Welcome back to Cooperative Adventure Month! Last week, we took a look at the “Adventure In a Box“: Starlings! This week, we take a look at the expansion  Saints and Sinners for the wonderful cooperative (and more) Detective: City of Angels!   This expansion offers more mystery, adventure, and discovery with more cases in the seedy world of noir LA!

Detective: Saints and Sinners was on Gamefound back in May 2023. This is an expansion for the wonderful game Detective: City of Angels (not to be confused with Detective series from CGE which is a very different set of games). Detective: City of Angels is a mystery solving game for 1-5 players (1-4 if playing cooperatively), with age rating 14+ and games taking anywhere from 30 minutes to 150 minutes, depending on the case and the number of players. We love this game so much, it made the #1 spot on our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2019! It also made our Top 10 Cooperative Detective and Mystery Games!

There are multiple ways to play Detective: City of Angels, but we prefer the cooperative way (aka Sleuth mode): See our review here for more discussion of the game and different ways to play. 

This expansion arrived at my house late January 2024. Saints and Sinners is a “new content” expansion for Detective: City of Angels: it’s a bunch of new mysteries to solve! Since Detective: City of Angels cases are “play-once” entities (once you know the solution, it doesn’t make sense to play it again), expansions like this are the way to keep the game invigorated! 

Let’s take a look!

Unboxing

This is a box full of either 2 or 3 cases for the Detective: City of Angels game.

Those of you paying attention may have noticed the little red sticker on the top right of the cover. That’s right! My version doesn’t contain the “Clock and Daggered” case cards? I only have two cases in my box!! What’s going on?

It turns out Detective: City of Angels tried a different way of marketing new cases: one case at a time … and I guess it didn’t do very well. So, Saints and Sinners is an expansion is packing of 3 cases into one purchase. We actually did buy the single case Cloak & Daggered blister pack! See above! In fact, Cloak & Daggered made our Top 10 Cooperative Expansions back in 2021!

And for those people who HAD bought the Cloak & Daggered pack, Gamefound allowed you to back Saints and Sinners with only two cases, so you wouldn’t buy the same case again!

The box comes with only what you need for new cases: A new Chisel book for the 2/3 cases, A new Sleuth book for cooperative mode, 4 new briefing notes, boxes containing cards for each case, matrices for entries lookups, and finally the standees.

Weirdly, the standees are very inconsistent: the first five standees are obviously Vincent Dutrait art, the next five are a different style, and the last 5 are an even different style! This is very jarring as previous standees have been Vincent Dutrait art! 

However, I am here for the mysteries, so the mixing of art styles isn’t that big a deal. It’s the stories and mysteries that matter!

Solo Play

To play solo or cooperatively, you have to play Sleuth mode: see an excerpt from the main rulebook above.

Luckily, this new expansion supports the solo and cooperative modes: it comes with both the Sleuth book (see above) and matrix cards you need in order to play these mysteries solo/cooperatively!  (In other words, they didn’t just support the main game in Classic mode: they supported all modes!)

If you know how to play Detective: City of Angels, you can just jump right in to this expansion. There are no new “mechanics” added to the game: it’s just new cases! So, I jumped right in, solo, for the first case (for me), One Last Hit For the Hit Man!

Solo mode works great!  I went around the board trying to figure out when to choose moving to new locations vs searching  locations vs questioning people!  I only had a limited numbers of actions, and I had to make the best of them!   The mysteries are very much non-linear: sometimes you question a suspect and they reveal something that you need  … which means you have to move back to question someone you’ve already interrogated previously!

I had this little monologue going in my head that sounded like a bad noir narrator:

“I figured, while I was on this side of town, I’d question the dames.  I couldn’t get anything out of Laney, but at least Brenda was just a short stop away.  At some point, I knew I’d have to bite the bullet and slough myself across town to the murder scene.  It’s quite inconvenient that the murder scene was so far away.  But I guess it was a lot more inconvenient for the corpse.

I’ve said this already in my reviews of Suspects (see here and here): Why watch a murder mystery on TV when you can be part of one?   This new expansion is like a new season of your favorite noir detective show!  It still works great as a solo game.

Cooperative Play

I was a little nervous playing the next game in the pack: Blast From the Past is labelled as a Veteran level case!

Sara is a new gamer to our group: she hasn’t played quite as many modern board games, so I was afraid it would be too much.

I don’t know why I worried: Sara handled it like a pro.  We had a fantastic time playing this case cooperatively! It seemed a little easier than we expected, but maybe we just made some really good hits at the start of the game.

Overall, this still plays great cooperatively and this was a really fun case with interesting turns.  

Conclusion

If you have finished all the cases for Detective: City of Angels, Van Ryder games has your back!  Saints and Sinners offers more cases in this noir world, and they are just as good as the original!  Of course, if you are still working through the original 12 cases in Detective: City of Angels, this expansion may seem silly.

Think of Saints and Sinners as a new season of your favorite Detective show.  You haven’t gotten around to watching all the seasons yet, but just knowing that there are more seasons of the show is heartening, since that demonstrates that people are liking this!  This show must be good if there are so many seasons!

1. Detective: City of Angels original cases (Season 1)
2. Smoke And Mirrors (Season 2)
3. Bullets Over Hollywood (Season 3)
4. One-off Standalone Special: Cloak & Daggered!
5. Saints and Sinners (Season 4: one episode was teased as a standalone)

Of course, this must be British TV since later seasons only have 3 or 4 episodes each …

Welcome to the start of Cooperative Adventure Month!  This month, we’ll talk about cooperative board games with a sense of adventure and discovery!  We begin this month with a game literally labelled with “An Adventure In A Box“: Starlings Box One!  Take a look below!

Starlings was a cooperative game on Kickstarter back in January 2023. It was advertised as The Starlings: A Graphic Novel Escape Room. I backed this, but it got lost in the mail! It probably should have arrived at my house in November 2023 (see kickstarter update #10): at that point it would have been about 3 months late. Anyways, I contacted the publisher: they were very understanding and sent me the box above!

Interestingly, there’s no player count, suggested, or time/length anywhere on the box or even inside. Just so you know, this is a light-hearted Escape Room aimed at a younger crowd with its “cute vibe”. The cover should be a good indication of whether or not you will like this game. In the end, I think Starlings is probably best for families, but if you don’t mind a lot of silliness, this light Escape Room game might be right up your alley.

Unboxing

This is mostly a box full of very bulky envelopes and a few leaflets.

The instruction leaflet sets the tone for this: this will be very silly! If you find yourself enjoying the the text of the intro leaflet (and the silliness and puns therein), I think you will love this game! Otherwise, you might want to bail now … it only gets sillier …

The coolest part of this game is the Graphic Novel!! It tells the story as you go through!

It’s definitely a kid’s comic book inside. See above. The art is nice and the word balloons quite readable. 

Since this is an Escape Room, you may get stuck on some puzzles, so there is a hint book. We only used it once (as we always seem to get stuck on (slight SPOILER) folding puzzles).

The bulk of the game is black envelopes with little symbols. When you get to a new chapter in the Graphic Novel, it will tell you to open one of these envelopes: the envelopes contain Escape Room puzzles!

This is a pretty neat looking game.

Gameplay

So, it’s hard to talk too much about this game without revealing too many spoilers. We will show some pictures of the game which might reveal something if you look too close, so don’t look too close!

The Graphic Novel controls the flow of the game (but see below).  The story comes out very linearly: there is no branching or “Choose Your Own Adventure” here.  You just read the Graphic Novel, get to the end of a chapter, open a envelope, solve the puzzle.  Repeat until you get to the end of the game!

There’s about 10 envelopes in here, and each envelope has a typical Escape Room puzzle … sort of. Most of the puzzles are simpler so a younger audience can enjoy them. We still had fun doing these puzzles even though we are all older. It’s an Escape Room! For a younger Audience! 

The main selling point is the Graphic Novel … at first. (We’re being enigmatic on purpose).

Legacy or Campaign Game?

Is this a Legacy or Campaign game?

Overall, it took about 2.5 hours to go through the whole game, so you can play it all in one sitting if you like (as long as you are using the video, see below). You can also just stop the game, and just restart from where you left of at a later date: it’s probably best to stop at chapter boundaries.

From a replayability perspective, you can put Starlings back together to a pristine state after you;ve played it all the way through, but you just have to be a little careful (as you play) to note which pieces came from which envelopes: there are no instructions on how how to reassemble this! So, it’s “kind of” a legacy game if you don’t take good notes! This is a resettable campaign as long as you take good notes: be aware before you play!!

Video Comics

Video Comics was a television series that aired on Nickelodeon from 1979 to 1981. The show would feature stories from various comic books, mainly DC Comics, narrated and with voices. – Nickelodeon Fandom Wiki

I used to watch this show (Video Comics) as a kid: they would show comic books, panel by panel, with voice narration.  I was introduced to Adam Strange, Green Lantern, Swamp Thing, and a whole raft of DC comics.  See what it was like above: watch a sample episode!

I loved this show!  But I haven’t seen anything like this since 1981 … until now.

Starlings Video

It’s very very very important (when you play) that you follow the link on the upper right side of the “ATTENTION” page! It takes you to a very long YouTube video … which is basically just Video Comics of the Starlings Graphic Novel!

All the text and panels that appear in the Starlings Graphic Novel are presented here in this very long video!

Just like Video Comics, this YouTube video takes you panel by panel through the graphic novel … with voice acting! The voice acting was actually pretty good! We all commented how well done this video was!

The game is “meant” for you to follow along with the Graphic Novel, but we absolutely loved and preferred following along with the the YouTube video instead!  We think the game would been twice as long had we just read the Graphic Novel as a group!  Even worse, we’d all have to crowd around the Graphic Novel as we read. No, this game is meant to be enjoyed using the Video Comics of the Starlings Graphic Novel!

By far the best way to enjoy this game is by watching the video and pausing it when you get to parts where you “do the puzzle!” 

We would watch the video, pause it to open an envelope, solve the puzzles, then unpause it to move on! We were lucky enough to watch the video on a big screen: we recommend that for you!

Solo Game

Intent on learning the rules, I sat down with the Starlings game, opened the box, read the first chapter of the Graphic Novel, … then stopped before the first puzzle. Theres no need to try this solo before showing your friends: Starlings is very straight-forward and you and your friends can just jump in. In fact, I think the game is much much more fun as a shared experience.

I think you can play this solo, and in fact it might be more fun to play solo if you don’t want the video!   If you are interested in consuming the Graphic Novel as a physical book in your hands, then solo is probably the best way to play!  With multiple people, it would be harder to share the experience of reading/consuming the physical Graphic Novel, as you all have to sit physically together behind the book! Unless that’s what you want: it’s more chummy to snuggle around the book and read it together … but I think you have to be close as a family or friends to do that.

Although you can play Starlings solo (which might be best for consuming the physical Graphic Novel), this game really is much more fun as a group.

Spoilers?

Here’s some pictures of us playing: they don’t necessarily reveal anything unless you look to closely, but they show the game a little bit.

Conclusion

This silly, made-for-younger-audiences, Escape Room game was one of the funnest nights we’ve had in a while! We were enchanted watching the Video Comics of the Starlings Graphic Novel! We laughed at the silly jokes and puns! We had fun with the puzzles when they came out (none were too hard)! Sara commented this was almost an activity since we were watching the Video and only had 10 puzzles.

Calling Starlings “just an activity” does it an injustice: the phrase on the cover captures the spirit of the game more than anything! This is An Adventure in A Box! Assuming you like the youngish silly vibe, we think you will absolutely love this journeying through this adventure. This is the funnest time we’ve had in a while!

If we had received Starlings in 2023, it should have made our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2023! It was so much fun. This is probably a 9/10 for everyone involved!

The cover says Box One: I hope they do more!

Appendix

Below is a video we took for one of the puzzles.  It gives away a lot about that puzzle, but it also shows how much fun we were having! So, only watch this if you are on the fence and want to see more about the game!

Welcome to the end of Variable Turn Order Month! This month we saw Astro Knights: Expeditions with its card-based Variable Turn Order, then we saw The Plum Island Horror and its token and bag-based Variable Turn Order! We conclude this month with a discussion of some of the problems with Variable Turn Order and some ideas for fixing these issues!

Over the past few years, we’ve seen the Variable Turn Order mechanism show its face in quite a number of games! This is a mechanism that directs the order of players and “bad news components” in cooperative games. The first place I really saw Variable Turn Order was in Aeon’s End! Aeon’s End is a cooperative deck-builder and boss-battler game. I Kickstarted the original Aeon’s End and the War Eternal versions back in something like 2017: see our reviews here.

At that time, I was still enamored with the entire cooperative deck-building experience, and I didn’t quite understand the full-reaching effects of the Turn Order Deck (see above), which controls the Variable Turn Order in Aeon’s End and War Eternal. 

What Is Fixed Turn Order and Variable Turn Order?

Many many many cooperative games have a simple order of play: the Bad News happens then the players go in (something like) clockwise order.  The Bad News happens, then each player gets a turn. This would be a Fixed Player Order game.   Some examples of this would be Arkham Horror 2nd Edition (see snippet from rulebook above), Sentinels of the Multiverse, and Marvel Champions: Fixed Player Order (as the name implies) dictates that play unfolds in the same order every turn (modulo the First Player marker moving).  We discuss this in greater detail in a few places: Arkham Horror and Sequential play, Marvel Champions and Sentinels of the Multiverse on entry #7.

Variable Turn Order is random system in which the game controls the order of the players and the order of the “Big Bad”.  In most cooperative games, players are playing against the game; that’s usually expressed as a major villain (the “Big Bad”) the players are fighting against (See RageBorne from Aeon’s End above: he’s the major villain)! So, when the “Big Bad” takes a turn, it’s the game controlling some way for the game to attack/inhibit the players. When a player plays, he usually attacks the “Big Bad” or helps himself or compatriots in some way.  

In Aeon’s End, the Variable Turn Order is expressed through The Turn Order Deck. The Turn Order Deck is a small deck of 6 cards which controls the order in which the players can take a turn or the Big Bad (the Nemesis, controlled by the game) can take a turn. There are 4 player cards and 2 Nemesis cards (see above). You shuffle the deck and draw the next card: that card tells you who goes! So, the players get 4 turns, and the Nemesis gets 2 turns, and then you start again. This is a card-based system.

In The Plum Island Horror (which we just reviewed last week), the Variable Turn Order is expressed through drawing tokens from a bag (see tokens above).  The players get 4 turns (2 green and 2 blue tokens) and the game “Big Bad” gets 4 turns (3 red and 1 black tokens).  This is token-based system.

Some Cooperative Games With Variable Turn Order

Here’s an (incomplete) list of cooperative games we know of with Variable Turn Order.  All of these games here are standalone games, but some of them also expand a base game.

• Aeon’s End: a cooperative deck-builder with card-based Variable Turn Order.  See our review of Aeon’s End and War Eternal here.
• Aeon’s End: The Outcasts. As Aeons’ End. See our review of Outcasts here.
• Aeon’s End: The New Age.  As Aeon’s End.  We discuss The New Age in Outcasts review.
• Adventure Tactics: A cooperative dungeon crawler with token-based Variable Turn Order. See our review of Adventure Tactics here.
• Unmatched Adventures: A cooperative boss-battler with card-based Variable Turn Order.    See Our review here.
• Astro Knights: a cooperative deck-builder with card-based Variable Turn Order.  See our review of Astro Knights here.
• Astro Knights: Expeditions: same as Astro Knights.  We reviewed Astro Knights: Expeditions at the start of Variable Turn Order month!
• Kinfire Chronicles: a cooperative dungeon crawler with elements of deck-building: uses token/bag-based Variable Turn Order.  See our review here. 
• The Plum Island Horror: A cooperative tower defense game with token/bag-based Variable Turn Order.  See our review last week!

A common theme is cooperative deck-builders, but we also see in this list in a tower defense game and some dungeon crawlers!

The Problems

The problems with Variable Turn Order games are two-fold, but related.

1. Lack of Mitigation: Most (if not all) Variable Turn Order order games don’t have any mechanisms for mitigating or affecting the Variable Turn Order.   It’s much more difficult  to make tactical/strategic decisions based on who will or “might” go next.
2. Pathologically Bad Turn Order: Variable Turn Order can go pathologically bad and shut-out players for far too many turns.  This is usually expressed by the Nemesis taking all of his turns at the end of the round, and then all of his turns at the start of the next round!

As an example of Pathologically Bad Turn Order, consider The Plum Island Horror: if all 4 “Big Bad” tokens are drawn at the end of the phase, and then bad luck brings all 4 “Big Bad” tokens out at the start of the next phase, that shuts the players out of the game for 8 full turns!  This will frequently cause an immediate loss, especially in the late game.

I have personally witnessed losses in Aeon’s End many times from The Variable Turn Order giving the Nemesis 3 or 4 turns in row: in the late Aeon’s End game, this is devastating as a Nemesis turns are very powerful.  It’s very frustrating to watch 3 or 4 turns go the players can do nothing .. and just lose!  

At least Aeon’s End is only a 60-90 minute game: if players get screwed by randomness, it’s okay because it’s a shorter game.  I am more worried about being screwed in the game of Plum Island Horror because it’s a significantly longer game: imagine being three hours into a game then watching it be destroyed because the game takes 8 unanswered turns in a row!

External Solutions

So, if the game has no mitigation techniques built-in, you hope not destroying the game balance . We’ll explore an external mechanism: a mechanism outside of the game and rules.

Back in Seven House Rules for Cooperative Games (see link here), under entry #1, we proposed a simple solution for Aeon’s End: The nemesis is never allowed more than 2 turns in a row.  In other words, if you ever would draw a third nemesis card, you stick it back in the deck and draw until you get a player card.  (For token based schemes, you’d do the same kind of thing, but with tokens).   This has the effect of preventing the Pathologically Bad Order by simply never allowing it to happen.

A slight refinement of this idea came up in our Plum Island Horror review (last week’s review):

There are no mechanisms to mitigate Variable Turn Order—that’s the problem with it. Our stock suggestion is to make it so the Horrors can never have more than X turns in a row (where X=2 or X=3 depending on your tolerance) . One easy way to do this: if he players have two turns in a row, they must draw a horror token. If the horrors have two turns in a row, the players must draw a player token. This is more of a balancing mechanism, but simple enough.

This slight adjustment makes the game a little more regular as no entity can ever have “too many” turns in a row.  Although it’s almost always the “Big Bad” having Pathologically Bad Turn Order that’s frustrating, if the players have too many turns in a row (especially in the end game), the game becomes too easy!!  Let’s be clear: Variable Turn Order strikes two ways: too easy or too hard.  This slight adjustment (by disallowing the players AND the “Big Bad” more than a few turns in a row) keeps the game a little more fair.

Let’s be clear: the entire purpose of this external mechanism is to prevent the Pathologically Bad Turn Order.   It’s a simple enough technique that you can adjust it to your own preference.  For example, I can see allowing Pathologically Bad Turn Order early in a Aeon’s End game (because it’s not devastating), but maybe controlling turn order a little more in the end game where it matters more.   

We’ll call this the External Prevention technique.

Internal Mechanisms

A number of newer games do have some mechanisms built-in to the game to effect the turn order. 

Adventure Tactics: Adventures in Alchemy is an expansion to the base Adventure Tactics game.  This expansion adds some new content but fixes a lot of issues with the game (it also made  the #7 on our Top 10 Cooperative Expansions of 2023). 

On Page 5 of the Expansion Rulebook lists several ways to deal with Variable Turn Order! That’s right, the expansion addresses this issue directly! 

1. Fate Counter: The first way is to have a limited resource (The Fate Counter: see column 1 above) which you can discard to swap the order of two initiative tokens.  This is a simple mitigation technique,  but it gives the users some agency when it really matters
2. Static Initiative Invariant: The second way is to simply get rid of Variable Turn Order and use “The Static Initiative Variant” (see column 2).  You’ll see this is a much more constrained version of the External Prevention Technique: It simply becomes Fixed Turn Order.  For example, for  a 4-Player game, the game prescribes Hero, Boss, Hero, Hero, Box, Hero, Hero as the order.  It’s interesting to read Note 2: “With a predictable initiative turn order, you might find the game a bit easier”.

This expansion should be giving designers ideas! I like the idea of the Fate Counter: you can stop the randomness of Variable Turn Order … once. If you think the Prevention Technique we discussed earlier is too “ad-hoc”, then maybe you’d prefer a more formal technique like having a token (or two) you can discard to stop the randomness.

Kinfire Chronicles (which we reviewed here) is a bag and token based Variable Turn Order game.

Although Kinfire Chronicles can suffer from the Pathologically Bad Turn Orders, it does have a (limited) mitigation technique called (interestingly similar) Fate Tokens.

The players start the game with 2 Fate Tokens.

Players may then spend a Fate Token before drawing from the bag: if you do so, you get to draw 4 tokens out of the bag and choose which one you want!

So, Kinfire Chronicles gives you a limited resource which you can use to mitigate the Pathologically Bad Turn Order issue! I like how you get to draw 4 tokens and choose which token to keep! This make it even more powerful, as you get more choice in who might go next!

It’s interesting that both Adventures in Alchemy: Adventure Tactics and Kinfire Chronicles call this more formal token a Fate Counter/Token. Perhaps that’s what this should called? 

The Fate Token is a mitigation technique in Variable Turn Order games: it’s a limited resource which players must discard to affect the turn order (either by re-arrangement, or redrawing). By limiting its uses, players only use it when it’s absolutely essential to prevent Pathologically Bad Turn Order.

Summary

We’ve seen three ways to deal with the Pathologically Bad Turn Order issues:

1. External Prevention: Players, on an ad-hoc basis, limit the draw tokens/cards to prevent “too many” of any one type coming out.  This prevents both the players and the “Big Bad” from running away with the game.
2. Static Initiative Variant: As coined by Adventure Tactics: Adventures In Alchemy, players have a static chart which basically enforces a strict order, preventing any randomness in the system.
3. Fate Tokens: As coined by Adventure Tactics: Adventures in Alchemy, but further perfected in Kinfire Chronicles, players have a limited number of tokens they can use to either re-arrange or re-draw cards/tokens to prevent Pathologically Bad Turn Order.

A Case Study: Using Fate Tokens in UnMatched Adventures in the Solo Game

In our review of UnMatched Adventures: Tales To Amaze, we saw the Variable Turn Order was card-based.

In that review, we found that the Variable Turn Order of the 4-Player game must less intrusive than the Variable Turn Order of the 1-Player game! The issue here was more of statistics: you are far less likely the get a Pathologically Bad Turn Order in a 4-Player game, as there’s more cards (8 cards total = 4 player card, 4 “Big Bad” cards). 

Compare this to the 1-Player game, which only has three cards in the Initiative Deck: Hero, Villain, and Minion.  The odds of the solo player being shut-out for 4 turns is much more likely (2 bad guys at the end of a turn, 2 bad guys at the start of the next turn) just because there are so few cards!

Our plan: play the solo game with two Fate Tokens.  Since there are so few cards in the deck, we’ll simply make it so that discarding the fate token allows you to choose the next card from what remains in the Initiative deck.  You might notice that these are the Fate Tokens from Kinsfire Chronicles: this was on purpose.

For our UnMatched Adventures test play, we’ll play Daredevil in a solo game. 

You can see all the influencing games above!

Now, after our first game with just 2 Fate Tokens, it was clear that Pathologically Bad Turn Order comes out a lot more than we expected! We were trounced pretty quickly.

In our next game, we borrowed another token from Kinsfire Chronicles as a third Fate Token.

Even during that game, I cheated and added a fourth Fate token. It’s pretty clear that the Pathologically Bad Turn Order can really run you over.

In my final game, I was barely able to pull of a win with 4 Fate Tokens. I am leaning towards: 4 tokens for a solo game, 3 for a 2-Player game, 2 for a 3-Player Games, and 1 for the 4-Player game. That may be too much: you may want to reduce it by 1.

Case Study 2: Using Fate Tokens in a 3-Player UnMatched Adventures Games

For this play-through, we used two Fate Tokens for a 3-Player game. We played with the power of the Fate Tokens: we allowed us to draw any Initiative card we wanted when we use the Fate Token. In our case, we used it both times to keep Cloak from dying in the early game. (We played Daredevil, Cloak and Dagger, and Black Window vs Mothman).

In our case, we still lost, but part of that was misplaying Cloak and Dagger, and realizing the abilities of Cloak and Dagger don’t work quite as well: they can make a foe discard cards … which isn’t as useful in the cooperative version.

It was clear the 2 Fate Tokens were very useful: we used them to save Cloak early in the game! Cloak might have died a lot earlier in the game, and the game would have been much less fun. As it was, we still lost, but it was a “satisfying loss”: we felt that we got close. The randomness that shows up from Variable Turn Order was kept under control.

We did wonder if maybe 3 Fate Tokens might have been better, but we felt like that may be too powerful.

Conclusion

Hopefully, you have a better understanding of Variable Turn Order and ways to mitigate it so its inherent randomness doesn’t destroy your games. There are a lot of cooperative games with Variable Turn Order, so it’s nice to know they are some standard mays to mitigate that randomness:

• External Prevention: This is an ad-hoc mechanism you can use in most Variable Turn Order Games: Don’t let the “Big Bad” have more than X turns in a row (where X=2 or 3 usually).  A more balanced approach is to also not let the players have more than X turns in a row.  Basically, you balance the game as you go.
• Static Initiative Invariant: Eschew all randomness of the Variable Turn Order and have a static order for the initiative tokens/cards to come out: see how Adventure Tactics: Adventures in Alchemy operates for more info.
• Fate Tokens:  For a more formal mechanism, games like Kinsfire Chronicles suggest using a limited number of Fate Tokens to help mitigate the randomness.  You can either use it to draw the exact cards/token you want (like we did on our UnMatched Adventures case studies), or draw a bunch of tokens/cards to give you more choices (the latter method only works well in Kinsfire Chronicles because there are so many tokens in the bag).

Don’t feel afraid to add a mitigation mechanism to your cooperative Variable Turn Order games: They are your games! For me and my groups, these mechanisms make the game more fun!

One final story: my friend Joe, Kurt, and I were playing UnMatched Adventures a few weeks ago:  Joe was coming over to have Dr. Strange heal my Daredevil, but nope, Variable Turn Order had the exact wrong bad guy come out and murder poor old Daredevil.  It was depressing, and made Joe dislike UnMatched Adventures because it appeared too random too him: I think with one of the mitigation techniques above, we might change Joe’s mind!

Welcome Back to Variable Turn Order Month! Last week we looked at Astro Knights: Eternity with its card-based Variable Turn Order System! This week, we discuss the game Plum Island Horror with its bag-based Variable Turn Order system! 

The Plum Island Horror is a cooperative tower-defense game for 1-4 players from GMT. This arrived at my house the first week of January 2024.

That’s right! I said a cooperative game from GMT! For those of you who don’t know, GMT usually focuses on very complex wargames. I was intrigued when they said they had a cooperative game!

Interestingly, GMT rates the complexity of their games, and they give The Plum Island Horror a Low to Medium score (see above). We’ll examine this claim later. They also claim the game is 45 minutes per player: we’ll examine that as well.

GMT P500

This game came of interest to me back in June 29th, 2021: that was when I “pre-ordered” my copy. See, The Plum Island Horror was part of GMT’s P500 program (see link here). Basically, GMT won’t print a game until they have at least 500 people express interest with a credit card! Once they hit that magic number of 500 people, they hit the print button! I was actually getting worried because I hadn’t heard anything in a while, so I sent GMT an email back in Oct 2023, and they told me the game was at the printers! Huzzah! My copy finally arrived January 11th 2024! That was quite a wait!

At the time of this writing, it looks like you can order a copy of this game if you are interested: see here. At this time, it’s $95. I only paid $64, but that’s because I was willing to wait and be part of the P500 program. Let’s see if this is worth it!

Unboxing

This is a fairly normal sized box, if a little tall. See the Coke Can above for perspective.

There’s quite a bit in this box: there’s two rulebooks (a base rulebook and a reference guide: reminds me of Marvel Champions and other FFG games where they have two rulebooks!)

There’s 6 factions in the game, so you have a board for each of those, as well as some mutations (bad guys) and NPCs (they help you)

There’s quite a number of punchouts. One you take those out, you find a BIG board, and I mean BIG! It’s an 8-fold board!

On my table, it actually won’t fit in one direction! It’s huge!

See above as the board drapes off of BOTH ends of my table.  Luckily, it’s still playable like this!  (You can lay it the other way without it draping, but for my first solo game, the above layout was best).

One complaint about this board is that it didn’t really lay flat very well. Even after being set up for about 10 hours (spoilers), it still wasn’t “flat”.  I suppose I should have put some heavy books on it.

Underneath the board are the rest of the components: some cubes, some dice, and 3 decks of cards. 

Overall, the components were surprisingly good for a GMT game. I only say that because GMT has (historically) been more into wargames where the aesthetic matters less. This one looks pretty good, if not great. I am happy with the components. Lots to punch out, though!

Rulebook

From The Chair Test, I wanted to give it an A-, but it droops over just enough to earn it a B+.  But the font is good and big, and … the pages aren’t shiny!  I think I liked unshiny pages: almost every other rulebook in the world is “glossy”, but that glossy glare can sometimes get in the way of reading.  I think I prefer more “dull” paper like in this rulebook.  It just seems easier to read in heavy light. 

From a content perspective, this might be one of the best rulebooks I have encountered. The rules were well-specified and well-notated. It has a Table of Contents!

Continue reading “When Is A Zombie Not a Zombie? A Review of The Plum Island Horror! A Cooperative Game by GMT” →

Welcome to Variable Turn Order Month! This month, we take a look at a bunch of cooperative games using some evolution of a Variable Turn Order System! These are games that rotate through the players and bad guys in some random fashion, allowing the turns to happen in some random order (instead of clockwise or something else). At the end of the month, we will conclude with a discussion and some ideas how to work with Variable Turn Order in cooperative games! We start Variable Turn Order Month with Astro Knights: Eternity!

I almost didn’t back this on Kickstarter! Although I liked the original Astro Knights game (see our review of the original Astro Knights here), I saw what happened with Aeon’s End (another cooperative deck-builder from the same publisher): I got lots of content … that I never seemed to use. I was worried I would get more content and just never play it.

But, there’s the other side of the coin … for one thing, this is a stand-alone expansion to the Astro Knights game! That’s right, if you didn’t pick up the first Astro Knights, you could still play this version without anything else. So that was appealing. And, to be fair, one of my main complaints about the original Astro Knights was that there weren’t “that many cards”, so new content would reinvigorate the game. After much internal debate with myself, I ended up Kickstarting it May 2023. Astro Knights: Eternity arrived at my house December 31, 2023 … after promising a January 2024 delivery; that’s right, it delivered one day early!!! (I am still counting it is as a 2024 release though).

Astro Knights Eternity is a cooperative deck-building game in the Astro Knights universe. It plays 1-4 players in about 60 minutes for players 14+. Players work together to try to take down the “big boss” in the game, bringing it to 0 hit points. I guess that means this is a cooperative boss battler game as well as a cooperative deck-builder?

Let’s take a look!

Unboxing

The unboxing was a bit of a mess because the Kickstarter version includes 2 expansions in the box … and they were very poorly notated! 

I had to go back to the original Kickstarter to try and sort out “what’s what”. I found a nice thread on BoardGameGeek that had a nice picture of what’s in each version. See that thread here, and the pictures replicated below:

Without these pictures, I would have been a whole grumpier. Even as it was, I was grumpy because the components list in the first few pages of the rulebook is wrong!

See how the components page lists the 12 Turn Order cards? I went spare looking for those 12 Turn Order cards! Was I missing a deck? Was I missing something? No! As it turns out, these 12 cards are in Deck 1A … and you only discover if you start going through the campaign!!! You are told very specifically “DO NOT OPEN THESE DECKS UNTIL TOLD!”, so why would you open them earlier?

The fix is easy; either get rid of the Turn Order cards listing from the Components Page, or notate that same page with some text that says “The Turn Order cards will be available once you open Deck 1A!”

There’s a lot of cool stuff in here, but my unboxing took about two hours to try figure out where everything was and how it all fit together.

Rulebook

The rulebook is actually quite good, except for one major glaring issue.

It gets an A- on The Chair Test, as it fits just about perfectly on the chair next to me. It has nice annotations  and pictures, and it’s pretty easy to read (I would have preferred a slightly bigger font, but that’s a minor complaint).  This rulebook worked really well putting the rulebook on the chair next to me!

My complaint with the rulebook is really how it addresses playing this game for the first time. I think most people who pick this up already know how to play Astro Knights (I did like how they put all new rules in pink to point those out: like I said, this is still a good rulebook), so I wanted some directions how to “break this all up”. This issue goes along with a bad unboxing; how do I play this? I think this game needed a single page RIGHT UP FRONT (even separate from the rulebook) saying “To expose all the content of Astro Knights Eternity, you need to play through the 4-chapter campaign! You can’t play the game without at least starting the campaign!!!“ They do say something like that, but not until page 28! ”To play the expedition, skip reading the rules section for now …” and that’s buried on page 28 in the Expeditions rules.

This is the major flaw of the rulebook: it needs to be upfront that the expedition must be played first to expose all the content. I guess you could play the game without the expedition, but then you’d be opening up all the card that say “DO NOT OPEN”. Once you know this, this organization is fine. “Cool! I get to play an expedition!” But if you just come into thinking “Where’s all the cards? I don’t want to play the campaign, I just want to play right away!!!“ …. you can’t. Caveat Emptor.

Other than that, this was a good rulebook: good components page, good set-up, lots of text (not too small) with annotations. 

Gameplay

Gameplay is pretty much the same as Astro Knights: each players picks a character, builds a deck, spends energy to buy new cards or power-ups, and fights with weapons at the top of the turn. See our review of Astro Knights for more discussion of basic Astro Knights gameplay.

An Expedition!

So, Astro Knights Eternity comes with what’s called an Expedition: It’s really a campaign over four chapters for exposing all the new content in the game: the new monsters, the new cards, the new mechanisms. As we stated earlier, you pretty much have to play the full Expedition right our of the box to unlock all the content.

The campaign … err, Expedition is contained in the STOP card decks (see above) …

…and also the envelopes: note there’s one for each later chapter. (The first chapter’s components are mostly already out at the start of the game … yes that’s confusing too … where’s the Roman Numeral I envelope? There’s not one!!!). The card packs hold the new cards for the Expedition, and the envelopes hold everything else. Don’t worry, you don’t have to destroy or rip-up anything as you play the campaign: you can easily reset the Expedition back to it’s base state to start over! This is pretty much what I did: I played through the full campaign as a solo player, then reset it to play cooperatively with my friends. 

So, you play each chapter once or twice (only once if you win the first time, only twice if you lose the first game … you are still required to move on even if you lose) and then move to the next Chapter. Each Chapter basically introduces some new mechanic to the game! This is nice: we essentially get “5 new major ideas (and 4 new minor ides)” inserted into the Astro Knights system, but piecemeal, so we can enjoy the new mechanics one or two at a time.

We got through the new ideas below: they are slightly spolilerishy, but because the rulebook talks about all these new ideas (without a spoiler qualifications), we don’t feel we are spoiling anything.

Chapter I: Afterburn and Bolster

For chapter I, you don’t have to open any envelopes, but you do have to open three decks: 1A, 1B, and 1C.  Chapter I starts everything off with two cool new ideas in the deck-building genre!

Afterburn is a fantastic idea where the cards in your discard pile can do something! The cards with the special Afterburn tag in red (see above) can be used when they are in your discard. From the rulebook: “Afterburn means: Once per turn, during the main phase, if this is in your discard pile, you may resolve this effect”. What a cool idea! I also like how this mechanic canonicalizes the discard cards as being sideways: if you want to read the Afterburn text, it makes sense that all players now keep the discard sideways!

This is a great idea: it works pretty well, but you typically move through your discard deck pretty quickly in the game, so it’s not game-breaking, but it’s cool that you have another option on your turn!

The other mechanic is BOLSTER: see the Quasar Cell card above with a BOLSTER ability. Many times in gameplay, the Bad News cards of the game will tell someone to discard a card as a punishment. If the chosen card to discard has the BOLSTER keyword on it, the card is still discarded BUT the player gets the ability listed! In the example of the Quasar Cell, you get to Power Up! 

This mechanic is clever, because it makes people want to discard! “Oh! Let me do the discard! I can BOLSTER!” Who’d ever think there’d be a mechanic where people want to discard cards?

These two ideas are really fresh ideas in the cooperative deck-builder genre! I have never seen them (or if I have, I don’t remember). The Afterburn ability gives you a new power, perhaps even multiple times in the discard! That’s a really fresh and new idea! And then the BOLSTER idea actually encourages players to cooperate as they vie to discard cards when required! 

I really liked these new ideas.

UPDATE: Someone pointed out to me that I ways playing BOLSTER wrong. You can only use BOLSTER when an ally effect causes you to discard a card. From the rulebook, page 5:

“Some cards have the keyword BOLSTER:. The BOLSTER: effect if a card can only be triggered during an ally’s turn, not your own main phase. During an ally’s turn, if that ally plays a card or activates an effect that causes you to discard a card, and if the card you choose to discard has a BOLSTER: effect, you immediately gain the listed BOLSTER: efect. The discarded card is placed in your discard pile before its BOLSTER: effect activates You cannot choose to discard a card on an ally’s turn without a trigger.”

I suspect the reason you can’t you use it “anytime” is for balance. But this feels like one of those rules that might be better if it were simpler “You can discard a BOLSTER: whenever you are called to discard a card.” I think the precondition about the ally makes it unnecessarily complex; again, it’s probably about balance from playtesting.

So I “inadventantly” had a house rule about BOLSTER! 

Chapter II: Inventions and Villains in the Supply

Chapter 2 has the VOLT FUSION villain and the Inventions idea and a new Character you can play!

The card pack (2) for Chapter 2 give you a new character card, 5 new Inventions and the rest are the VOLT FUSION villain cards.

Chapter II introduces the Inventions idea (see above). Rather than being in the Supply, each player has a special card only they can buy! (This reminds me a little of Splendor when you reserve a card and only you can buy it later). Basically, you put the card to the side, and if you want to buy it … you can … but only you! The Invention for Caleb was so fantastic, so I tried to get it into play as soon as I could! The Invention idea is a very minor idea, but it still left like a little jolt of “that’s kinda cool”. Everyone still gets to pick something only they can have !

Another unique idea I’ve never seen is having the bad guy cards come out from the supply!  You can only damage the main villain if you reveal enough minions (see above), but those minions are hidden in the supply decks!

As you play, the Villain has Bad News cards that discard cards from the top of the supply decks, further exposing the minions! This is really cool idea, but it was perhaps a bit more random than I expected. It’s a lot harder to fight if the card you were saving up gets destroyed by the Bad Guy! Although this is a cool idea, I think it only “mostly worked”. It was just so random: my first game in Chapter II was a miserable loss. I won my second game of Chapter II, but I am not sure if I played that much better … still, it was a cool and interesting idea.

Chapter III: Combo Cards and “Lifeless” Villain

Chapter III introduces another new character to play (bringing the total playable characters to six), a new “villain” (which is just a stellar event), and the new Combo cards.

With the Combo cards, everyone chooses a Combo card before starting, as well as choosing another player: when that other player “does something”, the Combo holder gets a benefit! See the Dual Inferno Combo card above where “when player x gains a slot, you may destroy a card in your hand”. This was an interesting way to force two players to talk! “Hey! I got crappy cards in my hand , can you get a slot this turn so I can cull?” This was a neat idea: we didn’t use it too much, but it was a mechanism that furthered discussion and encouraged some cooperation.

The “villain” was actually a stellar event, and players had to keep the stellar event under control.

There were cards you could buy to lower the Solar Collision track: that was cool! This Solar Collision was very thematic: I really liked how this “villain” worked.

Combo cards were pretty neat, but not game-changing. I still enjoyed that they seemed to bring some more cooperation.

Chapter 4: Team Attacks and Dilemmas

Team Attacks are a way to “slowly” build up to a devastating attack, if you can satisfy all the pre-conditions!  Every time a players satisfies one of the pre-conditions on their turn, they place a token on it.  At some future point, a player can activate it to get a cool, big reward!  The example in the rulebook is Bolster Your Spirits:  

1. Red Blob: Suffer Two Damage
2. Blue Blob: Lose Two Slots
3. Yellow Blob: Discard a Weapon that costs 5 energy or more

If players do the necessary things (“ok, I’ll take 2 damage to get the red token if you lose slots on your turn for the yellow token!“), then they get the cool reward.  For Bolster Your Spirits:

Reward: Any player gains up to 3 cards from supply with a total cost of 11 energy or less and places them in their hand!

This doesn’t necessarily feel innovative, as we’ve seen something like this before: for example, In the Fantastic Four Marvel United set (see our review of that here), there’s Teamwork cards that allow you to put tokens on the Fantastic Four card (see above).  This mechanism, while not exactly the same, has a similar feel and purpose: rather than do direct good on your turn, do indirect good with hope to build a deferred reward!

This Team Attack mechanism definitely encourages cooperation and discussion.  I like it!

Dilemmas are another interesting way to add more choices to the game: I don’t want to say too more other than they were a very different way to play.

Solo Play

So, there are multiple solo modes (congratulations for following Saunders’ Law!) for Astro Knights Eternity!! The solo mode is a choice. One way to play solo: the solo player can choose to play multiple knights, alternating between them “as-if” there were that many characters. The solo player may also play just the single solo knight (just one character, which is his own ally), but only gets three player Turn Order cards! So, the Bad Guy comes out more often in the “truly” solo game. I played just the 2-handed way. (We did play “truly” solo game in the original Astro Knights: see our review for more info about that mode to see if that’s the way you would enjoy).

As a solo player with Caleb and ZAK, I played through the entire campaign! I really enjoyed the story that unfurled, and I looked forward to my next chapter! (You can change characters as you play, but I knew what these two did, so I stayed with them).

Basically, over about 4 nights, I played through all the campaign so I could reveal all the unlocks and cards!

Here’s the thing, after I was done, I reset the entire campaign! I liked the story that unfurled and I could see playing it again solo. I really liked the each chapter introduced some really neat ideas and unlocks. My only complaint was that Chapter II was probably too random.

Overall, I really liked playing this solo. This Expedition idea, which presents all the content over a campaign really enticed me to keep playing. 

Expedition

We never talk about this in other campaign games, but “How many chapters is too many and how many is too few?” In this case, four chapters seemed just about right! It was just enough new content to encourage replay, but at the same time four chapters didn’t seem too daunting! ”Ya, I can get through 4 chapters! 6, I don’t know … and 3 is too few”.

The fact that the campaign is pretty easy to reset and short made me want to play all the way through! I really like what they did here! The Expedition is a way to see all the content of the game with a directed story! This worked so well! 

We saw this same story system for unveiling content in the Aeon’s End Outcasts, and it worked really well there too! This is my favorite way to play this genre of games: a directed story, doling out just a few ideas and content every game.

Cooperative Play

Cooperative play was very smooth.  Once I explained the new ideas (Afterburn and BOLSTER), the game flowed really well.  Like I said, the BOLSTER had the effect of encouraging people to volunteer to discard cards, which was great! 

We had a great time talking, discussing, and figuring out how to proceed. There was also a surprising amount of cooperation in game maintenance: if Teresa was busy finishing her turn, I would handle the bad guy cards, or Sam usually did the Turn Order cards, unless he was busy … then I did it. There was a really nice flow to the game: everything was so smooth. We had a ball playing. See the big smiles above!

Oh, even though the amount of flavor text is longish (three pages for Chapter 1), we ended up sharing the burden for that: I read the first page, Teresa the second page, and Sam the third page. That worked well!  We shared the “reading out loud” burden … I recommend you do the same!

What I Liked

I’ve always liked the art for this game: it has a comic book feeling that I really identify with.

I really liked the way the content came out in the context of the Expedition story: there was just enough new content (cards, things in the envelopes) per Chapter to entice us to playing, but not so much that it was overwhelming!

The rulebook (once you’ve gotten over the hump of getting your unboxing and first play going) is quite good.

The story that comes out is a little cheesy, but it’s fun! It has a Firefly vibe to it: Caleb really looks like Mal from Firefly…

I like that you can choose to reset the Expedition OR just play “what you want” from this box (after you’ve unlocked everything) with the original Astro Knights!

What I Don’t Like

The mess that I got from the original unboxing could have been totally avoided if they just had a “First Play” or “Start Here” guide. And a sheet describing Kickstarter extras would have nice so I could keep those separate.

I still don’t love the Variable Turn Order deck: it can have too much randomness and destroy a game. I won’t dwell on it, but I have talked about it many times here, here, here, and here! I suggest a solution here. (We’ll talk more about Variable Turn Order at the end of the month!)

If you sleeve nothing else in this game, make sure you sleeve the Turn Order cards.  You touch these cards more than any other cards in the game!  Trust someone who did not sleeve one of their Aeon’s End games and saw how grody the Turn Order cards got … so you have to go out and get at least 12 sleeves.  It’s a deck-building game, so you may want to sleeve the whole thing.

I like the playmat, but it’s probably too busy. It’s thematic, it looks cool, it helps organize the game but I think there’s too much “art” on it, and it can be distracting.

Conclusion

The original Astro Knights is the “simpler” version of Aeon’s End, and something I’d recommend to someone just trying out cooperative deck-builders (rather than Aeon’s End as your first). Here’s the thing, there’s so much new complexity here in Astro Knights Eternity (with the Expedition, the Afterburn, Bolster, Inventions, Combo Cards, Team Attacks, etc.), I can’t recommend Astro Knights Eternity as your first game into this field! Even though it’s standalone, Astro Knights Eternity really should NOT be your first foray into the cooperative deck-building genre!

BUT once you know Astro Knights and start yearning for more content in this game system, this is a phenomenal standalone expansion! Heck, I think I’d recommend this over most of the Aeon’s End games if you are an experienced gamer! There so many neat ideas in here for cooperative and deck-building games: Afterburn is a really innovative new deck-building idea, Bolster encourages cooperation, Inventions are just cool, Combo Cards really help bring teams of two together, and Team Attacks encourage overall discussion, tactics, and cooperation! And the Expeditions idea is just enough story to entice to play more! And it’s resettable!

This probably gets an 8.5/10 for me (but only if you fix the Variable Turn Order somehow….); I really liked it both solo and cooperatively. I played through all the Expedition solo and really enjoyed it. I also found cooperative play to be so very smooth and fun. Great game: Astro Knights Eternity is a great standalone game (as well as an expansion to Astro Knights), but it probably shouldn’t be your first cooperative deck-builder.

Before we head into the top anticipated cooperative games of 2024, let’s take a look at the anticipated cooperative games from previous years and see how those games have been doing!

We started doing this in 2021 with the Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2021, and believe it or no, there’s still a few there we were waiting for and/or processing games in 2023 from that list of 2021!!

• Onimaru.  Promised Delivery Sept 2019. We don’t think we’ll ever see this.
• Isofarian Guard.  Promised Delivery Dec. 2020.  It finally arrived here in 2023 … and we didn’t like it.  Those of you who blinked may have seen a review here, but we took it down when we realized we may have played it slightly wrong.  We ended up selling it to someone else: It had amazing components, but we just didn’t like it.
• Freedom Five.  Promised Delivery in Nov 2021.  It is pretty late, but we have been seeing some regular updates: this will probably deliver in 2024.

There’s still quite a bit of stuff happening here in 2023 from our Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2022!

• The Stuff of Legend: This finally arrived in 2023 and we liked it!  See our Review of The Stuff of Legend here!
• Valor and Villainy: Lludwick’s Labyrinth: This arrived in early 2023 and my game group really liked it!  We liked it so much, it made the #4 spot on our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2023!!  See our review of Valor and Villainy: Lludwick’s Labyrinth here!
• Earthborne Rangers:  This arrived later in 2023, but we still did get a chance to play it.  Cooperatively, it was pretty good, but I think this is a better game solo: it made the #2 position on our Top 10 Solo Board and Card Games of 2023!! See our full review here to see if Earthborne Rangers is something you might like!
• Arydia: The Paths We Dare Tread: Promised Delivery Dec 2022.  We have been seeing regular updates.  Hopefully this delivers in 2024. UPDATE: The Kickstarter is showing mayyyyybe December 2024.  Probably 2025.
• Rat Queens To The Slaughter: Promised Delivery  May 2022.  There have been some very worrying messages from the publisher about this game and squandered opportunity.  We are not convinced we’ll ever see this made, but we think they are making some progress.  Who knows when we’ll see this, if we do.  We remain hopeful.
• Union City Alliance: Promised Delivery Oct 2021.  Yes, this one is taking a really long time, but the publisher does a pretty good job of keeping us up to date.  We really do believe this is imminent and will be delivered in 2024.

Interestingly, the majority of things from our Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games from 2023 actually delivered in 2023!  (This is especially weird when you consider how much we have in the backlog from 2021 and 2022!)

• Gathering Gloom: This delivered late late 2023.  The rulebook really frustrated us to the point that we stopped reading.   We hope we can still get a review up of this, because it looks like a neat game, but that rulebook is daunting and long!
• Tamashii: Chronicle of the Ascend:   This arrived later in 2023. The game is pretty good and just a little shy of being  a great game!  Check out our review of Tamashii: Chronicle Of The Ascend here!
• Kinfire Chronicles: Delivered late 2023.  We liked it, but want to play more of it!  See our first impressions here!  This game has a lot of potential, we just wished we could have played it more!  So, we made it our Honorable Mention on our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2023!
• Daybreak. Delivered later 2023. Played it a few times.  We hated how random it was: the four orthogonal sources of randomness can destroy this very very tight game.  We can’t recommend it currently, but maybe we haven’t given it a full chance.  We want to try it again and see if we are missing something, because we feel like we are the only ones who didn’t like this.  
• Doomensions: Pop-Up Mystery Manor: It arrived right at the very end of 2023.  Man oh man, did we like this! See our review of Doomensions: Pop-Up Mystery Manor here! This made the #7 position on our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2023!
• The Dark Quarter: Promised Oct 2023.  This is from Lucky Duck, so we  pretty sure it will be delivered in 2024 or maybe early 2025. We are not worried that this one is late.
• Hacktivity:  Promised Feb 2023. This publisher has been very open about his problems, and how his printer went out of business!  Yet, his perseverance makes us think we’ll still see this in 2024.   We are cautiously optimistic we will still these, despite all of the problems.
• Set A Watch. Promised Delivery in Feb 2024.  When we listed this game, we didn’t have a promised delivery date.  I am 100% confident this will deliver in 2024: these guys have done a great job on the Set A Watch series: see our reviews of  Set A Watch and Set A Watch: Sword of the Coin here!
• Legends of Storm City: This delivered (PDF) early 2023.  I kinda liked it, but my game group didn’t like it at all.  See our full discussion of the roll-and-write Legends of Storm City here!
• Tesseract.  This delivered mid 2023.  This met all the hype and ended up being the #2 game on our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2023! The components are fantastic! See our review of Tesseract here!

Okay, let’s see what our Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2024 look like! As we have done in previous year, we give a link to its website, a promised delivery date, and a summary of the game from BoardGameGeek!

10. Cyberpunk Unfolds

Platform: Kickstarter Cyberpunk Unfolds: Immersive Sci-Fi Pop-Up Escape Game
Promised Delivery: Jan 2024
Summary: Pop-Up Escape Game that unfolds and make a 3d paper structure. Find clues, solve puzzles & explore a city full of hidden secrets.

We had such a good time with Doomensions this year (see our review here), another pop-up Escape Room game sounded great! We thought we’d give this Sci-Fi Pop-Up Escape Room a chance! There are a surprising number of Pop-Up Escape rooms available at the time of this writing! Hopefully this one will be good!

9. Defenders of the Wild

Platform: Kickstarter Defenders of the Wild
Promised Delivery: Aug 2024
Summary: Defenders of the Wild is a cooperative board game of animals against machines. Play as one of four unique factions and assemble your crew of defenders from a wide range of animal characters to resist the machines across a modular map that changes with each game.

War has come to the Wild. For millennia, animals have weathered shifting alliances and the cycle of the seasons—but they’ve never faced an enemy like this. An army of machines powered by corrupted magic is rampaging across the woodlands, enclosing everything in its path and exploiting the warmth of the world. Across the marshes, plains, mountains, and forests, scrappy crews of defenders rise up to resist the machine occupation. The partisans hail from four factions, each determined to fight back in their own way: the Council with its fortitude and bread, the Order with its wisdom of the flame, the Sect with its ingenious inventions, and the Coven with its spells and subterfuge.

This game looks kinda cute, but fairly strategic.  I like the art and the promised gameplay description!

8. Santorini: Deluxe Edition and Co-op Expansion

Platform: Kickstarter Santorini Co-op & Deluxe Pantheon Edition
Promised Delivery: May 2024
Summary: Santorini: The Riddle of the Sphinx is a co-operative expansion for Santorini that adapts the competitive experience into an ongoing adventure that players navigate together.

In this expansion comprised of a series of scenarios called “riddles”, players will seek to complete tactical objectives to solve the riddles. However, if players exhaust their supply of Santorini tower pieces before an objective is completed, the riddle remains unsolved and must be played again.

Each successfully solved riddle allows players to progress on the adventure map and unlock new gods to add into future riddles.

This kickstarter is a combination of a deluxe edition of Santorini and a co-op expansion for Santorini called Riddle of the Sphinx.  The components for the deluxe version look amazing, and coupling this with a cooperative mode make this something we are very much looking forward to!

7. Weirdwood Manor

Platform: Kickstarter Weirdwood Manor
Promised Delivery: Apr 2024
Summary: You will assume the role of one of six asymmetrically designed characters as you battle against one of the three different Fae Monsters, each with their own unique mechanics and loss conditions. You’ll make use of dice drafting, card play, resource management, and location actions as you move through the ever-shifting Manor in pursuit of the Fae Monster and his minions. You can also recruit additional companions to aid you and you will improve your character’s abilities as you earn experience.

My friend Kurt played a prototype of this at Dice Tower West; he said he really liked it and it would be right in our wheelhouse! A cooperative game with asymmetric powers in a spooky universe sounds like a lot of fun!

6. Flock Together

Platform: Kickstarter Flock Together – An Asymmetric Cooperative Game
Promised Delivery: June 2024
Summary: Flock Together is a beautifully immersive cooperative experience for 1-5 players. During the game, each player takes on the role of a unique chicken with asymmetric abilities and works together to drive off the invading predators before the third season ends.

Every turn, players choose their own strategy to progress their cause by selecting two of their eight available actions. Along the way, players will also have to manage leveling up, predator loot drops, traveling grubs, and adverse weather conditions. However, players must plan carefully, because as the seasons change, every predator that is still alive grows stronger and gains new abilities.

With eleven asymmetric characters to play and ten unique predators to defeat, Flock Together offers immense replayability that can be enjoyed with quick turns and an experience that lasts 25 minutes per player.

Beautiful art by Andrew Bosley? An interesting woodland theme and asymmetric powers? Yes please! This production looks gorgeous … hopefully it will play well too! I mean, who doesn’t want to play a chicken?

5. Luddite

Platform: Kickstarter Luddite
Promised Delivery: Dec 2024
Description: Luddite is a roll and write style game with a fully integrated graphic novel. In Luddite, one to an unlimited number of players will progress along the story of the novel whilst competing to destroy ever more complex automata. Creating a full campaign style game.

As a Luddite you will be hacking into the neural networks of the NED automata. These bionic, dog-like creatures are capable of performing almost any complex task to which they are assigned and, as such, have begun to replace vast swathes of the human population. As a Luddite, you will work to destroy these infernal machines.

This cooperative roll-and-write campaign looks interesting, but what makes it stand out is the graphic novel that comes with it! I am really looking forward to seeing what this one does! One fun fact: Luddite (which basically means a type of person adverse to technology) can be delivered electronically! As a true luddite, I got the physical version. 🙂

4. Once Upon a Line: The Butterfly’s Breath

Platform: Kickstarter Once Upon a Line – The Butterfly’s Breath
Promised Delivery: May 2024
Description: Once Upon a Line is a narrative game played out in chapters. Embody heroes and use their actions to play on a board of scratch off ink. Uncover hidden words and take their corresponding cards. This will reveal the next part of the story as well as new words to find in order to accomplish your mission.

• Fully immerse yourself in a personalized adventure.
• Elude traps (riddles, anagrams, palindromes, etc.).
• Complete your Quest before scratching off the last square on the Line of Tragedy.

This is strange one: it’s a word game, in a campaign! The main hook is that letters are “scratched off” the sheets (so they are one-time use). There’s some discussion about how the arrows direct your progress, but this just sounds like a fun cooperative campaign!

3. Leviathan Wilds

Platform: Kickstarter Leviathan Wilds
Promised Delivery: Feb 2024
Description: Long ago, the once-gentle leviathans lost their minds and tore the world apart. After generations of hiding and struggle, humanity discovered that the frenzied leviathans can be restored. Climbers willing to take the risk must explore the wilds and work together to remove a series of binding crystals to heal the leviathans roaming the world.

In Leviathan Wilds, 1-4 players will confront these colossal beings, with each creature being depicted across the spread of a spiral-bound storybook that makes up the game’s board. The book also forms the basis of a connected campaign mode built around the game’s story, with each of twenty included scenarios estimated to last around 45 minutes. Tougher difficulty levels are also available for added replayability.

This basically looks like Shadow of The Colossus, the board game! Players climb on the creature of interest, doing damage sort of like that old PS2 game Shadow Of The Collossus! This looks really different and interesting.  It had a relatively small Kickstarter (after trying a second time and succeeding), which is unexpected given the design pedigree of this game: Justin Kemppainen, (who worked at FFG and Z-Man for years)! I am expecting this to be great!

2. Marvel Dice Throne: X-Men and Co-op Missions

Platform: Kickstarter Dice Throne | X-Men • Marvel Missions Co-op • Deadpool
Promised Delivery: Aug 2024
Description: In Marvel Dice Throne: X-Men, you become one of eight of Marvel’s iconic X-Men, including Wolverine, Storm, Cyclops, Rogue, Gambit, Psylocke, Iceman, and Jean Grey!

Every Marvel Dice Throne hero is painstakingly designed and balanced to provide the most thematic experience possible, allowing you to truly embody your favorite heroes like no other game. Featuring all-new mechanisms and asymmetrical designs, these are some of our most innovative and exciting heroes yet!

Marvel Dice Throne: X-Men is a heart-pumping, fast-playing game of skilled card play and dice manipulation supporting multiple modes of play, including 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 2v2v2, or free-for-all.

We have played Dice Throne (see here), Dice Throne Adventures (see here), and Marvel Dice Throne with Dice Throne Adventures (see here) We really do like this simple, yahtzee-esque combat system! It’s so cool to be able to get X-Men in the Marvel Dice Throne universe, but what I am looking forward to the most is the Dice Throne Missions! This will make it easier to play Dice Throne X-Men/Marvel cooperatively! We love the Dice Throne Adventures, but it requires a little more of a commitment to the campaign: The Dice Throne Missions promises single cooperative scenarios! The quality of the Dice Throne has been phenomenal, so we are really looking forward to this! That’s why it’s #2 on this list!

1. Marvel United: Multiverse

Platform: Kickstarter Marvel United: Multiverse
Promised Delivery: March 2024
Description: In Marvel United: Multiverse, you take the role of iconic Marvel Heroes cooperating to stop the master plan of a powerful Villain controlled by the game. Each Villain unveils their unique master plan, with cards that trigger different effects, and threats that pose challenges across the locations. Heroes must choose carefully the cards to play from their unique decks, that not only offer different actions and superpowers to use, but also combine with the actions of other Heroes to do the impossible. Build your storyline, unite your powers, save the day!

It’s hard to separate just the one Marvel United: Multiverse game from this kickstarter! There’s so much content coming from this Kickstarter!! Galactus: Herald Expansion, The Wrecking Crew, and so much more! The Omniverse pledge has: Marvel United: Multiverse, Exclusive Wrecking Crew Villain Team, The Coming of Galactus Expansion+19 More
And this doesn’t include the stretch goals! I came into Marvel United later, but I have absolutely loved it! See our review of Marvel United (Parts I and II), Marvel United: X-Men (Parts I and II), Days of Future Past (see here), Fantastic Four (see here), and First Class (see here) ! In fact, Marvel United: Days of Future Past was so good, it made the #1 spot on our Top 10 Cooperative Expansions of 2022! I can’t wait to see all the stuff that comes with this! The king-sized Galactus is probably my most anticipated component!

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!