Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Board and Card Games of 2025!

As we look forward, we also look back! It’s fun to look ahead at the cooperative games coming up in 2025!!! We’ve been looking ahead since 2021 (see our Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2021), but it’s always interesting to see the state of games from those previous years. Believe it or not, we still are waiting some games from 2021! Let’s take a look at some backlog!

2021:

Onimaru: There have been some pictures of pallets of boxes from the Warehouse, but we still haven’t see this yet. Maybe we’ll see this, maybe we won’t. I don’t know. It’s been since 2019 when this all this started (6+ years!!). As of now, this is the only outstanding game from our 2021 list.
Freedom Five: After being the #2 entry on our Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2021, Freedom Five finally arrived … and it was very disappointing. Basically, we found it too random and too long, plus there were some production issues, so we ended up selling it. See our review here to see more details.

2022:

Arydia: The Paths We Dare Tread: It’s been a while for this, but we did see a copy arrive at the Dice Tower, so we know that this is imminent. Based on everything from the Kickstarter, we should see this in early 2025. UPDATE: It arrived! December 30th, 2024! It’s a big mama! Look for a review coming soon!
Rat Queens To The Slaughter: There’s been some drama here as the original creator took the game back from the people who have failed to deliver! It’s unclear what happens next, but the creator wants to take charge of this himself … which is great, but it’s still really unclear when we’ll see this!
Union City Alliance: Huzzah! Union City Alliance finally arrived! And it was good! We liked it so much it made our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2024! See our review here of Union City Alliance to see if you might like it!

2023:

Dark Quarter: Promised Oct 2023. It is frustrating we haven’t seen this yet, but there has been lots of activity on the Kickstarter threads, so we believe we will see this early 2025. This is the only game still undelivered from our 2023 list.
Hacktivity: This delivered in June 2024 this year! And it was pretty good. It didn’t make any Top 10 lists this year, but I still liked it. See our review here of Hacktivity to see if you might like this!
Set A Watch: Forsaken Isles + Doomed Run: This delivered this year in about April 2024, and we absolutely loved both the Forsaken Isles (standalone game: see our review here) and Doomed Run (campaign game: see our review here)! Forsaken Isles made our Top 10 Cooperative Expansions of the 2024, and Doomed Run made the #1 spot as our favorite solo game from 2024! See our Top 10 Solo Games of 2024!

2024:

Cyberpunk Unfolds: This arrived in late summer 2024. It was ok but it was a little disappointing. See our review here for more details.
Defenders of the Wild: This arrived August 2024, on time. There was a lot to like in this game, but it just didn’t land for me or any of my groups. Take a look at our review here!
Santorini Deluxe and Co-op expanion: Promised delivery May 2024. Still haven’t seen too much activity. Hopefully it will arrive in 2025.
Weirdwood Manor: This delivered in June 2024 and was generally very well received by my game groups! See our review here to see if this might be something you might like!
Flock Together: This delivered in July 2024. My game groups tended to like this lighter co-op game. It made the #8 spot on our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2024! Check out our review here.
Luddite: Promised delivery December 2024. There has been progress, but we probably won’t see this until 2025.
Once Upon A Line: The Butterfly’s Breath: Promised delivery May 2024. They are still doing a lot of work (per the Kickstarter updates), but it’s not done yet, even from a development perspective, let alone manufacturing. We may see this at the end of 2025, but we suspect we won’t see it until 2026.
Leviathan Wilds: This arrived in April 2024 and really took my game groups by storm! We loved it (see our review here), and it made the #3 spot on our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2024!
Marvel X-Men Dice Throne + Co-op Missions! This promised delivery in Aug 2024. We still don’t have it. It looks like some people might get it before the end of 2024, but most people will be getting this in early 2025.
Marvel United: Multiverse: Season 3 of Marvel United arrived in late July 2024, and it brought so much delicious content! It made our heads explode! Read about the great Expansion Absorption Explosion here! We loved the base game Marvel United: Multiverse, we enjoyed the The Galactus expansion, we really dug the Inhumans expansion, and we loved the Campaigns! We even made our own campaign for Project Pegasus! Everything that came here peppers our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2024, our Top 10 Cooperative Expansions of 2024, and our Top 10 Solo Games of 2024!

All right! Let’s head into our 2025 games!

10. Floe + Monsters Unleased (CO-OP Expansion)

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Platform: Kickstarter Floe
Promised Delivery: June 2025
Summary: FLOE is an adventure-strategy game where players embark on heroic quests across an icy landscape. You’ll discover long-lost secrets on uncharted icebergs, sail the seas to find adventure and sunken treasure and delve into perilous caves to find precious crystals and battle fearsome monsters. Despite the dangers ahead, you won’t be alone in your travels. Always at your side, your loyal familiar may help gather resources or jump into the fray to turn the tide of battle. During their travels, heroes will also gain helpful allies, powerful abilities, and rare items. In time, heroes may also build shrines across the map, ensuring their legacy will be long remembered. However, always beware of the cold. Venturing into the icy wasteland is perilous: almost everything heroes do outside the safety of the village will cost them warmth. From time to time, they will need to return to the village to warm up, improve their homestead, purchase upgrades, and prepare for their next big adventure. Will you be the boldest explorer of them all?

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So, the base game looks amazing! But this game isn’t a co-op by default, which has us a little worried. But with the Monsters Unleased expansion, this will be co-op! This is #10 on our list because its unclear how good the co-op will be! Given the quality of everything else, we expect great things!

9. Fable Fury

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Platform: Kickstarter Fable Fury
Promised Delivery: Oct 2025
Summary: As unlikely heroes, you must explore unknown lands, fight unconventional enemies, dodge silly traps, and collect monster runes hidden within ancient shrines scattered across the realms. Once you have collected the 3 runes, unlock the portal to face the monstrous threat!

Choose your heroes and set out as a team to find the runes hidden in Shrines across three realms. Grab your coins, stock up on items at the Gift Shop, and jump into your first realm.

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The tag line of this game is Ridiculous strategic cooperative, rogue-like dungeon crawler: The art is very cute, and the game seems to have a sense of humor. We had such a good time with Slay The Spire this last year that maybe this will scratch the same itch! We are very much looking forward to this! I love the art! And the sense of humor!

8. Horror On The Orient Express

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Platform: Gamefound Horror On The Orient Express
Promised Delivery: August 2025
Summary: Horror on the Orient Express: The Board Game lures you into the luxurious Orient Express in the 1920s, taking you on a dangerous train ride into the realm of the Dreamlands. Everything is against you, from monsters attacking the train to murderous cults hiding among the passengers. Worst of all, an eldritch, blood-thirsty vampire hunting down everything that moves. Can you solve the dark secrets of the Orient Express before time runs out?

In this cooperative game, you and the other investigators try to survive on the doomed train. To win, you must hunt out the cultists to stop them from performing a hideous ritual and ensure the train reaches its destination. Each of you controls a character who can develop new skills, gather items, talk to the passengers, discover clues, and, ultimately, decide the train’s fate. You may even learn a spell or two!

Horror on the Orient Express: The Board Game brings the award-winning Call of Cthulhu horror and mystery TTRPG into the board gaming world. Special rules, ongoing character development, and awesome play pieces provide a challenging and exciting gaming experience. Your journey on the Orient Express will be something to remember!

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This games looks gorgeous and lures me back into the Horror/Cthulu mythos by being a little bit of a mystery too! Cthulu and a mystery? And a train? What more could you want!? And, let’s be honest, this looks gorgeous on the table!

7. Aetherspire

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Platform: Kickstarter Aetherspire
Promised Delivery: Jan 2025
Summary: The realm of Elementis, once a harmonious balance of earth, air, fire, and water, is now under siege. Elemental Aetherfiends have dispatched waves of invaders to drain our aethercore, the realm’s lifeblood, causing chaos to reign. You and your companions must build powerful elemental spires to lure away and defeat these invaders. As each spire grows stronger, it will unleash a devastating resurgence against the Aetherfiends. Can you restore balance before it’s too late?

Aetherspire is a cooperative 3D tile placement and tower defense game for 1-4 players. Build elemental spires and defend the realm in this stunning 3D strategy game!

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A 3-D Tile placement games and tower defense game? Sign me up! And I really like how it looks! I am excited to see how this comes to the table!

6. One-Hit Heroes

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Platform: Kickstarter One-Hit Heroes
Promised Delivery: March 2025
Summary: Pick a hero and fight for your life! One-Hit Heroes is a co-operative boss rush game where your team must defeat the boss without getting hit even once. The more bosses you defeat, the more your Armory improves as you unlock more card variety each time you play an Episode.

Each boss has a custom deck of moves to try and land hits on your team, but each of you have a unique hero deck with your own tools for blocking, dodging and damaging the boss.

Defeat bosses to be rewarded with card packs that you can tear open and draft from. Each card pack will let you power up and specialize your hero further for the rest of the Episode. But in order to defeat the final boss of each Episode, you’ll need more than just a refined deck – you’ll need to play your cards carefully and work as a team to survive long enough to win.

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This is a solo or co-op boss battler; it’s a card game about fighting, but avoid getting hit … as you only have one hit point! How do avoid all the damage but still manage to win? Rahdo really raved about this, and I too am excited for it!

5. Invincible: The Card Game

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Platform: Kickstarter Invincible: The Card Game
Promised Delivery: Jan 2025
Summary: Invincible: The Card Game puts you in the role of young superheroes as they struggle to become the new Guardians of the Globe. Working together as a team, each player gets to control an iconic character from the Invincible comic universe as you battle to protect Earth from escalating encounters with the series’ many supervillains.

In each battle, you start with a character-specific deck of cards and a unique special ability, then it’s up to you to build up your deck, charge your power, and choose your strategy wisely. Your enemy won’t be taking it easy on you, unleashing hordes of minions to take you down, launching attacks to destroy the city around you, and forcing you to adapt to their unique special abilities. How hard could it be? Well, all you have to do is stay alive, protect Earth, and defeat the universe’s most powerful villains.

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We loved Invincible: The Hero-Building game (see review here) and we love the Astro Knights games (see reviews here and here), so adding Invincible IP to the Astro Knights system seems like a good match! Astro Knights has the comicy feel and seems like a natural fit. It was somewhat surprising this Kickstarter didn’t do better: this only may made $111K, which seems small for a larger IP like Invincible. Still, we look forward to a cooperative deck-builder with Invincible!

4. Unstoppable

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Platform: Kickstarter Unstoppable
Promised Delivery: February 2025
Summary: On the city-planet of Ceres II, every alleyway invites a quick and quiet death. In the lush forests of Virenos, a single misstep could land you in the belly of a beast. The harsh wasteland of Mithras holds both grave danger and a great treasure for those who search its stacks of discarded rubbish. Amidst this chaos, you find yourself thriving, learning, and growing — a child of rank, touched by fate — but a new danger shadows the future of all three worlds. Gather your allies and sharpen your skills, for the darkest days are yet to come.

Unstoppable is a solo or co-operative roguelike, momentum deck-building game. Use card crafting and deck building wisely in the face of unlimited threats, maintaining action and card-draw momentum to become unstoppable!

This looks like such an interesting idea: a cooperative card-crafting game! It’s cooperative mode is limited to 2 people, so perhaps this will be best solo, but it looks really nice! I know some people actually backed out of the kickstarter (I am looking at you, Mike H.) because it was fairly expensive for what you got, but I was fascinated by this game and its premise, so I stayed in. Hopefully it will be good!

3. DCeased: A Zombicide Game

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Platform: Kickstarter DCeased: A Zombicide Game
Promised Delivery: April 2025
Summary: DCeased – A Zombicide Game is a cooperative game were 1 to 6 players control the last uninfected Super Heroes facing off against Zombie Heroes and the zombie hordes controlled by the game itself.

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DCeased: A Zombicide Game is the DC Universe’s answer to Marvel Zombies: Heroes’ Resistance and X-Men: Heroes’ Resistance. See our review of the Marvel version of those here and here! But basically, we really liked those games! So, we are very excited to be able play the DC Universe version of the same game! Let’s be clear: you are playing the DC Heroes fighting off the Zombie hordes! Some versions of Marvel Zombies actually have the zombified heroes fighting the good guys—that’s not what this is. Or at least, that’s not what I am looking forward to.

2. LA-1

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Platform: Kickstarter LA-1
Promised Delivery: Aug 2025
Summary: Most detective work done in the city of LA-1 takes place under the perpetual dark clouds that still linger from the bombs. Even so, you plan to work together to gather clues, interrogate suspects, and go on stakeouts in a world that is divided by class and dominated by status. Use your skills to solve the case before the all-consuming darkness closes in forever.

In the story-driven, co-operative adventure game LA-1, you take on the role of detectives working for Mace & Doyle Investigations who are helping one another to resolve cases in the post-apocalyptic city that was once Los Angeles. Each case can be played individually or as part of a campaign. Because of the multiple cards that can send investigations in different directions, it’s possible to play each case more than one time, having different situations and outcomes each time. But cases must be solved before the Darkness closes in on all the investigators.

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Here’s another Richard Lanius game that has me very excited! I love my cooperative detective games (see our Top 10 Cooperative Detective Games), and this post-apocalyptic detective game sounds really interesting! It’s story-driven and promises some really cool stuff. I also typically love Richard Lanius games (despite being so disappointed by Freedom Five), so I am super excited for this!

1. DC Super Heroes United

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Platform: Gamefound DC Super Heroes United
Promised Delivery: Aug 2025
Summary: The greatest Heroes in the DC universe unite to thwart the Villains’ plans in this fast-paced, family-friendly cooperative game with amazing figures!

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This is the DC version of Marvel United that we’ve come to love so much! We already know that we love this system so much, and it will be so much fun to delve into the DC Universe! And the crazy thing will be when we play with Spider-Man and Super-Man! Batman and Daredevil! Crossovers galore! CMON has a very good track record for getting the Marvel United stuff to us, so we think it’s likely we will see this in Aug 2025!

Top 10 Cooperative Board and Card Game Expansions of 2024

Welcome to the end of 2024! There were some great games that came out, but also some great expansions that really contributed to the world of cooperative games! As usual, we qualify our expansions are one of three types:

Stand-Alone Expansion: Some games you thought might be on the Top 10 Cooperative Board and Card Games of 2024 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!
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!
More Content: Some expansions just add more content (more cards, etc.) to the base cooperative game!

As of last year, we also add the new characterization: Does It Require Another Expansion? We continue adding this characterization, but note that this requirement was not quite as pervasive as it was last year!

If there were some games you thought missing from this list, be sure to check out Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2024 and our Top 10 Solo Games of 2024 to see if it made one of those lists instead!

Honorable Mention: Comic Hunters Cooperative Expansion

Expansion Type: Makes The Game Cooperative
Solo Mode: Comic Hunters already had a solo mode, but this can be played as a multi-handed solo mode as well
Requires Another Expansion? No

Comic Hunters is a game I adore from this last year! See our review here! There is a good solo mode included with this drafting game, but there is no cooperative mode! I like the idea of cooperative drafting games, but the only other cooperative drafting games I know of are Flourish and Sidekick Saga! Why couldn’t there be a cooperative mode for Comic Hunters?

With a little bit of perspicacity and imagination, I went ahead and developed my own cooperative rules for Comic Hunters and put them up on the web for free so others can try it! See a link here for Cooperative Rules for Comic Hunters! This is basically and free print-and-play cooperative expansion for Comic Hunters!

It’s a little bit of a cheat to put this as one of my favorite Cooperative Expansions of 2024 (since I developed it), but I spent so much time playing this solo and cooperatively with my friends (as I honed the rules), this needed to at least get an Honorable Mention. See the rules here to see if you might enjoy this.

10. Marvel United: War of Kings

Expansion Type: More Content
Solo Mode: Yes, any of the Marvel United solo modes
Requires Another Expansion? Not really, just any base Marvel United game

Marvel United: Season 3 Multiverse has pretty much torn through all of our Top 10 lists for 2024. The War of Kings was special to me because I ended up devouring the entire expansion! I played all the characters multiple times, all the heroes multiple times, and really enjoyed a lot of the ideas here! And I think Lockjaw (see above) may be the best introductory character for when you play with a new player! Who doesn’t love a dog?

I freely admit that this expansion appealed to me because of my love of Comic Books, The Inhumans, George Perez, and John Byrne! However, even when I predisposed to like something, it still has to be good (I am looking at you Freedom Five) …

After playing through this all, I fell in love with the Inhumans all over again (and even watched the Marvel show … sigh). Overall, this was a great experience! There’s so much new and great content for Marvel United here! See our review of War of Kings: Marvel United to see if this is something you might like!

9. Thunderstone Quest: Raging Seas and Ancient Adversaries

Expansion Type: More Content
Solo Mode: Yes (with Barricades Expansion)
Requires Another Expansion? Yes, The Barricades Mode Expansion is required to play the game solo or cooperatively

Nathan and Caroline have become my Thunderstone Quest buddies! See me and Nathan above! We ended up playing through both of these expansions this year!

The Raging Seas expansion (see above) has some great ideas with Pirates and adds the new Corsair! The idea of the Voyage has become ingrained in a neat new way!

The Ancient Adversaries adds the new Totems deck (see above) to replace most Treasure, and the game plays very differently with this new expansion and its totems!

If it weren’t for Nathan, I am not sure these would have gotten played. But, we had a great time! I think I may have gotten to the point where I have “enough” Thunderstone Quest expansions, but even still, I really did enjoy these two expansions!

8. Townsfolk Tussle: Foul Neighbors

Expansion Type: More Content
Solo Mode: Two-handed
Requires Another Expansion? No

I didn’t think Townfolk Tussle needed more content, but it’s nice to have! One of the purposes of an expansion is to breathe new life into a game, and that’s what Foul Neighbors did for us! Me and friends thought this game was silly and fun! See below as Sam I and I play this ridiculous game with this ridiculous expansion!

This expansion just adds more content: 2 new Townsfolk (heroes), 8 new Ruffians, a few new rules, cards, and tiles!! Nothing brain-bending!! This silly, boss-battler game was surprisingly good when we first reviewed it here, and this new expansion reminded us just how silly and fun this is!

My favorite moment from playing Foul Neighbors was blowing up the outhouse to take down the final Ruffian! In a game full of silly cards and fun (but slightly creepy) art, it seemed an apt way to end a game! (My second favorite moment was driving the jalopy over the Ruffian!)! Foul Neighbors is a fun expansion that reminds us how much we like original game of Townsfolk Tussle! It also has some of my favorite minis! See below! They are cute and creepy and cool, all at the same time!

7. Detective: City of Angels: Saints and Sinners

Expansion Type: More Content
Solo Mode: Yes
Requires Another Expansion? No

This is just plain up, more content for the great detective game Detective: City of Angels! And we need more content for this system, since each case is a “one-and-done”, meaning you probably can’t replay it again! So, they fact that they are still coming out with content for this system is great! And all of the new cases felt up to the same level of writing as the original!

We were even able to introduce my friend Sara to this system! And we had a great time playing! See above!

After all this time, I still feel like Detective: City of Angels is a great detective game that doesn’t get enough love! There are so many expansions for it which keep extending the life of the game for me! Take a look at our review here to see if this is something you might like!

6. Marvel Champions: Age of Apocalypse

Expansion Type: More Content
Solo Mode: Yes
Requires Another Expansion? No

If Nathan is my Thunderstone Quest buddy, then Joe is my Marvel Champions buddy! The people at Fantasy Flight keeps plugging away and generating new content for Marvel Champions!

My friend Joe and I played a few games, and although he was skeptical of playing Bishop and his discard abilities, Joe ended up really like how he worked!

For me, the reason this expansion makes this Top 10 Cooperative Expansions of 2024 is because it finally added Magik to the Marvel Champions universe! Her character and deck are so interesting, and very thematic to her abilities.

5. Marvel Zombies: X-Men Resistance

Expansion Type: Stand-Alone Expansion
Solo Mode: Yes
Requires Another Expansion? No

The whole Marvel Zombies: Resistance games surprised me! I didn’t expect to like these zombie battling games as much as I did! I guess I shouldn’t be THAT surprise since I love my Cooperative Superhero games (see our Top 10 Cooperative Superhero games), but I don’t necessarily love Zombie games!

But having a chance to play the X-Men on missions for killing zombies was so much more fun than I expected! My friends and I had a grand time in the X-Men universe!

See our review here to see if you an your friends want to be X-Men killing Zombies!

4. Astro Knights: Eternity

Expansion Type: Stand-Alone Expansion
Solo Mode: Yes
Requires Another Expansion? No

I liked Astro Knights from about a year ago (see our review here of the original Astro Knights), but I didn’t love it. One of my complaints was that it really needed some more content to keep it fresh.

Although it’s fantastic that this deck-building boss-battler now has more content, it was the story that really sold me on this expansion! I played through the whole adventure with me and friends, and we loved all the new content and the Firefly-esque story that unravelled!

For a while, I thought this would be my #1 Expansion! It made the top of my list at RichieCon 2024 (see that list here), but this year was really strong for expansions. See our review of Astro Knights: Eternity to see if this is something you might like! We really enjoyed this!

3. Set A Watch: Forsaken Isles

Expansion Type: Stand-Alone Expansion
Solo Mode: Yes (but you must play 4 characters: it’s not as bad as it sounds, especially once you get into it)
Requires Another Expansion? No

Like all the Set A Watch games (see our review of the original Set A Watch, and our review of Set A Watch: Swords of the Coin), this is a really fun monster battler as players play four heroes trying to get back home! Every night, they camp and one person has to watch the fire while the others go and fight the monsters in the night!

There’s a whole new set of monsters, a whole new set of heroes (with whole new powers), and a whole new set of gear! This game is easy to teach and plays pretty quickly! And you can play it either standalone or combine with other Set A Watch sets!

There’s some new mechanisms in the system (Doom), but it’s doesn’t really change the complexity of the game. Every time I play any of the Set A Watch games, I have such a fun time! This standalone expansion really just made me love Set A Watch that much more! See our review here to see if this is something you might like!

2. Marvel United: Fantastic Four: The Coming of Galactus

Expansion Type: More Content
Solo Mode: Yes, any of the Marvel United solo modes
Requires Another Expansion? No (but you might want the Fantastic Four expansion)

So, for a long time, I thought this would be my #1 Expansion of 2024! The Galactus model was so cool! The Heralds of Galactus added a new style of play! See below!

In the end, there were just a few niggling details that kept it from #1; I loved it, but my friends didn’t like it as much as me. See our review here to see more details of this.

But in the end, it was such an epic game of fighting heralds and Galactus, that this game had to make my Top 10 Cooperative Expansions this year.

See above the epic story told by the battle with Galactus!!

1. Aeon’s End: The Descent

Expansion Type: Stand-Alone Expansion
Solo Mode: Yes, and it’s a true solo mode!
Requires Another Expansion? No

I am just as surprised as you that this expansion was so good! I like the Aeon’s End system (see our Top 10 Cooperative Deck-Building Games), but this new expansion breathed new life into this game! Playing mages cooperatively fighting big bad monsters (in a cooperative deck-builder) had so many new turns!

What really made this hit the number one spot was the addition of the Friends and Foes module! This module mitigates a problem I have with Aeon’s End Variable Turn Order (see our Discussion of Variable Turn Order and How To Mitigate Its Randomness), but also adds some really new and interesting ways to play the game! What’s even better is that you can use this module in ANY of your Aeon’s End games! It’s a module!

And what put Aeon’s End: The Descent over the top to #1 was the story in the campaign! We liked how much the story elevated Astro Knights: Eternity (back at #4), and the story here coupled with the Friends and Foes module AND coupled with all the new mages and cards made this rocket to the top of my Top 10 Cooperative Expansions of 2024! Check our our review here to see if this is something you might like! My friend Becca (who doesn’t like cooperative games that muchh) also really enjoyed it! High Praise indeed!

Top 10 Cooperative Board And Card Games of 2024!

Wow! What a great year 2024 was for cooperative games! As we put this list together, it felt like any of the games here could have been the #1 game because there were were all great!

Some of the games you might expect to see here might make it on a different list! We will have our Top 10 Solo Games of 2024, our Top 10 Cooperative Expansions of 2024, and our Top 10 Party Games of 2024! Check these lists for more great games! Let’s head into our list! This is the best of the best for 2024! It’s so great that cooperative games have really flourished! Now I can play with my friends!

Honorable Mention: Ultimatch

Plays Solo: Yes (true solo)
Player Count: 1 to 5
Ages: 10+
Length: 20 minutes

I am so surprised this little cooperative card game didn’t do better! It’s colorful and easy to play! I don’t see many people talking about it, but my friends and I had a great time playing this!

If you are looking for a cooperative game to take out instead of UNO, this seems like a game could fit in anywhere! A light cooperative card game that anyone can play? Sign me up!

This has to make an Honorable Mention because it is such an approachable and fun little cooperative game! See our review here to see if you might like Ultimatch!!

10. Slay The Spire: The Board Game

Plays Solo: Yes (has true solo play, but it’s better cooperative)
Player Count: 1 to 4
Ages: 12+
Length: 60-90 minutes per Act

As someone who has never played the original video game, this was a huge surprise! If you like the video game, I think you’ll like this! And if you didn’t like the video game … you might still like this!! This is a surprisingly good game with surprisingly good components! It’s a cooperative adventure deck-building game as players navigate dungeons and fight bad guys … just like the video game!

This game worked so well in so many contexts! It was probably one of the most played games at RichieCon 2024 this year, as I saw it getting played so many times! See above. It also worked with my friends who have played the original video game Slay The Spire, and for my friends who HAVEN’T played Slay The Spire!

This had to make our top 10 list of the year because it was so good! It really is a great cooperative game, as it embraces Player Selected Turn Order and Simultaneous Play at the same time! The only reason it’s at number 10 is just that’s it sometimes harder to get to the table if you already have a game in progress (as cards are stored/flipped and saved in the box). See our review here of Slay The Spire: The Board Game to see if this is something you might enjoy!

9. Union City Alliance: Heroes Unite!

Plays Solo: No (but you can play two characters)
Player Count: 2 to 4
Ages: 14+
Length: 75-150 minutes

This was #1 on our Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2022, and it finally delivered this year! Of course I was excited when it came in, but I was wary! Luckily, it was very good!

This is a cooperative deck-building game (a lot of these this year) where players are Super Heroes with special powers and have special cards tailored to their deck! If you like Marvel Legendary, a cooperative deck-builder with Marvel Super Heroes, this might be right up your alley! Union City Alliance is also much more thematic than Marvel Legendary as players are actually Super Heroes moving around a map and fighting bad guys!

The only reason this is a little lower is because it doesn’t have official rules for playing solo (but it seems to work with the solo player operating two heroes), and because it is a little more complicated! This game drips with so much theme that it has to pay a little cost of complexity for that theme! Take a look at our review of Union City Alliance to see if you night enjoy this more than Marvel Legendary! I knowI did!

8. Flock Together

Plays Solo: Yes (true solo)
Player Count: 1 to 5
Ages: 10+
Length: 25 minutes per player

This is a gorgeous and very cute game with art by Andrew Bosley. Flock Together is a cooperative Boss-Battler, as players have to battle 3 minor bosses on the way to the final confrontation with the big Boss!

This was on my Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2024, and boy was it great! This seemed to hit home for so many people! Flock Together a light cooperative game and it is so easy to get to the table! The art and chicken puns in this game just evoke such joy!

This was another one of the most played games at RichieCon 2024 (see above) as I saw it getting played multiple times! Because this game is so easy to get to the table and evokes such joy and humor, this had to make my Top Cooperative Games of 2024! See our review of Flock Together to see if this might be something you enjoy!

7. Hissy Fit!

Plays Solo: Yes (true solo)
Player Count: 1 to 4
Ages: 8+
Length: 20 minutes

Wait, a game about taking cats to the Vet made the #7 position? That’s right! This super cute little cooperative game was a surprising hit! It’s a cooperative game you can take just about anywhere, it’s easy to teach and play, and everyone just responds so well to it!

I haven’t had a bad play of this yet! I have played with my gamer friends, my non-gamer friends, my niece, my best friend, and so many groups and it has been a hit every time! This is a great little cooperative game with a follow-like mechanism that keeps everyone involved the whole time!

In the end, the super cute art will bring in people (see above), but the simple cooperative gameplay (with the involving follow mechanism) and short games of 20 minutes will enchant just about everyone! Take a look at our review of Hissy Fit here and see if you want to take the cat to the Vet!

6. Endeavor Deep Sea

Plays Solo: Yes (true solo)
Player Count: 1 to 5
Ages: 14+
Length: upto 30 minutes per player

So, I have never played the original Endeavor, but this follow-on (called Endeavor Deep Sea) worker placement game had both a solo and cooperative mode, so I took a chance on it, and it was very very good! A cooperative worker placement game is such a neat thing when it actually works!

Although I liked the game solo and cooperatively, the reason this is higher on the list is that this was a hit for everyone who played it cooperatively! Each player feels like they have so much choice on their turn, so agency is present and relevant, but the discussions for how to achieve the cooperative goals really do elevate the game! It’s a cooperative game where the turns are multiplayer solitaire (which gives each player agency), but still instills a sense of cooperation in the goals!

This was a very thinky and engaging solo and cooperative worker placement game that looks really great on the table! Take a look at our review of Endeavor Deep Sea to see if this is for you and your group!

5. Tidal Blades 2: Rise of the Unfolders

Plays Solo: Yes (but you have to play two characters)
Player Count: 1 to 4
Ages: 14+
Length: 60-90 minutes

This is a fantastic year for board and card games! In many other years, this would have easily been my #1 game of the year, but there are so many good games this year! This is a cooperative boss-battler dungeon crawl campaign game where players play unique and interesting characters in this world of Tidal Blades!

This game is just gorgeous and took up my table for weeks as I played through the campaign both solo and cooperatively! The components are so good and, this sounds silly, but so easy to read and understand the icons and colors! They did such a fantastic job!

The best recommendation you can give a campaign game is that your friends want to keep playing it! I have gone through most of the campaign solo, and I am enjoying playing cooperatively with my friends when I can! See above!

The way players choose a card and then activate all the abilities in the row or column of choice is such a great mechanism! I hope we see this mechanism again in future games! Tidal Blades 2: The Rise of the Unfolders has so many great things (and fixes to Gloomhaven) that I wish I could give this the #1 position, but I liked the next few games just a little better! See our review of Tidal Blades 2: The Rise of the Unfolders here to see if you might like this and argue that it should be #1!

4. Invincible: The Hero-Building Game

Plays Solo: Yes (but you have to play two characters)
Player Count: 1 to 4
Ages: 13+
Length: 45-90 minutes

Invincible: The Hero Building Game is a cooperative bag-building game set in the Invincible universe. You may have read the original comic book or seen the TV show, but even if you haven’t, you might still really enjoy this bag-building/push-your-luck game! I really enjoyed that no cube is bad on its own, but if you ever draw 5 black cubes, a hero can crash (which is still recoverable). The black cubes are actually good (they are wild) up until you get 5 of them!

There is also a campaign, where each scenario can be just played as a one-shot as well!

Cooperatively, my friends (despite never having seen/read Invincible) still had a good time playing! Sam even mentioned Invincible in his top 10 list at RichieCon 2024 ! I freely admit that the SuperHero nature of this game contributed to me really liking it, but the game is very very good! See our review of Invincible: The Hero-Building Game to see if you might enjoy it!

3. Leviathan Wilds

Plays Solo: Yes (there’s an official true solo mode, but just play two characters: it’s easier)
Player Count: 1 to 4
Ages: 10+
Length: 60 minutes

Leviathan Wilds took my gaming groups by storm! This is a game I championed, as it was #3 on my Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2024, and boy did it deliver! It seems most reviewers picked up on how good it was!

This is basically Shadow of The Colossus, the cooperative board game! But, instead of “fighting” a creature by climbing all over him, players work together to heal a creature (by getting rid of crystal growths)!

This game works so well because it’s easy to get to the table and has some really unique features! Each player gets to choose a Climber and Class (each with its own deck) and meld them to create a unique deck and personality! The cards are multi-use, and your deck represents your grip! It’s such an interesting and gorgeous game! See below!

My friend Becca (who doesn’t like cooperative games normally) said she really liked this! And most of my friends also liked it! It was hit just about everywhere I went! Take a look at our review of Leviathan Wilds to see if this is something you may like!

2. Sammu-Ramat

Plays Solo: Yes (there’s a couple of ways, either the solo player operates 2 advisors or 3)
Player Count: 1 to 5
Ages: 14+
Length: 60-90 minutes

You haven’t probably heard of this game; it had a very small Gamefound presence, but in the end, it probably should have been game of the year. This game is fantastic: it’s a cooperative war-game with euro-type resource gathering mechanisms! And it’s cooperative and solo! The theme is that players are advisors to Sammu-Ramat, a leader from 811-820 BC known for her wisdom!

In the end, though, this is a puzzle game about how to keep the kingdom prosperous, while still enduring the warlike invaders! How do you handle crisis? What resources do you collect? how do you move about the kingdom to do the most good? It’s such a great and thinky puzzle with almost no randomness to the game (from a few events)!

My friends and I had such a good time playing through this puzzle, but I think I enjoyed the campaign mode best, where you play 5 games back to back using the previous game state as set-up for the next! So interesting and thinky!

I loved this game and strongly suggest you check it out, especially if you like thinky puzzle games! See our review of Sammu-Ramat to see if this might be something you like! If this were any of other year, this would have been my #1, but one other game took almost all my time this year …

1. Marvel United Multiverse/Season 3

Plays Solo: Yes (there’s many ways, but I prefer playing two heroes)
Player Count: 1 to 4 (sometimes 5, depending on the mode)
Ages: 14+
Length: 60-90 minutes

This is kind of a cheat, as Marvel United: Multiverse standalone game comes with Season 3 of Marvel United Multiverse! See above!

Marvel United: Multiverse is the base game that includes heroes from the Multiverse (Loki) and What If? (Captain Carter) and other lesser know heroes and villains.

One of the best new things in the Marvel United: Multiverse game is the Equipment cards! Some of the heroes in the game get some really interesting and choices if equipped! I was pleasantly surprised how much I liked the new equipment and its effects on gameplay. See our review here to see if Marvel United: Multiverse might be for you!

Even though Marvel United: Multiverse is out favorite of the Marvel United base games, it’s all the content from Season 3 that made this rise to the top! We spent weeks lovingly going through so much of Season 3 Multiverse!

The Stretch Goals! See the Expansion Absorption Explosion for more details!
The Campaign Decks! Play a campaign with your favorite Marvel comic!
The Inhumans! Play War of Kings with your favorite Inhumans!
Galactus! Play against Galactus or his heralds!

We liked Marvel United: Multiverse so much, we used the Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S location from that box to make our own campaign!

The Project P.E.G.A.S.U.S campaign, using “mostly” Season 3 and Multiverse components took over our lives for weeks as well! See our custom print-and-play campaign of the Project PEGASUS story!

Marvel United has become my favorite game of all time, and Season 3 pretty much cemented it i place! That’s why Marvel United: Multiverse (and Season 3) has to make the #1 spot on our cooperative games of 2024!

Over Hill Over Dale, Will Everdell: Duo Fail? A Review of the Solo and Cooperative Modes of Everdell: Duo

Everdell: Duo is a competitive or cooperative worker placement game for 1-2 players. It was up on Kickstarter in Aug/Sept. 2024. It promised delivery in March 2025, but it delivered to me on November 25th, 2024! Yes, almost 4 months early!

This is a worker placement game in the Everdell universe. Strictly speaking, I have never played any of the Everdell games, but I was excited about the cooperative mode of this worker placement game! It plays both solo and cooperatively with 2-Players! We saw another cooperative worker placement game that went over quite well this year with Endeavour: Deep Sea. Will Everdell: Duo find that same success?

Unboxing

This is a smaller box: see Coke Can above for perspective.

I was slightly grumpy at the Kickstarter because they shipped it in a padded envelope, and my box got a little banged up! See above. There are some dents, and the top is squished a little, so it feels like I got a Ding-And-Dent day special for this. So, I was already a little feisty when I opened this.

And there is really no insert to speak of. Everything just flops around all willy-nilly in the box!

Luckily, they did include a lot of plastic bags (see above and below) so you organize it.

There’s 4 punchout sheets and the art is pretty groovy on them (see above and below).

Most of the game is on the cards; there’s quite a number of them.

The game looks good: I love that Andrew Bosley art. See above.

Rulebook

This rulebook is a mixed bag.

It passes the Chair Test with flying colors! It’s an A! It’s just the right size so that it can fold over perfectly!

See above as the rulebook lays flat and fits perfectly; it’s so easy to read!

The Components list is pretty minimal (lower right of 2nd page, see above), but it works well enough. The set-up takes up all of page 3, works, pretty well, and is decently notated. So, things are starting off on a good note.

The Gameplay concentrates on the competitive mode, so the cooperative (and solo) mode take second fiddle a little bit. For example, the rulebook fully lists/describes the Season card effects for competitive mode, but the cooperative mode Season effects (which are different enough to warrant some text) doesn’t get any explanation. The game mechanisms are “generally” the same in either competitive or cooperative mode, but of course, the players have to approach the game differently depending on the mode.

This also irked me: they mislabelled the “Card Summary” as an Index! See above!! An Index is a list of sorted “important” words, with page numbers following in a list: this is NOT an index! This is a Summary! Even worse, as a Summary, it’s incomplete! You MUST print out the special sheet from the website to get all the rules. I remember looking for the the Inn in the rulebook … it’s not there?

Ah, there it is … at the top of the page! (NOT an Index). Do yourself a favor, makes sure you print out a full copy of the (what they call) the Everdell Duo Index! You need that to play or you will not be very unhappy.

The rulebook taught the game, but I was constantly looking up stuff. Also, there’s no real picture or great explanation of “town” or tableau. I think you have to have played enough of these types of games to get that your “town” was the set of cards in front of you. Again, this could have been clearer.

The rulebook taught the game. Let’s just leave it at that. Make sure you print out (what they call) the Everdell Duo Index, or you will be missing some important card descriptions!

Gameplay

This is a worker placement game for 1-2 players. You can play competitively or cooperatively (the solo mode is just the cooperative mode with one player operating both characters).

There are always two characters in play: the Hare and the Tortoise. See above as the Hare is on the left hand side, and the Tortoise on the right.

During the game players “usually” do one of two things on their turn; (1) place a worker placement token (see the 3 Tortoise tokens above) or (2) play a card from their hand into their “town” or tableau (see Farmer and Peddler as cards in their hand).

The top and bottom of the board is the worker placement zones.

The bottom part of the board are spaces that basically give resources (wood, berries, resin, or stone) to a player. See above.

At the top of the board (accented by the big tiles) are the big rewards, but they have significant prerequisites. The Bountiful Harvest (to the left) requires 4 green Production cards, but gives a whopping 5 victory points.

This is generally a victory point game, even in the cooperative mode (but see more discussion below). For the competitive games, players are competing to get the most victory points. For the cooperative mode, players (at first at least) need a certain number of victory points as a group to win.

The second most common action is playing cards from your hand (or board) to your “town” or tableau. It’s not clear from the instructions, but each character has a HAND of cards they can play on the board, and cards they HAVE played into their “town”. See above as the Harvester, Spelunker, Chip Sweep, and Fairgrounds are in the Hare’s town (with Miller and Barge Toad in hand; they haven’t come out yet).

In order to play a card into your “town” or tableau, the player must pay the resources on the upper left of the card. For the General Store (above), it’s one Wood, one Resin, and one Stone. If you don’t have the resources, you can’t play the card.

Interestingly, you can also play cards from the board (the Meadow) into your “town”! It really depends on where the Sun and the Moon are!!

The Sun and Moon are tokens that move left to right on the board. See above. Once they have both reached the last space, that season is over! There are 4 Seasons total: Winter, Spring, Summer, Autumn. Once all seasons are done, the game is over! Add up point to see who won!

At the end of the season, each characters gets some special effects (draw a card from the meadow (the board), create resources from Green cards, get resources, etc). The Season tiles above also specify who goes first!

The Sun and Moon tokens add an unusual twist in the game. The Sun token advances whenever any player plays a worker. There are only 5-7 or so spaces for the sun (depending on the mode, campaign, etc), so that means that maybe a limited number of worker placement actions total; someone may likely get screwed out of a worker placement action!

The Moon token advances whenever anyone buys a card from the board or their hand. See above; if a character buys, they can instead buy any of the 4 adjacent cards to the moon! That’s kind of different and interesting!

The game is all about trying to get the right resources to get the right cards to get the right combos to get the most victory points!

Solo Play

There are two solo modes (Congratulations on following Saunders’ Law)! One of two solo mode for this game is playing the cooperative mode (2-Player only), except that the solo player plays both the Hare and the Tortoise; this is the Campaign solo mode. For 4 seasons, the solo player alternates between the Hare and Tortoise until the Sun and Moon reach the end of the track … then head to the next season!

The solo mode (really, the two-handed cooperative mode) is, at least in the beginning, a victory point game. The sum of the victory points of the Hare and the Tortoise need to exceed some threshold!

The cooperative mode is really is actually a campaign (sort of) of 15 ever harder chapters! The first game of the campaign (see above) is a simple start: get at least 85 Victory Points collectively and also get at least 4 Events (the big rewards)! Luckily, you can play any campaign chapter you want as a one-shot: this is both Boon and Bane! It’s Boon because you can play any of the 15 chapters of the campaign at any time, but it’s Bane because there’s really NO levelling up in this game. It’s not really a campaign in the sense “your character gets better”; it’s just 15 scenarios that get harder.

What’s different about the Campaign solo/co-op mode is that there are SKUNKS blocking certain locations on the board! See above as two SKUNKS blocks two spots on the Sun/Moon path (thus reducing the number of actions) and one SKUNK on the Worker Placement part of the bottom (this blocking one action). This is how the game “simulates” blocking; every turn the players roll the die and move the SKUNKS to block spaces.

I have to admit I struggled a little with the randomness of this game at first. The cards in your hand or meadow are ENTIRELY random every game, and where the SKUNKS end up is ENTIRELY random. I was very afraid I wouldn’t like the game because of this. But, I think after getting through a bunch of games and getting the flow of the game, there always seemed to be ways to mitigate that randomness. You can always top-deck a new card, you can usually play a card out of your hand if you can’t play from the Meadow, you can always choose to draw any card from the meadow, and you can always find SOME worker placement action to help you, even if it wasn’t exactly what you wanted. Basically, you have to be able to pivot. The game is more tactical than strategic, as you react to the current set-up of the game.

But, this Campaign solo/co-op mode is much more strategic; since you can work together (with yourself as the Tortoise and Hare) and plan together, your actions be more far-reaching!

Note there is a Challenge solo/co-op mode in the game where you play against an AI opponent. I feel like, with the rules as they are, the Challenge mode is a much more tactical game. I strongly prefer the Campaign solo/co-op mode, as it feels like you can mitigate the randomness of the game much more by having the Tortoise and Hare collaborate.

There are two related issues I want to discuss more below. But for now, let me say that I do like the solo 2-handed Campaign mode as it’s more strategic. The Challenge mode was less to to my liking, as it felt more tactical.

And for solo mode, I completely ignored the Limited Communication rules; It makes sense to ignore this in the solo mode (of course you can communicate with yourself). More discussion below.

Cooperative Play

Even after three solo games, I was still getting a few rules wrong. As Teresa and I headed into a cooperative game (the campaign mode, not Challenge mode), she was the Hare and I was the Tortoise playing Chapter 1 of the Campaign.

There are rules for Communications Restrictions … which we completely ignored. There are some restrictions on what you can communicate: “You may not tell your partner which cards you have in your hand, but you may tell them what color and types (Critter or Construction) you have, and what resources you want”. We generally adhered to these rules, but that’s because we respect each others space. Sometimes we would share a little more, but that made the game more engaging: “Ugh! I am struggling! I can’t do anything, how can I help you?” I understand why cooperative games like this have Communications Restrictions: they don’t want the game ruined by The Alpha Player (a player who tells everyone what to do!). If you are playing Everdell: Duo with a person you trust and respect, these rules are insulting and take away from the enjoyment of the game. I prefer to encourage working with my friends rather than hamstringing them with arbitrary Communications Limitations.

That got more preachy than I wanted, but the game still seems to work even in you ignore the Communications Limitations. And it’s more fun.

Over one night, Teresa and I played and lost our first game. Then, Teresa liked the game so much, she wanted to play again!!

And we lost the second game too. But we had fun playing!

Sharing

With the gameplay description I have given above, this game sounds very much multiplayer solitaire. And it mostly is, except for two things. First of all, there is a “share” space! At the end of every turn, each character can decide to share a single thing and put it on the tile above! That thing can be a card, a resource, or an Occupied token.

Interestingly, different Chapters of the Campaign turn on/off this sharing space, or reduce its scope (so you can only use it in the middle). I noticed that I didn’t win a solo game until I actively started using the Sharing space. It’s there for a reason, as it does encourage cooperation and strategy!

It might seem, other than the Sharing space, this game is just multiplayer solitaire. After all, each player just tries to do they best they can on their turn, right? I think, after several plays, I would say that is not true! Because of the Sun/Moon move mechanism, each Season is restricted by how many worker placement and card buys characters can do—in order to get a full robust turn, the players must discuss the best play to enact a plan to make best use of the Season! And that makes the game very cooperative!

What I Liked

The Components and Art: The art of Andrew Bosley permeates this game, and it’s very striking. The game is gorgeous and cute, and it looks nice on the table.

Cooperative Worker Placement: The cooperative worker placement works very well in this game. Everdell: Duo uses the SKUNKS to help block spaces, and with the characters collaborating, this works far better than I expected it to!

Duo: I really like playing this as a cooperative 2-Player game (in Campaign mode). It seemed to work really well. Of course, the solo mode was great too … because it is the same mode!

What I Didn’t Like

The Rulebook: There were some great things about the rulebook, and some not so great things. I think this rulebook needs one more pass by an editor. In the end, I was able to learn the game from it, but it seemed harder than it should have …maybe it’s because I never played the original Everdell? Maybe they expected me to know more about the game?

Randomness: I was worried about the randomness of the game; between the SKUNKS positions being decided by die rolls and the pure randomness of the Meadow, I was very worried the game might feel like too much. I will say, after playing a whole bunch of games solo and cooperatively, I haven’t seen this be a problem. I still worry about it.

Conclusion

Everdell: Duo worked for me as a solo game and for my friend as a 2-Player cooperative game. The Campaign mode (misnamed, because no state changes between games) offers lots of replayability for the future. Although there is a Challenge solo/co-op mode, I feel like the Campaign is the better mode, as it allows the players to be more strategic in a game that is fairly tactical overall.

The games are fairly short, but they offer a lot of interesting choices. We found that, even if we lost, we wanted play again! This was a testament to how much fun the game was.

If I were to suggest one major revision, I would eliminate the Communication Restrictions. Just let me and my friend have fun and play how we want; I play games with my friend because I want to work with them and cooperate. Restricting the Communication takes too much away from the cooperation, to the point of being less fun.

Overall, this is probably a 7.5 from both me and Teresa. It’s easy to pull out and play either solo or cooperatively, it’s gorgeous on the table, and it’s very cute.

A Review of Cyberpunk Unfolds: a Cooperative Escape Room

Cyberpunk Unfolds is a pop-up Escape Room that was on Kickstarter back in December 2023 and delivered sometime in the later 2024. It promised delivery in January 2024, so it was a number of months late. We were very excited to get this, as it was #10 on our Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2024!

I think we were SO EXCITED for this Cyberpunk Unfolds because it was another Pop-Up Escape Room game! We had good luck with Doomensions: Pop-Up Mystery Manor (see above and below), so we were excited to get another Pop-Up Adventure! A Pop-Up Adventure!

Granted, the Cyberpunk Unfolds is a smaller scope than Doomensions, but it still looked cool.

Let’s take a look! There’s some minor spoilers on the content below (pictures of the game), but it shouldn’t affect gameplay at all if you don’t look too closely.

Jumping In

So, Charlie and Allison are my Escape Room buddies: we have played a lot of Escape Rooms board games together (Unlock, Exit, etc)! See above.

It might seem obvious from the cyber theme, but this escape room requires a phone or an iPad. In fact, you need to scan a QR code to even start the game (see above).

After clumsily trying my phone for a few minutes, we reverted to Charlie’s iPad (see above).

If you play this, get an iPad to play so everyone can see the screen (it’s a bunch of web sites, not an app to download). See above.

Gameplay

The gameplay was a little unexpected, as you interact with some people in Cyberspace almost like a text adventure game! You type in responses, almost like you are playing an old Zork adventure game. See above!

As we played, we were directed by little videos showing us how to open up the Escape Room and get to the next scene. There were a few struggles at the beginning, but it was nice that they actually showed a video showing EXACTLY how to unfold things.

Over the course of 1 night, about 1.5 hours, we proceeded through the Escape Room: we’d solve puzzles based on the current scene and enter the solutions into the “chat” with VIN, which would move us to the next scene.

By the end of the night, we ended up just opening up the puzzle so everyone could see it. It was “cool” that there were scenes that were 3D, but they actually got in the way of everyone seeing the scene! To make it so everyone could stay involved, we just flattened the scene on the table later in the game. See above as we flatten one of the last puzzles.

This is an Escape Room: you solves puzzles based on the current scene and move to the next scene. We don’t want to show too much more for fear of revealing too much.

Reactions

The 3D puzzles and scenes were pretty cool, and we made some cool stuff.

But, in the end, we actually didn’t like this very much. The quote of the night came from Charlie: “There were a lot of awkward points during the game”. Some of the puzzles were awkward and unclear, some of the directions for moving forward were awkward and unclear, and some of the time was spent just awkwardly trying stuff.

There were many times were we would say “Really? That’s the solution?”

You might say “well, you guys are just stupid“. Sure. But we’ve played a lot of Escape Rooms together, so I think we have a sense of what works and what doesn’t. Caveat Emptor.

Conclusion

Let’s be clear; Cyberpunk Unfolds is very playable; there is a help system (so we didn’t get stuck completely), there are some cool puzzles and there are some cool moments. But, none of my friends (not myself) really liked this experience.

There are directions for “resetting the game” … which we chose not to take. We couldn’t see passing this onto another group of friends (see above).

This is not a bad game, it just wasn’t for us. Because it is playable, has a good hint system, and contains some cool moments, we’ll give it a 5.5/10. Maybe you’ll enjoy this more than we did, but we struggled with a lot of points of awkwardness in the game.

coopgestalt

A place to talk about cooperative board and card games!

2021:

2022:

2023:

2024:

10. Floe + Monsters Unleased (CO-OP Expansion)

9. Fable Fury

8. Horror On The Orient Express

7. Aetherspire

6. One-Hit Heroes

5. Invincible: The Card Game

4. Unstoppable

3. DCeased: A Zombicide Game

2. LA-1

1. DC Super Heroes United

Honorable Mention: Comic Hunters Cooperative Expansion

10. Marvel United: War of Kings

9. Thunderstone Quest: Raging Seas and Ancient Adversaries

8. Townsfolk Tussle: Foul Neighbors

7. Detective: City of Angels: Saints and Sinners

6. Marvel Champions: Age of Apocalypse

5. Marvel Zombies: X-Men Resistance

4. Astro Knights: Eternity

3. Set A Watch: Forsaken Isles

2. Marvel United: Fantastic Four: The Coming of Galactus

1. Aeon’s End: The Descent

Honorable Mention: Ultimatch

10. Slay The Spire: The Board Game

9. Union City Alliance: Heroes Unite!

8. Flock Together

7. Hissy Fit!

6. Endeavor Deep Sea

5. Tidal Blades 2: Rise of the Unfolders

4. Invincible: The Hero-Building Game

3. Leviathan Wilds

2. Sammu-Ramat

1. Marvel United Multiverse/Season 3

Unboxing

Rulebook

Gameplay

Solo Play

Cooperative Play

Sharing

What I Liked

What I Didn’t Like

Conclusion

Jumping In

Gameplay

Reactions

Conclusion

Menu