among our favorite 2-player games and 10 games everyone should try.  While there are now four versions of Azul out in the wild, I’m sticking with my guns and declaring that the original is the best.  At least that’s how things will remain until Azul: Queen’s Garden makes its way to the US for me to properly scrutinize it.

Carcassonne / Isle of Skye

If you’re looking to go even more classic and simple than Azul, then perhaps Carcassonne is the best candidate.  The procedure is dead simple: play the one tile in your hand anywhere into the growing arrangement of tiles and add a meeple on top of it if you’d like.  With the tiles, you’ll be accomplishing tasks as simple as growing, connecting, or enclosing fields, roads, or cities.  But the most important aspect is deciding when and where to add your meeples.  You see, these meeples are like investments in unfinished landscape features; the person with the most meeples in a feature when it becomes fully enclosed gets the big payout in points.  Things get extra spicy when opponents attempt to outcompete each other in the same region or when they try to sabotage the completion of a road or city.

Yet I can’t help but mention here another square tile game with an interesting twist.  In Isle of Skye, there is no shared, central region of growing tiles for players to add to like in Carcassonne.  Rather, you’ll be building up your own personal area as you’re pulled this way and that by the changing scoring criteria.  Each round, you’ll also be pulling 3 tiles out of the bag and deciding how to price them to either entice or deter your opponents.  Money is important here because you’ll desperately need it to be able to buy the best tile from a single opponent of your choice.  Plus, you’ll be using your own money to price your tiles, and if nobody bites, then you just bought them yourself for the price you set.

If you’re looking for a straightforward game that lets players dip their toes in the spatial puzzle waters by aligning and arranging matching features on square tiles, then you can’t go wrong with Carcassonne or Isle of Skye.

A Feast for Odin

For those of you who prefer your games sprawling and meaty, let’s now dive back into the deep end of spatial puzzle designs.  A Feast for Odin is a game that features a worker placement game board with over 60 possible spaces, hundreds of tiny polyomino tiles organized across several trays, and large player boards with supplemental island boards for you to arrange these many tiles over the course of a 2-3 hour playtime.  This is one big box game that will make you wish your table was at least… three times its size.

Yet, A Feast for Odin is one of the most satisfying Euros in existence thanks to Uwe Rosenberg’s steady design hand.  You’ll be hunting, raiding, farming, whaling, trading, and more to acquire viking goods that come in many shapes and sizes.  You’ll have to arrange these polyomino goods wisely in order to increase your income, surround and gain bonuses, and cover up negative points.  All the while, you’ll be feeding your vikings as they grow increasingly hungry throughout their many pursuits.  It’s a feast of game that is indeed worthy of Odin’s name.

Isle of Cats 

If you want to wrap your braintacles around one of the hottest polyomino games of the recent years, then Isle of Cats might just be what the doctor ordered.  You’ll be rescuing cats from the evil Lord Vesh by cramming them onto your boat board.  If that doesn’t already sound zesty enough for you, then consider that the other core mechanism of this game is card drafting similar to 7 Wonders or Sushi Go.

This game also has an easier, more family friendly mode for those who need it.  But either way, you’ll be playing a game that is currently ranked in the top 100 games on BGG and the BGG top 10 family games.  Need I say more?

Sprawlopolis

Those of you who are primarily solo or cooperative gamers, worry not, we haven’t forgotten about you!  Sprawlopolis is arguably the best wallet game that money can buy, and it is meant to be played solo or together.  It still blows my mind what the creators were able to pull off with only 18 cards:  The backs of these cards each have a unique scoring objective.  Your game will feature a random combination of 3 scoring objectives, and you’ll be using the remaining 15 card faces to arrange and layer a city of cards to try and achieve the scoring requirements.

You’ll lose points for each unique road, so it’s wise to try and connect them together to minimize damage.  Meanwhile, you’ll be trying to overlap and connect matching districts in all directions according to the tricky objectives of each individual play.  If the 3 objective cards are easy, then you’ll need a higher score to win.  This crunchy minimalist game comes highly acclaimed by many critics, and at such a low price you have no reason not to try it.

My City

Although this list was arranged in no particular order, we are going to end things off with my personal favorite spatial puzzle game.  While most of these games see players drafting or selecting tiles or cards to arrange in optimal orientations, My City makes its players fall victim to a bingo style draft.  A central deck with one card for each tile is shuffled at the start of the game.  Each round, the top card is revealed and players must decide where to place this building tile onto their city board.

One would surmise, as I once did, that such a system devoid of tile choice or player interaction would be aggressively dull.  Not so, dear reader.  Instead, this system creates an experience of suspense, risk, and anticipation as you plan and hope that the right tile will come out of the deck before you fill a suitable area in with something less ideal.  

A critical aspect of these rules is that you may spend a point to trash a tile rather than be forced to add it to your board.  And we haven’t even gotten to the real juicy part of the design:  My City is a legacy game where over the course of 24 sessions players will add stickers to their board, gain more tiles, encounter new challenges and objectives, and compete to be the ultimate city builder by tracking points earned during each play.  We’ve sung the praises of My City so much that our followers are undoubtedly now bleeding from all orifices and begging us to branch out to other games.  But alas, when one makes a Top 10 Spacial Puzzles list, one must listen to their heart and include the masterful My City among the champions.

Honorable Mentions

While there can only be thirteen games among the top 10 (our math is sound, don’t question it), the following are honorable mentions that we wish to list and celebrate so that we can minimize our chances of being flogged by spatial puzzle connoisseurs:

1. Blokus – classic, strategic goodness
2. Calico / Cascadia – hot new tile drafting and arranging games featuring animals
3. Arboretum – a tense cutthroat hand management game with a sprinkling of spatial arrangement
4. Railroad Ink – a solid roll & write of connecting highways and railroads
5. Barenpark – a favorite polyomino game for many… plus BEARS
6. On Tour – a roll & write about scheduling a tour by sequencing your route across the country
7. Sagrada – a popular game similar to Azul featuring gorgeous colorful token drafting (dice in this case) and arranging

A Bitewing Games Publication Reveal…

And here we have finally arrived… at the end of all things.  Or more accurately, at the end of all things yet published.  We are thrilled to finally unveil the next title that Bitewing Games will be publishing via a Kickstarter campaign in Q2 2022.  It is indeed a spatial puzzle game, but it is also a love letter to outdoor adventuring.  Introducing Trailblazers by designer Ryan Courtney:

Trailblazers are the gutsy folks who pave and brave the trails of the great outdoors.  Whether by hiking boots, cycling wheels, or river paddle, these tenacious travelers seek to feed their insatiable appetite for adventure.  With a scenic wilderness ever ahead and a freshly charted path upon the heels, one mustn’t forget to eventually find their way back to camp.  For there are always new environments to explore, further expeditions to undertake, and more trails to blaze.

In Trailblazers, players compete to earn the most points by building biking, hiking, and kayaking loops from their campsites of the matching trail type.  Each round, players are dealt eight trail cards where they’ll draft two cards, arrange those cards in their personal area, and pass their hand to the next player three times.  Cards must either be placed adjacent to or overlapping other cards.  While players can push their luck by aiming to construct long and elaborate trails, only closed loops that start and end at a matching campsite will score points.  Players also compete to fulfill “First To” and “End Game” goal cards.  After four rounds, the game ends and the player with the most points from closed loops and goal cards wins.

Compared to the travel edition for 1-4 players, the standard edition of Trailblazers features a second deck of trail & player cards so you can play with up to 8 players.  The box also contains two expansions (the Animals expansion and Adventurers expansion) that add another challenging layer of strategy and objectives to the experience.  

Trailblazers is the third spacial puzzle domino game by designer Ryan Courtney (the first two being Pipeline and Curious Cargo).  While they share a similar puzzly DNA that fans have come to know and love, Trailblazers differs by:

• Featuring simple, highly accessible rules in a 30 minute game for 1-8 players
• Boiling the gameplay down to pure spatial puzzling and card drafting with a dash of push-your-luck route building
• Using durable PVC cards that can easily be shuffled, dealt, drafted, and overlapped (found in the travel edition and deluxe edition)
• Including three challenging solo modes with a high skill-ceiling

Well there you have it!  We’re ecstatic to finally get that big news off our chest.  But we’re even more excited to launch this Kickstarter project next year!  For those of you who want to follow along or even try out the game early on Tabletop Simulator (once it is ready), simply subscribe to the Bitewing Games newsletter and join us for the ride!  In the meantime, keep on enjoying those spatial puzzlers!

Article written by Nick Murray. Outside of practicing dentistry part-time, Nick has devoted his remaining work-time to collaborating with the world’s best designers, illustrators, and creators in producing classy board games that bite. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share experiences that, much like a bitewing x-ray, provide a unique perspective and refreshing interaction.

The post Top 10 Spatial Puzzle Games + A Bitewing Games Publication Reveal! appeared first on Bitewing Games.

Tis the season to buy more board games for your friends and family! Our 2020 Holiday Board Game Gift Guide is here to guide you to some of the best options available. Whether you’re looking to get your significant other the best surprise or hoping to find the perfect game for your holiday party, we’re here to help you find the cream of the crop!

Browse all the lists by clicking through the page numbers at the bottom, or use the links below to take you directly to the most relevant list for your needs. If any game mentioned catches your eye, click on the provided link (on the game’s title) to find some options for purchasing it.

Note: This is a completely unsponsored article, and none of the information or links provided generate a profit for us in any way. This article is written purely as service to you from genuine fans of board gaming who love to share this awesome hobby. This list has been carefully assembled to be ultimate gift guide, whether you’re looking to buy the hottest new game or find a reliable classic. We sincerely hope we can help you and your gift receiver find your next favorite game.

• Gifts for the Hobbyist Board Gamer in your life
• Gifts for the Casual Board Gamer in your life
• Gifts for your Significant Other
• Stocking Stuffer Games (small & cheap!)
• Perfect games for your Holiday Party

Continue on to Page 2: Gifts for the Hobbyist Board Gamer

The post 2020 Holiday Board Game Gift Guide appeared first on Bitewing Games.

“This your last chance. After this there is no turning back. You take the blue pill, the story ends. You wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

Morpheus – The Matrix

It all started when I stumbled across Wavelength on social media. Talk of the game lead me to its active project on Kickstarter, a crowdfunding website that I had heard much about but never actually delved into. Wavelength’s colorful, psychedelic art design drew me in like an unsuspecting Alice. I clicked play on the campaign video, and down the rabbit hole I fell.

Mad props to whoever made that video, by the way. If anyone needs a case study in how to hook potential backers and reel them in like a fish, just check out that whole page. After combing through the entire pitch, I wasn’t just excited about the concept, I was compelled to help bring about its existence.

This is the crux of Kickstarter… when a person or group dream up an incredible idea, pitch it to a crowd, and they collectively pledge their resources and efforts to make it a reality. This is old news to many backers and creators who have been using crowdfunding for years. We’ve even reached a point where many desensitized backers call Kickstarter a pre-order system, especially in the tabletop games category.

While that’s not entirely false, there is still something magical about joining a community of passionate dreamers and embarking on a journey of creation. When you support an exciting project and it fully delivers on its lofty promises, there is no better feeling. Fortunately for Kickstarter, Wavelength hit a homerun (just read my review of the game), and I’ve kept more projects on my radar ever since.

Projects that Earned My Pledge and How They Did It

Captivating Videos — Wavelength

Let’s talk a bit more about Wavelength’s campaign video. If you clicked the link above and watched it, you’ll notice something incredibly unique about it compared to most other campaign videos. How much time was spent showcasing or explaining the game? Practically none. You hardly even see a single game component in the entire video, yet it has a laser focus on what makes Wavelength special.

Instead of explaining to us how the game plays, the creators of this video opted to show us the game through the players’ emotions, reactions, and interactions. It paints a very clear picture to its viewers of what they can expect to experience with their family and friends. Most importantly, it briefly and succinctly shows the viewer the exact outcome they want from this kind of game and then leaves the rest of the project page to fill in the details of how they’ll get to that outcome.

Contrast this to many other campaign videos that quickly lose me… Usually they get caught up in fancy thematic narratives with fluffy animations and take far too long to get to the point of why I should back their project. In my opinion, if your campaign video is the first thing people see on your project page, then it should absolutely feature the hook of your concept and nothing else. Let the rest of the page take care of the details, once the hook is set.

I had never even visited Kickstarter.com before encountering Wavelength, but that campaign page had my pledge within minutes because it knew how reach me on a personal and emotional level.

Low-Risk Rewards & Credibility — Tussie Mussie / Sprawlopolis / Seasons of Rice

Wavelength was my form of taking the red pill and falling down the rabbit hole into Kickstarter Wonderland. Button Shy’s affordable, low-risk wallet games kept me hanging around for more.

I initially heard of all three of these games in unique ways:

• While enjoying our recently acquired copy of Wingspan, I heard that Elizabeth Hargrave’s next published game (Tussie Mussie) was on the way with another presentation that would appeal to my wife. Tussie Mussie was also the winner of the 2018 Gen Can’t design contest.
• Separately, I watched Tom Vasel’s raving review of Sprawlopolis that put it on my wishlist.
• Finally, I listened to the Board Game Design Lab’s episode with Corry Damey about How to Win a Design Competition, and of course the competition winner (Seasons of Rice) piqued my interest.

These above encounters were critical for getting these projects on my radar. Each game had an underlying credibility to it that allowed me to put my trust in a design I had never played. Perhaps more importantly, the pledge levels were all at a reasonable price ($10 per game) that gave me little reason to hesitate when clicking the pledge button.

Quality & Consistency — Dice Throne Adventures & Season 1 ReRolled

I was already an owner of Dice Throne Season 2 when this project went live. Having been blown away by Season 2’s character variety and production quality, there was little resistance left within me when Roxley tempted me with more Dice Throne goodness. But there is something to be said for making each little detail of a production a premium feeling experience. When publishers display a high standard of consistency and quality from one project to the next, backers will notice and they’ll return for more.

Alluring Presentations & Illuminating Playthroughs — Sleeping Gods

Sleeping Gods was Kickstarter’s biggest challenge yet in successfully acquiring me as a backer. The $70 base pledge is a tall order coming from a publisher and designer that I have no prior experience with. On top of that, this is a style of game that I have never even played before. The art and presentation are certainly alluring, but the pessimism was strong within me.

How am I supposed to know whether I like a storybook adventure game? Won’t this just feel like a more clumsy, fiddly version of a video game, book, or movie? What if I start playing and quickly discover that I blew $70 + shipping on a game that is clearly not for me?

I had plenty of reasons to stand my ground and let this campaign ship sail, yet I ended up backing Sleeping Gods. Ryan Laukat, you sly dog. So how did he do it?

Well, that dang artwork and concept was so well imagined and executed that I wanted this unique game to work for me. I think this kind of thing happens all the time to us gamers. Just look at something like PARKS, Camel Up, Horrified, or plenty of others. Strip away the gorgeous artwork, the inviting theme, the killer components, and much of what makes those games shine is lost. PARKS becomes a generic resource collector, Camel Up becomes a luck-infused dice roller, Horrified looks like an off-brand Pandemic copy-cat . Moral of the story: don’t underestimate the value of a unique theme, quality art, and thoughtful production.

The stellar presentation of Sleeping Gods wasn’t enough on its own to get me to bite. I still needed to find something within the gameplay that made me say, “Ooo, this looks fun!” Who helped me to uncover that fun? None other than Rahdo, himself.

Oddly enough, my opinion on games hardly even aligns with Rahdo’s. Usually when he says, “Too mean,” I say, “Just right.” Yet, I’ve found Rahdo’s run-throughs to be extremely valuable in communicating the puzzly tension of certain games. It took me a lot of deep digging into the project page and beyond, but Rahdo is exactly what I needed to push me over the edge on both Sleeping Gods and the next game I backed, Calico.

Alluring Presentations & Illuminating Playthroughs — Calico

Like Sleeping Gods, Calico is game that tempted me initially but required more effort to earn my pledge. I could tell it filled a similar niche as Azul and Sagrada, which have been big hits with my wife. But on the surface level, I had no way of knowing whether this one would measure up to its competition and justify its place on our game shelf.

Once more, it was Rahdo’s runthrough that uncovered the excruciating tension lurking within Calico’s gameplay. Before watching his play-through, this was just a cute puzzly quilting game with cats, and I was mildly interested. After watching his play-through, this was an agonizing feline challenge with colorful, crunchy decisions, and I was a backer.

These kinds of video previews that not only show how a game plays but how a game feels to play are often critical factors in earning a dip into my wallet.

High Standards & Hot Streaks — Loot of Lima / GPS / Sequoia / Mountain Goats

Perhaps the most important thing a publisher can do for long-term success is maintain a high standard of design from one title to the next. A mediocre game can often do more harm to a small publisher’s library than its short-term sales are worth. When I catch onto a publisher or designer that is on a hot streak, I will preorder and pledge to every title they throw at me until they lose my trust. If I’m burned by a design team, it’ll take a lot of convincing from critics to get me to take another chance on future games.

My current list of auto-purchases include any Capstone Games’ light-medium weight titles, any Cole Wehrle design and/or Leder Games titles, and games published by BoardGameTables.com. I’ll also seriously consider every new game put out by Matagot, Roxley Games, Stonemaier Games, Facade Games, Reiner Knizia, and Osprey Games due to their several hits of the past few years.

BoardGameTables.com have proven themselves with both On Tour and QE. I appreciate their attention to detail and love of quirky designs. My fingers are crossed for their next batch of games coming soon including Loot of Lima, GPS, Sequoia, and Mountain Goats.

IV Marketing — Oath: Chronicles of Empire and Exile

If you’ve ever been an in-patient at a hospital, you’ve likely had an IV in your arm drip-feeling your body fluids and medications. An IV (intravenous therapy) is a highly effect route of medication. It delivers drugs directly into your blood stream, bypassing any need for absorption or digestion. In the board game industry, if drugs equate to hype and medicating a patient equates to marketing, then companies like Stonemaier Games and Leder Games have perfected the IV Marketing technique.

When I started following these companies on social media, I noticed a pattern in their techniques. Leder Games publishes regular posts on their designer diaries leading up to a game preorder or Kickstarter launch. Stonemaier Games does the same thing on their website as well as creating Facebook fan pages for each game. Through regular updates and social media posts that tease out more juicy information and tantalizing images, these companies drip feed hype directly to their fans and potential customers. By the time the pledge/preorder button goes live, many people are eager to click it.

Meaningful Upgrades & Add-ons — Railroad Ink Challenge

Horrible Guild got me good with this one. It started out simple with a nice pair of roll & writes with a new coat of paint, improved gameplay, and unique variants. But things quickly got out of hand with more expansion dice, epic boards, and giant box to fit everything into. I often roll my eyes at the endless extras that publishers try to cram into their project, but I couldn’t resist these extras.

Often, these crowdfunding campaigns will try to milk their backers by merely offering fancier components, meaningless variety, and questionable add-ons. When I see a publisher trying to tempt backers to purchase 20 colors of player components for a 5 player game, I begin to question their judgment of customer-focused value.

With Railroad Ink Challenge, Horrible Guild kept offering me more of precisely what I wanted. With roll & writes generally being a low-interaction genre, I look to variants and expansions to give me more replayability and keep my brain on its brain-toes. Thus, I can’t resist new challenges within this familiar favorite.

Reliable Brands & Try Before You Buy — Bristol 1350

If you’ve played any of Facade Games’ Dark Cities titles before, then you already have a solid idea of what you are going to get with Bristol 1350. That’s exactly what makes this series so reliably solid. Facade Games has a playbook that their fans love and they have no reason to stray from it. While their productions continue to get prettier and more polished, a Dark Cities game will always be a Dark Cities game.

To help matters further, I had the opportunity to play Bristol 1350 several times as it was being developed. When a publisher knows they have a solid design on their hands, there is no better way to sell it to potential backers and earn their loyal support than giving them a chance to try it before buying it. This often happens through Print & Play, Tabletop Simulator (or equivalent software), or live demos. After having a blast playing a cheap, ugly version of Bristol 1350, you can bet I was absolutely ready to fork over some cash for a gorgeous, polished version. I even went so far as to write a preview for the game because I believed in it that much. The best evangelists are firsthand witnesses, so why not let people get their hands on your game?

Listening & Responding to Backers — Kemet: Blood and Sand

Kemet: Blood and Sand had a controversial campaign journey, to say the least. Loads of backers had seemingly dozens of different complaints as the Matagot’s campaign trudged from one problem to the next. These complaints included confusion about pricing and value, questionable graphic design and iconography, awkward miniature figures, theme-breaking expansions, and more.

These many problematic ingredients seemed like a recipe for crowdfunding disaster. While the campaign was messier than intended, Matagot weathered the storm well. Each major complaint was met with proposals, polls, adjustments, and solutions as Matagot listened and responded to their backers. While some backers abandoned ship, many more chose to ride out the waves or even join in on the crazy journey after seeing the commitment and care from the team behind Kemet. The end result was a nearly 1 million dollar campaign and a game that is much more likely to reach its full potential.

The Importance of a Hook — Whale Riders

Whale Riders has been another interesting project to follow. I’ve recently become a huge fan of Reiner Knizia’s designs, so this one was easy for me to get behind. The part that has caught me off guard is how little support this game received on Kickstarter. The game quickly funded and hit the $20,000 mark, but it seemed to plateau after that and was barely crawling higher every day since (until the typical last-minute bump).

Grail Games’ project seemed to have the complete package for a mega hit (at least in my naive eyes). It combines a legendary designer with an exceptional artist and a proven publisher. The game is accessible, the theme is whimsical, and the price is reasonable. I’ve also come across plenty of advertisements for it in the usual places. I would have placed my money on this game at least hitting six figures. Yet that didn’t turn out to be within reach.

As I’ve thought about it more, I can only come up with one reason why the game hasn’t received more support. The one thing that Whale Riders seems to be missing is a hook. Don’t get me wrong, Whale Riders looks like a solid game on all accounts; that’s why I backed it. But for comparison’s sake, let’s try to find the hook of the above mentioned kickstarter projects:

• Wavelength: That big, beautiful plastic device that allows for grand reveals and dramatic moments
• Button Shy’s Wallet Games: Pretty-looking, dirt-cheap games that pack a punch and fit in your pocket
• Dice Throne Adventures & Season 1 Rerolled: A premium production of a remodeled season 1 and a cooperative expansion to a beloved Yahtzee combat game
• Sleeping Gods: An epic, hand-crafted cooperative story-book adventure
• Calico: A colorful, Azul-like puzzly game with recessed player boards and cats!
• Loot of Lima: A clever deduction game with interactive player shields
• Oath: A quirky strategy game with a gorgeous production and an innovative system
• GPS / Sequoia / Mountain Goats: A bundle of fancy 10-minute filler games that are easy to teach and addictive to play
• Railroad Ink Challenge: The ultimate roll & write package with dozens of custom dice, maps, and objectives
• Bristol 1350: A thematic social deduction racing game that plays 1-9 players and fits into a compact book box
• Kemet- Blood and Sand: A mega hit game reborn and reimagined with improved gameplay, art, and components

Whale Riders has solid gameplay and fantastic art, but the above mentioned games contain all of that plus more. They stand out in at least one major way, while Whale Riders struggles to differentiate itself. Whether its a novel component, fresh concept, killer production, convenient feature, or something else entirely, the more hooks a project has, the stronger its campaign will be.

Jamey Stegmaier understands the importance of a hook. If you are wanting to pitch a game design to his company, the hook is a must. This philosophy has helped Stonemaier games to become the indie publisher juggernaut that it is today.

Just to be clear, I’m not just saying that I want our games to have an interesting theme or a unique mechanism. Being interesting and unique are interesting qualities, but they’re different than the hook. The key to a great hook is that it grabs your attention. It stands out in a crowd.

Jamey Stegmaier

Rabbit Hole Review

Kickstarter projects have used many effective tools to earn pledges from myself and many others. These tools include:

1. Get straight to the point with your campaign video and page. Why should I be excited about your project becoming a reality? (Wavelength)
2. Low-risk rewards and strong design credibility makes the pledge button easier to click (Button Shy’s wallet games).
3. Quality and consistency earns attention and loyalty (Dice Throne).
4. Alluring presentations and illuminating playthroughs are critical to influencing hesitant backers (Sleeping Gods, Calico).
5. High standards and hot streaks are the fastest route to super fans (GPS, Sequoia, Mountain Goats, Oath).
6. Meaningful upgrades and add-ons are the best shovels for digging deeper into my wallet (Railroad Ink Challenge).
7. Reliable brands and try-before-you-buy is a great way to earn unsolicited volunteers and proactive supporters (Bristol 1350).
8. Listening and responding to backers will gain the trust of current and prospective supporters (Kemet: Blood and Sand).
9. A solid game will be successful (Whale Riders), but a solid game with a hook will flourish.

This concludes my series on How to Win Backers and Crowdfund Projects – A Case Study. Thanks for tuning in! Do you have any personal examples of how a Kickstarter project won you over? Share below!

Article written by Nick. He is inspired by the stellar work of all the individuals involved in the Kickstarter campaigns mentioned above. He is looking forward to playing these games plus many more (including those on his most anticipated games of 2020 list).

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