As we close down 2022, we saw some great cooperative games and expansions: see our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2022 and Top 10 Cooperative Expansions of 2023! But what’s coming next year?

From last year’s list (Top 10 Anticipated Board and Cards Games of 2022), many didn’t even arrive for us to examine. Of the 10 (+1 Honorable Mention) we anticipated last year, six of them still haven’t arrived (The Stuff of Legend, Valor and Villainy: Lludwick’s Labyrinth, Earthborne Rangers, Arydia: The Paths We Dare Tread, Rat Queens: To The Slaughter, and Union City Alliance). Here are the ones that did arrive and we have been looking at:

• Legends of Sleepy Hollow: We liked this one enough that made out Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2022! See our full review here to see if you might like it.
• Tokyo Sidekick:  Not only did we like Tokyo Sidekick, it made the #1 spot on our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2022! See our full review here.
• Sentinels of Earth Prime: After a 5-year delay (yes, 5 years!) we finally got this and reviewed it here. It also made our Top 10 Cooperative Expansions of 2022!
• Batman: The Dark Knight Returns: Although primarily a solo game, this game had us thinking about things like Resolving Ambiguity in Cooperative Games.  See our review here, This one just squeaked onto our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2022.
• Jurrasic World: The Legacy of Isla Nublar.  We received this, we have been playing it, but don’t have enough information for a review yet.

Below are our Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2023!  Like years before, we will provide a link the the project (either Kickstarter, Gamefound, or BacketKit), the promised delivery date, and a quick summary from BoardGameGeek!

10. Gathering Gloom: A Killer Co-op Game for 1 to 5 monsters

Platform: Kickstarter Gathering Gloom: A Killer Co-op Game for 1 to 5 monsters
Promised Delivery: September 2023
Summary: The Charming family is an eclectic family that lives in a manor on top of the hill in the town of Banebridge somewhere in New England circa 1932. They own the local mortuary as well as a mining company. All they want to do is live in peace, take care of their ancestral home, run their businesses, and get along with the townsfolk. The villagers of Banebridge, however, see it differently. Many of them are firm of the opinion that at least some if not all of the “Charming” family are up to nefarious deeds and are, in fact, “monsters” of various sorts. To that end, they are constantly turning up evidence that implicates members of the family in foul play. Some villagers even start stalking individual members. Sometimes (well, a lot of the time really), the family members are forced to take action to deal with especially difficult villagers or incriminating evidence. Actions include Murder, Terrify, Beguile, Deceive, Extort, Bribe, Coerce, and many more. Of course, the family would NEVER take such actions if the villagers weren’t constantly interfering.

We literally backed this on Kickstarter 3 times: it failed to fund the first two times, but their tenacity paid off and they finally funded!  This game looks really interesting … although the art may be divisive … but I am really looking forward to this “Adams Family” co-op game!

9. Tamashii: Chronicle of Ascend

Platform: Gamefound https://gamefound.com/projects/awaken-realms-lite/tamashii-chronicle-of-ascend
Promised Delivery: 2023???? 
Summary:  Tamashii is a cyberpunk adventure board game with a post-apocalyptic vibe. Players will struggle to survive and pursue their agendas in two worlds at the same time – the physical one, filled with deadly machines and merciless human survivors, and the virtual one, prowled by tracking software and vicious viruses.

Players will try to achieve their goals on a modular city map. They will find new locations, fight against strong enemies and search for important information and files needed to win the game.

The second part of the game takes action on a virtual map. Here you will try to hack your opponents, unlock special bonuses or get one-time bonuses for completing the sequences.

The game may be played in different scenarios. You might have to cooperate with other players, play against them or even make an alliances with your enemies. But watch every step you take; every conflict, cooperation or alliance might be a double-edged sword.

Another cyberpunk inspired game on this list!  We know that Awaken Realms make gorgeous and high-quality games, so hopefully this will be a great game as well!  We don’t really know a delivery date, but we hope it delivers in 2023.

8. Kinfire Chronicles: Night’s Fall

Platform: Kickstarter Kinfire Chronicles: Night’s Fall
Promised Delivery: August 2023
Summary: In Kinfire Chronicles: Night’s Fall, a 1-4 player co-operative, quest-based RPG board game, players take on the role of seekers, adventurers who are fighting to push back the darkness threatening to change and destroy the world of Atios. The game plays as a campaign of 15+ quests, and each quest takes an average of 45-60 minutes to complete. Within each quest, players can expect to make choices related to adventures, battles, NPCs to speak to, and more. These choices create a branching story in the game, allowing the entire campaign to be replayable.

What makes this very interesting for us is that Kevin Wilson is on the team of designers: we love most everything he does!  The acrylic standees look great, and this looks like a lighter fun dungeon crawl campaign!

7. Daybreak 

Platform: BackerKit https://www.backerkit.com/c/alex-hague/daybreak
Promised Delivery: May 2023
Summary: Daybreak is a co-operative game about climate action. Each player controls a world power, deploying policies and technologies to both dismantle the engine of global heating and to build resilient societies that protect people from life-threatening crises.  If the global temperature gets too high, or if too many people from any world power are in crisis, everyone loses. But if you work together to draw down global emissions to net-zero, you all win!

Daybreak is a new cooperative game by Matt Leacock, the designer of Pandemic!  That fact itself is exciting, but the game looks really interesting romp like CO2, but perhaps a little easier!

6. Doomensions: Pop-Up Mystery Manor

Platform: Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/curiouscorres/doomensions-pop-up-mystery-manor
Promised Delivery: February 2023
Summary:  Investigators wanted they said… Safety guaranteed they said…

As a newly commissioned paranormal investigator gather your thick scrapbook of evidence and pay a visit to the fully assembled, 8 room, 3D popup Mystery Manor — no assembly required! Secrets lie hidden in every dark corner, behind every closed door. Making repeated exploration of the manor crucial to your investigation.

Packed with clippings, foldouts, and other curious ephemera, your case file will guide you through your time at the Manor. At key investigative milestones, your answer wheel will allow you to confirm your deductions before you return to the manor for more clues.

When did Pop-Up adventures become a thing?  We saw The Shivers deliver at the end of 2022: it’s an RPG lite adventure with pop-up rooms!  See our review here!  Now, we see a more “serious” mystery in Doomensions with more pop-up pieces!  This kind of reminds of The Cursed Dollhouse game … that’s great! We loved that game  See our review of thre Cursed Dollhouse here!

5. The Dark Quarter

Platform: Kickstarter The Dark Quarter
Promised Delivery: October 2023
Summary: In The Dark Quarter, a co-operative app-driven adventure game set in a dark, fantastical vision of 1980s New Orleans, players each take control of a Beaumont agent and work alongside one another to solve the worst crimes that New Orleans has to offer. It’s a world full of magic, where hexing curses are sold on every street, where voodoo priestesses and creatures of the night are lurking around every corner, and where even the most mundane crimes have a tinge of the supernatural to them.

Lucky Duck has done some pretty amazing app-driven games; They’ve also done a great job on mystery games like
Chronicles of Crime!  This looks like a more thematic supernatural Mystery deep in the lore of New Orleans!  We love our Mystery Games here at Co-op Gestalt, and we we are looking forward to this!  See our Top 10 Cooperative Mystery Games!

4. HACKTIVITY – A Highly Interactive Cooperative Board Game

Platform: Kickstarter link  HACKTIVITY – A Highly Interactive Cooperative Board Game
Promised Delivery: February 2023
Summary: A new virus has been detected in cyberspace. According to your investigation, the virus’ origin is linked to the activation of quantum generators, a new source of infinite energy. You and your team will dive into the depths of cyberspace and attempt to break through the generators’ defenses to short-circuit them once and for all. 
Hacktivity is a cooperative story-driven campaign card game for 1 to 4 players. Immerse yourself as one of the four unique characters.

There’s a lot of cyberpunk activity on the list this year!   This is another hacking game that looks cool as players play unique characters working together.  The component looks pretty cool too.

3. Set A Watch: Forsaken Isles + Doomed Run

Platform: Kickstarter (not up yet, here’s a link to the manufacturer’s site).  This should be up on Kickstarter in Feb 2022.
Promised Delivery: ???
Summary: A continuation of the Set A Watch series, Forsaken Isles features a new band of adventurers sailing to islands and other tropical locations to face new monsters and challenges.

Defend your campfire from a horde of creatures and unhallowed bosses using each hero’s unique abilities to survive the night. One hero stays in camp to rest and maintain the fire while the others battle. Each round, you draw a new location to setup camp in. Survive all 8 nights (rounds) to win the game.

This sounds very interesting, not only because they are adding more content to the Set A Watch system (which we love: we’ve reviewed it here and here, and it’s made our Top 10 Cooperative Dice Games as well as Top 10 Cooperative Expansions of 2021  as well as Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2019), but it’s also adding a campaign called Doomed Run! We are really looking forward to this! Hopefully we get it this year!

2. Legends of StormCity

Platform: Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/printandfun/legends-of-stormcity
Promised Delivery: January 2023
Summary: Legends of StormCity is a roll & write game, in which each player takes the role of one of the heroes of StormCity who will fight against villainous leaders and their henchmen who intend to carry out their evil plans to conquer the city.

Each player will control a hero sheet in which they will write down the damage they receive and the powers they can use. Villains and minions have their own game sheets.

Given the ubiquity of Roll and Write games, it’s surprising how few cooperative Roll and Write games there are!  (One was the Escape Roll and Write which we reviewed here).  Legends of Storm City has the distinction of being a cooperative Superhero Roll and Write and a Print and Play from Kickstarter!  This looks really neat and we will probably review this ASAP!

1. Tesseract – A Cooperative Dice Manipulation Game

Platform: Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/smirkanddagger/tesseract-a-cooperative-dice-manipulation-game/
Promised Delivery: July 2023
Summary: Tesseract is a compelling, cooperative dice-manipulation game for 1 to 4 players. The focal point of the game is a block of 64 dice, the Tesseract, which sits at the center of the board on a raised platform. Players will remove cubes to place in their individual labs, transfer them as needed to others, adjust the cube’s values and, importantly, isolate the cubes into the containment matrix, neutralizing them

Although the metal dice gives this Kickstarter some “wow factor”, the game also looks interesting: cooperative play rolling dice from the cube looks really interesting and different.  But, it’s probably #1 because of the metal dice.