Top 15 Board Games of 2025

What makes a favorite game? Is it the way it consistently entertains or surprises you? Challenges or delights you? Welcomes and invites you? Is it found in the excitement you feel to show it to others? The hunger you possess to return to it once more? The need to climb higher and explore deeper? The memories you smile back on and the people you share them with?

No doubt, it’s all of these things. A game is only as good as the experience it hosts and the emotions it generates for those at the table. Yet, it’s the players who fashion so much of that outcome. The perfect game for me might just be the worst choice for you. Despite our differences, we find ourselves here… Me sharing my strongest recommendations, and you hoping to find at least a spark of opportunity and/or vindication. What could be more human than the desire to find and share common joys?

Board games were alive and well in 2025, despite the year’s best efforts to torch them. Thank goodness they survived. In some ways, you could even say that board games are thriving. Particularly if you’re a fan of 2-player games, party games, or trick takers. It was a very good year for those genres (as you’ll soon see).

It’s worth noting that I’ve intentionally excluded Bitewing Games publications from my Top 15. As a daytime dentist and a nighttime cardboard vigilante, any design that we choose to champion will obviously be one that I love so much that I personally see to its fruition. Rather than bump another game out of the Top 15 spotlight, I’ll simply share afterwords what I love about each 2025 Bitewing release. I’ll also grant some special awards to other games and expansions including my favorite new-to-me game released before 2025, best game I didn’t love, worst game I adored, and more!

Let’s celebrate 2025 gaming, shall we?

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15. Torchlit

For my tastes, Allplay had perhaps their best year ever in 2025 in terms of hit releases. It’s not surprising for one or two of their releases to end up on my best of the year list, especially when they release nearly 20 games in a year. Yet it is unprecedented for them to have … well, you’ll see. On top of that, their first game to make my list is a trick taker! I’ve been pretty ambivalent about most trick takers in recent years — the flood of them is starting to wear on me. But that doesn’t mean that one (or multiple) can’t sneak their way onto my list when they really hit the spot. 

Torchlit marries an interesting theme with a stunning presentation (from the legendary Harry Conway) to great effect. Here players are delving into a dungeon to battle monsters and claim loot. At the start of each hand, you’ll place your bet on how deep into the dungeon you’ll travel. Every time you win the trick or play a value that matches the trick-winning card, you’ll get to advance to the next room. The loser of the trick (the lowest value played) gets to decide which played cards get added to dungeon to become points. So you’re aiming to land on your chosen room and in a room with the most monsters. But you’d prefer to be there alone, otherwise you have the split the points with all other occupants! 

That may sound like far too much for a trick taking game to work, but some smart design decisions under the hood give you more flexibility than you’d expect. In our last play, I was able to execute a thrilling comeback and land on the jack-pot dungeon all by myself. 

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14. Tic Tac Trek

Tic Tac Trek is one of those sneaky-good games that may be too sneaky for some. This charming little tin box is jam packed with wood tiles and campfires. Two players take turns drawing a square tile from the bag and placing it on their side (X or O) adjacent to a matching colored tile. Whenever you position three of your symbol in a row, you will crown the last tile with one of your campfires. But this is where things get very clever — you don’t score points for the campfire itself, you score points for the empty spaces surrounding your campfire. Sometimes it’s better to cover up your rival’s points (especially if they have multiple campfires clustered together) than try to build out another row of your tiles. Although it is easy enough to play with my 6-year-old, I’ve enjoyed some surprisingly cutthroat competitions with adults as well. 

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13. Animal Rescue Team / The Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship

Now before I hear any complaints, I just want to say that if Matt Leacock can keep using the core Pandemic system for multiple designs, then I should be allowed to use the same slot for two games. Fair is fair!

One of the more playful productions I’ve encountered this year comes from Shut Up & Sit Down’s debut title: Animal Rescue Team. In this game, you and your friends are driving vehicles around, loading them with animals and equipment, and delivering animals to shelters. Just like real life, each vehicle has different strengths and weaknesses… Some are better at speed while others can fit more stuff or even hitch a trailer behind. Random animal emergencies pop up around the board, and you’ll have to manage your time and resources wisely to keep things from spiraling out of control. If the proximity of problems and the roll of the dice don’t go your way, things can quickly become tricky. Thanks to the vehicle logistics and animal challenges, this one feels like a nice spin on the Pandemic formula (which happens to be from the same designer, Matt Leacock).

While Animal Rescue Team is the more zippy and casual cooperative experience, Fate of the Fellowship is more of a “meat’s back on the menu” kind of Pandemic game. While many board games have come from the Lord of the Rings IP in recent decades, Fate of the Fellowship might just be the most thematic yet. Here you feel the daunting quest of carrying the One Ring to Mount Doom while fighting back the forces of evil. The basic Pandemic system proves to be a great fit, and those looking for something more complex (with more events and abilities and variety) will find it here. It’s an event game that begs to be explored again and again.

As an added note, I don’t want to diminish either title here by having combined them into one spot. Both are great experiences that I would happily revisit again. One does not replace the other (unless you have very limited time and space for cooperative games at your table or on your shelf). I highly recommend you seek out the chance to try both and enjoy what makes them unique.

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12. Feya’s Swamp

I was lucky enough to pick up a copy of Feya’s Swamp at Essen… from a random stranger who was walking around with it… days after it sold out at the publisher’s booth. I didn’t even ask him for it, he simply offered. Sometimes fortune just lands in your lap. Thank you kind stranger.

Feya’s Swamp is an economic swamp development game that lets you boat around, throw parties, and cause a bit of mischief along the way. My favorite aspect of the game is how the islands grow outward over time by players adding their tiles to them. This changes the water routes that are available to everyone’s boats and allows players to create bottlenecks, port monopolies, and all kinds of shenanigans. Meanwhile, you’ll be rushing for the best worker placement spots and jumping on the juiciest financial opportunities as you upgrade your actions. The player driven economy reminds me of Brass in some ways, and I consider that a very good thing.

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11. Piñatas

As mentioned above, trick takers have strong-armed their way onto my list this year. Coincidentally, this one is also from Allplay. Piñatas is not the most flashy or innovative card game in this genre. But it has proven to be one of my favorite competitive trick takers for having a single brilliant twist. You’re out of the round when you win three tricks, and you immediately score points based on how many tricks other players have won. Crucially, the last player in the round effectively busts for waiting too long to go out and thus ends up with the worst score results. If you’ve ever been at a piñata party, then you may know what it feels like to be the last person in line to take a swing after that thing is already busted open and all the candy has spilled out.

Piñatas is wonderfully punchy while staying squeaky clean in its execution. It’s not even all that new. This game is basically a perfect meld of Reiner Knizia’s wackier Voodoo Prince and tighter Marshmallow Test — two games that were already extremely similar. So hate this pick if you wish, but it’s technically a different game. Plus it features illustrated piñatas that get beaten to a pulp across the increasing card values.

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10. Alibis

Alibis shares a lot in common with Codenames — words are displayed across the table and players come up with clues to link them and then guess each other’s words. The key difference here is that Alibis is a cooperative game (instead of team-based) and everyone is doing everything simultaneously. Each player gets dealt two words and must come up with a clue to link them. Then everybody sees all the clues and must figure out each other player’s pair of words. There’s virtually no downtime or boring turns here since you are always doing everything. If that sounds fun to you, then you’re practically guaranteed to enjoy Alibis. It’s a crowdpleaser.

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9. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring — Trick-Taking Game

Beside boasting the longest board game title of all time, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring — Trick-Taking Game presents a mighty fine spin on the cooperative trick taking formula established by The Crew. The major differences are the thematic chapters and the asymmetric characters, along with some novel new ideas sprinkled across the campaign.  While I still consider The Crew (especially Mission Deep Sea) to be the goat in this genre for its stronger approachability and endless variety, we’ve had a blast playing through The Fellowship of the Ring.

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8. Zenith

It’s time to blitz through a few more killer 2-player games, starting with Zenith! I’ve been known to champion a great tug-of-war game, and Zenith is the next worthy addition to this esteemed line of legends. In Zenith, you’ll utilize a hand of multi-use cards (drawn from a huge central deck) to drag planet tokens in your direction, advance up the tech track, and tussle for a larger hand advantage. Similar to Splendor, the cards you add to your tableau will grant you discounts on future cards. You’ll be juggling a few different resources including credits and zen while you try to hold your rival back long enough to cross the finish line first. If you don’t mind a huge variety of card icons (and their accompanying player aids that are packed with explanations), or at least have the patience to get the hang of the card language through the first 30 minutes, then you are in a for a cosmic treat here.

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7. Tag Team

This 2-player auto-battler is far more captivating than it has any right to be. In Tag Team, each player assembles a duo of characters from a wide variety of options and collects their associated cards. Then all you do is introduce one extra card to your programmed sequence each round and then watch it go over and over until one character is knocked out and the opposing team wins. There aren’t many decisions to be made here, but they are pivotal choices. By selecting where in your sequence to insert each new card, you’ll aim to synergize your powers and neutralize your opponent’s cards. But they are attempting the exact same thing, meaning it’s an experience of mind games where you must predict where your opponent will try to sync or desync their specific cards with your specific cards in the cyclical duel to the death.

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6. Toy Battle

Toy Battle is surprisingly simple yet deliciously clever. Where Tag Team and Zenith require the right type of person to enjoy their experience, Toy Battle is effortless to break out and play with anyone. Just play a tile or draw two tiles. Draw two tiles, then play a tile. Play play draw draw play draw draw. Back and forth, back and forth, badabing badaboom, into a gradual crescendo with a swift victory. 

Every choice in this quick-playing game is far more impactful than the playful presentation lets on. Your tiles feature various toys with strong abilities, and you never seem to have the perfect tile at the right time. You can cover opponent tiles with your own tiles if they are stronger, and much of the game is about holding the defensive line while advancing your offensive front. If your line of troops is cut off from your HQ, then your ability to expand shrinks tremendously. This is all paired beautifully with two ways to win — capturing the enemy HQ or surrounding stars to claim enough first. The cherry on top here is that the game comes with a whopping 8 maps. EIGHT. Madness.

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5. Merchants of Andromeda

Merchants of Andromeda has proven to be far more polarizing than I expected. It’s nearly as rules heavy as Feya’s Swamp, yet infinitely more silly and chaotic. I suppose if you hand somebody a mango popsicle and don’t warn them it’s spicy, they might be upset when they take a bite.

This one doesn’t even try to hide its wacky flavor. One look at the busy boards and aggressive artwork ought to clue you in to its brazen nature. Merchants is effectively five distinct mini games crammed into a single experience and strapped together with a dutch auction. What’s a dutch auction, you ask? It’s a bid clock that winds down until the first player leaps at the opportunity to claim the prize at the current bid value. This is facilitated by a free app where players start with their finger on a smartphone and the first to pull away wins the auction. It’s all about patiently pacing your spending and precisely bidding before somebody else takes the prize. Patience is a hard thing to come by when everybody wants to play those mini games (especially at 5-players). Timing is everything here — both in winning the auctions and in competing across the boards before their next scoring event triggers.

While some folks have lambasted Andromeda for having too much going on across the gameplay and presentation, this one has been a hit with my gaming groups to the point that they’ve asked to play it again on multiple occasions. It’s a love it or hate it kind of game, I suppose.

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4. French Toast

I don’t wanna brag, I don’t wanna boast, I love French Toast. 

This is another pick that will get me thrown in board games prison. French Toast technically released in 2021… but this was likely a 700-ish copy print run for a 500 backer campaign from a very small publisher. Barely a blip in the board game industry that was forgotten as quickly as it came. In reality, the game hasn’t been properly (widely) released until a few weeks ago at PAX Unplugged. So is it old busted or new hotness? YOU DECIDE. I’ve got bigger things to worry about… like what on earth is the secret noun I’m supposed to guess in this game?

French Toast has a bit of a 20 questions vibe — one person draws a secret noun card and everyone else tries to deduce what it is via rapid-fire interrogation. But instead of asking yes or no questions, you’re skipping straight to the last part where you guess exactly what the noun is. All the Toastmaster can do is answer … “French Toast” … OR they can repeat the word you guessed! They’ll latch onto whichever one is closer to the actual noun and continue to echo that word until somebody guesses an even closer one. Sometimes the group can pigeon hole themselves in the wrong direction, but fortunately the Toastmaster gives them a clue at the start of every round (which hopefully gets the group back on track). 

The beauty of French Toast is that it is simple enough to play with anyone, from a group of gamers to a family gathering with kids, and it’s full of electric guesses and enticing go agains. What a great party game.

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3. Magical Athlete

Magical Athlete is a party game in disguise, especially because it works well at 4-6 players. Heck, you can even have a riotous time at 3 players if everybody plays two characters each. This racing game turns lemons to lemonade with a taboo mechanism that all hobbyists loathe — roll to move. It should NOT be fun to race around a simple track by taking turns rolling a six-sided die. This is the kind of stuff that makes the general population assume that board games are for children only. But Magical Athlete is built different.

Layered on top of this simple premise is a cornucopia of hilariously broken powers. A banana that trips other racers as they pass by. A huge baby that hogs the space all to itself (and makes my 4-year-old yell “Big Babyyyy” in her deepest masculine voice). A suckerfish that attaches itself to the nearest racer. A lovable loser who gains a point every time they start their turn in last place. A tall bloke aptly named Legs who can just move 5 instead of rolling their die… every single turn. 

This is the kind of game that everyone wishes they had owned growing up (instead of Chutes & Ladders or Sorry). It’s the kind of game that makes you feel like a kid again. It’s the kind of game that can bring grown ups, grandmas, and kids around the table for a riotous occasion. It’s fun boiled down to its purest form.

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2. Regicide Legacy

I wasn’t sure the creators at Badgers from Mars could pull off the feat of making a full-blown legacy game. Especially since their only other title was a small card game that merely uses a standard deck of cards. That’s a huge leap in terms of project scope. But to say that Regicide Legacy has been a pleasant surprise would be the understatement of the year.

For those who haven’t played standard Regicide, this is one of my all-time favorite cooperative games. You can play it with a standard deck of cards if you want to try it. Players are going up against jacks, then queens, then kings in this limited communication boss battler. If I play a 10, then I deal 10 damage to the current boss. If the suit played is a spade, then I defend all players against the boss (effectively reducing the boss’s attack by 10). If the suit played is a club, then my attack value is doubled. Hearts and diamonds grant you the ability to replenish your draw pile and hands. These abilities are fun to juggle, but then there are other clever wrinkles like bosses being immune to their own suit, bosses getting added to your deck as you defeat them, players having the ability to play sets of cards together to combine powers, and more. It’s a brilliant system and the best creative use of playing cards I’ve ever seen. My only complaint would be that there isn’t anything new to see after you’ve beaten the game at various player counts. Enter Regicide Legacy…

Regicide Legacy takes what was already a challenging system and cranks up the insanity to eleven. You’ll encounter new bosses, utilize new powers, permanently alter cards, and more. You’re not allowed to progress to the next level until you beat the current one, but the game has a great system that allows you to hire increasingly stronger mercenaries to help you overcome the obstacle. It’ll take a lot of plays to get through the entire campaign, especially at higher player counts where players have smaller hand limits (or in other words, less health). But we’ve had blast battling through this one at 2-players, and I hear it even works great solo.

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1. Hot Streak

Before Hot Streak came along, it seemed like we had seen everything that racing/betting games had to offer. We have the timeless Winner’s Circle with its secret betting (the best way to play) and clever concept of rolling a dice and deciding which horse to assign it to. There’s the classic Camel Up with its layers of betting intermingled with the other action options of rolling dice and affecting spaces. And there’s the new hotness of Ready Set Bet with its tense real-time bet claiming. But while those games are all about manipulating the odds, hatching schemes, and pivoting tactics during the race, Hot Streak is a spectator sport first and foremost. 

Hot Streak understands more than any game that the thrill of betting is all about the emotional investment of the bettors. That’s why no decisions are made during the actual races — players can focus all their energy on cursing or cheering their mascots. That’s why the mascots themselves are some of the most delightfully garish figures you’ll encounter in board games, each with their own name and personality and history. That’s why the race deck is packed with comical disasters and unexpected comebacks. That’s why your final winnings are less about crowning a victor and more about setting the course for your life’s story as a degenerate gambler. Everything here is lovingly crafted all in the name of putting on a show and giving you a gaming experience to remember.

Many of my favorite gaming memories of the year were born from my plays of Hot Streak. Everything from the production to the experience is a home run. That’s why it’s easy to crown this one as my game of the year.

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Celebrating Bitewing Games’ 2025 Releases:

Best Cold Pitch — Iliad

Of all the designs I’ve ever been cold pitched, Iliad remains the best. Unlike our other publications that were projects I sought out or that started out as promising pitches and eventually developed into worthy candidates, Iliad landed like a strike of lightning — bright, bold, and perfect. I only had to read the rules to see that this one was special…

• The 2-dimensional tug of war across rows and columns of juicy rewards and perilous disasters.
• The contrasting mixture of a tight hand size with flexible tile abilities.
• The competing victory conditions of exclusive color collection versus point supremacy.

Add in the epic greek mythology artwork from Harry Conway, and it all combines into what feels like another stone-cold classic from Reiner Knizia.

Best Grower — Ichor

As a hobbyist, I’ve rarely been all that attracted to pure abstract games. Between the unforgiving perfect information and the historically muted presentation, it’s hard for me to get excited about moving around pawns or tokens in a battle of wits. So when I first encountered Ichor, I found the premise to be neat, but I wasn’t expecting to fall in love with it. Yet as I began to play, and I kept encountering endlessly new challenges and opportunities from the asymmetric character abilities, I realized that this was quickly becoming one of my all-time favorite 2-player games. There’s so much to dig into here between a larger map, additional characters, and an optional gate module. And it’s all supported by a satisfying core of whisking your figures around like rooks as they leave behind a trail of tokens in a race to put out all your tokens first. No wonder Reiner has been tinkering with this design for decades until he finally perfected it in Ichor.

Proudest Production — SILOS

As a board game publisher, sometimes you hire a talented artist for a project and hope that they can clearly see the end product that you can only somewhat make out in your mind’s eye. It’s a blurry silhouette that you can barely perceive through a thick fog, and you’re relying heavily on the artist to cut through that fog. Other times, inspiration strikes and you can clearly see it all — the pieces, the cards, the table presence, the wow factor. SILOS was the latter for me… I knew it would have chunky figures showing a human on one side and a disguised alien on the other. I knew they’d be wearing dapper hats as they abducted humans and cows beneath a roaming UFO. I understood that the game needed designated discard spaces to help players count the cards and dig into the thrilling probabilities. The vision was ripe for the taking.

Of course, the art team for SILOS (Kwanchai and Brigette) still managed to exceed expectations. And Reiner managed to do even more than I hoped with the gameplay variety. I’ve loved this wacky area majority game ever since I first played it as Municipium, and I’m extremely proud of what our team was able to evolve it into.

Favorite Gaming Experience — EGO

I like to describe EGO as an epic push-your-luck auction adventure. It delivers everything I want in a big box board game. Gorgeous artwork and lovely tactility across the components. A wild rumpus ripe with memorable interactions and dramatic surprises. Rich opportunities for careful strategies and clever tactics. A steady tempo of action and decisions without the baggage of fiddly upkeep or excessive downtime. Unique flavors and mechanisms that aren’t found anywhere else. A vast wealth of variety and depth that rewards repeat plays. And a streamlined system that lets the table get to playing quickly. Simply put, EGO is one of my favorite games of all time.

Best Crowd-Pleaser — ORBIT

ORBIT went through a major development overhaul between the initial pitch and the finalized version. The fascinating core premise of racing to and surfing on various moving targets was always there. But we considered all kinds of wacky paths to take it down. All the credit goes to Reiner, especially for his relentless focus on keeping the game fast-paced and streamlined. Thanks to his simple system of play a card and do everything on it in any order, ORBIT has proven to be one of our most approachable and popular big box games. I also love how Vincent Dutrait brought this space-race to life with vivid planets and stylish ships. There are a lot of ways to play ORBIT thanks to the many modules, but my personal favorite is the 4-player partnership mode with the devious nebula tokens and ridiculous hyper accelerator engine included.

Favorite Domino Game — Gazebo

Gazebo manages to capture the vibe of dominos better than any other domino game I’ve played. It’s all about being light on your feet —  taking advantage of the opportunities in your hand and on the board. Do you start a new nook, grow an old one, block an opponent from a lucrative opportunity, concoct a hostile takeover, pounce on a juicy bonus? It’s a lovely tactical time with a lovely presentation from Alisha Giroux. I enjoy bouncing around between the four different maps — they each provide a distinct flavor of Gazebo that keeps me endlessly hungry for more.

Most Clever Game — Gingham

This year we published our 20th title, which is absolutely bonkers to me. We’ve all encountered the concept of a 5-year plan and a 10-year plan. Where do you imagine yourself in X number of years?… That kind of thing. Well I can assure you that my 5-year plan at the end of 2020 most certainly did not envision me being a full-time board game publisher with 20 titles under my belt. I was fresh out of dental school, for heaven’s sake!

Anyway, out of the 20 titles that we’ve now published, I believe that Gingham is the most clever of the bunch. The design is born from a dichotomy between turn order advantage and strategic opportunity. That dichotomy is represented by a square grid shown across a gingham blanket. Players are positioning their queen in a row and then deploying an ant to that row between their queen and the central stitch. The row that gives you the best turn order advantage gives you the worst strategic opportunities, and vice versa. The objective is to build networks of your ants that connect matching sweets. The challenge is that players are often racing for the same sweets and fighting over the same spaces. So Gingham is all about reading the board state and finding the most lucrative opportunities while you jockey for turn order. It is incredibly rewarding of smart play.

Favorite Travel Game — Bombastic

Bombastic has become my new favorite travel game by a long shot. How so?

• It plays in 5 minutes.
• It’s dead simple to teach anyone.
• I can literally play it at the beach or on an airplane tray table.
• I’ve never had a bad play of this. Either it ends hilariously quickly when somebody accidentally explodes or it evolves into a tense battle where you start to second-guess your memory. 
• It’s delightfully moreish. The different cards and the order they come out continue to deliver unexpected moments. It’s the kind of game that begs to be played again and again.

Amid the dozens of mechanisms, hundreds of plays, thousands of releases, and millions of rules, it can be far too easy for us hobbyists to turn our noses up at dumb, silly games. Especially games that are built on simple commonplace concepts like tic tac toe. But Bombastic is one of those helpful reminders that games should be first and foremost about play. And I love that it lets me play with anyone, anywhere.

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Best New-To-Me Game Released Before 2025

Winner: Leviathan Wilds — I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: Leviathan Wilds is one of the best big box cooperative games I’ve ever played. It avoids the common pitfall of being an overcomplicated fiddly mess and instead provides its replayability through interesting character combinations and numerous boss challenges. The concept of scaling a gargantuan beast while it tries to squash you is refreshingly unique and expertly executed for a board game. This would easily haven been in my Top 5 of 2024 if I had played it that year. Bravo, Moon Crab Games.

Honorable Mentions

• Mexica
• Magic Maze
• Wheedle
• Linko
• River of Gold

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Best Reskin/Reprint

Old classic game brought back to life (sometimes with a new visual style)

Winners: High Society and Calimala — Allplay’s new version of High Society is absolute dynamite — it takes a masterpiece and adds three spicy new cards from Knizia, all in a stunning production. Calimala, newly illustrated by Ian O’Toole, proved to be one of the favorite games of my gaming group thanks to its beautiful components and distinct area majority competition.

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Comeback Award

Haven’t played in years… even better than I remember it.

Winner: YINSH — Shoot, I haven’t played YINSH in roughly 8 years. But I got the chance to try it again (this time on Board Game Arena) and was struck by how solid this abstract strategy game is. You’re moving your rings around, flipping tokens as you pass over them, and trying to line up five of your tokens in a row. Despite culling hundreds of games from my collection, I was wise enough to keep this one around. I’m long overdue to dust this one off and dig into it more!

Honorable Mentions:

• The Castles of Burgundy
• Iwari

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Fall From Grace Award

Once respected, now rejected

Winner: Skyrise — I’ve had really great plays of Skyrise. But this year I’ve also had some very painful plays of it. This one benefits greatly from a group that shoots from the hip and doesn’t think too hard about bidding. If you’re playing with folks who are prone to analysis paralysis and overthinking every single bid, you are in for an agonizing game. Not only do players have to consider what to bid, but they also have to evaluate where to bid… every single time the auction gets around to them. My last play was so slow that I was happy to purge this one from my collection and never see it again (unless with the right group).

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Best Game I Didn’t Love

Winner: The Hobbit: There and Back Again — It’s obvious that this scenario-based roll & write game was made with love, both by the designer (Dr. Knizia) and the publisher (Office Dog). The scenarios are inspired by their source material and creatively diverse, and the production is one of the best I’ve seen for a roll & write. I can understand why this has been such a hot title in 2025. All that said, I was bored to tears by this game. Slowly extending my routes to all the landmarks, collecting a few punchboard tokens here and there, and racing to claim a couple 3-point bonuses first was as thrilling as watching paint dry. Each scenario felt like homework, and the prospect of playing all the scenarios filled me with reluctance and dread. So rather than put myself through such misery, I quickly got rid of the game.

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Worst Game I Adored

Winner: Slambo! — I get a kick out of Allplay’s tiny box line. For $9 a pop and a few short minutes of your life, you can explore all kinds of gaming experiences. There are a lot of interesting design concepts out there that perhaps don’t hold up to close scrutiny or a higher price point. But the neat thing about this tiny box line is that it allows the publisher to put out more experimental products and aggressively seek out interesting bite-sized games. Slambo is a simple little card game where two players take turns manipulating the total with plus and minus cards until one player is “forced out of the ring” by pushing the total below zero or above ten. I wouldn’t call myself a Slambo pro, but it feels like a one-trick pony with one optimal strategy (get rid of your largest cards first while trying to keep a healthy balance of positive and negative cards). I suppose you could card count as well if you want to get real serious. But even so, I didn’t dislike my plays of it. My six-year-old loves it as well. So while it’s not one that I’ll recommend to the world, I’ll keep it around and dabble in some sumo card play every now and then.

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Best Kids Game

Winner: Magical Athlete – Because of course it is.

Honorable Mentions:

• French Toast
• Diver Go

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Biggest Bummer of 2025

Winner: Tariffs. I suppose this might not be so bad if you long for the good old days of mass poverty under a corrupt monarchy.

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Best Video Game of 2025

Winner: Donkey Kong Bananza — As much as I love Mario and Zelda, it warms my heart to see Nintendo invest so much money, passion, and creativity into one of their b-side characters like Donkey Kong. I grew up playing and loving the big collectathons — Super Mario 64, Banjo Kazoo, Spyro, Donkey Kong 64, and Super Mario Sunshine. These are some of the most memorable gaming experiences from my childhood, so for Nintendo to throw their best developers and budget at a brand new Donkey Kong collectathon is a dream come true. These people have perfected the 3D platformer, and it was a blast to see them explore that with destructible environments and a lovable hulk-smashing protagonist. If this game doesn’t put a smile on your face, then you should probably check for a pulse.

Honorable Mentions:

• Hollow Knight: Silksong
• Kirby Air Riders
• Mario Kart World
• Hades 2 (Probably… when I get around to it)

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Best Film of 2025

Winner: The Ballad of Wallis Island — While Hollywood continues to churn out increasingly putrid sludge, there are still some great films being made by passionate artists and competent teams (if you look hard enough). The Ballad of Wallis Island is one such film I can heartily recommend. A quirky superfan wins the lottery and pays his favorite musicians to get back together for a performance on a remote island. That sounds like it could be the premise of a horror film, but it’s actually a heartwarming comedy/drama that hits the spot in all the right ways.

Honorable Mentions:

• Kpop Demon Hunters
• Frankenstein
• F1 The Movie

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Launching on Kickstarter Soon

One of our biggest releases of 2026 is launching on Kickstarter soon! We’ve crafted the ultimate gold rush game featuring competing mine companies, crafty stock manipulation, rip-roaring shared incentives, dubious diggings, trepidatious cave-ins, timely canoes, California frontiers, devious bandits, and more! Don’t miss out — follow the Kickstarter here.

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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 critically acclaimed titles Trailblazers by Ryan Courtney and Zoo Vadis by Reiner Knizia. He hopes you’ll join Bitewing Games in their quest to create and share classy board games with a bite.

Disclaimer: When Bitewing Games finds a designer or artist or publisher that we like, we sometimes try to collaborate with these creators on our own publishing projects. We work with these folks because we like their work, and it is natural and predictable that we will continue to praise and enjoy their work. Any opinions shared are subject to biases including business relationships, personal acquaintances, gaming preferences, and more. That said, our intent is to help grow the hobby, share our gaming experiences, and find folks with similar tastes. Please take any and all of our opinions with a hearty grain of salt as you partake in this tabletop hobby feast.