Happy New Year! We finish writing this list on December 31, 2023 and reflect on what a great year it has been for cooperative games! This list is a culmination of the very full year of 2023 playing cooperative game with our friends!

We played about 52 brand new cooperative games over the past year! Whew! There were even more solo and cooperative and expansions in there! This year was an especially good year for expansions and solo games, so if you are surprised a game didn’t make this Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2023 this year, make sure you check out our Top 10 Cooperative Solo Board and Card Games of 2023 or our Top 10 Cooperative Expansions of 2023 to see if it maybe made one of those lists!

As we reflect back on the New Year, we remind everyone that we don’t take any money or promotions or advertising of any kind here at Co-op Gestalt: we buy all the games here with our own money! All of our opinions are our own! You may not like our opinions, but at least you know they are our own. We love cooperative games and just want to share those gestalt experiences with everyone!

Honorable Mention: Kinfire Chronicles

Plays Solo:  Yes (but you have to play two characters, and it’s better cooperative)
Player Count: 1 to 4
Ages: 14+
Length: 45-60 minutes per chapter, 20+ chapters 

Kinfire Chronicles is a wonderful game, of which I played far too little. It works okay as a solo game, but you must play two characters to play.  Some of the mechanisms (the Boost idea in particular) work better in a cooperative game, and I think this game is really meant to be played with you and your friends going through a bit of a dungeon crawl.

The best thing about this Dungeon Crawler is how quickly you can learn the rules.  Games like Gloomhaven have 56 page rulebooks; in this dungeon crawler, the rules come out piecemeal, making it easy for everyone to learn as you go.

The reason this makes the Honorable Mention is simple: we didn’t get to play nearly enough of this!  It’s got a long campaign, and my friends were tired of campaigns … even though this one is easy to get into.  What we did see what great: we look forward to playing more!  Given what we’ve seen, this may well shoot to the top of the charts the more we play!

One of my favorite parts of this game were the acrylic standees from the Upgrade Kit! See above!  If you find yourself drawn to this game, I think I would strongly suggest getting the Upgrade Kit for the standees and some other amazing upgrades!

Take a look at our review of Kinfire Chronicles here to see if this is a game you and your friends might really enjoy!

10. The Lord of the Rings Adventure Book Game

Plays Solo:  Yes (but you have to play a phantom hand)
Player Count: 1 to 4
Ages: 10+
Length: 20 minutes per chapter, 8 chapters total

This game is part of the Adventure Book Series of games, which is a system on which can play different Intellectual Properties. We saw the first one of these games with The Princess Bride Adventure Book Game and really liked that (see here)! This new one, based on Lord of the Rings, is probably the best evolution of this system! It’s a light (ish) campaign in the world of Lord of the Rings!

My solo play was quite fun, but my cooperative play with Sara was one of my favorite experiences of the year! Players work together to make decisions and control the fate of the entire party (not just one character)! Every chapter has many tense decisions! The best part of this system is that rings are fantastic wild cards, but each use of a ring causes corruption for the entire campaign! So, all throughout the game, you are have to decide: “Do I use the ring to progress but take the corruption?”

Many of my friends have bought and played and loved this game too: it’s been quite the hit in my gaming circles. The simplicity and the theme both just shine through!

See our review of the Lord Of The Rings Adventure Book Game here to see if this is something you might like!

9. Deep Rock Galactic

Plays Solo:  Yes (either the solo player alternates between two dwarves or plays a single dwarf with the BOSCO robot)
Player Count: 1 to 4
Ages: 12+
Length: 60-150 minutes (it really depends on the mission you go on)

Deep Rock Galactic was okay to pretty good in our first few sessions, but it seemed to get better the more we played it! This was mostly due to the documentation: when this first came out, the rules that came with the game weren’t “quite” enough to play through. But, as the game became more mainstream, you could get updated rules, questions answered, and just more documentation. Once you had that, the game became a lot more fun because the rules were better/understandable!

This minis are great! And even if this game is a little uneven and random, it’s still fun romp in this universe with dwarves blasting monsters and caverns! If the theme speaks to you, or if you know the video game well, I think you will enjoy this game that much more!

Deep Rock Galactic was also a suprising hit at RichieCon 2023 this year!  It’s surprising because it’s a big and daunting game, but the fans of the video game seemed really interested in this game!

Take a look at our review here of Deep Rock Galactic The Board Game to see if this is something you might enjoy!

8. Marvel D.A.G.G.E.R. (or Marvel DAGGER)

Plays Solo:  Yes (the solo player alternates between two heroes)
Player Count: 1 to 5 (but best at lower player counts)
Ages: 12+
Length: 3-4 hours (yep, you read that right)

In this game, each player plays a Marvel super-hero working in a team! Players travel the world together to take out the bad guy! This is all about playing a super-hero team banding together to save the world! This is an action point game, as each player gets a certain number of actions each turn to move, attack, and do good!

Each player plays a hero of their choice, but since there is some randomness in the game (dice get rolled for combat), it is possible to get destroyed early on. To combat that randomness, each player really plays a Hero Pair: the other side of the hero card becomes a hero you assume if the first hero dies! This is a really nice way to allow players to keep playing without complete hero elimination!

This is a real long game (3-4 hours), and the turns can be very long; it’s probably better at lower player counts. 

I have been told Marvel DAGGER is basically Eldritch Horror rethemed to a Marvel game, but having never played Eldritch Horror, I have no means of comparison! I just know that I had fun playing, and it’s a fun (if long) Marvel game! Just be aware of what you are getting into if you want to try it out! Avengers Assemble!

7. Doomensions: A Pop-Up Mystery Manor

Plays Solo:  Yes (but like most escape room games, it’s better with more brains)
Player Count: 1 to 4 (we were also able to play with 5)
Ages: 14+
Length: 10-15 hours, 90 – 120 minutes per chapter, 5 chapters total (including finale)

This is a cooperative escape room with a pop-up manor! It is so cool looking when you see it all set up: see the picture above!

The game plays over 4 chapters (5 if you count the finale), and each chapter takes about 90 to 120 minutes to play.  This is a quite a commitment: we ended up playing over a month at a rate of about 2 chapters per session.

The components are absolutely amazing, probably one of the best productions of the year!  But of course, the centerpiece of the game is a pop-up manor: See below.  Just be aware that, even though the cover looks kinda “kid-like”, this is absolutely a game for adults because of the complexity and subject matter.

Take a look at our review of Doomensions: Pop-Up Mystery Manor here to see if this is something you might enjoy!

6. Valor and Villainy: Lludwick’s Labyrinth

Plays Solo:  Yes (the solo player alternates between two heroes)
Player Count: 1 to 6
Ages: 14+
Length: 25 minutes per player (but really more like 50 minutes per player)

Lludwick’s Labyrinth went over really well for our group! This is a standalone cooperative dungeon crawler game in the Valor and Villainy universe where players pursue a campaign to save the pizza maker (I kid you not!).  This game has a sense of humor with its art and presentation that I really appreciate.  

This is a dungeon crawler with dice, but it has lots of cooperation and good decisions! It also has probably the best tutorial I have ever seen in a board game!  That first tutorial game makes it clear what you can and cannot do during a game!

In the end, it might be a little long and a little complex, but it was a fun romp!  We even were able to bring in a 5th player a few times, so even though it was a campaign, it was easy to add/subtract people!

Take a look at our review of Lludwick’s Labyrinth to see if this is something you might like!

5. Suspects: Eternal Detective Claire Harper and Adele & Neville, Investigative Reporters

Plays Solo:  Yes (and plays solo well)
Player Count: 1 to 6
Ages: 10+
Length: 90 minutes per mystery, 3 per box

This is actually a two-way tie, belying the weird release schedules of some games worldwide.  These are both two games in the same series of the Suspects Murder Mystery games (and would fit well on our Top 10 Cooperative Detective Games).  We reviewed the original orange box version of Suspects: Claire Harper Takes The Stage here back in 2022 and came to love it! That game made the #4 position of our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2022!  These new Suspects games are just more detective games in that same series!  They all present mysteries in a pack of about 54 oversized cards (where each box comes with 3 mysteries)!

Suspects: Eternal Detective Claire Harper was officially released in 2022 (if you believe BGG), but it wasn’t available in the USA until late 2023, so I count it as a 2023 game.  We loved this game: see our review of Suspects: Eternal Detective Claire Harper here to see if you would like this version!  This is just more mysteries in the world of Claire Harper like the original Suspects!

Suspects: Adele & Neville, Investigative Reporters official release was 2023, so it can qualify for this list! In fact, we received both Suspects copies at the same time! We haven’t officially reviewed the Adele & Neville version, but we have played it and loved it almost as much as the original Suspects games!  This still feels like the same world, but instead of playing Claire Harper (who loves Agatha Christie), you play as reporters Adele and Neville (who feel very much like Tommy and Tuppence from the Agatha Christie novels) solving crimes!

All the Suspects boxes have 3 mysteries, wherein the mysteries is all on cards!  These are fantastic mysteries that make you feel like an investigator in this world!

I liked the Suspects series solo so much that the Suspects: Eternal Detective Claire Harper made the #1 spot on the Top 10 Solo Board and Card Games of 2023!

4. Freelancers

Plays Solo:  Officially from the box, no, but the website (where you run the app) has official rules for solo.
Player Count: 3 to 7 (1 or 2 player rules on the website)
Ages: 14+ (in NSFW mode, it’s probably a 18+)
Length: 90+ minutes

Freelancers is the next great game in the Crossroads line, the most recent being Forgotten Waters!  Forgotten Waters was such a great game, it made many of our Top 10 lists: Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2020, Top 10 Cooperative Swashbuckling Games, and Top 10 Cooperative Storybook/Storytelling Games!  Freelancers is the next evolution of this system: it’s a cooperative, funny, storybook game in the a wacky post-apocalyptic universe!

Both Forgotten Waters and Freelancers require an App (actually, a website you visit): the story is contained on the website! There’s plenty of interactions and lots of great writing and voice acting! This universe really comes alive and makes you laugh! This game is so much fun!

One of the many great things about this game is that there are bunch of positions that need to be crewed, so everyone always stays involved! And the game works well, maybe even better, at higher player counts! We played a 5-Player game and it just worked so well!

My first game session of Freelancers was one of my favorite gaming moments of the year: it was so much fun, and so easy to get into, and everyone was involved the whole time! This was a great game! The story is great! The voice-acting is great! The App is great!

Take a look at our review of Freelancers to see if this is something you might enjoy!

3. Race To The Raft

Plays Solo:  Yes (slight mods to rules)
Player Count: 1 to 4
Ages: 8+ 
Length: Anywhere from 40-60 minutes

Race To The Raft could have easily been the #1 spot on our list!  Honestly, it only ended at #3 because the components are slightly better for #2 and #1!  And the components for this game were great! 

This cooperative tile-laying game is a puzzle-solvers dream!  Players have to figure out how collectively to move a group of cats to the raft!  Every tile you place has so many choices: which stack do you draw from? What orientation do you use? Where on the map?  Do I move my cat? Where do I put the fire tiles?  Everything you do is a choice: if you get hoisted by your own petard, it feels like your own fault!

This game was quite a hit at RichieCon 2023!  Even if players didn’t love cats or the theme, this game still went over quite well!  And people who loved cats were fighting to play this!  This game has just gone over like gangbusters in my play groups!  This cooperative tile-laying game should have  took the #1 spot on our Top 10 Cooperative Tile Laying/Placement Games!

Take a look at our review of Race To The Raft!

2. Tesseract

Plays Solo:  Yes (solo players operates two characters)
Player Count: 1 to 4
Ages: 14+ 
Length: 60 minutes

Tesseract is a cooperative cube game that was #1 on our Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2023! Players cooperatively deconstruct a cube, pulling dice off of it!

And the plastic cubes that come with this game are just some of the amazing components that come with this game! There’s a lazy susan for spinning the cube and optional metal dice!

The toy factor is quite high in this game, especially with the metal dice, but my friends and I had a blast playing this! The components are amazing (especially the metal dice)!

With all the emphasis on the components, it’s good to note we also really enjoyed the cooperative game, pulling dice off the cube to save the universe from imploding! This is a fun game with a major toy factor issue to reel you in!

Take a look at our review of Tesseract to see if this is something you might enjoy!

1. The Arkham Asylum Files: Panic in Gotham City

Plays Solo:  Yes (but you really want more than 1 player: like most Escape Room gams, more brains is better!)
Player Count: 1 to 6
Ages: 13+ 
Length: 5-6 Hours totals, “about” 50 minutes per chapter (for 7 chapters)

When you look at the components of #2, you might what wonder “How could #1 have better components than metal dice?” You do when you get an augmented reality escape room in the Batman universe!

This is a weird one: you set up some really great components, but still look at the city through your augmented reality app! As you stare at the city through the app, things appears and disappear! It hard to describe how cool this experience was!

This is an escape room game: players cooperative solve puzzles in the Gotham City universe. This universe lives physically on the table and virtually in your app! In between the escape room puzzles, the augmented reality, and the really cool components that came in the game (besides the augmented reality), this was my favorite experience of the year!

The game is campaign game over 7 chapters, which we ended up doing in 3 separate sessions. After I was done, I packed it back up and gave to Charlie and Allison (my escape room buddies) so they could play it! (Charlie and Allison just gave it back to me the other night, saying they had a great time playing it!)

This cooperative escape room with augmented reality was easily my favorite experience of the year! Take a look our experience with the game in our review of The Arkham Asylum Files: Panic in Gotham City!

This was a surprisingly full year for cooperative expansions! This list had to be shorn because there were so many candidates! As usual, we qualify our expansions are one of three types:

1. Stand-Alone Expansion: Some games you thought might be on the Top 10 Cooperative Board and Card Games of 2023 might have just ended up on this list because they are stand-alone games that can be played without a base game, but at the end of the day they also expand a base game!
2. Makes The Game Cooperative: Some expansions take a competitive base game and make the game fully cooperative with the expansion! We saw a number of these type of expansions on the Top 10 Games That Can Be Played Fully Cooperatively!
3. More Content: Some expansions just add more content (more cards, etc.) to the base cooperative game!

This year we add a new characterization to expansions: Does it requires other expansions? At least two entries on our list require other expansions (besides the base game) in the same universe to play!

Some games you might have thought were here might be on our Top 10 Solo Board and Card Games of 2023! Check there for more delicious games of 2023!

Honorable Mention: Naturopolis

Expansion Type: Stand-Alone Expansion
Solo Mode: Yes (this game is probably best solo, but can play 1-4)
Requires Another Expansion?  No

Naturopolis is the third in “opolis” line from Button Shy Games: Spawlopolis, Agropolis, and now Naturopolis! They are small, 18-card cooperative tile-laying games that pack a lot of punch! This series of games made both our Top 10 “Small” Cooperative Games and our Top 10 Cooperative Tile-Laying Games!

These small tile-laying games are thinky puzzles for 1-4 players (but really solo is best). See our review of the follow-up Agropolis for more info about this series!

This only makes Honorable Mention because it’s really a standalone game which “barely” expands the base game via Ultimopolis: The Naturopolis expansion includes a way to play all three “opolis” games at the same time! Ultimopolis! It feels like a cheat to call this an expansion when Ultimopolis is just a few cards … but it’s still pretty cool.

10. Valor and Villainy: Antagonist’s Arsenal

Expansion Type: Makes The Game Cooperative
Solo Mode: Yes
Requires Another Expansion?  No

Valor and Villainy is a competitive 1-vs.-many game that has really stylized (almost funny) art and interesting mechanics, but it’s not cooperative.  Valor and Villainy is basically a dungeon crawler, but with a sense of humor.  The Antagonist’s Arsenal Expansion takes the base game and adds a cooperative and solo mode!  One of the reasons this expansion is further down the list is because this doesn’t just add that much for cooperative or solo play: it really adds a little bit of content/rules to make the base bad guy fight the players with an AI … but the rest of the expansion is for the competitive mode.

The rest of the expansion takes the fully cooperative Valor and Villainy: Lludwick’s Labyrinth (see our review of that there) and adds content to make THAT competitive!  But that’s still cool if you like competitive version! I mean, there’s quite a bit of stuff in this expansion!  Just … only some of it is for making the game solo/cooperative.

If you find yourself fully interested in playing a fully cooperative Valor and Villainy, then Valor and Villainy: Lludwick’s Labyrinth may be a better option (as it has more gameplay but is more expensive). But, if you already own Valor and Villainy and want to try a solo game or a cooperative game, this expansion can help you test the waters to see if you might like Lludwick’s Labyrinth before you jump in whole hog!

See our review here to see if you might like this system!

9. Spirit Island: Nature Incarnate

Expansion Type: More Content 
Solo Mode: Yes
Requires Another Expansion?  Yes! Strictly speaking, you need The Jagged Earth expansion, but it would also be good if you had the Branch and Claw expansion!

It’s hard to recommend this game unless you are a hard-core Spirit Island fanatic!  This expansion requires the Jagged Earth expansion, which “almost” requires the Branch and Claw expansion (it has those rules, but it goes so much better if you have played Branch and Claw expansion separately).

Branch and Claw adds Event Cards, two new Spirits, but mostly the Beasts, Wilds, Disease, Strife tokens and Options. See above.

Jagged Earth (see above) expounds upon Branch and Claw, adding a lot of new spirits, some reminder cards, some new conditions, Wild Brush, and Aspects. See a game above with the base game of Spirit Island, Branch and Claw, and Jagged Earth!

Finally, Nature Incarnate (see above) expounds on Jagged Earth and Branch and Claw to add even more!  Incarna!  More Aspects! (And shiny foil spirits!!??)

In the end, Nature Incarnate makes a great game even better by having even more variants to play: mostly more Spirits with very different play styles! That variety in Spirits helps keep this great game fluid and interesting. It does make you wonder, though: will the next Spirit Island expansion require Nature Incarnate as an expansion (which in turn requires Jagged Earth)?

8. Thunderstone Quest: Deepwood Defenders (Nature’s Wrath and Rotten Roots)

Expansion Type: More Content
Solo Mode: Yes (if you have Barricades Mode)
Requires Another Expansion?  Yes! Barricades Mode for cooperative/solo modes, and “other expansions” for more beasts/allies and other cards!

Boy, this train keeps on rolling, doesn’t it? The Deepwood Defenders Kickstarter is something like the 5th Kickstarter for AEG’s Thunderstone Quest fantasy-themed deck-builder game!

To be clear, to play these expansions cooperatively, you need the base game Thunderstone Quest (which is competitive: we reviewed it here) and the cooperative expansion Thunderstone Quest: Barricades’ Mode (which we reviewed here)! Only then can you play this expansion!

It’s actually quite a bit of work to get the base game, the cooperative expansion, and these expansions played! You are pulling cards from all three boxes, coordinating three rulebooks, and then adding some new rules! (And a few house rules: see our Seven House Rules for Cooperative Games here) It’s a bit exhausting! See one such mess above!

But it’s fun! Thunderstone Quest has a lot of great decisions as you build yourself up in town (left) and go adventuring in the dungeon (right). There’s always some great decisions in trying to do the best thing! This is a great game, and it has a lot of content. For example: I really liked the new Beastmaster class and really played into the allies from these expansions! (Below)

All in all, some great new expansions .. if you need new content. You may not need that much new content, since this is the 12 and 13th expansion!

7. Adventure Tactics: Adventures in Alchemy

Expansion Type: More Content
Solo Mode: Yes (original base game solo mode: play 3 characters)
Requires Another Expansion? No

The best part of this expansion is that it fixed a lot of issues with the base game!  See our original review here: The boards were warped, there were some typos, some cards were wrong, and the class guide was inconsistent with starting cards (it still is, unfortunately).  By being on the expansion Kickstarter, I got a lot of stuff upgraded!

We were a little luke-warm on Adventure Tactics originally (see our review), but this update helped change our minds.  The new character class (Alchemist) and new story in the new campaign guide really added some new life to the game! Plus, the new character Laine is very cute! New classes! New allies! New campaign! New minis! New standees!  

So, this expansion did what expansions are supposed to do: make you revisit the original game and bring it back into your zeitgeist.  It worked! I think I like Adventure Tactics more after playing the Adventures in Alchemy expansion!

6. Mists Over Carcassonne

Expansion Type: More Content, Makes The Game Cooperative, Stand-Alone Expansion
Solo Mode: Yes (very different way of playing but still works well)
Requires Another Expansion?  No

Mists Over Carcassonne is one of those rare games that does it all! It’s a standalone game in the Carcassonne universe, but it’s also completely cooperative!  It also can be used as an expansion to the original (competitive) Carcassonne game!

This cooperative tile-laying game lives in the world of Carcassonne!  It was so good it made the #1 spot on our Top 10 Cooperative Tile-Placement/Tile-Laying Games!

See our review here to see if you might like Mists Over Carcassone!

5. Rook City Renegades: Sentinels of the Multiverse (Definitive Edition)

Expansion Type: More Content
Solo Mode: Yes (original base game solo mode: play 3 characters)
Requires Another Expansion?  No

In another reality, The Rook City expansion for the 2nd edition of Sentinels of the Multiverse was my favorite expansion of all time!  So, this one had high expectations!  

In the end, I still like the 2nd Edition of Sentinels of the Multiverse better than the Definitive Edition, but I’ve said it many times: it’s just as good, it’s just what you are used to!  I still like the new system and I am collecting it.  The Definitive Edition is really a better game for people just starting out.

See our review here for Sentinels of the Multiverse: Definitive Edition and here to see if you think Rook City Renegades might be right for you and your group!

4. Ares Expedition: Discovery, Foundations, Crisis

Expansion Type: Makes The Game Cooperative, More Content
Solo Mode: Yes
Requires Another Expansion?  No

Strictly speaking, you only need the Crisis mode expansion to make the game cooperative, and that expansion is available separately.  My group really liked this cooperative expansion! See below.

As much as my group liked this cooperative mode for Ares Expedition (see our very positive review here), my friends in Las Cruces didn’t like it … but they did like the other two expansions Discovery and Foundations!!  See our discussion on this here (RichieCon 2023 and Interesting Games).

The 6-Player expansion (Foundations) got played quite a bit at RichieCon 2023!  See above!

It’s pretty clear that if you like Ares Expedition, you will like at least ONE of the 3 expansions: Crisis (the cooperative mode), Discovery (more stuff mode), or Foundations (6-Player mode).  Clearly, the best thing to do is to get the the box with all three expansions!

3. Cantaloop Book 3: Against All Odds

Expansion Type: Stand-Alone Expansion
Solo Mode: Yes (this game is probably best solo)
Requires Another Expansion?  No, but you probably want to have played Books 1 and 2

Cantaloop Book 3: Against All Odds is the third and final book in the Cantaloop Trilogy.  Cantaloop Book 1: Breaking Into Prison was so good (see our review here) that it made the #1 top spot of our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2021!  It’s follow-up Cantaloop Book 2: A Hack of a Plan wasn’t quite as good (see our review here), but it still made our Top 10 Cooperative Expansions of 2022!

What makes the Cantaloop series so good is that they are what point-and-click adventure games (like Monkey Island or Day of the Tentacle) would be in book form!  And they have a great sense of humor! They are actually quite funny (like Monkey Island or Day of the Tentacle), if a little raunchy.

The game uses the little red acetate to hide clues throughout the book: you explore, combine objects, talk to people, and there is even a hint system!

Overall, the third book really knocked it out of the park and finished this fantastic trilogy with a bang! If you like humor and point-and-click adventure games, the Cantaloop series is fantastic! See our review of Cantaloop Book 3: Against All Odds for more information!

2. Battle for Greyport: Chaos in Copperforge

Expansion Type: More Content
Solo Mode: No (but you can play 2 characters and alternate: it’s not official)
Requires Another Expansion?  No

This might surprise some of you that this expansion is so high! Honestly, it just reminded me how much I like the original game!

It’s not flashy or large, but the newest expansion adds some new cards and humor into the Battle for Greyport world! Battle for Greyport is a cooperative deck-building game that I think is a hidden gem! See our of Battle for Greyport review here! It made the #5 spot on our Top 10 Cooperative Deck-Builder Games! The expansion Pirates! made the #5 spot on our Top 10 Swashbuckling Games!

It’s more great stuff for a great game! See our review of Chaos in Copperforge for Battle for Greyport to see if this is something you would like!

1. Unmatched Adventures: Tales To Amaze

Expansion Type: Makes The Game Cooperative, Standalone Expansion
Solo Mode: Yes (introduced by this expansion, but cooperative mode is significantly better)
Requires Another Expansion?  No, but see below

I have been waiting and waiting for Unmatched Adventures: Tales to Amaze for some time! Honestly, I’ve been looking for a cooperative way to play all my Marvel Unmatched expansions! Now, with this new expansion, I can solo play any of the Unmatched Marvel heroes, or take a group into a cooperative Adventure!

Although this expansion is standalone (coming with 4 heroes to play), we ended up playing with Marvel Heroes from other boxs most/all of the time! See above!

The game was fun (see as my friends are smiling ear-to-ear) and having a grand time!

The components are amazing and this was quite good! See our review of UnMatched Adventures: Tales To Amaze here to see if it’s something you might enjoy!

Doomensions: Pop-Up Manor Mystery was on on Kickstarter back in October 2022, and delivered to me in mid November 2023.

This is essentially a cooperative Escape Room game for 1-4 players with 4 chapters with 4 puzzles per chapter (5 chapters if you count the finale). Players work together to solve puzzles cooperatively in this Mystery Manor world.

The back of the box hints at what this world is: it’s a pop-up game (yes, pop-up) in an ancient manor. The back of the box doesn’t really do it justice: it’s pretty cool looking. I was very excited to get this to the table!

This review has a lot of pictures, but it shouldn’t have any real spoilers unless you look too closely at the pictures.

Preamble

A few months before my game arrived, I got this letter in the mail from the Department of Archeology and Historic Preservation. See above.  I almost threw it away, because it looked like some kind of phising or spam letter.   Something in my mind said “Wait”, and I ended up opening it up.

It turns out, as part of the Kickstarter, I got a “herald letter” before the game came to me!   There are some puzzles in the letter (see above), and some back-story to get me excited for the game!  I have to say, this was pretty cool: I’ve never had a Kickstarter do this before.   This really did get me pretty excited for the game.

Unboxing

So, this game is a weird size. It’s long and thin and pretty wide. Also note I got another letter with the Kickstarter (which I can’t open until I’m done).

The Coke can gives you a sense of how big and long this box is!

The rulebook is long and thin, like the box.

It comes with a folder of clues (don’t open this yet!)

There are 4 chapters to the game: each subtab of the folder is for that section of the game. See above.

The version of the game I got comes with a really nice and big magnifying glass! To see how big it is, I place it next to a Can of Coke! It’s quite nice and weildy.

A very nice bag comes with a notebook (for clues) and a Hint Book: since this is an Escape Room game, it’s possible you will get confused. The Hint Book is to help you when you get stuck. I also got a little flashlight.

The notebook is also from the Department of Archeology. Inside …

.. are a list of Kickstarter backers. Hey! There I am!

But the most important thing is the mansion! It’s a GIANT pop-up book held together with some knots on the edges!! We’ll see what this looks like opened-up later on … it’s pretty cool!

The production on this game is through the roof! Everything in this version of the game is just fantastic!  And wait until you see the pop-up book opened!!!

Rulebook

This rulebook wasn’t great.

Although the rulebook has a very big font and is very readable, it gets a C- on The Chair Test because it’s not really usable on the chair next to me. It’s too big! It really doesn’t fit on the chair and its pages flop over. The font choice and size keep this from failing, but I really couldn’t use this. This really needed a better form factor.

I also don’t feel like the rulebook did a good job preparing me for the game (see Solo Game below). The rulebook had a lot of text: it felt wordy. I have played a lot of Escape Room games, but I didn’t feel like I was prepared for this game.

I don’t know. I wish the rulebook had been a lot better: it might have made my first experience better. It needed a few more pictures?

Game Session 0: Solo Game

So, you can play this solo: see the box above. I both recommend it and don’t recommend playing this solo. What do I mean by this?

I recommend playing through the first puzzle or two in the game to get acquainted with how this world works. This a little different from most Escape Room game because of the world you inhabit. It’s good to get a sense of everything before exposing your friends to this.

My first mistake in playing the game was “only” opening the book to one section of the mansion. Since the game is 4 chapters long, it makes sense that you only see 1 of 4 sections at a time? Right? See above as I open just the landing area.

Nope nope nope nope nope! You have to open the entire mansion up and look at all rooms! I didn’t realize this until I made no progress solving the puzzle and looked at the Hint Book.

The Hint Book for the first puzzle made it clear: you had to open the whole mansion up! This was an honest mistake, but I wasted more time than I’d care to admit. By the time I got to that point, I was sort of done as the solo player. I figured out how the mansion works, how the clue wheel works, and how the game basically flows. But I really wanted more brains to help me through this.

I think this is one of those games that more brains make it easier to solve: someone else may see something you miss. If you miss something, this game just feels like you are a dead end. The Hint Book is very good, but still, there are only 4 puzzles per chapter, and you want to get your money’s worth.

Play it just a little way solo to learn how the game works and the puzzles work (all puzzles have a 3 digit number for the solution) and then stop: play with your friends. This was so much more fun with my friends.

Game Session 1: A 3-Player Game

In game session 1, we played a 3-player game. It was absolutely more fun to play with 3 players: Andrew would see something nobody else would see, Teresa would then take it from there, or I would offer some insight. I really think this game is better at multiple players.

We ended up playing 2 sessions in one night: it was about 90 minutes per session. We got more tired in the second session, so I can see only playing 1 session per night. Weirdly, I feel like the game’s assesssment of length seemed too long (a rare thing). It seems to imply each session is about 2 to 2.5 hours: we seemed to do a little better.

The main takeaway from our gameplay: this was fun, but it would have been slightly better at 4 people! There are 4 sections of the house, and it’s easier to divide the work into the different sessions! Still, it worked well at 3.

Session 2: A 4-Player Game

Our next session of this game was 4-Players!  And boy what a difference that made! The workload seemed lessened (as each player took responsibility for a section of the house), and more brains made the game more fun!  Right when someone felt stuck, another person might take charge!

It was clear that 2 sessions, at about 1.5 hours each (for a total of 3 hours), was about the right amount of time.  Although we made it to the finale, we were all too tired to finish … 

But more brains made a big difference: if someone felt a little tired, there were 3 people to take their place! In general, we had a great time shifting from puzzle to puzzle, with different subsets of people working on the puzzles concurrently.

Finale: A 5-Player Game!

In the Finale, Sara brought over her sister and we played 5 players!  It seemed to go over just fine with 5-Players: it may get a little crowded, but I think it depends on the makeup of your group.  We didn’t have any problems having a 5th player in our final run.

We took about 2 hours to solve the finale!  It was pretty fun and relatively climactic!  Our only complaint was the first puzzle in the finale had a wonky solution that we all said “ya, that wasn’t great”.  But everything else was fun! It felt like we had a very satisfying ending an investigation into this mystery house!

Components

These might be the best components of any game I played this year. The magnifying class, the pop-up book, the puzzle wheel, were all just fantastic.

And how can you not be blown away by the Pop-Up Book? Once you see it on the table, it’s fantastic!

This game should probably win Best Components of the year.

Suggestions

Play this at 4 players: it felt like the best player count and offered the best experience. Over the course of four week, we played it at 1, 3, 4 and 5 Players. A 4-Player game was probably the best.

Play the first puzzle or two (puzzle A & maybe puzzle B) as a solo player to get a sense of how the game works, but then don’t ever play it solo again! By biting the bullet and figuring how the game flowed, it made it so much easier to teach my friends.

We ended up taking a piece of clear acetate from the Star Trek Pathways, and it really helped us do the puzzles!! We could trace a lot of the puzzles and both keep the components pristine, but also embracing the puzzles. We used this same clear acetate when we played Suspects a few weeks ago (see our review here).

Put the pop-up book on the edge of the table with nothing else in front of it: it makes it easier to circle and deftly look at the rooms. Generally, we put the chairs on the far side of the table so we could do puzzles there, but kept the chairs away from the manor side.

This goes without saying, but make you open up the entire pop-up book!  Don’t be me and only open “1 section”: that’s not right!

Get 2 oversized binder clips.  Why?

Although the ribbons are supposed to be tied to keep the book open and taut, it worked much better to have 2 binder clips to hold the book open: see above.

Also, make sure you are well-rested to play.  There’s a lot of mental and physical activity as we played.  I might suggest playing over 3 sessions; chapters 1 and 2, chapters 3 and 4, and the finale as we did.

Complaints

The puzzles are all independent, but they are labelled A,B,C,D, etc which implies they MUST be done in order. Nope! Our experience was the each puzzle was an independent puzzle. It might have been more fun to have be able to work on some of the puzzles concurrently: when I got stuck, I could have moved forward on a different puzzle and still felt involved. Sometimes, a puzzle just didn’t speak to you, and you feel useless. It wasn’t until we made it most of the way though the game that we realized “We could have worked on these independently!!” (at least per chapter). ABCD labels implies ordering. I wish they would have used labels that don’t imply order (obviously numbers wouldn’t have worked either): maybe some of the arcane symbols from the game?

This is NOT a kid’s game! That font and that cover picture and that pop-up book maight make you think this is for kids … no no no no no. First of all, the subject matter can be a little disturbing: there’s death, blood splatters, and some scary situations! Second, the complexity of the puzzles and amount of detail needed really wouldn’t work with kids. Maybe, maybe they could help play, but our experience was that we needed every brain with no distractions to really engage this game.

One last complaint, the flashlight that came with the game died within 2 sessions. Make sure you have multiple flashlights: they really do help.

Comparison

One of my favorite escape room experiences of all time was playing Escape The Room: The Cursed Dollhouse!  See our review here!   Although the components aren’t nearly as good as Doomensions, they did definitely awe us when we played this 3 years ago!  

The best part of the game was that each room had numerous puzzles, and we could concurrently work those puzzles!  We got to experience every single subset of 4 people solving the puzzles!  That really set a high bar for cooperation!  I think that’s why I complained that the puzzles were presented so linearly in Doomensions!  My experience with The Cursed Dollhouse really exposed how great that  concurrent mechanism can work.

From a components perspective, The Cursed Dollhouse can’t hold a candle to Doomensions.  But I think I enjoyed the puzzles a little more in The Cursed Dollhouse: they were all just a little different.  The puzzles in Doomensions “always” had to be a 3-digit number … which felt a bit tedious after a while.

Conclusion

This game is an amazing experience with amazing components, but it does require a a commitment to get through the whole thing. If you do decide you want a similar but more contained experience, The Cursed Dollhouse might be the better choice. But if you want to embrace a full multi-session escape room game in a scary universe, Doomensions: Pop-Up Mystery Manor is a great choice! To be clear, this was a fantastic experience with my friends! I strongly recommend checking out the Recommendations section if you do decide to play the game: those recommendations can really make or break this game.

After a frustrating start, this ended up being a pretty great game: This is probably an 8.5/10 for the overall experience! Amazing components! Just be aware: it’s probably not for young kids.

Even though our main focus here at CO-OP Gestalt is cooperative games, solo games are many times the other side of the coin of the cooperative games! Frequently, we play the solo game to learn the game so as to teach the cooperative game! We frequently talk about Saunders’ Law (the hope that a cooperative game has a viable solo mode)! We discuss ways to play cooperative games solo (The Changing Perspectives idea and Least Intellectual Overhead idea)! We care a lot about solo games, but this is our first year calling them out!

Honorable Mention: Marvel Midnight Suns

Our favorite solo game of the year wasn’t a board game or a card game, but a video game: Marvel Midnight Suns!  Strictly speaking, this came out in Dec 2022, but we didn’t get this until March 2023 or so.  So, because it’s a video game AND it didn’t come out in 2022, it can only make our Honorable Mention here in the solo games list. But we played it so much in 2023!

What’s weird is that this video game is a deck-building game!   Combat is performed via a deck-building like mechanism within the video game.  But what this game nails, and is part of the reason I liked it so much, was the exploration and the story!  There is such a great story that unfolds as you explore this world.  

This should have been our #1 solo game of 2023, but it can’t be because it’s a video game that came out in December 2022.  Considering we spent 100+ hours playing this solo in 2023, so it has to make this list at least as an Honorable Mention.

See our review of Marvel Midnight Suns here to see if this is something you would like.

10. Illiterati

A solo word game is a rare beast! Luckily, Illiterati is a word game which works well both solo and cooperatively!  The components, especially the plastic letters, are wonderful!

The solo gamer makes words using letters given a theme (by some cards).  You can choose to play this realtime or not: I personally prefer my word games to be untimed, but the game supports both real-time and off-line modes.

See our review here to see if Illiterati is the type of solo word game you want!

9. Lost Ruins of Arnak: The Missing Expedition

Strictly speaking, this is an expansion for the base game Lost Ruins of Arnak (so you need the base game and this expansion to play), but it really fleshes out the solo mode of the original game with a neat campaign! 

The solo gameplay stays relatively the same, but there’s a lot of new ideas: new story,  new cards, new leaders, and new approaches!

Everything about this solo mode is fun! It is a bit of a table hog getting both the original game (which was also a table hog) and the new expansion set-up with it!

8. Age of Comics

Age of Comics is, by default, a competitive worker placement game for 1-4 players: it’s a victory point game!  But it does come with a dedicated solo mode!  This is a game all about making comic books in the Golden Age of comics! 

The art and components are really evocative of the Golden Years of Comics, with lots of comic book 1950s style art on all sorts of components: cards, tokens, and boards!

If you want to play this solo, you really need to play the competitive version first! The solo rules make it clear: “You need to play the base game first!”  So, for my first play, I played me-vs-me to learn the rules:  see above for a 2-Player game (where the two players are me and me). I just barely beat myself by 1 point! It was a close game!

Finally, once I learned the base rules, I can pull out the solo rules by Nestor (see above).  The official solo mode is similar to the me-vs.-me game, as the solo gamer plays against a solo AI, trying to get more victory points that the AI!  There are a few places where the solo rules need some clarification (Sales especially), but it’s still very fun and very playable.  I am really glad I picked this game up! Age of Comics can give you a very nice solo experience: either me-vs.-me or using the built-in solo rules!

7. Roll For Great Old Ones

Roll For Great Old Ones is a roll-and-write game about stopping the Cultists of Cthulu (or your favorite Great Old One) from summoning terrifying creatures!

This Cthulu roll-and-write game was surprisingly thematic and surprisingly deep for a roll-and-write game.  You felt terror as the summoning approached, you felt dread as the dice conspired against you, and you went mad making choices  (… well, not really …)!  There’s even a re-roll mechanism in the game … but it has a cost … which is also very thematic!

This was a fun solo game (and cooperative too)!

See our review here to see if Roll For Great Old Ones is something you might like!

6. Find The Source

This was a surprisingly good year for solo and cooperative roll-and-write games!  Find The Source was solidly good roll-and-write that works well for both the solo or cooperative game.

The components are quite good, with thick boards and good pens (and amazing erasers!)  This game is easy to set-up, easy to learn, quick to play, and has a lot of interesting decisions.  The component quality and ease-of-play give this is a slight leg up on our other solo roll-and-write Roll For Great Old Ones (#6).

See our review here of Find The Source to see if this is a game you would enjoy solo!

5. Skytear Horde

Skytear Horde is one of those omni-mode games you can play solo, cooperatively, or competitively. Now, I only got to play it solo, but I really liked it!

This is basically a tower defense game: you play cards stop the attacking horde and defend your place of power!  There’s quite a bit of content here, but if you need more, there is an expansion coming soon which adds more content to this game.  The solo game is good fun!

The art on the cards is quite nice!  And the components quite high quality.

Take a look at our review of Skytear Horde to see if something you would enjoy solo!

4. Marvel United: SpiderGeddon

SpiderGeddon was a little hard to get a hold of, but it should be available soon (it’s on Amazon as this goes up)! It’s sort of the precursor the the next wave of Marvel United (Marvel United: Mulitiverse) coming out in 2024.

What made this stand out for us was that they finally addressed the weird solo mode that comes with Marvel United!  (See our discussion here and here). The solo mode that came with the original Marvel United (and X-Men) had some rules that required a bunch of exceptions: it felt like it really diverged from the main cooperative game! We almost always played solo with the 2-handed Solo games! 

Now, the newest Marvel United: SpiderGedden introduces a newer and more interesting solo ruleset (called Commander Solo Mode) for Marvel United!  This newer solo mode is precisely why this is so high on this list: it’s a much better solo game now!

3. Race to the Raft

Race to the Raft is a very puzzly and fun solo tile-playing game in the Isle of Cats universe!

At the time of the review, we had just finished our Top 10 Cooperative Tile-Playing/Tile Placement game!  Looking back, I think Race to the Raft should be the new #1 on that list, except for timing! Ah well!

What makes this game stand out so much (and place so high on this list) is that everything you do is a choice! Which tile do you get from which pile? How do you place the raft tiles?  Where do you place the fire tiles?  I think Race To the Raft is a fantastic game, and the solo mode is just great!  I think I like to solo mode more than the cooperative mode! It’s such a great puzzle!

See our review here to see if Race to the Raft is something you might like! We loved it!

2. Earthborne Rangers

Earthborne Rangers is a game all about exploring.  It’s a thoughtful romp through a fantasy land, with deck-building (sort of) as a main mechanism.

The art is here is phenomenal, and, in a very chill fashion, you get to explore this wonderful world!

There are a lot of rules and a lot of things you have to absorb before you can really enjoy the game, but once you get into it, the game moves quickly and can be quite fun!   The game seems significantly better as a solo game (which is why it’s so high on this list), but my friends still had fun playing cooperatively.

See our review of Earthborne Rangers here to see if you might enjoy it!

1. Suspects: Eternal Detective Claire Harper

This surprised me too!  My favorite solo experience of the year was playing case #1 from the Suspects box solo!  Normally, this game goes over great as a cooperative game, but the solo game works so well too! 

I think since the mystery is confined to the cards, it’s not quite as necessary to have a bunch of brains working on the mystery (as opposed to deeper mystery games like Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective).  

If you love your murder mysteries like Death In Paradise or Midsomer Murder, why not solve a mystery rather than watch it? See our review of Suspects: Eternal Detective Claire Harper here to see if this is something you might like!

My friend Robert loves his map and train games! Last year, we re-played Pandemic Iberia (a cooperative hidden train game with a map: see our retro review here) and had a grand time! This year, we were able to play a new game that just came out with the last two months: Express Route. I ordered this from The Op’s website and it arrived a few weeks ago (Oct 2023).

Express Route is a cooperative 1-4 Player game where players work together to deliver packages under time constraints! (This is called a pick-up and deliver game). The joke throughout the night was “Is this how Amazon trains its staff to deliver packages?” This is a game all about delivering packages across America.

Unboxing

This is a surprisingly big box: it’s standard width and length (like a Ticket To Ride sized box), but it’s quite tall/thick! See our Coke can for perspective above and below.

The rulebook is shaped just like box .. see above.

Under the rulebook is a map and a bunch of cardboard punchouts.

The map is gigantic! See as it takes up the entire one side of my table! See the Coke can above for more perspective.

There’s quite a number of things to punch out: there’s five giant punch out boards! You punch out tokens, summaries, but mostly the packages! There are SO MANY little cardboard packages that come with this game. See below.

See some more tokens above.

There’s also a number of cards: player cards (left), upgrade cards (middle) and some bad news cards (called “Breaking News”, right).

There’s also numerous thicker boards (cargo: left, player: middle) and some wood tokens (right).

The components overall very functional (easy to read), but nothing in this game looks great or fabulous. I guess it’s very thematic for a package delivery: it just looks ordinary. Again, the game is very functional, it’s just not particularly good looking.

Rulebook

This rulebook isn’t bad, but I struggled a little with it.

This rulebook gets about a C+ or B- on the Chair Test. It flops open and makes it harder to read the edges (see above). The font isn’t small (so that’s good), but it isn’t big. It’s okay for readability on the chair test, and it does stay open. The pages just needs to be slightly smaller.

The intro is fine, and it has a link to learn the rules online: I prefer to learn from the rulebook, but some people prefer videos.

The Table of Contents is fine. There’s no Index (fail), but there are Appendices with some FAQ/extra info.

The components page is great!  There’s pictures with labels correlating the components! 

And a lot of people could learn from this set-up page!

• You can leave it open (see above) while you are setting it up!
• It spans two pages for the board: it seems necessary and proper that the board takes a full two pages
• The arrows do a good job of pointing to what’s relevant as you set-up

My only complaint about the set-up is that the steps weren’t numbered, but maybe they didn’t have to be!

The rest of the rules were okay, but they seemed very wordy.  Not sure if it was the font, the organization, lack of highlighting, lack of elaboration in some places?

One rule that seems like it needed more discussion was the Demand Track: there are three different actions depending on whether its green, yellow, or red. But, there were a number of questions we had: if you are in the red, do you do the green and yellow actions as well? (not clear: I am pretty sure the answer is no). And here’s some confusion about how to fill the telephone track as well.

And the back of the rulebook contained no good summaries: it was just empty.

This wasn’t a bad rulebook, but I struggled through about four games before I felt like I finally got everything. This wasn’t a complex game, but something about the rulebook (The organization? The Way rules were expressed? Lack of an Index?) just didn’t flow for me.

I learned the game. The rulebook was good enough for that, but be aware you may have to struggle a little though it.

Gameplay

Each player takes the role of a character in the game: each character (there are 11, see above) has a special set-up ability (usually a few more movement or loads), and then a special ability to use during the game.

All the players ares working together to deliver packages using the four vehicles (three trucks and one airplane) on the board. See the yellow, teal, brown, and white tokens on the board above. To be clear, no one player owns any vehicle: player share control of all delivery vehicles!!

Each vehicle has its own capacity: each truck starts with a capacity of 1 and can be upgraded to 2 (the airplane starts with 2 and can be upgraded to 3).

Players need to deliver packages to keep the demand under control: if the demand every reaches the top of the track (45 or 35, depending on unlocks), players all lose! Amazon has failed to deliver their packages and customers are very grumpy!

Every turn a bad news (“Breaking News”) happens which messes up the players: these get progressively worse as the game progresses.

And some new packages are placed on the map every turn, spiking demand!

Each player has 3 actions (denoted by the 3 batteries): they can move the vehicles a few spaces or load/unload: see the player board above.

If players can collectively deliver 4 normal packages and then another 4 packages (with special constraints), you win!

One of the ways the game is interesting is that you can spend packages to get upgrades! Even though you need 8 packages delivered to win, you will have to spend some of those deliveries to upgrade you vehicles speed, capacity, and other things! (Thematically, this feels weird: am I stealing packages and selling them to upgrade my business?????)

Players win if they deliver the proper 8 packages, but they lose if the demand spikes too high! Also problematic: If the Bad News (“Breaking News”) deck ever runs out, players all lose! Can your group deliver all the packages needed in time?

Solo Play

Solo Play is specified right up front on the components page! Thank you for following Saunders’ Law and having a viable solo mode!

The balance mechanism for one player or multiple players is simple: For every three actions the players take, a new package and a new Bad News card comes out! That’s it! So, it doesn’t matter how many players you have: every three actions taken by any player has the game respond the same way.

It took me a number of games to get the flow of the game. At first, the game felt impossible! I lost my first game badly, and I was afraid I could never win! It was at the point I realized you could trade delivered packages for upgrades, and then the light came on! The upgrades are essential to winning! I think I struggled with the upgrade rule because it seems so athematic: “I am going to sell some of my packages to upgrade my company!” Wait, is this legal?

I played a few more games and finally got the main flow, and I even won a game!

The game was decent solo: it allowed me to learn the game (modulo a few rules) so I could teach my friends. It felt pretty necessary to learn the same solo before playing in a group: there’s just too many rules to get down beforehand!

I don’t know if I’ll play Express Route again solo: that’s not necessarily the fault of the game, I am just not enamored with this theme.

Cooperative Play

Express Route was more fun with a group: we played our first group game with 4 people.

Because the balancing mechanism is so simple (bad news, package, 3 actions, repeat), playing multiple players didn’t seem to slow down the game too much. There was a lot of discussion about how the game worked, there was discussion about the long-term planning, there was discussion as we played. It was pretty fun.

One problem we had: there were a few places where if felt “a little” like the Alpha Player reared his ugly head (see the discussion of Alpha Player Syndrome if you don’t know what an Alpha Player is). It wasn’t a big deal, but there were some places were it felt like there was a little tension as we tried to decide the fate of our packages. This is definitely a game where you drink each other’s Kool-Aid: all players share control of the delivery vehicles, and there’s no way you can win unless you really work talk and work together!! This is not a multiplayer solitaire cooperative game by any means! That’s both good and bad, depending on what you want in a cooperative game.

My friends and I had fun playing cooperatively.

Four Way Thoughts

After we played, I reached out to my friends and asked for their reactions. It was kind of fun to watch the discussion: here’s what I saw!

“I never got a number score for (Express Route) the delivery game.  What do you think (out of 10)?  – Rich

“8?” – Becca

“You liked it that much? :)” – Rich

“I did like it and would be willing to play it again.  I haven’t played many co-op games though” – Becca

“7? definitely fun to play, fun theme, minor downside not sure I liked the dynamic of how you need to buy your way into the red part of the meter though maybe there’s a way to make sure you understand and use the card options you should buy” – Robert

“I am also a 7.  There were a few instructions that were unclear.  Flow was good.  Our game kept us strategizing the whole time.  I was concerned how quickly the meter shot into the red, but that kept us thinking the whole time.”

“Okay, yeah, 7 … all good points” – Becca

So, Express Route is a 7/10 from my friends!

I think I am just 6.5/10: I just don’t love the theme.  I also felt like only 3 actions per turn sometimes made it feel like you couldn’t do a lot on your turn. Despite those thoughts, the were some good moments, especially in the cooperative game.

Conclusion

Express Route is a good pick-up and delivery game: it’s very strategic and keeps players engaged as they play. Be aware that this game really needs everyone to stay involved to win: if you wanted a cooperative game where you do your own thing, this is not the game for you! Express Route demands everyone’s full attention if you want any chance to win … otherwise, you might be inviting the Alpha Player to your table.

My friends all liked Express Route more than I did, as they all gave it a 7/10! For me, the theme just doesn’t do a lot for me (and I wish I had more than 3 actions per turn), but I recognize the game is interesting, and I had some fun! I would give this only a 6.5/10, but realize I am in the minority: my friends liked it better. Caveat Emptor.

I will keep Express Route for my map-loving friends.