LA-1: The Heat Is On! A Solo and Cooperative Review

Welcome to the Detective Month here at CO-OP Gestalt! This month, we take a look at several new games in the cooperative detective genre! We begin the month with a Richard Launius design!

LA-1 is cooperative cyber adventure and exploration game in a post-apocalyptic future with hints of the detective noir genre. This was #2 on our Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2025! We were really looking forward to it!

This was originally on Kickstarter back in Oct/Sep 2024, promising delivery in August 2025. My Kickstarter copy arrived in January 2026, so about 6 months late.

So, this is not a detective game per se; see the back of the box as the game fully admits “LA-1 is not a deduction game, but a story-driven cooperative adventure …” There’s a lot of thematic detective things like clues, stakeouts, and police, but this is not a deduction game but rather a story game! That means this would NOT end up on our Top 10 Cooperative Detective Games or Top 10 Cooperative Light Deduction Games, but it might end up on our Top 10 Cooperative Storybook Games!

Let’s take a look!

Unboxing/Gameplay

This is a pretty normal sized box: see Coke can above for scale.

I ordered the Kickstarter version of this, which includes upgraded pieces, some minis, and a new case.

The base game itself comes with 4 case files for 4 cases: see above. These case files give the flavor text, set-up, winning and losing conditions for each case.

The cases are on cards! See above! The game comes with over 800 cards in this box! I want to emphasize this is where the story is in the game, on these cards.

For some reason, the cards were packed in reverse order that you might expect (1 is the very last card instead of the first?). It’s not big deal, but a little confusing on first unpacking.

Some cards are specific to cases (and marked by the case graphic: see above) and some are more generic.

Each player takes the role of one of the several cyber/noir roles in the game.

The base game comes with standees and cardboard pieces for each character.

The deluxe version came with some plastic minis. Eh, they are ok. What they really needed was colored bases; I think the standees might be better for distinguishing the characters on the board because their colors are so distinct! I am not sure you need the deluxe minis.

It is probably worth getting the Upgrade of the other components though! Most of the base components (clue tokens, basic tokens, heat, etc) are all cardboard punchouts: see above.

The upgrade pack (which came with the kickstarter, and I think you can get separately) is probably worth getting! These are some really nice wooden components!

There are wooden heat tokens, plastic money, wooden Karma, … just really nice. And you don’t have to punch them out!

Each character has their own deck: you can tell by the little icon in the lower left whose deck is whose. As you can see above, there are different types of Skills in the game; and this game is all about the skill check! Some characters are better at Mechanical checks, others better at Mind Checks, other better at Moxie … ! Each deck gives the character a different flavor.

See above as Tina Woo (Hacker) has her own deck!

Each character gets their own little board to keep track of resources; karma (karma is a resource!), money, passports (to get to the nice parts of LA), and heat tokens. The back of each characters deck tells them what they start with.

There’s also a little flavor with each character (see bottom).

Each character also gets something called “Heat”: see the 5 tokens above. Basically, it’s something you can trade in the game to get stuff done, but at a cost of bringing more interest upon yourself! Play it safe, and you take no heat, but then it’s harder to get stuff done. Take too much heat, and the cops rough you up! You decide what’s the “right amount” of heat!

When a player is all set-up, you can see all the resources. See above! This is Tina Woo, and she’s a hacker!

Players explore the cyber-noir city of LA-1! This is a huge 8-fold board that does NOT fit on my table very well! See above with Coke Can for perspective!

There’s three parts of LA: LA-1 (Old Angeles), LA-2 (Underworld), and City of Angels! City of Angels is so exclusive, you have to get a passport to travel around there!

As players traverse the city trying to find out whodunnit, they will explore different locations in each part of the city. See Ashtown (jn Old Angeles) above.

This wouldn’t be a detective game of any flavor without clues! There are CLUES (orange) which help you solve the mysteries, and basic tokens (which give you useful resources). You need CLUES to solve the mysteries, but you need the BASIC tokens to keep your resources up!

The clues are distributed all over the city! See above as each Location in the city has “about” 4 tokens next to it! Some are CLUES, some are basic tokens, and some are hidden so you don’t know what they are!

It’s not clear until you’ve played a little, but successful encounters at Locations allow you to (usually) take the top token at a Location! If we have a successful encounter at the Mutant Warrens in Underworld (above), there’s a good chance we can take the CLUE (orange eye) at the top!

Skill checks are resolved using the Fate deck and the player’s decks; we’ll talk more about those later.

The game is somewhat on a timer; see the Darkness track above. If the darkness marker ever gets all the way to the right; game over and you lose!

The Darkness track typically advances every other turn or so; it really depends on what comes up in the Darkness deck! Many time, the Darkness just advances. See above. But you also get to make choices, maybe you want darkness to advance in exchange for a clue you really need! Most Darkness cards come with choices!!! See above as you can choose to move to any Location and grab the top token (which could give you a CLUE you desparately need), but it costs extra darkness!

Every case is very different, but typically you do Detective-like thing like show Motive, Means, and Opportunity!

If you can solve the case before time runs out, you win! There are usually several other ways to lose as well …

The game has a great production, especially if you get the token upgrades. See above. To be clear; you will need a LOT of table space for this!!

Rulebook

The rulebook is generally ok.

My main complaint with the rulebook is the form factor; it gets D- on the Chair Test! It droops over the edges, being almost unusable on the chair next to me. It barely works, which is why it doesn’t fail completely, but the “rulebook as large as the game box” needs to go the way of the Dodo Bird. Please publishers, make rules reasonable sized so we can open them without needing a giant table!

The Components page was good enough: see above as it shows components and some correlating text so you know what’s what.

The set-up seemed a little squished onto one-page; see above. It works, and steps are notated, so it’s good enough.

The set-up drifts into the next page, and that doesn’t work as well. Each case defines its own Set-Up and this was a little more unclear. I would have the first “recommended” case have more info … maybe a first play guide like we’ve seen in many games.

The rulebook packs a lot of stuff in just a few pages. There are pictures but I wish there were a few more.

There is a nice summary on the back … which I used maybe once in the solo game and never in the cooperative games.

The rulebook is ok. It teaches the game. I feel like this rulebook probably should have had an index: there are a lot of subsystems within the game, and an Index would have made it a little easier to navigate.

One-Shot Game?

What I mean by asking this? Most Detective games are “one-shot” games! Once you have played the game, you know the solution so you can’t really play it again! The solution is indelible imprinted on your brain (that’s the legacy part), so you can’t play it again! Is LA-1 one of these games?

So, should I be worried that I am giving spoilers by showing some of the case cards from the game? Yes and no!

Each case will have a basic outline which is nominally the same, but it will change when you play it. How? The cases are in the cards, and there are multiple versions of some cards! See above as there are two 42 cards! Sometime during the game, you will be given the instructions “take a Random 42 card”, and the card you take will cause a different path! So the game will NOT be the same every time! Sure, you can choose the exact same cards next time, but it’s unlikely. It felt like there were about 12-15 points where the game could take a different path (by taking a different card).

So, there is a case, it has an outline, and it even has multiple outcomes. But it’s not a detective game. You aren’t trying to use your deductive reasoning like Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective (“Hmm. There’s ice on the floor. Clearly the murder weapon!”). You aren’t being smart like Poirot or Sherlock or Father Brown or any of your favorite detectives to solve cases. You are more “exploring” this world and this case, and trying to do well on Skill Checks! Successful Skill Checks reward you with “progress” on the case.

The text that comes out during the game is very thematic, as there is an outline to this case! It does have a bit of a solution. But, it’s exploration and skill checks that keep this game moving forward, not “Sherlock smarts”.

An analogy that will come up again and again: this game reminds me SO MUCH of Arkham Horror: 2nd Edition. In Arkham Horror, you explore the city so you can kill monsters and close gates. In LA-1, you explore the city so you can find things to solve cases.

LA-1 is an exploration game with a detective theme, but it’s not a detective/deduction game.

Solo Play

So, LA-1 does support solo play! Congratulations on following Saunders’ Law!

It’s not true solo play, as you must play two characters and alterate between them: see rules above. It’s very clear what the solo rules are and I applaud LA-1 for being so clear on this!

My first solo game was playing Tina Woo (hacker) and Roni Mace (investigator). Usually, I put my characters side to side, but I ran out of room! That 8-fold board of the city is SO HUGE it took up too much room!

This was a bit of an ordeal, trying to operative two characters in my space! See above!

I got a lot of rules wrong as I figured it out. The rulebook is ok.

I was able to get a couple of solo games together before teaching my friends. There is quite a bit of maintenance as you play; it’s a little much to play 2 characters, but that load feels less and less heavy the more you play. To be clear, there is a lot of flavor text on the cards, and a lot of directions on the cards, and a lot of systems in this game (CLUE bag, BASIC bag, damage system, fate resolution, Location actions, darkening Locations, advancing darkness, dealing with heat, karma, money, passports, etc etc). It’s probably gonna take about 2 to 3 plays to really get the game down. My first two solo games were about 2 to 3 hours each. Granted, they were learning games, but LA-1 feels more like a 2 to 3 hour for the solo game than a 90-120 minute game. Especially if you are trying to read all the flavor text and immerse yourself into the game.

Did I have fun as a solo player? Yes. Will I come back to it and play it solo again. Maybe?

Cooperative Play

I think LA-1 is a better cooperative game than solo game! For me at least, the game feels a little more immersive as I play just one character and interact with my friends. The solo game makes you play two characters, but it’s usually a lot more fun when you can inhabit ONE character and become that character for a game!

See my friends smiling and laughing as we play! We typically (as a group) really like storybook games, and this game really tickled our fancy.

If the solo game were harder to play because there’s more maintenance per turn, then the cooperative game shares the maintenance load and makes it easier to play! See above as Andrew reads Sara’s storycard!

As a group, we enjoyed this. I mentioned that there’s a campaign (you can play the 4 cases of the box in a full campaign), and my group seemed very interested in continuing our adventure!

The game was very interactive as we all shared the story, the reading duties, and the load for set-up and tear-down.

This was a fun cooperative game. The only real downside is that this game has a lot of systems and subsystems to maintain (Fate deck, karma, money, Locations, Skill deck, etc), so it might be harder to teach this game to less experienced gamers. Still, if you know what you are doing (play the solo game first), you can teach this fairly easily.

The Arkham Horror Comparison

This game feels so much like Arkham Horror: Second Edition! And it should, as Richard Launius (one of my favorite designers) is also the main designer of the original Arkham Horror! I don’t love everything he does (see our review of Freedom Five), but I generally like his designs (see our list of Top 10 Cooperative Superhero games with Batman: The Animated Series game and Top 5 Cooperative Games Of All Time!)

Let’s be clear; the theme is very different! LA-1 has you hanging out in a cyber-world in a post-apocalyptic future world as a noir detective! And Arkham Horror: Second Edition has you hanging out in a 1920s world, fighting horrors from the Cthulu mythos! And yet, the core gameplay feels the same.

Move around a world and search for stuff to help you: In AH, you visit places in Arkham, In LA-1, you visit places in LA.
Perform Skill Checks: dice based in AH, Fate deck based in LA-1
Take Damage: hit points in AH, Damage cards in LA-1
Read Thematic Text off Cards: In AH and LA-1, when you visit a Location, you read a card with thematic text (scary Cthulu stuff in AH, creepy cyber stuff in LA-1)
Perform a macro-level Task to win: In AH, everything you do is in support of closing gates. In LA-1, everything you do is in support of solving the case
It’s a big game! Both in board space, time, components, rules, both AH and LA-1 are big games!

This isn’t meant to be a ding against LA-1, not at all! Arkham Horror: Second Edition is one of my favorite games of all time! See discussion here of my Top 5 games of all time, and a discussion of what I want in Cooperative games!

Some people don’t like Arkham Horror: Second Edition because it is a little dated. Does LA-1 fix these problems? I think LA-1 does fix a lot of problems modern gamers might have with Arkham Horror: Second Edition. Let’s take a look!

A Sense of What’s Coming

One of my favorite things that Arkham Horror: Second Edition does is that it gives you a “hint” of what kind of reward you might get at a Location! See above at Walder, as you might get money ($) or an Item (gun). If you are looking for money because you need to buy an Elder sign, or need a plain weapon to fight Horrors in the street, maybe you’ll choose to go to Walder?

In LA-1, when you go to a Location, the card gives you a “hint” of what Skill check you might have to do there! See above as the Mutant Warrens indicate you’ll “probably” need some mechanical skill or some punchees! Tina Woo isn’t very punchee, so maybe she’ll suggest Mace goes there! You can make decisions on what Locations to visit to go based on what Skill you might need! What you might get at the Location is “generally” the top token (but not always).

So, when you visit the board, you have a better sense of whether or not you’ll succeed because you know what Skill cards you have ready!

You can make a much more informed choice of places to visit based on what skills you have in hand, and what the Locations offer! And this feels very thematic; “I knew, going to the Mutant Warrens, I might have to get into a fight to get any information … but I was ready for it.”

In some ways, this is an improvement over AH because you have a better sense of whether or not you might succeed, based on your cards and hints on the Location! You will “probably” get the top token, so you also have a sense of what you’ll get! There are also lots of places in LA-1 where you can “flip” or “swap” tokens to have a better sense of what you get!

“Sometimes you spend your time just trying to find out what information you need to even find a clue. It’s just the life of an investigator. It’s just the way of life for us.”

It doesn’t feel like just random exploration: you have hints of what you will get, and that makes it feel like your choices matter.

Fate Deck vs Dice

One of my least favorite things about Arkham Horror was how all skill checks depended on a roll of the dice. There were clues to help mitigate that, but in the end, you just rolled dice. I remember one game of Arkham Horror extending to 6 hours because of 1 bad roll … and everyone just sort of died inside. What should have been a 3-hour game (which is still quite long) became a 6 hour game. Oi!

But Skill checks in LA-1 feel much less debilitating and random via using the Fate deck now. It’s just a little deck of cards, and it’s basically some randomness (plus or minus) to a skill check.

A Skill Check usually comes form an encounter. See above as I can choose to do a Mind (6) or Moxie (5) test.

Looking at my hand of cards, I think I have a better chance with Moxie rather than Mind, so I discard two Moxie (1) cards to give me a base of 2.

I draw from the fate deck; I always keep the first card (see above as I add another +1), but since the card matches the test (Moxie), I can keep drawing!

I draw until I don’t match anymore … oooooh, bad luck … -2 Fate. So, my test fails. 1 + 1 (two cards) + 1 (Moxie fate card) + -2 (Fate -2 card_= +1. I fail

If you have Karma tokens … you can discard one to keep drawing and ignore that last -2 Fate cards! Karma tokens from LA-1 remind me of Clue tokens from Arkham Horror: you can discard them after the checks have been made to keep going!

What I like about this system is that you have choices along the way: if it’s clear you CAN’T make the Skill check, you can try to mitigate the resource cost and not invest any Skill Cards or Karma tokens: you just take it. But, if you really really need that test to succeed, you can use Karma and special abilities, and others can help you (of in the same Location or maybe even same CIty Block). But of course, if you went to a Location that needed Brain and you had NONE, that’s your choice!

This Fate Card system is a little more complex than rolling dice (and it takes a few tries to explain it and get it right: “Wait, I keep drawing because I matched the test?”), but this system gives you choices and decisions (rather than just rolling dice and spending clue tokens from Arkham Horror). I feel like this is a major improvement for resolving Skills checks in the world of gaming.

Storybook Game

The card below is a little bit of a spoiler, but out of context, it’s not too bad. I show it below to show you how much story is on the cards in this game.

This is absolutely a Storybook game like Vantage from last year (see our review here) or any of the games in our Top 10 Cooperative Storybook games!

Players read cards to each other as they choose what kinds of skill checks to make and advance to story!

One of our favorite things about Storybook games (and what we loved about Vantage) was reading story to each other! See above! This keeps everyone involved as one person reads one person has to make choices, and everyone else hears the story unfold!

I think if you saw that cover, you would NOT think that this is a storybook game! “Oh, it’s s detective game!” Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. This is definitely a storybook game with lots of text to be read! You can choose to read your own encounters, but’s it a lot more fun and interactive if everyone reads aloud! The story becomes shared as we team of investigators try to figure out what’s going on and share this adventure together!

Replayability

This is a little more replayable than most story games because the story cards can come out randomly. See above as there are multiple #3 and #5 cards! The story you experience depends on which #3 and #5 card you draw!

Heat

One last thing I want to mention is the Heat system. This worked so well! Players can CHOOSE to take Heat to move the game forward faster (“Hey, if I take some Heat we can get a CLUE sooner”), but taking Heat will likely have some repercussions later in the game! Taking Heat is just adding tokens to the Heat space (see above).

Many Bad News (Darkness) cards will target players with too much heat, making the Bad News even worse! But, you can “lay low” for a turn to reduce your Heat.

Each player starts the game with 5 Heat (see Heat tokens above), but taking Heat is almost always a choice. And you can always “lay low” for a turn (so thematic in a Detective Noir game!) to lose Heat.

Heat is a really neat mechanism that is thematic, adds tension to the game, but it is still a choice; you have to deal with the consequences of taking too much Heat … but maybe you have to take Heat to get the case solved!

Campaign Game

So, there is nominally a campaign here: you can play the games in order and keep a few of the cards between games.

And you gt a few extras too.

But honestly, it’s not really much of a campaign with lots of “continuing story”. It’s more of an excuse to continue play all the cases in the box. I have to tell you, I am surprised how much my friends wanted to continue playing this (kinda lame) campaign. When you are enjoying the experience, I guess any excuse to keep playing will keep you going! So, the campaign, while not “too campaigny” (in terms of story or holdovers), it was an excuse to keep playing.

Conclusion

I think LA-1 might be a Hidden Gem! Unfortunately, it’s Kickstarter only had 597 backers, and it only made $68,000 … which is not a lot of money in board game Kickstarters. But if you like the theme and like Storybook games, this is a fantastic game! There’s plenty of choice and hints in the game that the exploration of this Cyber-Noir world feels directed and fateful, and not just random. And the mechanisms of the game (Heat, Fate deck) make the Skill checks seem like that have much more agency than a random die roll! You still have choice, even if sometimes things go against you!

Be aware that this is NOT a Detective game (like Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective), but more of an exploration and Storybook game! I admit I was a little disappointed that this wasn’t a detective game … it’s more of a detective-themed story book game. Just be aware of what this is before you jump in.

As a cooperative game, me and my friends really enjoyed LA-1; enough to engage in the Campaign game over 4 Cases! The choice, the story, the gameplay, makes this a 8.5/10. I like the solo game, but this is much more fun to play with my friends reading and sharing, so I’d give the solo game 7/10; it still works, but the shared story among friends is what makes this great. UPDATE: this might even drift to a 9/10 for the cooperative game!

If you know what Arkham Horror: Second Edition is and loved it, I think you will really enjoy LA-1 as well! LA-1 has the same feel as AH in many ways, even if the theme is completely different. If you didn’t like Arkham Horror: Second Edition because it was too random or too long, you might still like LA-1; it takes a lot of the mechanisms that lengthened/randomized games of Arkham Horror … and fixes them.

Appendix: Remembering Arkham Horror: Second Edition

For many people, Catan was the modern game that brought them into the hobby. For me and my friends, it was Arkham Horror: Second Edition. It was complex, overwrought, way too thematic, but we adored it! It was a cooperative game before cooperative games were popular. Many people say it was Pandemic who introduced them to cooperative games; for us, it was Arkham Horror: Second Edition. And Arkham Horror: Second Edition came out BEFORE Pandemic!

There are some things that Arkham Horror: Second Edition still does a little better than LA-1. For one, the city feels like a city! When you need to get it healed, it’s clear you need to go the Hospital! When you need sanity, it’s clear you go to the Sanitorium! When you shop you go to the General Store! It was intuitively clear, based on the board, where to go. LA-1 doesn’t quite have that intuition; it almost feels like a Worker Placement game (partly because you can do actions on spaces) than a city.

The thematic immersion in Arkham Horror was also a little more complete; the monsters wandering the streets, the other world encounters, the spells, the closing of gates, it just felt … a little more immersive. And these characters felt a little more real; I can still tell you the name of my favorite character: Mandy Thompson. Something about this game was magic for us.

I think LA-1 is a better modern game than Arkham Horror: Second Edition; it’s less random, more streamlined, cleaner systems, and modern sensibilities. Yet, there’s something magic in Arkham Horror: Second Edition that anything has yet to capture.

Disparation: The Final Chapter? A Solo and Cooperative Review of the Sentinels of the Multiverse Expansion

I have a lot of reviews queued up to go out, but I really wanted to talk about this expansion a lot. It means a lot to me, so it jumped the queue.

Never before has an expansion been so appropriately named: Disparation. Why is that? Because it is likely the final hurrah from the Sentinels of the Multiverse line of games!

To be clear; Disparation is an expansion for the Sentinels of the Multiverse: Definitive Edition; this is the most recent and modern version of Sentinels of the Multiverse. For a full discussion of different versions (1st, 2nd, definitive), see a link to our review of Sentinels of the Multiverse: Definitive Edition here.

In April 17th, 2025, Flat River Group (who owns the Sentinels of the Multiverse line of games and Greater Than Games) announced that they were essentially shuttering the business. Essentially, there were shutting down the company in response to the tariff crisis: see link here. The wording suggests that maybe they can come out of it, but it’s unclear. In a recent visit (in 2026) to my FLGS, I asked them about Greater Than Games, and they said “No, they’ve shut down”.

Now, as someone who had kickstarted (well, it was on BacketKit) the Disparation expansion back in something like March 2023, I was concerned! Would this mean they would just abandon this? It had already been 2 years since the BackerKit project, and the project seemed to be taking forever.

In fact, one of the Updates about the time of the announcement indicated that they had just starting printing the expansion, but then shut it down?!!?! Over the past year or so since the announcement, me and other backers of Disparation have been on pins and needles. Would Disparation be abandoned in light of the current situation?

As you might guess, we finally got some good news back in September in this update!! It was printing and would be delivered in Q2026! So, on January 18th, 2026, my copy of Disparation finally arrived: see above! I was overjoyed! I never thought I’d see this!

I do not know what the status of Greater Than Games/Flat River Group currently is. I was a BackerKit backer and got my copy, but I don’t know if this will ever see retail. If you see it somewhere, pick it up! It may very likely never come back in print (at least, that’s the current feel).

Let’s take a look!

Unboxing

Strictly speaking, this unboxing started ALMOST TWO YEARS ago! Waaaaay before they had the tariff crisis, I was sent all the sleeves for the game! That’s right, two years before the game itself arrived, I had the sleeves … waiting on a box (see above). I put the sleeves with the original Sentinels of the Multiverse token box to remind myself WHAT these sleeves were for! See above!

But, once I brought the game to my game room, it was 2:06pm.

In fact, I had gotten the foil cards and the Disparation box and sleeves for it.

See Coke can above for scale.

There’s a number of punchouts for this: most of these are little hit point wheels for the Ennead Villain set!

One of the bigger Villains in this set is the Ennead! See above! There are (potentially) 9 Bad guys that may emerge as you fight the Ennead!! So, this set includes 9 more spinners to note hit points.

These hit point spinners were a little clumsy to build, and they are a little clumsy to use. You have to hold one of the wheels down with your fingernail while you spin the other wheel. Not ideal.

But most of this expansion is cards: cards, cards, cards!

There’s 6 new Heroes, with 6 new hero decks and new Giant Hero cards! (One of the heroes is a set of two twins called Darkstrife and Painstake, but they are officially one hero deck and one hero). If you know the original 1st/2nd edition of Sentinels of The Multiverse, all of these heroes are familiar … except Darkstrife and Painstake are new.

Each new Hero actually has three base Hero cards for slightly different starting Powers! They use the same Deck, but the starting power varies slightly! See Parse above with her three different multiverse characters!

And See Visionary above!

There are 5 new environments (anyone who has played the 2nd edition will recognize all of these).

There are Principles cards: these allow a slightly different way where you must adhere to some basic Principles as you play. It sort of gives your character a direction/sense of how it should be played. You don’t have to play with these; they are optional. (They don’t change the game THAT much).

There are nine new Villains(!) ! That’s right! Nine! Those of you familiar with 2nd Edition will recognize most of them, but Grimm, Necrosis, and Ruler of Aeterna are all brand new villains. See above.

Of course, there are giant cards to note the Villains. See above.

There are also Event cards which explore the Sentinels comics lore; they mostly set-up some special fights with special powers and rewards.

There are also Critical Event (cards) which are like Events, but replace the Villain with alternate version of said Villain; these are usually much harder fights.

As well as Hero variants for this set, there are plenty of variant Heroes from other sets! See above! (To be clear, I am showing the FOIL versions of these cards, not the ones that came with the game … these are the exact same cards, except for the foiling. See more discussion of FOIL cards below).

There are also 1st appeareance variants, which allow you to play a hero with yet a different variant!

There are a TON of cards in here, and they all look cool. I have to admit, this set feels a little … dark? The vibe, the art, the basic heroes all seem a little .. darker than the base game.

The Sleevening

This is definitely a game that has a sleevening event. (We coined this term way back in when we unboxed Obliveaon! See link here!)

The worst part of this was putting sleeves on SO MANY cards! Remember how I said I starting the unboxing at 2:06?

By the time I finished sleevening the game and finishing the unboxing, it was 3:48! An hour and 42 minutes! Oi!

I’m of two minds about sleevening this game. For one, I like it, because it protects the cards and I can enjoy years of play without worrying about wear and tear!

On the other hard, the sleeves make the cards much more slippery and harder to manage! See above as one slip-up caused all the cards for Parse to go everywhere! The sleeves are just slippery!

The good news is that the game fits well (if a little snug) into to the box. See the Villains above!

The Heroes and Environments fit pretty well!

And the rest of larger cards sit pretty well in the bigger compartment.

It all fits when sleeved, if a little tight. See above.

Foil Cards

As part of the BackerKit, you could get an optional set of Foil Card versions of all the large cards. Basically, all the big cards have foil versions of them: see above.

It’s harder to see the foiled cards (see above) and how cool they look in my pictures! See above as I try (and fail) to capture how cool the foiled versions look!

Do you need the Foil versions? Not at all, and in fact, some people don’t like the foil versions of the cards because they think they are harder to read. I STRONGLY disagree with that sentiment!!! I LOVE LOVE LOVE the foil versions! They look so comic-booky, and capture the “foil versions” of comics from the 90s. They also just have a cool table presence.

You do NOT need the Foil cards; the game works fine without it. I personally think the foiled cards are one of the coolest upgrades ever for any game, but especially for a superhero game like Sentinels of the Multiverse. Decide for yourself; see above with a bunch of the foil cards laid out.

I also think that Marvel Champions is missing an opportunity; it would be so cool if Marvel Champions had foil cards AND oversized Hero/Villain cards like Sentinels of the Multiverse. Can you imagine how cool a foiled, giant Iron Man card would look???

Solo Play

We always get a little nostalgic when we discuss solo play for Sentinels of the Multiverse! It was actually the original 1st edition of the game that made us coin Saunders’ Law! The 1st edition did not have a solo mode, so we had to make one up! It was our frustration with that which made us grumpy and said “there should be a law that all cooperative games should have a good solo mode!” We were being a little silly, but it stuck.

The definitive edition has a solo mode; you must play three heroes. Admittedly, this solo mode is a little clumsy because Sentinels of the Multiverse has a learning curve (it’s always had this learning curve; you have to play a super hero deck a number of times to learn that hero), and throwing three new heroes at the solo player can be daunting!

So, it’s harder to recommend this as a solo game for newer gamers, but frankly, I think I have played Sentinels of the Multiverse solo more than any other game. I have played it THAT many times (to be fair, that includes the app). The solo game works great, just be prepared to read lots of cards to get a sense of everything.

Inspires A Story

What I like about Sentinels is how it inspires a different story every game. There’s a story in the set-up, what characters you choose, what environment you choose, what Villain you choose. And then there’s the story that unfolds as you play!

The Dreamer of Silver Gulch

“The Chrono Ranger is a cosmic ranger who wanders the multiverse seeking to help others. He found an old Western town in trouble named Silver Gulch … it was a little girl who was having nightmares.

The townfolk were scared of this little girl .. they called her The Dreamer, but the ChronoRanger knew it wasn’t the kid’s fault; he had to help her. He knew who to call to help her.

Darkstrife and Painstrike are brother and sister who knew the torment of bad dreams and what it does to little kids, having experienced their own in life. He knew they’d want to help.

And then there’s Visionary. She’s a little unstable, but her mental abilities would be perfect for helping this little girl.

ChronoRanger, Darkstrife and Painstrike, and the Visionary were an eclectic team, but they all wanted to help this little girl! It was surprising how well they worked together, given how diverse they were! Darkstrife and Painstrike were constantly pushing themselves too hard and discarding so much of their essense, but Visionary helped them find new energy and new avenues by constantly feeding them new ideas (and cards!). ChronoRanger was the glue that held them together, just constantly keeping the pressure on the monsters in the little girl’s dreams!

In the end, these heroes saved a little girl by keeping her nightmares in check .. and Silver Gulch, the town where she lived!

The Dreamer was just one of many stories that emerged as a I played 5 or 6 solo games over the first week of getting this!.

New Rulers

As Darkstrife and Painstrike finished helping the Dreamer, they were called BACK to their own realm of nightmares! It’s time for a new battles for the realm of Aeternus, and Darkstrife ad Painstrike, having been from Aeturnus are called back!

The twins know they need no nonsense to keep the Ruler of Aeternus under control, so they call on KNYFE! She’s no nonsense!

And even though Parse is a little goodie-goodie for their taste, her ability to see into the heart of any situation is needed!

Can there heroes keep the new Ruler of Aeternus from branching out into our world?

The battle rages to be the new ruler! Parse and KNYFE help keep the rulers under control, but it’s Painstrife who knows the way to end this; kill all combatants AT THE SAME TIME, so there is no one left to become a ruler!

After the battle rages, it ends anti-climatically with all hopefuls to the throne being banished at the same time. But that’s the best way this could have ended!

God fight!

An archeologist went to the Tomb of Anubis and accidentally summoned The Ennead! But this created quite the clash of Gods as Anubis also fought to break free as well! The gods were fighting!

Always monitoring the world for problems,Omnitron-X was first on the scene! Knowing that magic and gods were outside his purview, he summoned help!

Darkstrife and Painstake were the obvious choices, since they had a background in the arcana!

And the Visionary followed!

This was a battle for the ages and members of the Ennead kept getting summoned!

And inside the Tomb of Anubis, this conflict kept spilling out!

Finally, after some heavy fighting, the heroes were able to keep only 7 of the 9 Ennead summoned, before taking them out!

Anubis and his tomb of minions were surprisingly helpful in keeping the gods under control, as they were lashing out all the time! Normally, this lashing hits the Heroes, but with so many powerful Ennead in play, Anubis was focused on the Ennead!

Somewhat surprisingly, it was The Visionary’s Dark Side that made the difference!

Basically, Visionary would lash out at everyone when she was under stress, and the heroes were lucky it helped them more than hurt them!

Cooperative Play

Despite never playing any of these characters … my friends and I had a fun time fighting: Grimm!

“Let us tell the story of a group of Heroes who almost got lost in their own tale!” For some reason, Grimm sounded like the Cryptkeeper from Tales from the Crypt … not sure why … And this is the kind of detail that emerges as you play and have fun with it!

The Sheriff of Silver Gulch hung out the entire game! He sounded like Sam Elliot. And he helped keep the outlaws of Silver Gulch under control.

We made a lot of mistakes as we played, but we really had fun.

It took a while: 2.5 hours, because my friends had to read all their cards! But we still had fun.

The story that emerges, the voices that emerge, the silly vignettes that emerge … that is fun. We cooperated well as different ways to change ROLES (a Grimm villain thing) came out, Visionary kept pumping up the cards, Parse would double some damage …. so many different ways to talk, cooperate, engage, and have fun.

And we stopped Grimm from being … well, grim. We won!

Back on Top

Every game tells a story (see above as the heroes battle Necrosis! Ewww!). I had forgotten how much I love this system. It’s so easy to explain the basic gameplay, but there is so much variety in the environments and villains and heroes, that each game plays out so deeply and differently.

Recently, Marvel United had jumped to the top of my list! It’s such a neat game!

But, Disparation reminded me of all the subtle interactions and cooperations that can emerge from the game! As I played new games, the joy of playing Sentinels emerged!

I had never really embraced Parse in the 2nd edition, but she was really fun to play! She has some neat ideas! And she seems like a bright character!

And holy cow, Darkstrife and Painstake are so interesting to play! They are a little messy and complicated, but once you get the feel of this set of twins, they are fun to play!

And Visionary, who was more of a support character became SO INTERESTING with her Dark Side deck! I was able to keep Visionary’s Dark Side under control when we helped the little girl, but her dark side was SO CRITICALLY IMPORTANT when we took on the Ennead! She also worked so well with Darkstrife and Paintake; this was a cooperation I hadn’t seem before! She kept the twins in cards so they could fully utilize their abilities!

I saw new ways of cooperating and interacting emerge as we played.

I think Disparation reminded me how great Sentinels of the Multiverse is: it’s my #1 game again!

Things To Look Out For

Expansion: TO be clear, this is an expansion for Sentinels of the Multiverse: Definitive Edition. First of all, make sure you have the Definitive edition (not 2nd edition) if you want to pick this up. Strictly speaking, you need the tokens and rulebook from the base game to make this work. BUT, if you really wanted to, you could get away with this being a standalone game … all you really need are heroes, villains, and environments!! And those are all in there! The base game has hit point spinners and the rulebook … but if you really wanted to, you could use paper and pencil to keep track of hit points (I did that back in the 1st edition of the game) .. and of course, the rulebook is on-line. So, you COULD play this as a standalone game if you really wanted to … but it’s probably better to just make sure you have the base game.

Foil cards: You don’t need the foil cards. But, they are pretty cool. If you do pick this up, try to get the Foil cards at the same time!

So much text! I love this game, but I always warn people about this!! It takes a while to get to know a Hero deck before you can use it well; you have to enjoy the process of playing with a deck you don’t know and reading lots of text to get to the point where you feel useful! If you don’t love that process, then this probably isn’t the game for you.

Conclusion

So, this expansion reminds me why Sentinels of the Multiverse is my favorite game of all time. I love the art, I love the stories it inspires, I love the gameplay, I love the new ways that cooperation emerges. There was a time when I didn’t love the art, but the art style has grown on me.

There is also so much content in this box: 9 villains (with many variants), 6 heroes (with many variants), 5 environments. I love Marvel Champions too, but from a bang-for-the-buck perspective, Sentinels gives you so much more content.

I have to apologize for gushing about this expansion because I am not sure if this will be available outside the BackerKit kickstarter. If you see it, pick it up immediately: it’s my favorite expansion in some time (and I have seen some good expansions). And it may not be around much longer … which is too bad. It’s probably my favorite expansion of the year: 10/10.

Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative And Solo Games of 2026!

It’s always fun to look ahead and see what might be coming! We’ve backed a bunch of Kickstarters this year, but which ones are we most excited to see?

As we look forward, we also look back to see which games we anticipated, which delivered, which we liked, and which we didn’t! We’ll start with some games from 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 … which believe it or not, some games from 2021 still haven’t delivered!

2021

The only game left from 2021 that hasn’t delivered is Onimaru. We have received no updates in the last year and few months; it’s pretty clear they took our money and ran away. This is a sobering reality check! We love Kickstarters and all the great games we can get, but there are charlatans out there who want our money.
This is the only thing from 2021 that hasn’t delivered. And I don’t think it ever will.

2022

Rat Queens to the Slaughter has had some major ups and downs, as the original creator “took back” the project after it was flailing. We are seeing updates pretty frequently with lots of new art and cards, so I think we will one day see this deliver. One day, maybe even 2026.
This is the only thing from 2022 that hasn’t delivered.

2023

Dark Quarter arrived, but the app didn’t work until later in this year? It’s been a long wait for this. We liked it, but it wasn’t quite what we expected: it’s more of an immersive experience than a detective story. See our review here to see if Dark Quarter is what you might want! We did like it enough that it made our Top 10 Cooperative Games from 2025!
Everything from 2023 has now delivered!

2024

Santorini Pantheon Edition and Santorini: Riddle of the Sphinx! This arrived sometime this March 2025, and we really liked it! It made our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2025 as well as our Top 10 Solo Games of 2025! See our review here to see if this is something you might like!
Luddite came in and we definitely enjoyed it! It’s a cooperative roll-and-write that definitely tells a story! It made our Top 10 Cooperative Roll-And-Write Games! It was such a fun experience! See our review here of Luddite to see if you might enjoy it!
X-Men Marvel Dice Throne and Marvel Missions came in this year! I loved it solo, but my friends didn’t like as much cooperatively. See our review here, but check out our Top 10 Cooperative Expansions of 2025!
Once Upon A Line is running very late. There is some movement, and it sounds like all the translations are done. It’s very likely we will see this in 2026! This is the ONLY game left that from 2024 that hasn’t delivered yet.

2025

Floe + Monsters Unleased: It’s taking a while for this. I have to admit, I have been a little frustrated that they did more development than I expected for a game that was “supposed to be basically done”. It still hasn’t delivered, even after promising a June 2025 delivery.
Fable Fury: This delivered sometime in November. It was a beautiful production, but me and my friends didn’t like the game. I didn’t do a review because I couldn’t even finish a game with my friends. Beautiful game, great art, wonderful production, but too random.
Horror On The Orient Express: We see lots of activity and updates, but it clearly missed its August 2025 delivery! I am confident we will see it deliver, maybe 2026.
Aetherspire: This one kind of makes me mad; I haven’t gotten my copy at the time of this writing (early December 2025), but in late November I saw two copies at my FLGS! I may see it in December 2025, I may not! If I had just WAITED, I could have picked this up from FLGS. The developer apologized online, and I get it, but it is still frustrating since I paid real money to back his Kickstarter, and others see the game first. UPDATE: it arrived Dec 18th. I don’t know if i can get a review out before the end of the year. UPDATE UPDATE: See our review of Aetherspire here!
One-Hit Heroes: One-Hit Heroes delivered to me in early 2025, and it was a hit with everyone I played it with! See our review here! It also made our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2025!
Invincible: The Card Game: This re-theming of Astro Knights into the Invincible universe delivered to use in September 2025! We liked it; it made our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2025! In some ways, it’s the best version of the Astro Knights system (esp. with the Assist keyword)! Check out our review to see if this might be for you! Get the main mat, but probably stay away from the player mats.
Unstoppable: This cooperative deck-builder game for 1 to 2 players delivered in early 2025! Nominally, it’s for 2 people, but it’s really a solo game. This made our Top 10 Solo Games of 2025 and was a real unique treat! See our review of Unstoppable here!
DCeased: A Zombie Game! This kinda delivered, but not really. The main delivery, which is full of games, it still in production. But an early version of DCeased: Gotham City Outbreak went on sale on Amazon!
LA-1: It’s close to being done. The updates have closed for shipping addresses, and the updates seem to indicate shipping is happening. I suspect we’ll see this in early 2026.
DC Super Heroes United: This is in the same boat as DCeased. The main, huge order of games hasn’t delivered, but they did put up one of the games on Amazon: DC Super Heroes Batman Hush. DC Batman Hush was our favorite game of the year! See our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2025!

On to our anticipated cooperative games of 2026!

10. Journeys Afar: The Ketsueki

Platform: Kickstarter Journeys Afar: The Ketsueki
Promised Delivery: December 2026
Summary: Welcome to Journeys Afar, where infinite worlds filled with boundless possibilities are connected by a single road: the Ketsueki. Along this path, brave heroes venture forth, each journeying to distant, mysterious lands. On their travels, they explore sites of great importance, acquire powerful items, make offerings to benevolent spirits, sharpen their skills, battle fearsome ronin, and form lasting bonds. But in the end, only one will be remembered as a legend.

Journeys Afar: The Ketsueki is a sandbox game of epic adventure, where the journey matters more than the destination. Each player is a unique hero from a distinct world. Your world defines everything in the game: encounters, quests, threats, upgrades, and special rules that reshape every session into a new experience. As heroes travel across The Ketsueki, they impact the worlds they visit and discover who they truly are.

This is a competitive game, not co-op, but I’ll probably be playing it all solo (there is a solo mode). Everything I have read about this game makes me feel like it SHOULD be a cooperative game, so maaaaaaaybe I’ll try to get some cooperative house rules going. This game, as an open world, just looks AMAZING! I am super excited to get it solo, and you MAY just see some cooperative rules on our site for this game after we give it a solo go!

9. StarDriven: Gateway + Invasion

Platform: Kickstarter StarDriven: Gateway
Promised Delivery: Jan 2026
Summary: In StarDriven: Gateway, 1-4 players each control their own starship and crew while determining the fate of distant colonies near an ancient alien gateway. The game can be played competitively, co-operatively, or in solo mode depending on which episode you select at game set-up.

Your objective is to be the most renowned and respected Crew by gaining the most points. You gain points by increasing your reputation with the Council Worlds, promoting your Crew, researching Anomalies, recruiting Freelancers, and completing Missions. All of these brave endeavors will score you points and lead to your victory. Running your starship entails assigning crew to different stations on your ship board, which allows you to assign dice to those stations to activate ship actions. Move and explore space, encounter raiders, face anomalies, and use your crew abilities and skills to fulfill mission requirements and activate their bonuses. Manage your ship’s power, weapons, and shields, and recruit and promote crew members to enhance your ship and achieve objectives to ensure your side prevails

This is #9 on the list because it is only cooperative with the Invasion expansion that comes with the Kickstarter! Usually a game that has an expansion to make it cooperative isn’t great cooperatively, but we had fantastic luck with Kinfire Council with the Winds of Change expansion making it cooperative! Honestly, we backed this because we had such a good time with games my Mike Gnade: his Set A Watch series just knocked it out of the park for us (see here, here, here, here, and here) … so if he is doing this game, I’m in! The Set A Watch games made so many of our Top 10 lists! The ultimate was when Doomed Run made our #1 spot on Top 10 Solo Games of 2024! A co-op game in space by Mike Gnade? I’m in!

8. Honor’s End

Platform: Kickstarter Honor’s End
Promised Delivery: Sep 2026
Summary: Honor’s End is a 1–4 player cooperative deckbuilding adventure set in a medieval world overshadowed by a mysterious truth. You can play it as a standalone session or as part of an episodic campaign that gradually unlocks new content and challenges.

Players must band together to overcome escalating threats. By wielding hero, action, and equipment cards, they’ll strike at their foes while fending off dishonor—brought on by danger dice rolled each round by their enemies.

Each knight chooses a path of Valor, Fortitude, or Wisdom, building a deck that shapes their abilities and tactics. Enemies, forged from the traits of Wrath, Deceit, and Despair, create unpredictable and unique battles every time you play.

Victory demands more than raw power. Success lies in balancing honor, clever deckbuilding, and shrewd use of the Temple and Monarch reward tracks. Defeat all three enemy champions to claim victory—or watch your honor slip away.

This is a game where the gameplay sounded interesting despite the art. I don’t love the art I have seen, but it’s all thematic. This cooperative campaign deck-builder looks like it will be a lot of fun with some possibly unique gameplay.

7. Exoterra: The Giant Mech

Platform: Kickstarter Exoterra
Promised Delivery: Aug 2026
Summary: Welcome to the universe of ExoTerra, a sandbox strategy game with tactical planning, deep customization, and enemies who are complex and highly challenging.

ExoTerra is played cooperatively over the course of many sorties in a campaign. Each Player takes on the role of a Pilot in charge of requisitioning equipment, personnel, supplies, and, most importantly, Jackets – massive humanoid weapon systems, to be customized and fielded in battle.

Leveraging a new system of enemy generation, battles should always feel different, even if facing the same enemies. This is accomplished through several factors of enemy customization that force players to assess each situation individually. You can rely on your experience from past battles, but must be able to change your strategy on the fly based on the variables of the mission.

This looks like an amazing Mechs game! I was on the fence on this one, but it just looks really neat. And I think the idea of customizing your Mech is what finally sold me. That and cooperative play!

6. Viking Route

Platform: Kickstarter Viking Route
Promised Delivery: Oct 2025 (ya, they didn’t make this. It will be 2026)
Summary: In the co-operative game Viking Route, your heroes sail a magical Drakkar to the World’s Edge and beyond. Influenced by magical ravens sent by Odin to steer your course, and by the winds of Fate, you will face powerful and monstrous creatures out of the Norse mythos to fulfill your quests and prepare you for the final challenge to defeat the greatest enemy of the Gods and prevent Ragnarok!

Viking Route uses a compass-and-magnets movement mechanism first introduced the game The Faceless. The main game piece — the Drakkar — is represented by a compass, and multiple magnets (representing ravens and wind) are manipulated by players to steer the course of their ship.

Magnets and compasses? In a cooperative game? Yes please! This game looks really interesting and definitely has a high toy factor! Let’s hope the game underneath is good as well!

5. Ghostland: The Game

Platform: Kickstarter Ghostland
Promised Delivery: March 2026
Summary: Jurassic Park meets Ghosts in this Co-operative boardgame about a theme park gone mad! It’s opening day at Ghostland, a theme park that contains actual ghosts! However, havok has immediately broken loose, and the ghosts are attacking guests left and right. It’s up to you and your friends to stop the ghosts, build Field Generators to contain them, and finally face off against the most sinister ghost in the park, the infamous Rex Garrote!

Each players picks a character that is unique and contains their own stats and abilities to help you not only survive the theme park, but hopefully save the day as well! The game is played in rounds where players move arounds the park, fight ghosts, buy items, or try to build a Recurrence Field Generator.

Once players have successfully built three Recurrence Field Generators they will summon the big bad himself, Rex Garrote, for them to defeat! But if the park’s human population reaches zero, it’s Game Over!

Ghosts in an amusement park? And a co-op to boot? Who needs a Scooby-Doo game, because this sounds like it might scratch that it! This may or may not be a Birthday present for my friend CC! He loved amusement parks and horror-themed games! I just hope I don’t like it better than him or I may keep it!

4. Sail: Legacy

Platform: Kickstarter Sail Legacy
Promised Delivery: August 2026
Summary: Assemble your crew, captain your ship, and take on the high seas in this legacy co-op trick-taker!

In Sail Legacy, you and your best matey will go on an adventure across thirty unique missions. Upgrade your ship, outfit your characters, and tune the deck itself to avoid a watery grave!

Sail Legacy evolves from the core Sail game mechanisms as you cooperatively use “must-follow” trick-taking to take on the unforgiving ocean — and the mythical beasts that call it home. Based on the combination of symbols in the trick, you’ll steer the ship, charge ahead, or fire the cannons. Throughout the game, you’ll tweak your pirate’s asymmetric player powers. Will you have a well-balanced team or specialize in one area?

We really liked the original 2-Player Trick-Taking game Sail; it made it pretty high on our Top 10 Solo and Cooperative Trick-Taking Games! This one takes that formula and transforms into an Legacy games where maps changes and components may change forever! It’ such an interesting idea; I am really looking forward to this!

3. Companion Quest

Platform: Kickstarter Companion Quest
Promised Delivery: Dec 2025 (ya, it’s not making that; we’ll see it in 2026!)
Summary: Companion Quest is a cooperative game for 1-4 players, who take on the role of gnomes, tasked with preventing Gu’Gu from causing chaos. Players will collect magical Energy Cubes (dice), tasty Snacks (resources), and fantastical Companions (abilities) along the way. Each Companion has unique abilities that allow players to manipulate their dice to overcome the challenges they will face.

Complete quests before the Mischief Meter reaches the end of the track and things spiral out of control!

This looks like an epically cute dungeon crawler in a small but beautifully cute package. The BGG pages lists this as 30 minutes and 10+ ages, so I suspect it will easy to jump into! Sometime you just want a fun and fast and cute dungeon crawler!

2. Abyss Echo: The Forbidden Rite

Platform: Kickstarter Abyss Echo: The Forbidden Rite
Promised Delivery: April 2026
Summary: Step into the shadowed halls of Miskatonic University, where fate and madness echo behind every closed door.

Abyss Echo: The Forbidden Rite is a deeply immersive narrative game that weaves branching storylines, dice-driven uncertainty, and evocative physical artifacts — blurring the boundary between reader and protagonist. Here, you are both yourself and the 1920s student investigator, their fate and sanity intimately entwined with your own. Guided by cryptic letters, you’ll piece together elusive clues, test the limits of science and reason, and confront choices that might reshape reality itself.

This looks to be Cthulu meets escape room a little bit! I am usually not huge into Cthulu, but the components look stunning … and I love mystery stories! Cthulu, mystery, escape: count me in!

1. Doom Guard

Platform: Kickstarter Doom Guard
Promised Delivery: May 2026
Summary: Doom Guard is a cooperative board game for one to five players, who don the mantle of Earth’s mightiest heroes and villains as they are forced to work together in order to protect Earth from total annihilation!

Defeat the minions of Cthulhu, fight the spread of corruption, and beat back the forces of evil through 45-60 minute scenarios that can be played individually or as part of a complete campaign.

This looks like a really neat super heroes vs Cthulu game! I like the art and the vibe and I am really excited for this! I have always wanted super heroes in my Cthulu mythos, and now I have them! This is a smaller endeavour (“only” $103, 000), so let’s hope it delivers! UPDATE: They delivered the PDFs to backers (Dec 16th?) already! A good sign!

Top 10 Cooperative Board and Card Game Expansions of 2025!

Welcome to the end of 2025! There were some great games that came out, but also some great expansions that really contributed to the world of cooperative games! As usual, we qualify our expansions are one of three types:

Stand-Alone Expansion: Some games you thought might be on the Top 10 Cooperative Board and Card Games of 2025 might have just ended up on this list because they are stand-alone games that can be played without a base game, but at the end of the day they also expand a base game!
Makes The Game Cooperative: Some expansions take a competitive base game and make the game fully cooperative with the expansion! We saw a number of these type of expansions on the Top 10 Games That Can Be Played Fully Cooperatively!
More Content: Some expansions just add more content (more cards, etc.) to the base cooperative game!

We also continue with the newer characterization: Does It Require Another Expansion?

Honorable Mention: Origin Story

Expansion Type: Makes The Game Cooperative
Solo Mode: Well, you could play the 3-character co-op mode as a solo player, but there’s already a 3-character solo mode in there.
Requires Another Expansion? No

This is an odd duck … because it’s not a real “official” expansion. This is a homebrew set of rules to make the really wonderful game Origin Story into a cooperative game! See link here for rules.

We played Origin Story, admired how well it works, especially with the powers, strategizing a limit of 5 rounds … and the artwork is amazing. While playing, we couldn’t help to think “Being a Super Hero game, is there a way to play cooperatively?” We fervently decided a new mode of gameplay should be added: a cooperative mode! Over a month or so, we developed some simple rules to make an optional cooperative mode for Origin Story. These rules probably need a little more play-testing, but frankly, we all enjoyed the game in a whole new way with this cooperative mode. Now, as well as playing the current mode to be the best Super Hero and win, all the Super Heroes can now work together to save the planet in a cooperative mode!

A Super Hero game should be cooperative: see this free set of rules here.

10. Marvel Champions: Agents of SHIELD

Expansion Type: More Content
Solo Mode: No new solo mode, just the original
Requires Another Expansion? No

More than any other game on this list, I play this with my buddy Junkerman (see above). He loves Marvel Champions, even more than me! (So much so, that he has his own blog about it: see Aspect Expressions Blog here!) Marvel Champions is a game where you get the expansions because they offer you characters or some kind of adventure!

In this case, we get Maria Hill and Nick Fury as characters, running them through an adventure of 5 Scenarios as Agents of SHIELD!

I think what sold me more than anything else was the fact that Nick Fury gets a Flying Car! Once I saw Nick Fury had that, you couldn’t stop me from playing him! A Flying Car!! Agents of SHIELD is just more content in the Marvel Champions universe; good stuff.

9. Thunderstone Quest: Twilight Souls/The All-Consuming Horde

Expansion Type: More Content
Solo Mode: Needs The Barricades Mode Expansion for solo
Requires Another Expansion? Yes: To play solo or cooperatively, you need The Barricades Mode Expansion

If Junkerman is my Marvel Champions buddy, then Nathan and Caroline are my Thunderstone Quest buddies! I have played most of the recent Thunderstone Quest expansions with them! See above as we finish The All-Consuming Hive, having rescued peoples from a living dungeon!

It’s kind of gotten ridiculous how many Quests there are (see above). But, these expansions still offered something new and expanded the game and made it more fun!

It’s gotten a little ridiculous (I know I have already said that), but I still like to play Thunderstone Quest solo or cooperatively (see above as a I play Twilight Souls solo). You can still use these two new expansions in the base competitive game, but if you want to play solo or cooperatively, don’t forget that you need the Barricades Mode expansion!

8. Flock Together: Birds of a Feather Eggspansion

Expansion Type: More Content
Solo Mode: No new solo mode, just the original
Requires Another Expansion? No

This is the easiest type of expansion to recommend; it just adds more of everything you already like to the game! This eggspansion (be prepared for lots of Chicken puns) adds some new cards, some new players boards (so you can play up to 6) … but, most importantly, it adds 6 new predators with 6 new chicken puns (see above) … Chew Bawka? Oi!

… and 6 new player chickens (with even more chicken puns)! If you liked the base cooperative game Flock Together (see our original review here), this is just more stuff of the stuff you already like! You like Chicken Puns, right? See our review of the expansion here!

7. Skytear Horde: Campaigns

Expansion Type: More Content, Standalone Expansion
Solo Mode: No new solo mode, just the original
Requires Another Expansion? No

I never know whether this series should go on my Top 10 Solo Games of 2025 or my Top 10 Cooperative Expansions of 2025! This year, because I was able to get it played cooperatively in a some good sessions, I am counting is a cooperative (standalone) expansion!

This expansion is mostly just new cards! If you like Skytear Horde (see our original review here), this just gives you more cards … more content … for this cooperative tower defense game.

There is a campaign book in here that is both good and bad. It’s not particularly well-written, but once you get how the campaign modes work, I think they add a lot to the base Skytear Horde game! See our review here where we discuss the good and bad of Skytear Horde: Campaigns!

In fact, I conjecture that this campaign mode could be a phenomenal way to teach the game! I taught my friends the game using the campaign mode, and they really responded well to this! Basically, the game comes out piecemeal in campaign mode, making it easier to digest. For this to work, however, you really need someone who knows the game to teach this mode. Check out or review of Skytear Horde: Campaigns if you want more information!

6. Leviathan Wilds: Deepvale Expansion

Expansion Type: More Content
Solo Mode: No new solo mode, just the original
Requires Another Expansion? No

This really is just a more stuff you already like expansion! If you liked the original game of Leviathan Wilds (see out review here of a game that made our #3 on Top 10 Cooperarive Games of 2024), this just gives you more of the stuff you like!

There’s 7 new Leviathans, and oof, they seem creepier than the original Leviathans! And of course, rage decks for each Leviathan.

We also get a new climber! The Edge!

This is really just more stuff for Leviathan Wilds! Nothing groundbreaking! (Ha, pun intended). See our review of Leviathan Wilds: Deepvale Expansion to see if you might want to pick up this expansion!

5. Santorini: Riddle of the Sphinx

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

More than any expansion that came out this year, this expansion is a puzzle. It doesn’t even require THAT much from the base game Santorini; mostly just the building pieces and some minis! It’s also a very different kind of game than the original Santorini!

I played it both solo and cooperatively. It’s much easier to play this solo; each scenario is just a puzzle you are trying to solve! The puzzles are about placing city pieces out, using god powers, and trying to get more city pieces (as city pieces are scarce)!

I was able to get some cooperative games played, and as long as everyone promises to NOT be an Alpha Player, they can work well! This expansion isn’t for everyone, as not everyone is going to like the very puzzly scenarios The Riddle of the Sphinx presents! But if a puzzle building game using the pieces of Santorini sounds fun to you, check out our review of Santorini: Riddle of the Sphinx to see if this might be an expansion you enjoy!

4. Unmatched Adventures: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

Expansion Type: Stand-Alone Expansion, Makes The Game Cooperative
Solo Mode: Yes
Requires Another Expansion? No, but you can play with any Unmatched set.

Of course, we had to eat pizza before we played Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Unmatched Adventures.

Our favorite part of this expansion is that it adds two more scenarios to the Unmatched Adventures system! Recall that we loved Unmatched Adventures (see review here), but our main complaint was that the box only came with two scenarios … now we have two more!

I am not personally a TMNT fan, but I really enjoyed the new heroes and villains. My friend Jon (above), who is a huge TMNT fan, really liked the game. I think knowing the IP might move this game to a 10/10 for some people: it really does capture a lot of TMNT feel (with the sewers being a fun way to travel around the city)! See our review here to see if this is something you might like!

3. Dice Throne Adventures: Unchained

Expansion Type: Makes The Game Cooperative, More Content
Solo Mode: Yes (true solo)
Requires Another Expansion? Yes: this is an expansion for Dice Throne Adventures (and I am also assuming you have one of the base Dice Throne character boxes)

Firstly, this is an expansion that just adds more stuff: more Minions, more Loot, and another boss to fight in Dice Throne Adventures! And yes, this is an expansion to an expansion! The original Dice Throne Adventures (which Unchained expands) took the base Dice Throne game and made it solo and cooperative!

But this expansion fixes three major problems! Firstly, there we no solo one-shots in the original Dice Throne Adventures! Unchained allows the solo player to play a one-off little solo Adventure! Unchained adds the Minion Rush solo mode (see above), which allows the solo player to take a new character and try it out in a limited little adventure!

Secondly, Dice Throne Adventures had the problem that the adventure is way too long and too involved. Unchained fixes Dice Throne Adventures by adding a one-shot cooperative adventure, which is a condensed little Minion dash/Boss battle! There’s 6 new maps (see one above) that allow the cooperative players to go through a little adventure in one game session!

Finally, Unchained fixes the “slow upgrade” problem of Dice Throne Adventures! It seems to take forever to upgrade your cards in Dice Throne Adventures, but in the new Minion Rush and One-Shot Adventures, you get a new One-Shot Loot chart! See above! And this time, Loot goes directly into your hand, so you feel the effects of upgrading quickly!

Overall, I think Unchained is an essential upgrade for Dice Throne Adventures! See our review here to see if you agree!

2. Marvel Dice Throne Missions

Expansion Type: Makes The Game Cooperative
Solo Mode: Yes (true solo)
Requires Another Expansion? No (but I am assuming you have one of the base Dice Throne character boxes)

This expansion takes the base Dice Throne and adds two-sided Missions to the game. These missions are usually more exploration on first side (with mini fights against minions) and then fight the big bad boss on the other side (see Doctor Octopus). You can also choose to do longer campaigns with a notion of experience points to help you upgrade.

This game supports true solo so you can take your favorite Dice Throne character through as many missions as you want! You might have noticed that the Missions are VERY Marvel character specific (it is called Marvel Missions), but there’s no reason you couldn’t take any Dice Throne characters on these missions!

I enjoyed the heck out of this as a solo game (especially with Wolverine), but my friends bounced off the cooperative game! I think the mistake there was in NOT letting them try out their hero in a quick head-to-head mode; I think that would have made all the difference! See our review of Marvel Dice Throne Missions here! In the end, I personally loved it, so it had to made near the top of the list!!

1. Kinfire Council: Winds of Change

Expansion Type: Makes The Game Cooperative, More Content
Solo Mode: Yes (two-handed, with special rules*)
Requires Another Expansion? No (but you might want the Kinfire Council upgrade kit with wooden bits, see far right)

Kinfire Council is a pretty cool worker placement game … that I would never want to play in its original form. Wait, Why? It’s rife with back-stabbing, traitoring, and some indirect take-that! The Councilors may side with the city or may side with the Cult trying to take over the city! The base game is all about intrigue within the city! But, as part of the original Kickstarter, Kinfire Council also had the Winds of Change expansion which took out the base back-stabby/traitory traits, replacing them with both a solo and a cooperative mode!

With the Winds of Change expansion, players are city Councillors trying to stop the Cult from ruining their city! Along the way, they vote, upgrade spaces, upgrade workers, arrest cultists, stop threats, build a tower for inspiration, and so many other things! To be fair, the expansion doesn’t change the gameplay THAT much (there is a really neat base worker placement scheme here), but the cooperative mode made me and my friends feel that much more engaged! “This is our city, darn it! We’re not going to let the Cultists take over!! “

I was very surprised just how much I liked this game with the expansion! Me and all my friends all liked it too! We played over multiple game sessions over multiple game nights with multiple groups; it was so fun! We even added a little House Rule to make the game more fun, more cooperative, and more interactive! See our review of Kinfire Council + Winds of Change to see what our House Rule is, and if this is something you might like!

I am kind of surprised this made my #1 expansion! It’s gone up in my estimation every time I have played it! It’s just that … I want to play it more! I am so excited by this, I am going to go out of my way to teach it at Dice Tower West this March! We’ll be playing the cooperative version with my House Rules if you want to play! I just loved how interactive the cooperative version was!!

Top 10 Solo Board and Card Games of 2025!

What makes a good solo game? I find them many times when I start playing solo games to learn games cooperatively for my friends. If a game starts to enchant me and I can’t stop playing it solo … there’s something to it! Most of the games on this list were games I played solo to teach my friends … but then I kept playing! Some of these games will end up on either my Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2025, but some of them may end up on my Top Cooperative Expansions of 2025, but one things for sure … they are all great solo!

My tastes are a little funny; see if you agree or disagree.

For more great solo games, see last year’s list: Top 10 Solo Games of 2024!

Honorable Mention. Broken Sword: Shadows of the Templar (Reforged)

This is a solo game I played quit a bit in 2025, but it can’t “officially” make this list for a number of reasons. For one, it’s a video game! Broken Sword: Shadows of the Templar is a point-and-click solo adventure video game … (See our discussion of point-and-click adventure games here in Top 10 Point-And-Click Adventure Board Games here)! This game is sometimes what I want when I want to play solo: it’s an all-consuming adventure game with story and exploration!

My physical copy arrived about November 2025, so I can still count it as 2025 (even though my digital copy arrived in 2024, so that’s another reason). I know, it doesn’t really belong on this list, but these point-and-click adventure video games totally scratch my solo game itch sometimes! And I spent a fair amount of time playing it solo in 2025!

10. Wroth

What a strange journey Wroth was! This is a solo, competitive, and cooperative area control/area majority game, which is a real interesting mix of game modes! Unfortunately, the solo play is hard to get to because you have to learn the base competitive game BEFORE you can play the solo/cooperative mode!

Along the way, I discovered I actually liked the competitive game but disliked the cooperative game! And somewhat paradoxically (because the solo game is the cooperative game), the solo game ended up being a really fun puzzle! After almost selling the game (because I disliked the cooperative mode so much), it was the solo mode that prompted me to keep this game.

Wroth also has one of my favorite covers of the year! Check out our journey with Wroth to see if this is a solo game you might like!

9. Earthborne Rangers: Legacy of the Ancestors

This is an odd entry for a few reasons! Firstly, this was the expansion for the original Earthborne Rangers that was part of the first, original Kickstarter! Even though I ordered this expansion many moons ago (from the first Kickstarter: see our review here), this expansion didn’t arrive until 2025 (and even BGG says it’s a 2025 release date)!

This probably should go in my Top 10 Cooperative Expansions of 2025, instead of here in my solo list … but the thing is, I only ever played it solo! Even though you can play 1-4 players with Earthborne Rangers, I think one or two players is the best count for Earthborne Rangers! In this case, one player was best!

In some ways, the abundance of storybook games (see our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2025) just reminded me what a great exploration and storybook game this is! I got to relive the fun of exploring in this system in this exploration and story-filled game! I got the explore … The Arcology!

8. Storyfold: Wildwoods

Storyfold: Wildwoods is both a perfect entry and an odd entry to this list. Why is that?

In name, this is a solo game only! It’s about a little girl and her animal companion roaming and exploring a dark and depressing forest. There is a little bit of worker placement, a little bit of dice, and little bit of story, and a lot of dark experience! It’s a solo game!

I ended up playing this solo game as a two-player game, as team solo! In other words, me an my friend Teresa operated the solo game as a team, with both of us working the solo position! We would operate the single position, but discuss tactics and strategy together. I argue that this is still a solo game, but you can just choose to be on team solo together! See our review of Storyfold: Wildwoods to see if you agree!

7. Santorini + Riddle of the Sphinx

Riddle of the Sphinx is an expansion that makes the Santorini base game solo and cooperative.

Of all the games on our list this year, this is the most thinky puzzle-like game; you have to figure out how to build and acquire resources in an environment of scarcity. The gods offer special bonuses and resources as you burn through them.

This game stayed on my solo table until I had to go to Dice Tower West! Although I enjoyed the cooperative game as well, I think this really engaged my solo gamer brain, and I loved moving the characters around to try to solve the building puzzle in an optimal way! Take a look at our review of Riddle of the Sphinx to see if this is something you might enjoy!

6. Unstoppable

Unstoppable is nominally a solo game or 2-player cooperative game … but almost all my plays were solo! Honestly, it feels more like a solo game than a 2-Player game anyways? Honestly, that co-operative mode does feel a little pasted on; I mean, you can’t even share money…

This is a deck-building game with some card-crafting going on! Cards slip into sleeves and upgrade your cards, all while you are still trying to build a deck!

There’s some really interesting mechanisms going on in here, as the things you battle flip and give you good stuff! Overall, I got to play through all the scenarios in the base box and really enjoyed this deck-builder. One question you may want to ask yourself: would you prefer Unstoppable or Astro Knights (both deck-building games)? See our review for more discussion!

5. War Story

This was such a unique adventure to play through solo. This is all about being part of the French Resistance in World War II, and it’s pretty brutal. You shoot Nazis, see most of your team die, and try to survive a wartime environment.

Even crazier, all of this happens in a Choose Your Own Adventure book situation! This is a game where your choices really do matter; everything you do affects the final outcome and how well your team does! Do you show mercy on the Nazi your captured? How do you silence the little boy so he doesn’t alert the authorities? Everything you do matters!

The game comes with 3 adventure books, as a full adventure unwinds over three big sessions (and each session affects the others)! After playing all the way through solo, I was emotionally exhausted but strangely fulfilled! Take a look at our review of War Story: Occupied France to see if this unique experience is up your alley!

(This is a game that has a 2024 release date on BGG, but try as hard as we could, we couldn’t get it until 2025, so we count it as 2025)

4. Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game

I ended up enjoying the solo mode for this much more than I expected! For a cooperative trick-taking game that has a lot of similarities to The Crew, its one big difference is that it has a solo mode! And it’s very very good! If you love Lord of the Rings, this is an easy recommendation. Even if you only “like” Lord of the Rings, it’s still a great solo game!

Over the course of several weeks, I ended up playing solo through all 18 chapters! Each chapter has a nominal play-time of 20 minutes … but if you fail a chapter, you have to keep playing it until you win!

The production on this game is amazing, the solo game is amazing, it’s quite thematic, and the 18-Chapter campaign was so much fun! It’s easy to get this to the table … as even though I was a little sick, it was engaging enough to forget I was sick for a week. I made it through all 18 chapters solo, and it was a blast.

See here for our review of Lord Of The Rings, The Fellowship of the Rings: The Trick-Taking Game to see if this something that might appeal to your inner solo gamer!

(This is a game that has a 2024 release date on BGG, but try as hard as we could, we couldn’t get it until 2025, so we count it as 2025)

3. DC Super Heroes United: Batman Hush

DC Super Heroes United: Batman Hush is a great game for both cooperative and solo. In the end, though, I probably played it a lot more solo than I did cooperatively! In fact, I couldn’t stop playing it solo!

I ended playing just about every combination of heroes and villains from this base box, as a solo game! Now, you have to understand that I strongly prefer playing Marvel and DC United solo as 2-Player multi-handed, where I operate two characters and alternate between them as if it were a 2-Player cooperative game. I find the “official” solo mode of the United games just too contorted.

It was such a blast to play DC heroes like Batman and Robin together solo! See above.

I couldn’t stop playing this solo! I kept trying more and more! I even started pulling out some Marvel United and combining DC United and Marvel United together! See above at Batman hangs out in Stark Labs! I got such a giggle imagining Bruce Wayne critiquing Tony Stark’s tech!

See our review of DC Super Heroes: Batman Hush to see if this is something you might like as a solo player. This probably would have been out #1 solo game of 2025, but the next two games offered such unique solo experiences, they had to be just above it!

2. Arydia

It was very hard to choose between #1 and #2 on this list; either of them could have been #1! I also feel bad not putting Arydia in our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2025! In the end though, I only played this solo, but I had a heck of a great time!

Arydia is a huge adventuring/dungeon crawler game with tons of content: maps and cards! See above! And the components are just fantastic!

This game, with its unique map(s) system(s) and combat stayed on my table for a straight week as I couldn’t stop playing playing! I wanted to see what would come next in this world!

This is an adventure-laden dungeon crawl that reminded me a lot of the old computer game Ultima IV: it had combat, little maps, big maps, and a big adventure! I had such a wonderful time playing this solo! Check out our solo review of Arydia to see if this is something you might like!

1. Star Trek: Captain’s Chair

At the end of the day, I slightly prefer space over fantasy, so I think that’s why Star Trek: The Captain’s Chair ended being the #1 solo game of 2025 for me!

This is such a neat deck-building game, but calling it JUST a deck-building game seems to be an insult! There’s so much to this game that it actually almost took me the whole year to absorb it, get it to the table, and play it! Make no mistake, this is a big and complicated game with lots of rules! The rulebook is very very good, but I joke that it feels like a legal document!

One major feature of the game is that there are two solo modes: the Cadet Training Mode (see rules above) aka easy mode, and the normal solo game aka hard mode! The easy mode gives you a chance to learn the systems of the game in a simplified scenario!

The Cadet Training Mode also a great way to learn a new Captain’s Deck! Another great feature of this game is that every Captain in the game (see above) has a unique play style that is encapsulated in a different Captain’s deck! Sisko is different than Picard who is different from Koloth! See the six different Captains above!

In the end, it’s the normal solo mode (which has its own rulebook!) that makes this game a wonderful challenge. An AI runs another captain playing against you; see above as I play Picard facing off against AI Koloth! This solo mode is challenging and interesting and has a ton of variety as each Captain is so different!

This is a large, sprawling, solo game with ships warping to planets, planets being taken over, landing parties landing, crew members beaming to ships, crew members on duty, drafting new people, cargo, allies, and ships on your way to being the better Captain!

It’s hard to recommend this game for many reasons: the base game is actually competitive (the solo modes are add-ons), the game is pretty complicated with a legalese rulebook, and apparently it’s sold out everywhere as I write this! Despite all that, I had a heck of a time playing Star Trek: Captain’s Chair as a solo player! It was such a unique experience that it had to be my #1 solo game of 2025. See our review here to see if this might be something you enjoy!

Top 10 Cooperative Board and Card Games of 2025!

Welcome to the end of 2025! This is our top 10 games that were from 2025*! The best of the best!

This was a slightly weird year for cooperative games, if only because it’s not 100% clear when some of our favorite games came out! Some of the games on our list were “officially” released in 2024, but as a real playing customer, we couldn’t get them until 2025. This is also a reminder that we here at CO-OP Gestalt pay for every single game we get as a real consumer! We receive absolutely no consideration of any kind from Publishers for free review copies of games or expedited delivery or anything like that! We just play cooperative games because we love them so much that we want to share them!

Some games you might think would be on this list might have made our Top 10 Solo Card and Board Games of 2025 or our Top 10 Cooperative Expansions of 2025!

There’s some great cooperative games that came out this year, let’s take a look!

Honorable Mention: Tales From The Red Dragon Inn

Plays Solo: Yes (two-handed or with a special companion)
Player Count: 1 to 4
Ages: 13+
Length: 90-120 minutes

So, this is an example of game that we picked up on the second Kickstarter; it really did officially come out in 2023, but the second Kickstarter delivered to us in 2025. So, we are counting this unofficially as a Honorable Mention for 2025 … because it’s so good!

This is dungeon crawler game that is fun and quirky, but it has a well thought out combat system!

Despite it having a Variable Turn Order system (we have so many opinions on Variable Turn Order), this game is a fun dungeon crawler. We joked that this should be called Lighthaven! It’s like Gloomhaven in many ways, but so much more light-hearted! Take a look at our review to see if this is a game you might like!

10. The Dark Quarter

Plays Solo: Yes (operate two characters)
Player Count: 1 to 4
Ages: 18+
Length: 120+ minutes

This is more of a story than a game; I was originally hoping for more of a detective game set in voodoo-laden New Orleans, but this is more of an adult crime novel set in a voodoo-esque New Orleans.

This is a game with lots of plot points that unfurl like an adult crime thriller on HBO or Netflix or Apple TV. As you going through the game, you are enjoying the story as it happens, and you get to make some choices along the way. Rather than watching an HBO crime drama, you are part of it!

An App runs this; this is one of four Storybook games in our Top 10 this year! This is less interactive and more about coming along for the story! The Dark Quarter also very very 18+ with adult language and adult content. If you want to immerse yourself in a crime story in New Orleans, there is nothing else like it! Just be aware that it’s very story-driven, but maybe not too much game. Take a look at our review to see if you might like it. My friends and I enjoyed the experience, but others didn’t, which is why this is only #10.

9. Wandering Galaxy

Plays Solo: Yes (very special mode: true solo, but has two sidekicks)
Player Count: 1 to 6
Ages: 14+
Length: 60+ minutes

This is the third in the series of storybook app games from Plaid Hat: the first two being Forgotten Waters (which made #8 on our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2020) and Freelancers (which made the #4 spot on our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2022). These are all silly games where players go through an adventure together!

This particular silly adventure is set in space!! An app (website) controls your progress through the story, as it offers voice-acting as it reads little vignettes aloud! This is a space-based game where players roam the galaxy in search of adventure, using some worker placement and deck-building along the way.

This is a very cooperative game, as players must operate many positions of a star ship together (like the crew of the Star Trek Enterprise with helm, weapons, … etc!) This is one of four Storybook games that made our Top 10 list this year! This one concentrates on the humor and the voice-acting of the app to tell the story! See our review to see if Wandering Galaxies is a game you might like!

(This was also a game where we got the physical copy very very late in December 2024, but the app didn’t “really” work until 2025, so we count this as a 2025 game)

8. Vantage

Plays Solo: Yes (true solo)
Player Count: 1 to 6
Ages: 14+
Length: 120-180 minutes

Vantage is one of the four storybook games on our Top 10 this year! It’s a very divisive game, which is why it’s lower on the list! Some people love it and some people hate it!! Why? Vantage weaves in and out of different definitions: Is it a storybook game? Is it an exploration game? Is it an adventure game? Is it a campaign game? Take a look at our review of Vantage here (What Vantage Is and Isn’t) to see if this is something you might like.

At the end of the day, me and my friends had fun exploring this game world with it’s beautiful art and very different worlds. The solo experience is good, but I believe this is a better shared experience as a fully cooperative game, as players read to each other and explore with each other. This is a gorgeous and well-produced game that you may love too!

7. One-Hit Heroes

Plays Solo: Officially no (see the cover), but there are two solo modes in rulebook
Player Count: 2 to 4
Ages: 10+
Length: 20 minutes

This game made our list this year because it felt like I could bring it out to both gamers and non-gamers, and both sets seemed to enjoy it! This is a simpler game that only last 20 minutes (but you can keep playing if you like the little campaign); it’s all about battling some bad guys together! It’s major premise is that if you take one hit, you die (much like real life)! So, you have to work together to keep out to harms way!

I was able to play the game with my nieces, and they had fun! They aren’t really gamers, but they were good sports who enjoyed the experience!

This is a light, bright, fun and somewhat innovative cooperative game. I am glad to have some lighter, simpler games to teach my gamer and non-gamer friends and family. See our full review here of One-Hit Heroes to see if you might like it!

6. Secrets of Zorro

Plays Solo: Yes (true solo)
Player Count: 1 to 4
Ages: 10+
Length: 45-60 minutes

The Secrets of Zorro is the surprise hit of the year for my groups! We played it over several weeks of game nights because it was such a fun and thematic cooperative worker placement game!

The cooperative worker placement works so well in this game as you move to places for upgrades, visit the local tavern to get rumours and tactical info, visit the blacksmith for stuff, visit your home for “stuff our Dadleft us”, and just try to get ready for the craziness of the night mode!

This is a game that embraces Player Selected Turn Order (one of my favorite mechanisms)! It is a thematic and interactive romp through the mythos of Zorro! Check out our review of the Secrets of Zorro to see if this is a game you might like (we also suggest you have House Rule that makes the game more fun and more thematic and more cooperative). This is a Hidden Gem!

5. The Lord of The Rings, Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game

Plays Solo: Yes (very different solo mode)
Player Count: 1 to 4
Ages: 10+
Length: 20 minutes (per episode)

As we head into the top 5 games, realize that any of these could have been our #1 game!

This little cooperative trick-taking game took all my gaming groups by storm! My friends in Las Cruces played though the whole campaign! Me and my friends played it over and over and over at Dice Tower West! My friends in Tucson loved it! Everybody who played this loved it!

Everyone seems to agree that this is a very thematic game, with characters from The Fellowship of the Rings having specific thematic goals to meet as you play. The game unfolds over many episodes, and each episode is a piece of the story of The Fellowship of the Rings! I was told by my friends (who love Lord of the Rings) how thematic the story and episodes were!

This made the #2 spot on our Top 10 Cooperative Trick-Taking Games, and it is a fantastic game! It is very easy to get into and everyone I played this with seemed to love it! Check out our review here to see if this is a game you might like!

(This is also a game that BGG lists as 2024, as I think it was released in Germany first; but I tried like crazy to get a copy and could only get one delivered to me in 2025 in the USA!)

4. Tales of the Arthurian Knights

Plays Solo: Yes (very different solo mode)
Player Count: 1 to 4
Ages: 12+
Length: 45 minutes per player

This is the fourth and final storybook game on this list. This was far and away my friends’ favorite game of the year! They liked it so much they went out and bought their own copy almost immediately!

This is a game all about exploring the world of Camelot (and yes, it can be a silly place with lots of Monty Python references) while reading flowery text from the Book of Tales! See above! Of all the Storybooks on this list, this is the more prosy! This would easily make our Top 10 Cooperative Storybook Games!

It’s hard to believe that this is actually a competitive game FIRST, and that the cooperative and solo modes are actually add-on modes! Regardless, the only way me and my friends play this Storybook game is solo and cooperatively! And it works so well! My friend Teresa actually borrowed my copy to play at her Mom’s birthday party and they adored it! Take a look at our review of Tales of Arthurian Knights to see if this is something you might like.

(This is also one of those games that BGG lists as 2024 but we tried like crazy to get a copy, and we could only get one delivered in 2025, so we call this a 2025 game!)

3. Invincible: The Card Game

Plays Solo: Yes (true solo and two-handed solo)
Player Count: 1 to 4
Ages: 14+
Length: 60 minutes (well, it’s 2x that)

Invincible: The Card Game (not the confused with other Invincible games) is a re-implementation of Astro Knights (the cooperative Deck-Building game: see here and here). Does this re-theming and re-implementation work? Absolutely!

Cooperatively, everyone gets to take the role of a Superhero in this very thematic deck–building game! This is also the best iteration of the Astro Knights system, partly because it add the Assist keyword which really brought out extra cooperation as we played!!

See our review of Invincible: The Card Game to see if this is something you might like! Oh yes! And you can even mix this with Astro Knights if you wish!

2. Ham Helsing

Plays Solo: Yes (true solo and two-handed solo)
Player Count: 1 to 4
Ages: 10+
Length: 60-90 minutes

I really did not expect Ham Helsing to be so high on my list, but this game was so much fun! Ham Helsing is a comic-book universe (of which I knew nothing about until I played this game)! The art and cards in this game follow the style of the original artist Rich Moyer, and I gotta say, it works! This is basically a cooperative boss-battler game where each player takes the role of a character from Ham Helsing!

This is a card-crafting game where you can upgrade your cards by adding clear plastic to them! See above! This is definitely a gimmick, but it’s a gimmick that works! It’s fun to upgrade and choose your little cards and slide them into the sleeves!

Between the clear cards, the cute art, and the acrylic standees, this game’s production is gorgeous! There is also a sense of humor that underlies all of this, giving it an air of extra fun! Take a look at our review of Ham Helsing to see if this is a game you might like! We loved it!

1. DC Super Heroes United: Hush

Plays Solo: Yes (so many ways, but just play two-handed)
Player Count: 1 to 4 (5, depending on the mode)
Ages: 14+
Length: 30 minutes (well, usually longer)

As I wait for my kickstarter of the original DC Super Heroes United (which was #1 on our Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games of 2025) to deliver (which looks like it won’t deliver until 2026), CMON gave us an early sneak peek of the system with DC Super Heroes United: Batman Rush. Surprisingly, I had never read Batman: Hush (a well regarded Batman story by Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee), so this gave me a reason to finally pick up and read it! It was great!

DC United: Hush is a beautiful game; it is basically the next small evolution of the Marvel United system that we love so much!

The game contains equipment (one of the newer additions to the game system, which does make the game feel like you have a little more choice), plus a few new kinds of cards. It’s the next (and probably best) evolution of this system!

But most importantly, it add DC heroes like Batman and Robin and DC Villains like Hush and Joker and Harley Quinn!

This game was on my table for weeks as I played through all the combinations of heroes and villains both solo and cooperatively! My friends and I played cooperatively, and this system just works so well as a group game! People can choose the heroes they want! And re-use symbols!

One of the best parts of this game is now you can play with DC and Marvel universes together!! I got such a giggle when Batman and Robin were on SHIELD HQ battling Marvel’s Taskmaster! See above!

This game was on my table for weeks and I still want to keep playing it. I knew it when I got it, and I know it now as I write this: DC Super Heroes United: Batman Hush is my game of the year, not only for being a great game, but also introducing me to the Batman: Hush story!

Origin Story: Adding a Cooperative Mode

Origin Story is a competitive trick-taking game for 1-4 Players. It has a Super Hero theme, as people grow into their Hero forms over 5 rounds. At its core, it is a trick-taking game: Players gain tricks for victory points, gain powers for special abilities, and emerge slowly over time. The player with the most Victory Points after 5 rounds wins.

We played Origin Story, admired how well it works, especially with the powers, strategizing a limit of 5 rounds and the artwork is amazing. While playing, we couldn’t help to think “Being a Super Hero game, is there a way to play cooperatively?” We fervently decided a new mode of gameplay should be added; a cooperative mode! Over a month or so, we developed some simple rules to make an optional cooperative mode for Origin Story. These rules probably need a little more play-testing, but frankly, we all enjoyed the game in a whole new way with this cooperative mode. Now, as well as playing the current mode to be the best Super Hero and win, all the Super Heroes can now work together to save the planet in a cooperative mode!

Communication

We loved the cooperative trick-taking game Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring Trick-Taking Game! It inspired us to make these rules! See our review here! It just works so well as a cooperative trick-taking game! Just like LOTR, the Origin Story cooperative game keeps the basic limited communication rules; you can’t ever talk about what’s in your hand.

About the only rule in LOTR that we didn’t like was that you couldn’t really consult each other about which characters to take; there’s not SUPPOSED to be any conversation about who takes which character, because it might give away info about your hand. It doesn’t really give away that much, and we really enjoyed the discussions and interactions that happened, so we inserted a house rule saying we COULD discuss the characters in the LOTR trick-taking game.

So, in Origin Story Cooperative Rules, players are allowed to discuss who should go into Hero mode and Secret Identity mode; you may have full conversations. The Origin Story cooperative game encourages a little more discussion than the competitive mode, but to be clear; you still can’t communicate what’s in your hand (unless you are forced to by a power).

Ruleset

We really liked the idea that a Super Hero game should be cooperative.

See rules below. The current version is 1.0.0. As we get feedback, we may update this.

Version 1.0.1: Some disambiguation, added notion of notating travel with markers
Version 1.0.2: Added note, making sure each player takes control of a marker

OriginStoryCooperativeMode-1.0.2 Download

Ham Helsing! Pig Puns For The Win! A Really Great Cooperative and Solo Game!

Ham Helsing is a cooperative boss-battling board game from Fireside games. I had heard about this game various places online, and I was excited for it! I ended up ordering it off the Fireside games web site and had it shipped directly to my house: It delivered in the first week of October 2025.

So, this game is based on the Graphic Novel Ham Helsing by Rich Moyer. I literally know nothing about the graphic novel! Luckily, you can play the game without ever having read the Graphic Novel! I am sure there are references and funny callbacks which would make the game more enjoyable, but you don’t need any of that to enjoy this game. Spoiler Alert: I really liked this game, despite not knowing anything about this world.

What is this game? This is a cooperative card-crafting and boss-battling game.

Let’s take a look below!

Unboxing and Gameplay

This feels like a little smaller game than a Ticket to Ride size box. See Coke can for scale above.

The components are all very nice and cartoony. They seem to fit this world … which I know nothing about. But the art is all very consistent with the cover and the cartoon pigs.

Each player takes the role of one of the main characters from the comic book (left-to-right): Malcolm, Lobos, Ham, or Ronin. See above. I LOVE the acrylic standees!!

The players choose one of the 4 bad guys in the game: Hen, Chad, Robo-Knight, or Silk (with Silk being the hardest). See above. The players must defeat that bad guy to win.

Players move around the world of Ham Helsing on the map above.

Little minions cover this world: you must keep these minions under control or they will “destroy” locations on the board!

Each Location has an upper limit of how many minions can be there: note the 3 above on Gigantovia … if more than 3 minions ever end up a Location, it is lost and much more expensive to deal with!

In an interesting twist, the minions come out (from a bag; see above… it’s quite nice and big) and attach to all Locations adjacent to the player! This is an interesting way to have the minions overrun the board! You kind of control where the minions come out by the nature of where you end up at the end of your turn!

How do the heroes operate? Each Hero (see Ham above) gets their own character board and their own unique deck of cards. See above how Ham has his own deck of specialty cards! (Yes, they are sleeved, yes, you need the sleeves, but yes, they do come with the game!)

See above as Lobos has slightly different cards!

Players each have deck of cards that can do things like fight, move, get gold, and invoke Knuckles! See above!

Players play these cards to get stuff done: see above. The icons on the left of the card are the actions you can do (attack a blue or yellow enemy above).

This is called a deck-crafting game (or you might hear card-crafting game if you have played Mystic Vale) where you can add little clear sleeves to improve the cards as you play!

The bad guys also does bad stuff … see his cards above. This is a quick game; you only have 5 rounds to take out the bad guy! This is a boss-battler game! If you fail to take out the bad guy after 5 rounds, you lose!

I really like the way this game looks. See a 2-Player set-up above!

Rulebook

The rulebook was okay.

The form factor is a little off—it doesn’t fit well on the chair next to me. This gets like a C+ on the Chair Test; you can use it on the chair next to you, but it could have been better.

The Components section made me very grumpy. There is a little list of components at the bottom of page 1 (see above), but it has NO correlating pictures! I had to figure out what-was-what from context as I set it up! That made me a bit grumpy.

The Set-up spanned 3 pages? And you had to cross page boundaries? I feel like this Set-Up could have been on two pages facing each other making it easier to read. This rulebook feels very “crammed” in there, like there were trying to get page count as small as possible. I appreciate not wasting space, but this rulebook feels very cramped.

I feel like all the rules were in here, but for some reason, the flow seemed “off” to me. I found rules, but not always where I expected them. But they were in there.

The rulebook does have an Index, but it’s not that useful? I hate saying this, because I applaud Ham Helsing for having an Index! … but I just didn’t find it useful? I went looking for a few terms and found them in SO MANY PLACES (Health track pretty much lists all pages of the rulebook) that it was almost useless. This index needed to be curated a little better, and use italics or bold to distinguish mentions vs definitions. Sigh. I really like that they tried using the Index. It didn’t quite work.

I found all the rules, I was able to get the game played, but the rulebook “flow” seemed off; I think it just felt too cramped.

The rulebook was just okay, but it does teach the game, so I guess that’s all that matters.

Deck-Crafting

I think the reason I was so excited for this game was the deck-crafting (or card-crafting, since you are constructing a better card … I wonder if Fireside Games can’t use this term because Mystic Vale copyrighted it?). This is where you upgrade the cards in your hand to make the cards better and better (by allowing each card to do more stuff).

For example: Take a look at Pig Up The Pace above. All the base card does is move 2. (And yes, there are a LOT of pig puns in this game. Get used to it). Pig Up The Pace is a pretty minimal card. BUT! I am about to card-craft!

By putting the clear upgrade into the sleeve, I can add more actions to the left side of the card! I can attack red +1, and attack a yellow for +1 now!

By the time I am done “upgrading” the card, Pig Up The Pace not only moves Ham twice (the original action) but also can attack with +1 red and +1 yellow attacks!

Players can buy these upgrades every turn; the cost is on the upper right. Players cooperatively figure out who should buy what when they buy … this is a cooperative game after all.

There are two types of upgrades: mostly attack (see above for that deck) …

… and specials (which have special text). Usually, the specials are more powerful but more expensive.

You gotta upgrade the heck out of your cards if you want to win! See Thwip above with 2 or 3 upgrades in it!

Solo Game

So congratulations to Ham Helsing for following Saunders’ Law and having solo rules!

Unfortunately, the built-in solo rules are half a page of exceptions. And they aren’t even true solo play rules! You still have to play two characters in the official solo mode; the only real savings of the built-in solo mode is that you have one deck to manage (instead of two).

Instead of the built-in solo mode, I recommend that you play 2-handed solo with all the normal rules: take control of two characters and alternate between them as if you were playing a 2-Player game!! The 2-handed solo mode is much better than the built-in solo mode! In the 2-handed solo mode, the game plays as it’s mean to be played, without any special exceptions. See my 2-handed solo mode play above.

I really enjoyed my first solo play, but boy did I get crushed! I even played the simplest Villain, Hen! I just couldn’t do enough damage to Hen before the end of the game!

There’s quite a bit of strategy in how you handle the minions across the board! See above! Get too many minions in a region, and you may lose the region or have have them bleed into your regions and do damage! You WANT to kill the minions yourself, because you get gold and experience … which keeps you upgrading as you play! But you also need to keep the minions on the board under control!

You can use Knuckles (see above) to help you keep the Locations clean of minions, but then you don’t get that much needed gold and experience!

My second game was MUCH better as I started to get the hang of how to balance all the different systems in the game! See above as Ham and Lobos take out Hen!

I had a BLAST playing this game solo. It was so much fun upgrading cards, figuring out strategies, keeping minions under control, but still trying to get enough gold to keep upgrades happening! There were so many delicious decisions!

And the game is just adorable. I think the look-and-feel made this solo game even a little more light-hearted and fun.

I could have done without all the pig puns, but it made it more fun. EDIT: That’s not true. I loved the pig puns, but I couldn’t admit it without some therapy.

Great decisions, great upgrades, great fun.

Cooperative Game

I may have actually done my friends a little disservice by discussing all the strategy up front! I didn’t give them a chance to discover all the repercussions themelves!! Still, we had a full 4-Player game and has a great time!

The cooperation was great; we worked together to keep the minions under control, all the while getting gold for upgrades! I didn’t use the trade action to any effect when I played solo, but I did see Madelyn and Andrew use it very well to make sure they had the right attacks and cards to deal with the minions!

Although ending up on the same Location at the end of your turn as another player allows the player to draw an extra card, sometimes that comes with a cost! At one point, we accidentally lost the Swamp `O Lies because we tended to congregate there! And the minions swarmed up! GULP! We saw yet another delicious trade-off … stay together to get more cards, but disperse to keep the minions away! Neat tradeoff!

One thing that seems overlooked is the question: Can you share gold in the Market Phase? Players are all together buying cards! Can you share? It’s not addressed in the rules!!! There is a trade action players can invoke during Play Cards phase which allows players to share gold, cards, shield, and katana. But the rule is very clear: only during your turn! Since it’s not specifically addressed in the Market Phase rules, it seems clear: you can’t trade/share gold!!

This problem reminded us a little of The Secrets of Zorro (see review here) when, even though we were all together in an end phase, we couldn’t share gold! See above. We house-ruled The Secrets of Zorro to allowing sharing then, and that little change made the game more cooperative and more fun! So, we are house-ruling that here as well: you can share gold (or cards or normally sharable stuff) in the Market Phase … and it even feels like it makes sense thematically! We are all shopping together at the same time at the same Rat Store! (Seriously, rats are selling us stuff. I am not making that up). It makes sense to say “Hey Lobos! Can I borrow 1 gold??” And to allow it … “Sure!”

In the end, all of us took turns beating up the Hen together! So, we all participated and we all felt we mattered in the final rounds of the game! And we won!

There was a lot of cooperation and a lot of fun.

Reactions

Positive reviews.

Andrew: 6.5/10 (which is actually high for him). It was too easy, but we also only played the easiest of the villains AND I may have helped too much in getting strategy going!
Teresa: 8/10
Madeyln: green (doesn’t have numbers; she either likes it (green) or doesn’t (red))

Rich: Wow. I loved this game. I would love to play it solo or cooperatively. 9/10 because there so many delicious decisions AND you get to card-craft!

A Worry

After two games (just TWO), you can already see fingerprints on the clear sleeves. I worry that this might become a bigger problem the more you play. At some point, I might have to go in an windex/clean all my cards? That doesn’t sound like fun!

The Randomness

There are two dice that you roll occasionally; usually for when you fight the big bad guy. The bad guy, in the final combat, BLOCKS the color of attack you roll. With four colors of attack, you are guaranteed that at least 2 of your attack types will get through, maybe more? So, you always have a sense of how much damage you will do.

The other major source of randomness is pulling the minions from the bag. You can only take out minions you have matching attacks for, so you can get screwed if the wrong cards or wrong minions come out.

But, I never felt like the randomness was too much. You had a lot of control on how many minions came out, based on where you ended your turn; this was a unique way of dealing with “where do the minions come out”! It is completely deterministic where they come out! I really liked that choice, as it gave us yet another delicious thing to think about!

And Knuckles was always an option to keep the minions under control too … couldn’t fight anything? Let Knuckles go disperse those minions for you!

I always felt like I could do something on my turns. I did not think the randomness was unhinged by any means.

Conclusion

Wow, Ham Helsing is a great game! The toy factor is high with the card-crafting system and the super cute art! The components are just great! The solo and cooperative games were super fun with lots of delicious tensions about how/when to keep the minions under control, balanced with keeping gold coming in so you can perform upgrades!

My only concern is that this game may be too much for younger audiences; the game says 10+ (which is probably the age range of the graphic novel), but there are a lot of rules to keep track of, and a lot of subsystems to keep operational as you play. I worry that a couple of 10 years olds trying to learn this game without anyone present might really bounce off this game. Ham Helsing is a lot more complicated (there are a lot of rules and a lot of interaction) than it looks! Maybe make sure you shepherd younger kids if you get this for them?

Other than that, I adored this game. 9/10 for both solo and cooperative for me. So neat and so fun. I admit that my rating of Ham Helsing was higher than my friends, but they liked it a lot too! And to be clear; you DO NOT need to know anything about the Graphic Novel to enjoy this game! None of us knew this IP, and we still enjoyed the game tremendously.

Invincible: The Card Game. Review After Full Playthrough!

So, just so you know: we are talking about Invincible: The Card Game! This is the one that has the subtitle Guardians of the Globe (see above). You have to be careful! There are at least 3 or 4 other Invincible games: some of them great (see our review of Invincible: The Hero-Building Game) and some of them … less so. What about this one?

Invincible: The Card Game was up on Kickstarter back in October 2024: see link here. I love the Invincible universe in the comic-book world, so I went all-in and backed the full Kickstarter and probably got waaaay too much: see above.

The Kickstarter had originally promised delivery in January 2025, but it didn’t arrive until the last week of September 2025. It was about 9 months late, but given the state of the world and shipping, and it’s a Kickstarter, I guess that’s ok.

Invincible: The Card Game is a cooperative deck-building game for 1-4 Players. It’s very very much like Astro Knights , a cooperative deck-building game we’ve reviewed here (Astro Knights) and here (Astro Knights: Eternity).

In fact, Invincible: The Card Game is so similar to Astro Knights, you can combine them and play them together!

Let’s take a look!

Kickstarter Extras: How Much Do You Need?

So, before we get going too much, we should have a quick discussion on “Should I get the Kickstarter extras?”

The “bad-guy” mat (see above) is probably worth getting. It helps organize all the cards and where they go during play. I don’t love how “busy” the art looks; I feel like it gets in the way of gameplay a little, as the art is distracting.

The “good guy” mat I was less in love with (I got four, one for each player). See above!! I don’t love the layout for a bunch of reasons. For one, I want to use the bottom space for “cards in hand”, but the “invention” space takes away from that, so that the whole bottom of the mat seems like wasted space. I would have put the “invention” to the left or somewhere out of the way! The “invention” is a very short-lived concept in the game (usually, you buy your invention in the first few turns), so I wouldn’t devote so much space (if any, esp. at the bottom) to such a short-lived card.

A bigger problem is the discard pile: it should be turned sideways! For one, it’s clearer the cards are discarded (remember, the “Discard Pile” notation is under all those cards!). Secondly, the Afterburn effects are harder to read when the discard is up right! See above!!! What does that say?

The entire purpose of the Afterburn effects is that while a card is in your discard, you can use that ability! So, it should be easier to read!

We saw the Afterburn idea first in Astro Knights! See how much easier it is to read those effects when your discard is sideways? See above! (There was no player mat for Astro Knights, so we could do the right thing and have the discard sideways).

Another problem with the mats were the Assist Zone! You are supposed to put cards in the Assist Zone when you Assist (a really great concept in the game), but there’s one main problem with that! More than once, you “forget” about the card being in your hand because it’s in the Assist Zone and you take your turn “forgetting” to use the card! It would be MUCH better if you just kept your hand of cards in front of you and “nudged” the Assisted cards up an inch to show you’ve used them for assist! That way, they stay in your hand, but you have marked that it’s Assist has been used! See above as Eve has a card in the Assist Zone, but it looks like she only has 4 cards in hand! It’s too easy to forget that card is still in your hand. Just nudge the card up to show it has assisted.

The rest of the player mat worked fine, but I think it should be thinner (for more space for “cards in hands” and moving inventions), and it should have the discard space sideways.

Of course, mats are always nice because they make cards easier to pick up and handle.

Another thing that came with the Kickstarter are sleeves! My “default position” is that you should usually get sleeves when you have a deck-builder. And I think that’s still true here.

I am VERY HAPPY that the Turn Order deck has its own sleeves! If you ONLY sleeve a few cards in the game, you MUST sleeve the Turn Order deck! These cards are touched all the time! After many games of Aeon’s End and Astro Knights, trust me on this! My original Aeon’s End Turn Order deck is a little grody!!

The sleeves are very nice for Hero cards (see above); these are the yellow sleeves with Invincible on back! Unfortunately, there are no sleeves for the “bad guy” cards! If you want to sleeve them, you’ll have to use different sleeves (as the “bad guys” cards have a different card back). So, I went all-in to get all sleeves, and I was a little disappointed I couldn’t sleeve the entire game! I love the Hero card sleeves (they are very very nice), but I can’t sleeve the bad guys cards without having to use/buy a separate set of sleeves (I think I have some leftovers from Thunderstone Quest I can use).

There’s also two expansions that came with the Kickstarter; these are just more heroes and more villains. We’ll (probably) review those separately later.

I admit I was a little underwhelmed by the extras. The only thing I’d say you should probably get is the “bad guy” mat, but even then, I thought it was too busy (from an art perspective). The sleeves were nice, but realize that they ONLY sleeve the Hero cards, and you’ll have to get more sleeves for “bad guy” cards!! The player mats were the biggest disappointment: they were too tall and needed some reorganization … I’d only get the player mats if you love this game.

The only thing you HAVE to do is make sure you sleeve the Turn Order cards (either with the given cards or some others). These cards get handled SO MUCH as you play.

Rulebook

This is an excellent rulebook. It’s “essentially”, in many ways, a copy of the Astro Knights: Eternity rulebook in turns of layout and progression.

The rulebook gets an A- on the Chair Test. It opens up and lays flat on the chair next to me, making it easy to consult. It has big fonts, lots of pictures, and is easy to read. It’s very easy to consult on the chair next to me. I wish the font were just a little bigger.

The Components page has pictures with annotating text.

Even after pointing this out in the Astro Knights: Eternity review (see here), they still don’t note that the Turn Order cards are in deck 1A!!!! I think this will still confuse some people, as they expect them in hand (before opening anything … remember: all decks say STOP! At the top, so you are reluctant to open anything right when you get the game).

One huge mistake the rulebook still makes (and we had the same problem with Astro Knights: Eternity) is not addressing how to play for the first time UP FRONT!!! See ON PAGE 28, there’s a small sentence that says: “To play our expedition, skip reading this rules section for now…” … however, in order to play the game you still kinda have to start opening decks up! It would have been SIGNIFICANTLY BETTER if the rulebook, on page 2, said something like “To play and uncover all content in this game, you will need to play the pre-written expedition! See page 28!” Since I had played Astro Knights: Eternity and had to suffer through this already, I knew how to do this. New players may not. Caveat Emptor.

I like how the rulebook has summaries of the cards immediately after the Components page. I also like how the “new rules” are emphasized in Red above … The Assist keyword is a new rule (but not if you know Astro Knights: Eternity … that was kinda/sorta/not really like the Bolster keyword … it’s still newish for some people).

It is interesting how the set-up isn’t until halfway through the book … still, I think it works. If you have the mats, like I do, this isn’t AT ALL what my table looked like. Oh well.

The end of the book has keywords summaries: it’s not an Index, but it’s probably as good as we can hope. I consulted the back of the book several times during gameplay.

Overall, this was an excellent rulebook full of good examples. I wish they had addressed the first play issue better. Especially since I didn’t get the First Play Sheet (see later).

Unboxing and Gameplay

This is a actually a pretty thick box; see Can of Coke above for perspective.

It’s about half the width of a Ticket To Ride size box.

This is a cooperative deck-building game, so there are a lot of cards. See above.

The expedition book will tell you when to open the decks above. The game has a campaign (called an Expedition) which will allow you to open up and see all the content in the game over 4 games. This is a completely resettable campaign (as I did reset everything after playing it solo).

Each Player takes the role of a Hero from the Invincible universe. If you don’t know the Invincible universe, you aren’t alone. I know it from collecting comic books for years, and many people know it from the recent animated show. None of my friends knew this universe. Each character is kind of different (some have more slots, more hit points, faster power chart), but what distinguishes each character is their “special power”.

If, for example, you look closely at Robot above (and yes, that’s his name in the comics), you’ll see written in blue (corresponding to the power chart) his special abilities: Stun each Enemy or Gain the top two Tech supply…

This is a deck-building game, so every player starts with a “crappy” hand of cards that they will upgrade and cull as the game goes.

Like most deck-building games, you can buy cards with Fuel to get better Fuel, Tech, or Weapons!! The six piles above form the market; the top two piles get you better Fuel (purple) the bottom three piles give you better Weapons (orange) and the the upper right pile gives you Tech (green).

The interesting thing about this market is that every deck is full of different cards. If you are used to Aeon’s End or Dominion, where every deck in the market has the same cards, that’s not what you get here! Each card in a deck has a similar cost and “flavor”, but they are all different.

Every game has a “bad guy”, the first is The Flaxans (see above).

Usually, you have to bring the “bad guy” to 0 hit points to win the game; this is denoted by a health dial.

At the same time, you are protecting the city! You are a superhero after all! If the city ever goes to 0 health, or all heroes are reduced to 0 health, players lose!

The expedition has four chapters (each a self-contained game), each with special cards and envelopes.

Overall, this game has a lot quality components!

Where’s My First Play?

Where’s my First Game Setup sheet? I did not get one! I am VERY SURPRISED, because the Aeon’s End games (made by the same people) have amazing first play sheets! Am I the only one who didn’t get one? Hopefully, if you get this game, they will have rectified this issue.

Art: Is This a Coloring Book?

So, I love the art of the original Invincible comic: It feels clean without being too messy. That art really complements this universe. See some covers and inner pages above.

Unfortunately, I feel the art in this game is more … anemic. Compare the Atom Eve and Invincible characters (above) to covers from the comic! The player art in the game just seem … lesser. To the point that it bothered me.

And Robot feels so anemic (above), he feels like a page from a coloring book!

From just one frame in the comic, Robot looks great! But the character in the game made me cringe. “How could I explain this to my friends? This looks like a coloring book!! Really, though, this is a great comic!!”

I was told by my friends to mellow out, as the game art is more consistent with an animated series anyways. So, the art we are seeing is more like the animated series. I guess.

Maybe this is just me, but I would have loved this game a lot more if the art had been … more like the comic book than the animated series. (To be clear, even though Invincible: The Hero Building Game didn’t have art that quite as good as the comic, it was still significantly better: see review with lots of pictures here).

Decide for yourself. To be clear, I like the game, but I don’t love the art.

Solo Play (true solo)

There are two ways to play solo (thank you for following Saunders’ Law)!

Our first play was true solo, where the solo player takes control of one character. See above as Invincible battles the Flaxans alone.

There is a major difference in the true solo game: the Variable Turn Order deck is changed! Instead of having 6 cards, there are only 5! The Villain goes twice as normal, but the Hero only gets to go three times (as opposed to four turns in any normal game). See above.

I think the idea is that the Hero gets a chance to refine his deck much more quickly, so that he has to be limited to three turns for balance. The problem is, I think the solo mode is fundamentally more fragile.

My first true solo game was a massive bummer: I lost my being reduced to 0 hit points very quickly. My second game was much better, and I think I just barely lost.

The problem is, the true solo game is very fragile. In a 2 to 4 player game, there are multiple players with multiple hit points, so there are 20 to 40 hits points total distributed among the players! In the solo game, the solo player has only 10 hit points (or less)! If the randomness of the game is too much, the true solo player will take that 10 hit points and die quickly! And that’s what happened in my first solo game. The other problem is that with multiple characters, one character can be reduced to zero hit points and still be useful as long as someone still has hit points! With one character, that will never happen.

We saw this same problem in the app for Aeon’s End: the solo player gets fewer turns. And frankly, I don’t play the app solo anymore because of this. The true solo game is just too fragile and it’s too easy for the randomness inherent in the game to overwhelm you.

If you really want to try the true solo game, a simple house rule might be to allow the true solo character to double the number of hit points (have 20 hit points). At least then it will allow the solo character to absorb more of the damage before dying (simulating multiple characters taking distributed damage). I am surprised this isn’t built-in to Invincible: The Card Game; I know some games, like The Heroes of Terrinoth, where they balance the game by giving fewer players more hit points.

I probably won’t ever play this game true solo ever again.

Solo Play (Two-Handed)

Ah, but two-handed solo was much more fun! The solo player alternates between two characters like a 2-Player game: this is the way this game was meant to be played! Two characters who can assist! Characters who can keep playing even after the other has been down to 0! More hit points to take damage from the bad guys! And four full turns for the heroes for every two turns of the bad guys!

This is the way I played the Expedition solo: Two-Handed Solo. I recommend you play Two-Handed solo if you wish to play; it’s the way the game was meant to be played. The only real downside to Two-Handed solo mode is there is more maintenance: you have to maintain two hero decks/stats as well as maintain the “bad guy” decks/stats. There’s less maintenance in the true solo mode (as you only operate one hero), but (as you now know) that true solo game is much more fragile.

Solo Expedition

The Expedition is a series of 4 games (or more games if you lose) that you play in a row. (If you lose, you just play again with some adjustments). New cards, new abilities, new heroes, new villains, and just new stuff comes out after every game of the Expedition and augment the next game!! By the time you get to the final game, you are playing with a lot of cool new stuff!

SPOILERS BELOW: for the rest of this section, we’ll be discussing and showing pictures of the the chapters 1-4 of the Expedition. Most of this won’t spoil too much, but if you want to be completely surprised, skip to the Cooperative Play section.

Chapter 1: Invincible and Atom Eve

The first Expedition game has us fight the Flaxans: it’s the only enemy you have when you first unbox your game! I chose Invincible and Atom Eve to be partners in my first Two-Handed solo game of the Expedition! They did great and were able to take down the Flaxans. Atom Eve‘s special power seems very specialized, and I didn’t find myself using it at all (it’s very city based). Invincible‘s special power was more interesting and I used it at least once. To be fair, I didn’t need to use the Special Powers too much, because the first game is simpler.

This is really just the base game with nothing special.

Chapter 2: Rexsplode and Robot

For Chapter 2, you fight the Titan! He’s all about damage reduction! And this Chapter also introduced something called Inventions! Basically, Inventions are a card only you can buy, but you get to choose it at the start of the game; it allows players to strategize a little on what their characters may focus on.

Titan’s really hard to do damage to!

To change things up, I had Rexsplode and Robot fight the Titan. Rex has a very weird power (use a weapon twice, but blow it up), and so does Robot (he grabs tech)

And we saw exactly the situation we discussed earlier in the True Solo section! Robot was reduced to 0 hit points, but because Rexsplode was still alive, Robot kept fighting! Even Rexsplode was down to 3 hit points, but they emerged victorious! I think part of the issue that they didn’t do better was that I didn’t use their powers very well.

The Inventions were interesting, but not a real game-changer. It’s just one more card you can buy. It does give each hero some focus, though, and some chance for discussion/interaction when you choose, so that helps cooperation. Note above that I put the Inventions on the LEFT of the mats (instead of under the character). Again, the player mats could have been better.

Chapter 3: Monster Girl and Duplikate

Chapter 3 introduces Monster Girl as a new player character. The “bad guy” now is Sinclair!

Monster Girl and Duplikate went after Sinclair!

Something new from this chapter: The Combo Powers! Each player gets to chose a Combo! The Combo Powers are interesting because they allow your partner a special action whenever you do an action! For example, when player 2 activates their ability, player 1 gets to draw two cards! And when player 1 attacks with debris, player 2 powers up!

Monster Girl and Kate (with their Combos and Inventions) were a great pair! They handled Sinclair and all his crazy machinations! And this was the first game when I really feel like I was very strategic and took great advantage of both the Special Powers and the Combo Powers! Both Monster Girl and Duplikate did a great job of helping each other all the time! This was by far my favorite game of the Expedition. It was just fun!

If Inventions were pretty good, I think The Combo Powers are a bit of game-changer (in a good way), especially if you can harmonize so that the characters combo powers really reinforce each other!

This was my favorite game of the Expedition. The villain was still hard and interesting, but the Combo Powers stepped up the game for me!

Chapter 4: Monster Girl and Duplikate

By this point, I had tried all the heroes. I had so much fun with Monster Girl and Duplikate, in my previous game, I took them for the final run against Omni-man!

Chapter 4 introduced the Team Attacks. You get to choose one of six (I think). See one of them above. Basically, your characters can choose to do one of these three sacrifices on their turn. If, all three sacrifices have been done, players can choose, at any time, to get the reward! The coolest part is that you can choose WHEN to get the reward so you can make sure the sacrifices are timely and not in vein!

Omni-Man is a VERY different villain, as you basically have to stop him from destroying earth with his catastrophes! Basically, you have to make a TON of sacrifices as you play!

This was a super cool way to end the game. Monster Girl and Duplikate did a great job making sacrifice after sacrifice to save the world! And they did use the Team Attack, but it wasn’t as game changing as we had hoped.

It was fun to save the world!

Putting It All Back Together

After I was done with the solo campaign, the Expedition book gave us directions on how to put the game back to its pristine state; I reset the campaign so I could play cooperatively with my friends. Every card has a notation about which deck it came from (see above).

Cooperative Play

Invincible: The Card Game took over my game table for a cooperative game for a game night.

The Assist keyword was the hit of the night! Everyone loved the idea that they could help someone else out when it wasn’t their turn! And the Afterburn effects were also a big hit! (I didn’t talk about Afterburn too much, because we already saw in Astro Knights: Eternity, but Afterburn was great in our solo games).

The cooperative game worked, even though we lost. We had fun and would play again.

What I Liked

Universe. I really do like this universe! Retheming Astro Knights to this universe really did work.

Assist: I think Assist was what Bolster (from Astro Knights: Eternity) wanted to be. Assist is easy to explain and easy to play: when it’s not your turn, you can offer an ability/something to another player! Take a look at some of the cards above. This one thing really boosted my assessment of Invincible: The Card Game! It makes the game more cooperative, more interactive (as you pay more attention to other people’s turns), and generally makes the game more fun! (Bolster was the idea that when someone else had to discard, you could get something. It was clumsy and harder to use. Assist is what we wanted but didn’t know it).

If there were one thing that elevates Invincible: The Card Game above all the Astro Knights or Aeon’s Ends of the world, it’s this. (Put Assist with Friends and Foes module from Aeon’s End: Descent, and you might have a Top 10 game!)

Afterburn: The Afterburn effects are really a neat thing. Sure, we saw them in Astro Knights: Eternity, but they work great here too! It’s just another choice you have when buying a card to help future you!

Things I Didn’t Like

Time: I have played this game a LOT. I don’t think I ever saw a game anywhere NEAR 60 minutes. Except maybe that pure solo game when I lost so quickly! That 60 minutes for estimated time seems off by about 2x. 90-120 would have been better? Maybe, maybe, after you have read all the cards and know everything in the villain and box you are playing, sure. But a new game with new rules and a new Villains (which is what you want to keep the game fresh)? No way for 60 minutes.

Art. I love Invincible and I love the art of the original comic book. The art is in this game seems anemic and more like the coloring book version of the universe! Maybe this is just me. My friends told me to mellow out; it’s more like the animated version.

Player Mats: I had so many problems with the Player Mats; I think they should be redesigned. (see our discussion in the section at the beginning). Another problem is that all mats have the be symmetric, but sometimes when I lay out cards next to my friends, I want the layouts to be mirror images! For example, the Combo Cards should probably be NEXT to each other so that’s it’s easier to remember when to activate them! Bah, maybe I’m just grumpy and you’ll be perfectly fine with the mats. But I think I struggled with almost every decision they made.

True solo: I think the True Solo mode is too fragile. I think an easy fix might just be to give the solo character double the hit points. I am also reminded that Aeon’s End: Descent had a solo mode with that DIDN’T use fewer player actions, and it worked just fine (so fine that it made the #3 spot on our Top 10 Solo Games of 2024), so I really don’t think you need to only have 3 player action cards. Ugh.

Variable Turn Order: We’ve said it many times! There are problems with Variable Turn Order games! See out discussion here: A Discussion of Variable Turn Order and Ways To Mitigate Its Randomness! In all of our games, we did have to use our ad-hoc house rule of never letting the Nemesis have more than 2 turns in a row (at least twice). (I did note that some of the Afterburn effects allow you to have some choice on the Variable Turn Order deck, so I appreciated there was some mechanisms in the game to affect that, but it’s still pretty random).

Conclusion

I’ve been grumpy a lot this review; I think that’s because I know this game and this system fairly well, so I have some experience with what seems to work. But don’t get me wrong, this is an 8.5/10 game for me. And the Assist keyword is probably my favorite new thing in this system! It really facilitates cooperation!!! (I am so glad they kind of “jettisoned” Bolster)

There are just some things that could have made this a 9/10 for me! I just don’t think this will ever be a 10/10 for me because of Variable Turn Order issues (unless they find some way, like Fate Tokens, of mitigating it).

The Expedition is a fun way to reveal all the content of the game! And four chapters (games) seems just right as the length of a campaign! Any longer and it seems too much, any shorter and it leaves you wanting more.

And the game says you CAN play this Astro Knights. I guess I never got that far? I still have at least two expansions to play before I even get anywhere near that!

Forbidden Pandemic Island: The Card Game! A Review of The Four Doors

What do you get when you cross Pandemic with Forbidden Island and make a card game? You get a cooperative card game named The Four Doors!

This cooperative card is designed by Matt Leacock (of Pandemic fame) and Matt Riddle and Ben Pinchback (of many games, but the one I know best is Legends of Sleepy Hollow: See our review here). The Four Doors is a light little cooperative card game for 1-4 players and takes about 30 minutes to play. If you have played Forbidden Island (a light little cooperative tile-laying game) or Pandemic (a heavier cooperative game), you might be saying … “Heeeeeeey, this kinda feels like those games a little…” … and you’d be right!

Let’s take a look!

Unboxing and Gameplay

I ordered this directly from the Happy Camper website (the publisher) about 2 weeks ago? It arrived fairly quickly (late August). See above! It looks kinda neat, but it’s relatively small! See Can of Coke for scale.

The object of the game is, as a a group, to retrieve the sacred relics above! Yes, they looks shiny because they are foil covered cards. They are pretty neat! And yes, this “gather 4 items” kinda feels like Forbidden Island or Forbidden Desert … you gotta collect some exactly 4 things and it’s an action point game! (You only get 3 actions per turn!)

To win, you have to bring the 4 relics to the light house and turn it on to win! (sarcasm mode on) This is COMPLETELY unlike Forbidden Island or Forbidden Desert where you have to return to the launch pad to win (sarcasm mode off).

And you have to turn the lighthouse with a special card! It is pretty cool with that foil.

… just like you need to activate the helicopter/flying machine to fly away in the Forbidden Games…

Players each take the role of one of the characters above, each with a special power (yes, like Pandemic or the Forbidden games). But the powers are pretty cool and a little different.

To retrieve a card, you have to have and discard 4 cards of the same color at a door. (Yes, more Pandemic and Forbidden analogies). These are in a deck that you get 2 cards from at the end of each turn.

There’s some special cards you can use (spells) which you can play at any time (not just your turn), but then they are not discarded but put in place (the Hollow) where they (usually) can’t be brought back!

The Four Doors (that’s the name of the game, remember?) are laid out in a column: see above. Your pawns move up and down the column and you can only retrieve a colored relic at the appropriate door.

So where’s the Bad News? This is a cooperative game after all! Every turn, the same cards that help you also come out and hurt you! The same deck is used for both good cards and bad cards! It just depends on which phase you draw them!! When drawn and played as Bad News cards, these cards “further open” the rift which may seal the door forever! If you ever get 4 of these Bad News cards attached on one side of the door, the doors gets half-shut … then closed forever! If you haven’t gotten the relic out before the door closes forever, you lose!

The cards attach at the sides, depending on what’s at the bottom of the card: see above and below.

Three cards attaching to the doors should feel reminiscent of Pandemic …

Every time the good news/bad news deck recycles, the difficulty goes up: this chart (above) dictates how many of the colored cards attach to the doors in the bad news part of the turn!

If you retrieve all 4 relics and bring them to the lighthouse before the doors close forever, you win!

Solo Mode

Congratulations to having a solo mode! (Thanks for following Saunders’ Law!)

The solo game is documented on page 9 of the rulebook. This is a true solo game; the solo player operates one character (but see below).

The only real difference is that the solo player has another action they can take: Swap Adventurer! This allows the solo player to invest in another character whose special power may help him accomplish a short turn goal easier!

So, I kinda put the adventurers off the side so I could see all their special powers.

I started my first solo game with The Summoner! See above! She makes it easier to get cards you need to get relics!

And I started at novice, and boy I crushed this game. I didn’t need to start so easy! I also never used the Swap Adventurer once because The Summoner was so good! She just gets the cards I want from the discard, so I never needed another adventurer!! I started thinking about “optimal ways” to use the Swap Adventurers to best effect, which I think might be fun once the game gets harder!

Luckily, it’s easy to adjust the difficulty level by simply getting more cards attached to doors per turn (see card above). Instead of starting on Novice, I should start on Standard, or Heroic, or Epic…

I felt like the solo mode worked well. I felt NO NEED to try this 2-handed solo (although it would be easy to); the solo mode seemed to work well. This is VERY UNLIKE the solo mode from Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship from a few weeks ago (see review here); I did NOT like the built-in solo mode there! I do like the built-in solo mode here in The Four Doors.

I kind of dig that you can switch adventurers to really try some fascinating in-game power switches. I am worried this may be overpowered, but hey, if it’s too easy, just adjust the difficulty! It’s easy to do that!

Cooperative Game

The cooperative game went well. We played as 4-Players.

The game is open-handed, which means all information is shared! See rules above. I love that shared information in cooperative games! It makes it really easy to coordinate and talk. “Ah man, I need a red card! Wait! I see you have one!! Maybe we should meet!” I personally think this shared-information type game is much more cooperative and interactive as players can talk strategy much easier if they can see everything! Full information does have the downside that it can invite the Alpha Player to join you, but Alpha Player Syndrome is not a usual problem for my groups. I suppose it is something to be wary of here.

The opportunities for sharing and doing clever card combos came up quite a bit! Between the character’s special powers, the spells on cards, and special powers on relics, we were able to pull off some really cool combos! And the discussion came from everybody; someone might see a special combo others didn’t see! “We need to get that relic before the door closes!!! Help!” “Oh! Use my TELEPORT!!”

There was quite a bit of discussion and cooperation; that was really fun for us.

I was also pleased to see that everyone got a relic, which meant everyone had an “extra” special power. These relics have pretty neat powers too … and they also help contribute to the conversations of combos!!

Overall, this was a hit cooperatively. Everyone had fun, there was a lot of interaction and discussion, and the combos we pulled off made us all feel smart!

Good times.

Reactions

Andrew: Fun, 6/10
Sam: Fun 7.5/10
Teresa: 7/10
Richie: 7.0/10 solo, 8.0/10 cooperatively

My rating was initially a 7.5/10 for cooperative play, but the more I look back on my experience with my friends, the more fun I realized I had as we played!

Which One?

Which game should I play? The Four Doors is very much like Pandemic, Forbidden Island, and Forbidden Desert. Where does it fit in with those?

I think it depends on what you are in the mood for. From a complexity point of view, I think Pandemic is the most challenging and complex game, Forbidden Desert is next, The Four Doors, then finally Forbidden Island. If you want a game that is little bit more than Forbidden Island, but not too much more, The Four Doors is a great choice. To be fair, I think all of these games are great choices.

Conclusion

I should just called this review The Four Doors: The Forbidden Pandemic! It sounds like a forbidden dance of love! But it’s not; The Four Doors a cooperative card game that feels like Pandemic/Forbidden Island/Forbidden Desert. I do think it’s different enough from those games that you can buy it and not feel like “they are all the same game!”. I think The Four Doors is a nice cooperative game to bring out for someone who is just above Forbidden Island, but maybe not quite ready for Pandemic or Forbidden Desert.

This game is easy to learn, has a great table presence, and can be a jumping on point to learn cooperative games. It’s a little more complex than Forbidden Island, but I think it can still be a pretty good starting point as a cooperative game.

Even though this is an “easier” cooperative game, the cooperation, interaction, and combos that emerge from the game will also appeal to more sophisticated gamers. It’s a good cooperative game!

I’d say the solo game is good at 7.0/10, but the cooperative game is better! I’d personally give it a 8.0/10, but as a group, my friends probably average this at about a 7.5/10. Still, that’s good!

A place to talk about cooperative board and card games!

Unboxing/Gameplay

Rulebook

One-Shot Game?

Solo Play

Cooperative Play

The Arkham Horror Comparison

A Sense of What’s Coming

Fate Deck vs Dice

Storybook Game

Replayability

Heat

Campaign Game

Conclusion

Appendix: Remembering Arkham Horror: Second Edition

Unboxing

The Sleevening

Foil Cards

Solo Play

Inspires A Story

The Dreamer of Silver Gulch

New Rulers

God fight!

Cooperative Play

Back on Top

Things To Look Out For

Conclusion

2021

2022

2023

2024

2025

10. Journeys Afar: The Ketsueki

9. StarDriven: Gateway + Invasion

8. Honor’s End

7. Exoterra: The Giant Mech

6. Viking Route

5. Ghostland: The Game

4. Sail: Legacy

3. Companion Quest

2. Abyss Echo: The Forbidden Rite

1. Doom Guard

Honorable Mention: Origin Story

10. Marvel Champions: Agents of SHIELD

9. Thunderstone Quest: Twilight Souls/The All-Consuming Horde

8. Flock Together: Birds of a Feather Eggspansion

7. Skytear Horde: Campaigns

6. Leviathan Wilds: Deepvale Expansion

5. Santorini: Riddle of the Sphinx

4. Unmatched Adventures: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

3. Dice Throne Adventures: Unchained

2. Marvel Dice Throne Missions

1. Kinfire Council: Winds of Change

Honorable Mention. Broken Sword: Shadows of the Templar (Reforged)

10. Wroth

9. Earthborne Rangers: Legacy of the Ancestors

8. Storyfold: Wildwoods

7. Santorini + Riddle of the Sphinx

6. Unstoppable

5. War Story

4. Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game

3. DC Super Heroes United: Batman Hush

2. Arydia

1. Star Trek: Captain’s Chair

Honorable Mention: Tales From The Red Dragon Inn

10. The Dark Quarter

9. Wandering Galaxy

8. Vantage

7. One-Hit Heroes

6. Secrets of Zorro

5. The Lord of The Rings, Fellowship of the Ring: Trick-Taking Game

4. Tales of the Arthurian Knights

3. Invincible: The Card Game

2. Ham Helsing

1. DC Super Heroes United: Hush

Communication

Ruleset

Unboxing and Gameplay

Rulebook

Deck-Crafting