Stupid Fun. A Two Word Review of Camp Grizzly: Second Edition

Stupid Fun. That’s all you need to know about Camp Grizzly: Second Edition.

What? You want to know more? Ok, we’ll talk a little more about this.

Stupid, Random, but very Thematic Fun! There! Is that better?

No? That’s still not enough? All right, all right …. we’ll look a look closer at this cooperative (yes, it is cooperative, that’s why we are here) horror game.

Unboxing

This is the second edition of the silly cooperative game called Camp Grizzly. See Coke can and box above for scale.

I backed Camp Grizzly:Second Edition from Kickstarter back in August 2025, and it arrived at my house in early July 2026. It arrived early! It was originally slated to arrive August 2026!! What? An Early Kickstarter??? That never happens! I was on the fence for backing this, but it was Mike Heller who convinced me this was a good choice! The game I backed was the Limited Release version with lots of acrylic tokens and standees.

Acrylic Standees

I am embarrassed to say that one of the reasons I was so excited for this game was the Acrylic Standees! The version I got (Limited Release) comes with Acrylic Standees that are so funny and goofy and thematic! See the full bag above of them!

The Acrylic Standees work SO WELL for this game! The art style is very “comic booky”, and I find that style works really well with Acrylic Standees: The colors are more vibrant and just pop!

There’s a LOT of them too! See above!! Why so many? Because this particular version comes with 8 expansions, and some of these standees are just for the expansions that come in the box!

Note the two above; the lady on the left has no “symbol” on the bottom of her standee, so she’s a base game character. The lady on the right has a bottle-looking symbol: she’s from the Spin The Bottle expansion!

Some of the expansions have a TON of standees! See all the Mountain characters above!

I adore the Acrylic Standees; they work so well! If you have a chance to buy and/or play Camp Grizzly: Second Edition, try to get the version with the Acrylic Standees! I think they are that great!

Gameplay

The premise of this game is simple; have some Counselors survive Otis and make it to the Finale! If all Counselors die, everyone loses! If some counselors survive, everyone wins! Let’s be 100% clear; some of the Counselors will die!! And possibly you might die!! But don’t take it personally.

Otis (see above) is at Camp Grizzly and he is the BIG BAD HORROR monster chasing the Counselors! Otis is the amalgam of Jason, Freddy Krueger, Micheal Meyers, Leprechaun (blah) and all your “favorite” horror movie baddies! Just to be clear: no player is operating Otis and hunting the Counselors: the game plays Otis via some rules.

There are several modes of play in the game: Modern Murder Mode and Classic Action Mode.

In Classic Action Mode, the players choose 6 Counselors (see all Counselors above; some are from expansions) and the players as a group operate the 6 Counselors: there are always 6 Counselors (well, until they get killed … and they probably will …).

In Modern Murder Mode, each player takes the role a single Counselor: one character per player. If your Counselor dies, you get another one.

And just a reminder, in case I haven’t mentioned it yet, counselors will die.

Counselors each have a Special ability to help them! Kevin (see above), for example, may move to a fight and gets +1 during BOAT finales! Kevin only has 5 hit points (note, it’s NOT the number next to you: that’s your movement). Notice that the healthier you are are, the faster you move! At full health, Kevin moves 3 spaces per turn, but as he gets wounded, his movement degrades to 2 then 1 (and then with a second wind back to 2)! If Kevin ever PANICS (yellow bam), he can run up to 2 away.

The players choose a Scenario (as specified by a number of cards) and set it up!

There are a number of set-ups of different difficulties. The game recommends starting with “Quick and Dirty”: see above.

After reading the flavor test (whosoever is the most dramatic and over-the-top reader should read this), the other side gives the set-up for the game!

The set-up puts the characters, Otis, and some Objective Tokens on the board.

The Objective Tokens have various things on them (First Aid Kit, gas, rope, … other things). The players are trying to the objective tokens so as to trigger one of the end Finales!

There are 4 possible finale-triggers at the 4 corners of the board; the BARN, the BOAT, the VAN, the RANGER tower: see above.

If you can get the three Objective tokens (keys, crowbar, battery), you can move to the Ranger Tower and initiate the Finale!

Depending on which tokens you get (they are all hidden at the start of the game), you may have to run to the VAN or the BOAT instead! Each finale needs different resources! (To be clear, there are a lot of finales; it looks like 24 for my version of the game).

The finale can be SO VERY different! One of them is a Barn Dance, where you have to roll dice and try to get a certain match! In another, I had to sacrifice one of the Counselors! … and each one is really different.

As the game goes on, Otis gets more and more terrifying! He starts to move faster, attack for more!

Basically, as the Body Count goes up (yes, there’s a body count track), Otis slowly get more powerful! Funny, even if the Counselors don’t die, there are extras that die all over the place: Cameos and other NPC campers.

If players can’t trigger a finale, and the Body Track gets too high, there will be a final fight instead!

Along the way, you’d better hope you find some stuff to help you! Sherry was lucky enough to find the Chainsaw and Slicker! See above!

There’s a Cabin deck that players will draw from every turn, and a Survival Deck you can get lucky and draw from occasionally. What’s in the Cabin deck? So much random stuff!

You might get good stuff … like the Slicker …

You might get a Cameo by a famous actor (who will probably die very quickly) …

You might get a Plot Twist, which screws you!

… or you might get Otis Strikes!

You can fight Otis (a little), but generally he overwhelms you and you take damage. If your Counselor runs out of hit points, you either just die (Classic Mode) or respawn a new character (Modern Murder Mode).

Survive the Finale or the Final Fight and you win!

Rulebook

The rulebook is generally pretty good.

It gets a D- or an F on the Chair Test, as the rulebook is the same size as the box, and hopelessly droops over the edges. You might be able to use it on the chair next to you, but maybe not. It’s too bad, because the rulebook is pretty good otherwise.

I wish the rulebook had an Index; there are a few too many concepts and/or keywords, so I wanted to look stuff up quickly via an Index.

Solo Game

So, Camp Grizzly: Second Edition works as a solo game! (Thanks for following Saunders’ Law!) Interestingly, because there are two modes to the game (Classic and Modern), you can choose to either play 6 Counselors at once as the solo player in the Classic mode, or you can play true solo in the Modern mode, and play just one Counselor!

I opted for the true solo game with one Counselor. See above as Jody decides it’s a good idea to stay at camp alone at night! Wait … maybe that’s NOT a good idea …

Jody died pretty quickly, but C.J. stepped up (“spawned”) after Otis killed Jody! The great thing is that C.J. was that he was able to pick up all the stuff Jody dropped when he died! See above! This is really thematic that you can loot the dead bodies!

Now, C.J. made it to a Finale at the Ranger Tower! And what happened?? Because there was only ONE Counselor alive, C.J. had to be sacrificed! If there had been TWO Counselors, we could have won, as one of us had to die … but as long as at least one Counselor survives, we win! I COULDN’T WIN! No matter how I played the true solo mode, I couldn’t have won .. at least with this Finale.

Huh. I wasn’t frustrated. I thought it was kind of funny! Are all scenarios this poopy for the solo player?

I set-up the same intro scenario and had Sherry run this one by herself!

Sherry did MUCH better than C.J. or Jody! She made it all the way to the BARN Finale with no wounds and a CHAINSAW!!

The BARN DANCE was a very different Finale! Sherry had to roll some dice to survive … and she did not survive.

Sherry died. So I lost again. But I could have won … I am beginning to think I actually would have had a better chance with at least one more Counselor. I am beginning to think 2-handed solo (2 Counselors in Modern mode) is probably the best way to play solo?

Again, you might think I was frustrated that I lost. Nah. It was goofy fun. You have to realize .. these games were very quick! Once you get into the groove of this game, I think my second solo game took 45 minutes? This game moves quickly. And you really can’t take it too seriously.

Cooperative Mode

So, when I first looked at Camp Grizzly: Second Edition on Kickstarter, the game is billed as “semi-cooperative”; see above!! I actually didn’t back it at first when I saw that!

I don’t think that’s quite accurate. I think a strict playing might be “only the players that survive” are the winners. But the thing is, it’s almost always in your best interest to keep many Counselors alive! I have seen a number of Finales now, and it always behooves you to have more Counselors! The more Counselors you have, the better chances you have of surviving and winning!

Even the rulebook points out: “look, if anyone survives, y’all win”. It’s cooperative! Mostly; even when you have to screw other players (like when we had to sacrifice a Counselor), it’s still in the name of common good! As long as one Counselor makes it out alive, you all win!

The basic cooperative game was pretty easy to explain and jump into. I didn’t have too many problems teaching the game.

The Finale was actually a little harder to explain and how it worked.

This game reminds me a lot of Betrayal at House On The Hill! The Finale was “wonky” and we had to try and figure out what the card meant! I have to admit, I had this problem a little in the solo game too! Each Finale you trigger is very different, but it means the rules aren’t quite as well defined because they are different every time! Luckily, this is a cooperative game (unlike Betrayal At House On The Hill), so you players can discuss “What does this mean?” One of the problems with Betrayal At House On The Hill is that the environment is so tense and antagonistic because you can’t ask questions… because that might give something away! At least here in Camp Grizzly, the wacky Finales can be discussed as a group.

And we definitely saw what “could” be semi-co-op nature of this game!!! We had to leave poor Teresa behind because her movement had dropped to 1! There was no way she could make it to the Finale in time! So, we had to trigger the Finale and “leave her behind”. If this had been a true semi-co-op, Teresa would have just lost. But, like a Horror movie, even if your favorite character dies, you still hope the Counselors will survive! The flavor of this game was cooperative; we aren’t gonna win if we have to wait for Teresa, so we all made the decision to leave her behind! And she was cool … she was just hoping one of us would survive!

In the end, Sara just barely survived the Finale: both Andrew and I died in the Finale, but since Sara survived, we all won! Hurrah! It was a bummer to die, but we “knew” we won!

So, our game was over in about an hour. The game moved quickly, and was “generally” easy to teach! I did have to look up some rules in the rulebook as we played, but it wasn’t too bad.

I think this game is simple enough that a group could learn this “cold” at a Convention without too much trouble. This probably could have made our Top 10 Cooperative Games To Play at Conventions! It is very simple to learn.

Thematic

Growing up in the 80s, I was forced to watch a ton of Horror Movies with my friends. CC and Sloppy loved the horror genre, and I didn’t. But they outvoted me many times! So, I watched a lot more Horror than I expected to as a teenager. In fact, I was once made to watch ALL 7 Leprechaun Horror movies! (Yes!! There are 7 Leprechaun movies!! I think there are more now)!! It was to settle a bet: Which Leprechaun was the best one? CC liked Leprechaun 1 the best, but Sloppy liked Leprechaun 2 the best! But, of course we had to watch them all! (I liked a different one: Leprechaun in Space the best).

All of this is to say, I was exposed to a lot of Horror tropes! And Camp Grizzly nails the theme! Cheerleaders! Chainsaws! Cameos! The big three Cs! And this game does NOT take itself seriously.

But it nails the Horror theme and tropes perfectly.

Randomness

Jody died very quickly in my first because he had bad luck. C.J. did great and made it to the Finale, but lost because of bad luck. There is a LOT of randomness and luck in this game! You absolutely cannot take it seriously! You may die right away. You may win easily. You may get screwed by Otis or a die roll or a bad card draw or ….

There’s a lot of luck in this game. A lot.

Camp Grizzly reminds me a lot of Tales of Arabian Knights: see our review here. The advice we give when we play Tales of Arabian Nights: Don’t take it seriously; play and have fun! I think I like Camp Grizzly better than Tales of Arabian Nights for one major reason: it’s shorter! A Tales of Arabian Nights game can take 2-3 hours! Camp Grizzly? Dead in 45-60 minutes!

As long as you know this game will random and silly, I think you will enjoy it! Just don’t go in expecting a big thinky thing.

Reactions

Not everyone loved this.

Sara said it was “Fine”. That’s a 6/10 for her.
Teresa liked it. That’s a 7/10 for her.
Andrew said it was fine, but he’d prefer Tales Of Arabian Nights over this. He’s probably a 6.5/10.
Rich liked it the best. Maybe a 9/10?

Conclusion

Camp Grizzly is just stupid fun. It’s random, it’s goofy, it’s unfair, but it nails the horror movie theme and tropes! And it’s only 60 minutes!

If you think you would enjoy the Horror theme and like the idea of a stupid fun game, this game is for you. If you don’t like the Horror theme, Tales of Arabian Nights (see review here) or Tales of the Arthurian Nights (see review here) might be better choices for you: they are both silly story games like Camp Grizzly, but with different themes.

The problem with being stupid fun is that some people will just think this is just stupid … without the fun. My friends were more middling on this than I was: they gave it between 6 and 7. I gave Tales of Arabian Nights a 9/10, so I think I have to give Camp Grizzly something similar: 9/10. Tales of Arabian Nights has more “story”, but Camp Grizzly is over so much faster! Both are pretty darn random.

Stupid fun.

Top 10 Cooperative Replacements for Traditional Board and Card Games

We’ve all played that game of Monopoly that lasted 6 hours, or that game of Scrabble where everyone was yelling at each other, or that old traditional game where we all hated each other at the end! In the modern world of board and card games, there’s no reason for this! There are now many cooperative games that can replace the hate with joy! These are ten modern cooperative games that can replace some of old traditional board games with a more interactive and friendly game.

This list is ordered by how “obvious” a replacement game is! The games at the bottom of the list has obvious replacements, but the higher up the list you go, the harder it is to find a cooperative replacement! The top positions will really make you think about how hard it might be to replace those!

10. Monopoly -> CO-OP: The Co-op Game

If Monopoly is all about making money and crushing your opponents in a game that’s way too long, CO-OP: The Co-op Game is all about making just enough money to keep the co-op (a cooperative store and place of business with Customers) alive, while still keeping the place fun! The game is over quickly (no 6 hour game here), as players must learn to cooperative and reinforce each other’s actions! There’s actual “cooperate” actions, where players run Car Washes together to make money, or have Drum Circles to attract customers! At the end of the day, players must still make enough money (like Monopoly) to win, but it’s the delicate balance of money vs. fun that makes this so much more enjoyable than Monopoly!

CO-OP: The Co-op Game also embraces Player Selected Turn Order (see link here) allowing players to embrace the fairly modern concept choosing turn order as you play. As opposed to everyone hating each other at the end of Monopoly, high-fives end of the game when you save the CO-OP in CO-OP: the co-op game!

Disclaimer: the main designer of CO-OP: the Co-op Game is a major contributor to this web site CO-OP Gestalt, so take this with a grain of salt. But we’d still rather play CO-OP: the Co-op Game rather than Monopoly!

9. Poker -> Ace of Spades

Everyone knows how to play Poker … but sometimes it’s not the vibe you want! A “friendly game of Poker” is never truly friendly … until now! Ace of Spades is a 1 or 2-Player game where players cooperatively use poker hands to fight bad guys!

There’s a “river” of cards, shared among the players! Each player needs to form the best Poker hands they can to do damage to the current bad guy!

There’s a series of bad guys you must fight! If you can make it to the last one and defeat him, you cooperatively win! Take a look at our review of Ace Of Spades to see if this might be a good game for you!

8. Scrabble -> Word Weaver Adventures

Scrabble, at least in my family, was a vicious game where players vied for bonus spaces, and sometimes played stupid words just to block others from playing words on bonus spaces! There were heated arguments about words, but also deathly quiet!! The quiet around the table was deafening as players had to think, and there was so much analysis paralysis as player turns took forever! I love word games, but I hated playing Scrabble.

Word Weaver Adventures transcends all those petty issues! The game is gorgeous and encourages talking and communication! The vibe is open and flowing! And players all work on their words together at the same time, so turns don’t take forever! Players are all doing simultaneous word selection!

Everything I like about Scrabble (spelling words by myself, feeling smart using bonus spaces) is in Word Weaver Adventures, and everything I hate about Scrabble (turns too long, tense vibe) is absent from Word Weaver Adventures! See our review here of Word Weaver Adventures to see if this is something you might like!

7. Carcassonne -> Mists Over Carcassonne

Carcassonne is a fun tile-laying game that’s been out for a while! Carcassonne is now considered a “classic”, uttered by many people in the same breath as Monopoly and Scrabble! It’s actually a great game, but if you are looking for a cooperative version of this, the Carcassonne people have you covered! They already have something called Mists Over Carcassonne!

Mists Over Carcassonne makes the game cooperative by adding a new element: ghosts! When tiles come out, you have to worry about capturing ghosts by enclosing them using fairly standard Carcassonne rules! If too many ghosts comes out, players lose as a group!

This is a cooperative victory point game where players have to earn enough victory points (as a group) in order to win, while still keeping the ghosts at bay! Mists Over Carcassonne is a great cooperative tile-laying game, while still preserving all the things you love about Carcassonne! Take a look at our review here to see if Mists Over Carcassonne is something you might like!

If you are looking for more cooperative games that might replace Carcassonne and its tile-laying, take a look at our Top 10 Cooperative Tile-Placement Games!

6. Yahtzee -> The Reckoners

So, Yahtzee is all about rolling those dice! Keep what you want, then re-roll! Keep what you want, then re-roll one final time! Sure, it’s fine, but there’s no real interaction among people as you play; you just get the best score you can! What if you could use the Yahtzee ideas to fight bad guys? And play together at the same time??? That’s exactly what The Reckoners is! A cooperative game about fighting the bad guys together, using Yahtzee-like dice! It’s even based on a fairly well-known book by Brandon Sanderson!

The dice: this is really just a Yahtzee game, but the dice are SO nice!

The dice in this game are just gorgeous! Rolling them is a real treat! Players move around a board, looking for weaknesses and fighting bad guys together! There’s even a fine-grained Player Selected Turn Order going on that makes this so cooperative! (See link here discussing fine-grained Player Selected Turn Order).

After playing with this amazing production, you can’t go back to Yahtzee again! See above! The players are all interacting, cooperating, and rolling dice together for the common purpose of taking out bad guys! Playing talk to strategize, figure out how to use their dice as a group, and generally beat-up bad guys! Take a look at our review of The Reckoners here and it’s expansion here to see if you might like this more than Yahtzee!

Another set of games which can replace Yahtzee are roll-and-write games! See our Top 10 Cooperative Roll and Write Games for another angle on Yahtzee replacements!

5. Apples to Apples -> Just One

Apples To Apples is a fun party game that had its heyday 20 years ago! One player would be the “judge” and everyone else would try to play a card to “play to the judge!” It introduced the idea of the judge player to many people, but it was still competitive! Some of my friends would get angry if the judge didn’t choose their cards! And people would get frustrated if they got crappy cards! Apples To Apples became an instant classic, but it has faded out for my groups because of the frustrating problems.

Just One took the judge idea and made it cooperative! Now players were working together to get the judge to guess the one word (word 2: Frankenstein!) Players could be creative and think of any word they want! They tried to think out-of-the-box so as not to collide with other words! Now, no one was getting mad that their word wasn’t chosen!! People would laugh when you only had one clue, and people would generally high-five when the judge guessed the word! Just One is all the great things of Apples to Apples without its baggage! Just One is a shared experience that has worked every time I have played it! This recently the #1 position on our Top 10 Cooperative Games To Play At Gaming Conventions!

4. War -> Regicide

War is the game I remember playing at sleepovers when I was a kid. You’d take a normal deck of cards and just play all night. So easy! Cut the deck in half, each player gets a half! Flip the top card; whosoever has the highest card wins both cards! A tie? You resolve with 3 more cards, then flip again! I remember so many sleepovers and just playing this all night long.

Later on, you come to realize that War is just random. If only there were a cooperative game of fighting you could play with just a deck of cards! With a little more strategy! There is! Regicide! Regicide has the vibe of War very much; you have to do enough “damage” to bad guys (not each other), take cards, and you have to worry about losing cards!

Regicide has the benefit of using any plain deck of cards, and had the vibe of War! It is, unfortunately, more complicated than plain War, but it is a good cooperative game you can play with a plain deck of cards! See here for the free rules of Regicide! Or, you can order a deck with the rules and get the cool art!

3. Spades, Hearts, or Bridge -> The Crew: Quest For Planet Nine or The Crew: Mission Deep Sea

Spades, Hearts, or Bridge are standard trick-taking games that many people grow up with! Bridge even has its own groups! My Mom had Bridge ladies over all the time for tournaments! It was serious business to play Bridge! My Mom was actually quite good, but it was hard to keep up with her! In fact, you couldn’t keep up with her! She would destroy you!! If only there was cooperative trick-taking I could play with Mom instead of Bridge!

There is! The Crew: Quest for Planet Nine, or its second version The Crew: Mission Deep Sea are cooperative trick-taking games where players of all skill levels can play together! Even though none of us are as good as my Mom at Bridge, we can all still have fun playing this together, and still get that trick-taking game vibe my Mom loved so much!

There’s actually quite a number of cooperative trick-taking games that can take the place of Spades, Hearts, or Bridge! See The Top 10 Solo and Cooperative Trick-Taking Games here! But The Crew is our favorite replacement!

2. Risk -> Spirit Island or Horizons of Spirit Island

Original version of Spirit Island from the Kickstarter: signed by R.E. Reuss!

There’s a rather infamous story in my friend circle from High School about me giving Joe a bloody nose during a game of Risk! Yes, Risk is random, Risk is mean and vicious, but it’s the standard area-control game for most people! If you don’t want to risk giving bloody noses to your friends, then maybe there’s a better area-control game than Risk?

Spirit Island is game where players work together to control areas to to kick-out invaders! Players have to strategically inhabit the lands and keep control of lands (much like area control)! Spirit Island is an incredible modern hit, making our Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2017 and, as of this writing, the #11 game OF ALL TIME on the BGG list of games!

There’s even a slightly lighter version of Spirit Island called Horizons of Spirit Island! And it’s available at Target!! Spirit Island is a very complex game, and jumping straight into Spirit Island from Risk maybe a bad idea, but jumping into Horizons of Spirit Island from Risk is probably the right way to start with it! Horizons of Spirit Island is simplified enough to get you going and see if you might like it! Take a look at our review here of Horizons of Spirit Island to see if Spirit Island can replace Risk for you!

1. Chess -> Santorini: Riddle of the Sphinx

Chess is a hard game to replace. People either love or hate Chess, usually because games are so imbalanced when one player is clearly much better than the other. What if there was a way to take advantage of all that Chess knowledge to solve puzzles together?

Santorini: Riddle of the Sphinx is all about moving pieces around the board, getting into position, and strategically setting up the next turn! It has a very “Chess” feel as players move pieces around the board to solve a puzzle! Let’s be clear, Santorini: Riddle of the Sphinx is absolutely a puzzle! The board sets up a puzzle and players have to solve it as a group or solo player!

This absolutely feels like Chess as move you characters around the board and solve the puzzles presented! Every Chess player I know thinks of board configurations like “puzzles to be solved”! Santorini: Riddle of the Sphinx absolutely has that board configurations as “puzzle to be solved” vibe, but working together in a cooperative game!

See our review here to see if you think Santorini: Riddle of the Sphinx might replace Chess for you! This is probably the most oblique replacement on our list, which is why it is #1! Let’s be clear; you need both Santorini and Riddle of the Sphinx expansion to play this!

The Gnomenclature of the Dice! Companion Quest: A Solo and Co-op Review

This week we take a look at a game from our Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games For 2026! We want to give it some attention because RichieCon 2026 is in a few weeks, and *spoiler* I think some people will really like this game!

Companion Quest is a cooperative dice game that on Kickstarter back in March 2025. It promised delivery in December 2025, but just delivered to my house here in June 2026 … so, it’s about 6 months late.

This is also a game that was on our Top 10 Anticipated Cooperative Games For 2026!

Was it worth waiting for?

Unboxing and Gameplay

Although we got the Kickstarter edition with a few expansions, there are better versions with mats and other upgrades! We’l just be taking a look at the base game.

The size of this box might surprise you a little; it’s a smaller game! See Coke can above for scale.

This is front-and-center a dice-rolling/dice-placement game. But what are the right words to use? Is this a dice-placement game? Is this a dice-rolling game? What’s the right gnomenclature? According to BGG: it’s dice-rolling (but it feels a little like dice-placement).

Although the name and cover might imply a little more questy game (and there is some questing), the dice-rolling/dice-placement portion of this game is the majority of gameplay. If you were looking for a game with lots of story and fighting, you probably need to look elsewhere!

Each player takes the role of a Gnome!

Each Gnome has his own power and a companion that accompanies him!

See all the companions above!

Each Gnome has his own special power, and an attached “companion”! The companions are bonded to the specific Gnomes, so you can’t choose willy-nilly. See above as Bubbles the Gnome has Arlo the companion!

The special powers of the Gnome or companion are activated by “tapping” (turning the card sideways) to show the ability has been used. How do you recharge the power(s)?

You recharge with Cookies of course! Cookies are phenomenally useful in this game! They can recharge any Gnome or companion …

… or the Cookies can be used to recruit new companions to your menagerie! There is always four companions available for recruiting on your turn!

How do you win? There’s “gnominally” (nominally? With Gnomes? Get it? Ok, it’s not that funny) a bad guy named Gu’Gu who is popping around dimensions and causing chaos! To win, you must catch him!

If you can move your Gnome marker (collective Gnome marker) to the Gu’Gu, players win! How do you move?

Every time players complete a “Quest” (see Quest above), the players advance forward one space! The quests are solved by placing dice on the quest spaces!

See above as the Gnome’s Nook is completed by placing dice correctly on the last few spots! Usually, you have to match the color and/or odd/evenness of a space on the quest!

Once you complete a quest, flip the Quest card over to see your rewards; move closer to Gu’Gu AND get some cookies AND increase your carrying capacity! See above!

The carrying capacity defines how many dice you can get on your turn! At the start of your turn, you grab some dice and use the dice to solve either Portal Problems or the Quest! Early in the game you can only grab 3 worth of dice: red, green, and blue cost 1! And orange, purple, and orange cost 2!

Portal Problems are “issues” the players must solve (at the bottom of the board)! Players place dice on them to solve them! There’s two types: Challenge and Danger cards. The Danger cards (with the yellow warning) must be solved before you can Quest again!

To “solve” a Portal Problem, you place dice! For example, to “Unlock The Chest”, you have to play three dice total (possibly over multiple player turns) so that their difference is on an orange die!

For example, 5-3 = 2 works fine, as long as the final dice is orange! See above!

If, on your turn, you DO NOT solve a Portal Problem, Gu’Gu moves forward one space towards the portal! See above as Gu’Gu is almost at the portal!

The game is all about trying to decide how to place the dice you roll on your turn, and when to use the special powers on the Gnomes and companions! Do you solve a Quest to move forward? Or do you solve a Portal Problem to keep Gu’Gu from moving forward? Do you use a precious cookie to augment your companion menagerie? Or do you use your cookie to refresh someone?

This is a game all about balance; you need to Quest to win, but you have to solve smaller Portal Problems along the way to keep the chaos at bay!

This game is absolutely gorgeous! The cover was one of the reasons this game originally piqued our interest! The components are really nice, especially the rulebook.

Rulebook

For such a small box (and arguably smallish game), this rulebook is really good!

The game gets an A on the Chair Test! This rulebook sits very well on the Chair next to me … and it is so very readable! There is no droopiness, the fonts are big and readable, there’s tons of pictures and annotated text, and the colors just pop!

The Components page is great! See above!

Everything about this rulebook is quality. I don’t think it needs an Index because the game is pretty straight-forward! There aren’t a lot of keywords, so I won’t ding it for not having an Index.

There are two things that needed a little more discussion, but we’ll go over those below.

Otherwise, just a great rulebook!

Solo Play

So, congratulations to Companion Quest for following Saunders’ Law! We have a solo mode! The solo mode is a true solo mode, where the solo player takes the role of a single Gnome! The rules are well-defined on page 16 of the rulebook.

Normally I don’t “love” solo rules that change up the game, but the solo rules are pretty simple. There are two changes:

The solo Gnome can activate his own Gnome’s power to help himself (in the cooperative game, your Gnome power can ONLY help others). This is pretty typical of true solo modes: any ability that normally helps other players can be used to help yourself instead!
When you “refresh” your Gnome, you actually need to get a new Gnome instead! This forces you to cycle through the Gnomes and their special powers.

You can also keep a die from a previous round, but this is pretty much the same as the cooperative game; it’s just “the next player” isn’t someone else, it’s you!

The solo game is an easy way to learn this game. All the rules are there, and it’s pretty easy to jump straight in. I had a fine time learning the game this way. I played about three solo games; I had a good time while getting the gist of the game. It’s pretty fun to roll the dice, think about which dice to use for which thing (Quest? Portal Problem? Companion?), and try to catch Gu-gu. There is some brain power needed to do well; it’s not as simple and cute as the rulebook and look belies.

The balancing for the solo game seems to be achieved by cookie distribution. If you have just one Gnome, you start with two cookies, and get another two cookies at the end of a quest stage (see above). Since cookies are pretty powerful (usually in getting companions), it’s clear these need to be rationed. A 2-Player games starts with two cookies distributed amongst the two players (one each) . Interestingly, a 3 and 4-player game start with no cookies. We’ll revisit that decision some more below.

The solo game is cute and adorable, and it’s a great way to learn the systems of the game. I might come back to it again as a solo player, but I think cooperatively is the funner way to play. You might say, cooperatively is “gnominally” the best way to play! Sorry, that joke should get gnominated as worst joke in this review!

Cooperative Mode

I’ve been able to get Companion Quest played at 2 and 3 players. I’ve played a couple of times with my friend Teresa (below) and one with my niece Megan (see above).

So, the rule about “you can only use someone else’s Gnome powers” makes the game a little more cooperative. Players then need to talk a little more about what you can do “Hey Rich, I need a +1, can you help me get that with your Gnome?” So, that simple mechanism does help bring players interact more.

There is a little bit of downtime between turns, as you really do need to think a bit about the best way to use your dice. Depending on the group, this will either bring out conversation (making the game more interactive) or it MIGHT invite the dreaded Alpha Player in (making it less fun)! You get so excited when you see someone else roll the amount they need that sometimes you start accidentally Alpha Playering! I KNOW I did to Teresa a few times and I feel terrible! For Megan, she was asking for help more, so it worked out there more (my Alpha Player was more of a teacher). But I think you need to be a little careful about making sure you don’t Alpha Player!!!

With that little warning, I do think cooperatively is more fun that solo! Most people love the little Gnomes and their little companions. The game is pretty quick (besides some of the thinkiness that might occur on your turn), and the 30 minutes playtime as indicated on the box is about right. Most turns are pretty multiplayer solitaire (if you don’t have an Alpha Player … Rich …) so it’s still fun to make your own choices!

The game is bright and gorgeous and draws people in with its art. The cooperation is pretty good; even if you can’t use a die on your turn (sometimes, you just can’t get a die out), it’s pretty cool you can pass a die to the next player for their turn. It makes you feel like you are helping them! That rule (and the “you have to use someone else’s gnome powers”) make the game pretty cooperative and interactive despite the multiplayer solitaire nature of each turn.

Things I Liked

Using Dice for Wake-up! We didn’t mention this in the overview, but there is an another way to wake-up companions! We mentioned that you can use a Cookie to “wake up” a resting (tapped) companion … but there is another way to “wake up” a companion! Using a colored die wakes-up a companion! You might notice that every Companion has a color associated with it! Kusa (above) is red and Peppy and Snaps are both yellow. If you ever place a die, you can wake up one companion of that color! So, placing the yellow die above, we can wake up Peppy!

This really expands the choices you can make in the game! When you get some dice at the start of your turn, do you get dice to help with the Quest? Do you get dice to help with the Portal Problems? Or do you get dice to wake up your companions? This just really makes the choices so interesting! I really think this one mechanism elevates the game!

Art: I adore the art in this game! That cover may be one of my favorite covers of the year! I also really like how this game uses color! I love the colors in this game!

Things I Didn’t Like

Dice: At the end of the day, it’s still a dice game and you may get stuck with bad rolls. This is balanced out by it being a pretty short game; I don’t might a dose of randomness for a 30 minute game. Also, you generally can mitigate bad dice rolls with all the special powers you have.

Cookie Balancing at 3 and 4-Player: One of the funnest parts of the game is deciding when to use the cookies for their myriad of effects! (Recruit? Awaken? Reinvigorate?) Yet, the 3 and 4-player games start with NO COOKIES. It’s clear that when you finish a quest that everyone generally gets a cookie, but our first few 3-Player games seemed “less fun” and “less balanced” as we struggled more with no cookies to start the game. It “feels like” that there should be at least 2 cookies always at the start of the game? The balance felt a little off in the 3-Player game without cookies. In the end, after failing multiple times at 3-Players, we sorta started with a couple of cookies and that seemed to make the game a little more palatable. This probably sets the balance off a little at later levels, but it made us want to play more because cookies make it more fun!

Some Clarity: It seems like, when you play, that “completing a quest” should stop Gu-gu from moving forward. After searching the rules several times, it seems clear that Gu-gu will ALWAYS move if you don’t finish a “portal problem!” The interaction between those two (finishing Quest and finishing Portal Problems) should have been more specified! If you “cheat” and don’t move Gu-gu after a quest, then the game may seem too easy? But it also is MUCH harder if you do move Gu-gu! I wish this had been clearer in the rules. (Arguably it’s the flow of the game, so it doesn’t need to be specified, but the intuition seems to be counter-intuitive on this point … requiring more specification). Look, maybe you won’t have this problem, maybe I saved you from looking something up, but just be aware that completing a quest isn’t considered solving a portal problem (for Gu-gu movement purposes).

Modular Arithmetic: So, this game embraces that “adding 1” to a 6 flips it to a 1. And subtracting 1 from a 1 turns it into a 6. That’s modular math!!! Additions roll over, and subtractions underflow. That’s great! Because of this one feature, we are now using modular math (Modulo 6, Offset 1). This usually makes sense in the game, but they need some discussion. And what about negative numbers? What is 3-4 in this system? There is NO discussion of this! By opening the door to modular math, they need to define what that means! So, 1+6 = 7 = 1. Easy. 2+6 = 8 = 2. Easy. 3-1 = 2. 3-2 = 1. 3-3 = 0 = ??? By the rules we have, this should be 6!!! So, 3-4 = -1 = 5. An easy way to think of this; just do the normal math and add 6 or subtract 6 from the number until you get a number that’s between 1 and 6!

Some of cards, like “Unlock The Chest” (above) can be a lot easier if you can do modular math. And the game has opened the door for this! But they need to embrace the modular math and show examples! 6 is the additive identity here! I don’t think you can open the door and not specify this.

Conclusion

Companion Quest is a fun little cooperative dice-rolling/dice-placement game, but be aware! Compansion Quest is a lot more thinky than it looks! I don’t think this a gateway game; I think this is a game that needs a little sophistication and brain-power. Don’t get caught in the trap of thinking “Aw, it’s so cute, it must be simple!” This isn’t something super deep and heavy (remember, games really only last about 30 minutes), but it does have a lot of thinky decisions.

With an appropriate shepherd, I think most people can play this, but it might be a little too much out of the box for newbies.

But, overall, all my friends and nieces liked Companion Quest; it was a fun, cute, fast, simple game with deceptively more thinkiness than you might imagine. I might play it again solo? It’s a good game solo, but for me, the better game is the cooperative game with the dice-sharing and gnome-power sharing! I’d give this a [6.5-7/10] for solo and [7.0-7.5/10] for cooperative. It’s good! But, at the end of the day, it’s still a dice game and that randomness can be too much! That’s why we have a ranged rating; when the dice are poorly behaved, the game is less fun (for the lower ratings), and the game is more fun when the dice don’t conspire against you (for the upper rating).

Top 10 Cooperative Games To Play At A Gaming Convention!

As RichieCon 2026 approaches, we are reminded that not all cooperative games are created equal! A convention hall (or equivalent thereof) usually has a very different atmosphere than a home or a store. A convention tends to be a noisier, you may play with people you don’t know, and maybe you’ve been up too long so you are tired! In this convention environment, some cooperative games work better than others! For each game we list below, we indicate WHY we think this is a good cooperative convention game!

Unfortunately, a convention is a place where the Alpha Player Syndrome can manifest more easily (as you tend to play with strangers who you don’t know or trust), so we choose games where the Alpha Player is kept at bay by something! Each game we choose will also somehow address mitigating the Alpha Player!

The order for this list matters less than other top 10 lists; these games are mostly just good cooperative games to play at conventions! Here’s my current Top 10 Cooperative Convention Games! Every single one of these I would be happy to play with you and/or teach you at RichieCon 2026!

All of these games will be at RichieCon 2026!

#10 Kinfire Council + Winds Of Change Cooperative Expansion

Ok, this is a weird one, but follow me here! So, this is a long game! It’s kind of complex! The base game is nominally a really good worker placement game, but it’s just too chaotic and fragile as a competitive game. There are a lot of rules, so if you are playing competitively, it makes it a lot harder to ask questions and address issues! The cooperative expansion (Winds of Change) makes the game more interactive and a lot more fun! The complexity is not nearly as overwhelming because players are all working together to play! The game is a lot for a convention, but if you can get someone to teach it to you, the game is more tractable (which is why it’s only #10 on this list and not higher).

The Alpha Player is kept away because the game is very multiplayer solitaire! Each players has their own set of workers and upgrades that, frankly, are too much for others to follow! This game has a lot of choices, and players tend to negotiate to help each other and not get in each others’ way too much. We also strongly suggest that you play with the house rule that you may also share a resource as an errand. See our review of Kinfire Council + Winds of Changes for more discussion of this and some house rules!

I have taught this at Dice Tower West, and to at least 4 different game groups, and it was always a joy! It also made the top position of our Top 10 Cooperations Expansions of 2025!

#9. Marvel United or Marvel United: X-Men or Marvel United:Multiverse or …

Marvel United is a great convention game for many reasons; it’s easy to teach, easy to play, but still quite cooperative! The game is usually under an hour!

The idea that each player uses the symbols of the previous player’s card is genius! Most people love this simple idea that they haven’t seen elsewhere!

Another reason this is a great convention game is because anyone can play the hero that they want! Who’s your favorite Marvel Hero? You can probably play them! The three Seasons of Marvel United have almost every hero from Marvel that you might want to play! Play the quirky Ant-Man! Or the powerful Venom!! Or play the baroque and mysterious Dr. Strange! Or play Wolverine!

The only reason this is just #9 on the list is that Marvel United is slightly susceptible to the Alpha Player since everyone can see each other’s hands; this makes it slightly easier for the Alpha Player to slide in and tell everyone what to do. I personally haven’t had any issues like that, despite having probably played 50 or more games! Each player is generally playing multiplayer solitaire, so that tends to keep the Alpha Player away!

Marvel United had made so many top 10 lists here at CO-OP Gestalt: here’s just a few! Top 10 Cooperative Games of 2024! Top 10 Solo Games of 2025!

#8. Good Dog, Bad Zombie (2nd Edition)

Good Dog, Bad Zombie is a light game that’s easy to jump into at a convention! It’s easy to play, easy to explain, and people can jump in and out very easily as the game is playing!!

Players play as dogs keeping the dumb humans away from the zombies! The dogs are adorable and will probably immediately bring you into the game!

This is a pretty light game with a touch of randomness, but when you are tired and just want a light game (where you can easily add people or take them out), this is a great choice! It’s quite cute too! See our review of Good Dog, Bad Zombie here to see if this is something you want to play at a convention!

#7. Tembo: Survival of the Savanna

Tembo is a very cute game about moving elephants along in the Savanna! The players work together to move the elephants to different watering holes, eating trees along the way, and keeping the herd away from the Lion and Lioness!

This game has amazing art from Vincent Dutraite, and the elephant meeples (elepheeples?) just pop on the table! My friends all adored the cute vibe this game exuded!

But this is still a fun little game for 1-4 players. I am actually expecting to teach Max and Cassidy this game at RichieCon 2026! They will really enjoy this I think! As will you; it’s a quick, cute game that’s easy to teach and you can be done in under an hour.

The Alpha Player is kept in check because there’s a notion that each player’s perspective informs how the tiles must be played on the board, and the Alpha Player can’t necessarily see all that! Each player must play tiles along their perspective! This is a unique way to keep the Alpha Player away!

See our review here to see if Tembo is the right convention game for you!

#6. Aetherspire

Aetherspire is really great at a convention because it is looks so interesting on the board!

The structures you build look so cool! Each player’s turn is fairly multiplayer solitaire, so the Alpha Player can’t sneak in. The game is easy to describe, but it moves well and has some interesting and unique ideas. In the end, it’s the 3-D structures you build that make this game pop in a convention!

Take a look at our review here to see if Aetherspire might be a game you like to play at a convention!

#5. Boaromia: The Cooperative Festival Game!

I can almost guarantee you’ve never heard of this game! It had a very small Kickstarter, and it’s a little rare! But the boisterous energy of this game matches the boisterous energy of a convention!

Players move around a music festival, trying to make sure they see their favorite bands, but making sure to eat enough, pee enough, and drink enough! Along the way, players will stop and see other bands with their friend and just have a good time!

This is a game about having fun together as you traverse a music festival. It’s goofy, the names of the bands are goofy, the characters are goofy, and the game is just goofy. But this is a great game that works for 3 to 8 players! It’s rare to get a game that works for so many players!

I know the Alpha Player can’t really invade this game; I tried playing it solo and there’s just too much going on for the Alpha Player to tell you what to do! Everyone has to see their own favorite bands, and that scheduling can really only handled per player! See our review here to see if this might be a game you are interested!

#4. The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine or Mission Deep Sea

I have played The Crew (either one) in so many environments, and it has always worked! Missions are short, and it’s really easy for people to hop in or out of this game! You may start with 3 people, add 2 more, then drop to 4! This is just the nature of conventions; people come and go, and The Crew can easily accommodate that! And the game is fun the entire game, even with people coming and going! And you can play as long as you want!! The Crew is also a cooperative game that works well at 5 people, and sometimes it’s just harder to find good cooperative games that work at 5! What a great game; it’s never failed me! The Crew has also made our Top 10 Cooperative Space Games, and the Top 10 Cooperative Trick-Taking games!

The Alpha Player is kept at bay because this is a game of hidden information; the Alpha Player can’t tell you what to do because he can’t see everything! While I personally like The Crew better than most trick-taking games, I can’t deny there was a more popular trick-taking game that works so well at a convention … see #2 below!

#3. Fate: Defenders of Grimheim

There are multiple reasons Fate: Defenders of Grimheim works so well in a convention! For one, the rules are simple to teach and easy to internalize: it’s a tower defense game! Defend the homeland in the middle!

For another, the board is so well-labelled! Everything you need is well-labelled on the board with big enough fonts to read!

For another, the game feels very multiplayer solitaire, but in a good way. Every player is upgrading their own character with their own rules and their own cards, so everyone feels like they are getting powerful! The Alpha Player is kept at bay because each player is too busy concentrating on their own deck; the Alpha Player can’t see what everyone is doing with their own very different deck!

A game of Fate: Defenders of Grimheim starts off very multiplayer solitaire, as each player defends a different direction, but as the game progresses and more shared area is threatened, the game becomes much more cooperative! This is a great dynamic for a bunch of strangers because they can slowly get to know each and slowly become more cooperative as the tension increases!

See our review here to see if Fate: Defenders of Grimheim might be right for you! Oh yes! I have also taught this at Dice Tower West and it went swimmingly!

#2. Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, Trick-Taking Game. Also, The Two Towers!

This is a cooperative trick-taking game set in the first book of the Lord of The Rings. There are 18 very thematic chapters that people play through!

I know this is a good convention game because I saw it being played non-stop at RichieCon 2025 and Dice Tower West 2025! People just seem to love this game!

Everyone seems to love the simplicity of this game! Like other games on this list, the game does scale so you can jump in and out (a little, the game is best at 3 or 4), but it’s been my experience that people just want to keep playing! See our review of Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, Trick-Taking Game here!

The Alpha Player is kept at bay because this is a limited communication and limited information game; the Alpha Player can’t tell you what to do because he can’t see everything!

And don’t worry RichieCon 2026 people; the next game in the (The Two Towers) will also be available to play at RichieCon 2026!

#1. Just One

I have never had a session of Just One fail me! I have played with gamers, non-gamers, and casual gamers … and it has always worked! This simple party cooperative game is easily to explain, easy to play, and addicting to keep playing! People can drop in and out without any consequences, and it can play small numbers (like 3 players) all the way up to 9 players (with a little cheating) and still work flawlessly! This word game has a simple premise: everyone choose one word to make the guesser guess the secret word. That’s it! If any words are the same, they are eliminated, so players must think outside the box sometimes to get thing working! Each round is quick, and people can easily join or drop!

The Alpha Player is kept at bay because players simply aren’t allowed to communicate during the word choice phase! There’s no way the Alpha Player can sneak in because he simply can’t talk! (And if he is talking, he is cheating!)

Just One has made our Top 10 Cooperative Games You Can Play Online and also our Top 10 Cooperative Party Games!

Cooperative Scrabble? A Solo and Cooperative Review of Word Weaver Adventures

Word Weaver Adventures is a cooperative word and (sorta) boss-battler game from Gamefound back in June 2024. It arrived at my house sometime April 2026. There were delays along the way from tariffs and other issues, but it delivered!

I have to admit, I almost didn’t back this! This wasn’t a well-known company or anything like that, just a bunch of passionate new gamers. They promised a cooperative word game (maybe like a cooperative Scrabble?) .. and the art and the enthusiasm for the project amped me up enough to back the project! It ended up being a smallish Gamefound project at about $13,000 with only 152 backers.

In the end, when the game finally arrived, I enjoyed the personal letter they sent. See above.

Will this be a hidden gem? Let’s check it out!

Unboxing and Gameplay

Word Weaver Adventures is a smallish box; see Coke can above for perspective.

The rulebook is, unfortunately, a folded pamphlet. Sigh. See above.

If Ace of Spades (from a few weeks ago) uses poker hands to take out bad guys cooperatively, then Word Weaver Adventures uses words (with point values like Scrabble) to take out bad guys cooperatively! There’s actually a surprising amount of overlap in the ideas!

Each player takes the role of one of four characters: see the choices above.

Each character has a special ability, powered by letters and gems. See above as Fulminate : The Exploder can double the value of a letter!

Each use of your power consumes a gem and 2 letters (see above). You only start with 3 gems, which means you only get to use your special ability 3 times during the game! And that use also costs precious letters!

At the start of each turn, each player draws up to 7 letters, and uses them to try to spell things! It has kind of a Scrabble vibe, eh?

The letters are really nice wooden letters, ala Scrabble. They are in a very nice bag holding them … see above!

The words you spell do “damage” to bad guys! How much damage? It depends on how much the letters of the words are worth! JARS above (with no modifiers) would be worth 8+1+1+1 = 11 points of damage!

This is a boss-battler game! Sort of! To win, you have to take down one of the big bosses (see above) by doing enough damage! I keep saying this is a boss-battler, but these “bosses” are just challenging you to spell! My first pass through the game, I thought these were bosses you “defeated”! No no no!! The theme is that they are teachers quizzing you, and you have to get enough points to move on to the next teacher! The “damage” you do is just points towards overcoming a “test” or “quiz!”

Along the way, you must pass smaller quizzes from Assistant Teachers! See The Termite Colonizers above! He’s an Assistant Teacher who gives you little quizzes! They are just a minor quizzes on the way to the big test at the end! (The bad guys are all grouped; we are spelling for the yellow diamond bad guys! See the little yellow diamond in the upper right corner)

The (left) bottom of the card describes how many points they have, plus (right bottom) how much “damage” they do to the characters if the survive to the next round! Damage to characters is done “cracking” a letter spot so that character(s) get fewer letters next turn!

If the players can survive the big boss (called Head Teacher) test and take out little spelling quizzes along the way (with Assistant Teachers), players win! Basically, if all slots are cracked (meaning players can’t draw any letters), players lose!

Overall, these components are just fantastic!

Rulebook

Yes, the rulebook is a pamphlet. Sigh. I really detest this form factor for rulebooks.

It DOES fit on the chair next to me without drooping, but the text is a little hard to read. They did a good job of not wasting space (there’s almost no wasted space: see above), and there is no droopage, but it’s still a pamphlet that’s kind of hard to read: this gets a C on the Chair Test?

The rules were ok, but a little unclear on a few things. I didn’t realize until I looked at the Variations, that you can generally only spell one word per turn with your tiles! If you play the Early Spellers Variation (above), you can spell multiple words! Whoops! I wish that had been clearer!

I mean, I got the game played from this rulebook. . I would have been so much happier if this had been a little rulebook. But I get it; there were only 152 backers for this campaign. They did such a great job with the cards and characters and the art therein, I guess someplace had to suffer a little. I’d rather have the great art and cards (which you look at all the time) and an ok rulebook (which you only ever look at once or twice). So, I get it. The rulebook mostly taught the game; It was fine.

Solo Play

Strictly speaking, this game DOES NOT support the solo player! Only 2-4! So sad, no support for Saunders’ Law.

It is SO EASY to support solo play! Just play the 2-Player mode (play as two characters) and alternate between them as-if the game were 2-Player! This is perfect example of 2-handed solo working just fine! I found that this solo mode worked! I am a little surprised they didn’t include this simple solo mode.

This is how I learned the game; playing 2-handed solo mode! In the end, I had a fine time playing.

Cooperative Mode

We played a few cooperative games. We liked it enough, after the first game, that we wanted to play again! In fact, we probably should have upped the difficulty in the second game! We crushed it!

From a mechanism point of view, there isn’t really that much cooperation. Every turn, you can maybe swap one letter each, and each player can only swap once! (Which means in a 3-player game, there is a limit of one swap total per turn). Basically every turn is mostly multiplayer solitaire (see Teresa above looking at her letter) as each player tries to get the best word they can with their letters! So, there’s not that much cooperation, at least at the spelling word level.

Interestingly, even if the “spelling” part of the game had pretty minimal communication and/or sharing, some of the higher-level strategies emerged as we chatted. “You know, if I spell a lesser word, I can use my shield to protect us all from cracking!” “Oh ya! Do we have good letters? I can double the best letter? Is this a good idea now?” As the monkey, I was good at shielding …

The special powers and special cards (treasures) actually became very important part of the strategy of this game. The discussions that revolve around when to use these cards was the main cooperation that emerged.

To be clear, there are NO communication limitations (thank goodness) in this game! Players can talk as much as they want! And even the rules aren’t 100% clear, I am pretty sure you are allowed to show all your tiles to all other players! That encourages the cooperation and helping! You can kinda tell when someone is having trouble with their letters, and you can look across the table and offer suggestions! I did that a few times … and I was offered suggestions a few times as well. It works; each player still make all the decisions with their own letters, but minor help occasionally from your friends does help.

The game is mostly multiplayer solitaire, as players spell their words fairly independently. There’s a minor mechanism for sharing letters, but much of the conversation that flows in the game is high-level strategizing about how to use special powers and treasures. Despite the multiplayer solitaire nature of the spelling part of the game, the rest of the game is fairly interactive and cooperative!

What I Liked

The Art: The art in this game is generally fantastic! I love the vibe that this art exudes! No adjustment needed on the art at all! This art is AWESOME!

Cooperative Scrabble: I like that I can generally describe this as a cooperative Scrabble game! Most people know what Scrabble means, but they wonder how it comes together as a cooperative game! It’s tempting to hear, “Oh, you can play Scrabble cooperatively?”

Easy To Pull Out. In general, this game is easy to pull out and teach.

What I Didn’t Like

No Solo Mode? It’s really weird that there’s no solo mode. Play 2-handed solo; it works fine.

Scaling: The game scales weirdly. It’s supposed to be Easy/Medium/Hard difficulty, but honestly, the game is so much easier with more people! If you have 4 people, you can do so much more “damage” per turn! I was struggling in a 2-Player game at the “easy” level, and I realized I would be destroying the game with 3 or 4 characters playing! So, it sorta feels like the difficulty should be a function of the number of players? It’s not!!! I think that the difficulty level should probably be the number of characters in play: Use easy for 2 characters, medium for 3 characters, and hard for 4 characters. (Note that I say characters because a solo game would be 2 characters!) I guess you can choose to make the game easier or harder by upping or lowering the difficulty.

It felt like a mistake the game had no notion for scaling for the number of characters in play. This is probably the biggest flaw in the game; there needs to be an orthogonal scaling factor for the number of players and the difficulty; they conflated them and I think that’s a mistake (and confusing).

Pamphlet For Rulebook. Yes, I’ve complained about this a lot; I’ll shut up now. I’d much rather have the amazing art and a pamphlet than mediocre art and a real rulebook. I’ll shut-up about this. The pamphlet worked. This is a personal issue.

What’s a Word? There is no discussion really of “what’s a legal word I can use?”. I think they are relying on the Scrabble back-knowledge of most people, assuming people will use standard Scrabble rules for “what’s a legal word”. But there wasn’t really a discussion.

Conclusion

Word Weaver Adventures is a hidden gem of a game! Most people know what Scrabble is, so it should be easy to pull this out and teach this to most people. As long as you know about the scaling issues (and know how to correctly use the difficulty based on the number of players), this game is great! 8/10.

You can play solo; have the solo player operate two characters and alternate between them. It’s surprising this solo mode isn’t in the rules.

I am so glad I have a simple and gorgeous cooperative Scrabble game I can pull out and show anyone.

A Pirate’s Favorite Letter? A Solo and Cooperative Review of Tanares Expedition

Tanares: Expeditions is a cooperative pirate game that was on Gamefound back in November 2024. It finally arrived at my house in late April 2026.

What Is This?

What is Tanares Expeditions: Central Sea? It’s basically Gloomhaven with a pirate theme! You fight a bunch of minor bad guys on the way to fighting a big bad boss on every quest!

Players quest! Players each play as a pirate exploring a map! That’s not quite true; there must ALWAYS be four pirates, no matter the number of players! So, a 4-Player game works best, as each player gets their own pirate to play! Other player counts can work, but you have to either take control of multiple pirates or do something special (that isn’t well specified) using something called comrades. I found the comrade rules very underspecified and underwhelming, so I always just played with 4 full pirates with full abilities. It’s a lot of work (especially for the solo player operating all 4 pirates), but you get used to it … after a quest or two. It’s still a lot of work to operate multiple pirates, even if you do use the comrades rules … so just play as full pirates.

Pirates fight! They roll barrels! (Seriously!)

Each quest offers “about” 4 encounters where it’s tactical combat! Each combat is unique and different! A full quest takes about 2.5 to 3 hours, with each encounter in that Quest being about 30 to 45 minutes.

Each combat is a little different and a little special; you don’t always do the same thing! There are challenges (see above) that help give the combat a lot of flavor! Sometimes you have to roll barrels to kill opponents, sometimes you have to push them into spikes, sometimes you get drunk on Grog, and sometimes you have to bat them into the hole with the Kraken! (I am not making this up). You can still win the combat if you don’t succeed at the challenge (BTW, the word challenge wasn’t in the Index, so you have to go looking to find it), but it’s better to succeed at the challenges if possible! Succeeding at challenges allows to activate your Sea Blessings sooner and better!

Sea Blessings are arguably the best part of the game! Basically, after each encounter, each pirate gets a new Sea Blessing! The Sea Blessings enhance each pirate character and allow them to feel more powerful very quickly! Since each Quest is “about” 4 encounters, you will have a full raft of Sea Blessings (no pun intended … well maybe a little)! See below for four full Sea Blessings active!

These Sea Blessings are also unique to your character type! Captain Mavra (above) is a Controller type which tends to focus on upgrading her abilities to do magic damage from far away! See above as she has 4 of her Sea Blessings out! Each Sea Blessing really makes her feel a little more powerful! And of course, you get some choices on the Sea Blessings that come out, so you can make your own combos!

There are 4 character types: Healer, Tank, Controller, and Striker. All quests must have four pirates, with one of each type. See above for the Healer.

See above as the solo player BARELY keeps all four sets of pirates cards together! Yes, this game takes up a LOT of real estate!

Probably the second coolest thing about this game is the powers: each pirate has two main Attacks (far left) and 1 Ultimate Attack (far right)! You can use the main Attacks all the time (once per turn), but you can only use the Ultimate Attack once per Quest!

Oh, and you’ll notice the Kickstarter awesome version of this game came with plastic stands to hold cards. These were completely unwieldy and took up waaaaaaay too much space for the solo game. We’ll see how much we like them in a 4-Player game? Honestly, I don’t think I would recommend them at all. I kept knocking over the cards. UPDATE: Andrew and I hated them and didn’t play with them. Sam and Teresa kept theirs the whole game, but their cards got knocked over quite a bit.

Sure, it looks cool all set up with these card holders (above) but I found them unusable. They got in the way, the cards fell down all the time, and I couldn’t see the map!

It was kind of a mess to player 4 characters solo, but above (with the 4 characters all scrunched together) worked MUCH better than the plastic card holders. Your mileage may vary.

Minis and/or Standees.

Players are pirates fighting pirate-themed bad guys. I got the Kickstarter version which has Minis.

There are bunch of minis; most of them are bad guys you fight! Bad pirates, Spiders, Goblins, etc. the standard pirate stuff!

Some of the minis (the big bosses, see above) are even painted!

So, I got the painted version of the game, but not all my minis are painted? Just a few? Shrug? Just so you know that not ALL your minis will be painted.

Here’s some bad guys (above and below) with their stats card and minis.

The minis seem to correspond pretty well (we had trouble correlating minis to cards in The Last Spell from a few weeks ago). So that was nice.

Combat

Combat order is decided by the initiative deck! See above! Each pirate gets a card and each bad guys gets a card.

See other side of the initiative cards above.

Once the Initiative cards are laid out, they stays like that for the rest of the encounter. See above! Those of you who have played Dungeons & Dragons might recognize this; this feels very much like the initiative system from D&D! In fact, you can even use special powers to “slightly modify” your turn order! To be clear, this is NOT Variable Turn Order (like we saw last week in Aeon’s End: Beyond the Breach)! Once the cards are out, players know the order that everyone will activate for the rest of combat! So, it may suck that the bad guys goes twice or even thrice in a row, but it’s predictable, you know it’s coming, and so you can work with it or around it!

Oh! One of my favorite parts of the Initiative system is that a Sea Curse (see above) defines attack preferences for that round! One of these cards come out every round, revealing some bad news, but more importantly: defining attack preferences!!! Bad guys are red or blue in this game, and you can see that each round has the attack preference VERY WELL DEFINED! “Red enemies go after the farthest enemy” and “Blue enemies go after enemy with fewest HP!” This disambiguations makes me very happy! They kind of dropped the ball though; if there’s a “tie”, … the players pick! No no no no no no! You already have a well-defined ordering in the initiative line! LEFT TO RIGHT! If there’s ever a tie, just use the leftmost character in the initiative line!!! ARGHGH!! ARGHGH! ARGHGH! ARGHHG! I have very strong feelings about this; I hate it when a cooperative game says “players choose”! (See my blog entry here about this: Resolving Ambiguity in Cooperative Games). They are SO CLOSE to getting it perfect; they should have use the leftmost character in case of ties! Done! So, this will be a house rule if you play with me …

This is a boss-battler; you (generally) have 3 minor combats on the way to a final combat with the boss! You have a decent chance of dying while you play … but there are many mechanisms for healing, and one-shot resurrections! This game really FEELS LIKE they want you to keep going! Even though the game is hard, there are enough mechanisms to keep you on-track … it almost feels like you have a DM who is trying to look out for you …

Campaign

To be clear, this is a campaign; you can see that designation on the cover.

The campaign is many Quests; see the quest book above! Each Quest is about 4 encounters long!

I said earlier that this game reminds me of Gloomhaven; and I stand by that. There is flavor text and story in the game … about as much as Gloomhaven (some story but it’s not the main emphasis). The main emphasis of the game is the tactical combat on the many different maps.

Each Quest (see the first one above) has about 4 encounters, and may actually span multiple maps. I would say each quest is “about” 2.5 hours to 3 hours? It depends on how much you know. Sure, my first quest was probably 4 hours, but it was a learning quest.

There IS an overarching story going on here! I gotta be honest, I kinda like the story! It feels very thematic and piratey! Each Quest, when you end, gives you upgrades and takes you to the next part of the story! The game DOES have a branching adventure … again, very much Gloomhaven.

The campaign and game feel very much a like a Gloomhaven style campaign; a story evolves, but the main emphasis is on the tactical combats (usually 4 encounters per Quest).

Upgrades

One of the best parts of this game is how many upgrades you see as you play!

We’ve already mentioned the Sea Blessings! You get a new Sea Blessing (from a deck of 5 you chose) after every encounter, so you get upgrades mid-quest to help you feel more powerful!

And at the end of every Quest, you get to upgrade your Sea Blessings so you can choose better ones! You can choose Sea Blessings that combo! You can choose Sea Blessings that fit your play-style! If each encounter is “about” 30 minutes each, that means you get a Sea Blessing every 30 minutes! It feels good to get those!

After some Quests, you get loot! See above.

After each Quest, you also usually get to upgrade an Action! See as Captain Mavra’s Tentacles Action is now level 2!

These upgrades follow you as you play; this is a campaign after all! You always feel like you are upgrading, which is a really great feeling!

Ships

Wait! There’s also ship-to-ship combat! No pirate game is complete without some ship-to-ship!

It’s not all the time, but on some quests, you must sail the Seven Seas! On Quest 3, I got to sail!

The sailing part of the game is VERY different! You have very different rules for shooting and ramming other ships! But, they seem fairly well-defined on just 2 pages of the rulebook! See above! You also don’t get Sea Blessing (boo hoo) in the sailing parts of the game. Or powers. You just do what your ship does!

If you flip your character card, you have a ship on the other side! When you sail your ship, you get to choose two things: your Crew and your Attack! See above as Captain Krog chooses a defensive crew (+3 defense) and Lightning as an Attack!

The basic combat still works, more or less, the same way! You have Initiative cards for your ships and the bad guys ships!

There’s a bunch of bad guys ships that come out (see above), each with their own weapons and weaknesses!

The sailing part of the game feels VERY different … but it still feels very piratey and thematic! I cheated a little bit to make sure I made it to the end. The good news is that, even if your ships sinks, it can come back … once. If all four pirate ships sink twice, well, then you lose. You probably will lose at least one ship, but it’s good to know you have at least one resurrect.

I liked the sailing part of the game; it really fit nicely in and really gave the game a lot of variety!

What I Liked

Art: I adored the art in this game. It’s VERY piratey and thematic.

Components/Minis. The components were all high-quality and worked really well. They looked really cool on the table.

Upgrades. Between new Sea Blessings between encounters and upgrades to Main Actions between Quests, you always feel like you are advancing and getting better. It happens quite a bit!

Sea Curse and Resolving Ambiguity: They almost got the ambiguity resolution perfect; the Sea Curse cards do a great job of helping describing attack resolution! See above! They unfortunately don’t say anything on “ties”: as a House rule, use the leftmost relevant player Initiative card to resolve ambiguity in case of ties.

Story: there’s not THAT much story, but I like what I have seen. The campaign seems well-defined.

Combats all feel different! Each combat, so far, feels very different! I rolled some barrels, I shoved into some spikes, I got drunk! sailed some ships! Everything I have seen feels just a little different and gives it a nice flavor. The Challenges really enhance that flavor too.

What I Was Annoyed Over

Dice Based: Combat is dice-based; it would remind you a lot of Dungeons & Dragons as you roll a 20-sided die and have to be over the enemy Defense. If you are rolling badly, you can just lose lose lose and it’s not fun. Sure, there are buffs, sure there are a lot of mechanisms to help you (two free resurrections!), and sure it’s just the nature of dice. I found that I had to cheat once of twice to keep the game going because of one or two bad rolls! This is one place where this is more like Dungeons & Dragons and maybe a little less like Gloomhaven.

Rulebook and Rules. There are a LOT of rules. I played a bunch of gams, and it felt like it took a while to converge to what the rules where. The rulebook is ok; it has an Index but it is incomplete (Area of Effect? AoE? Challenge?). I used it it a few times and it worked, and a few times and it didn’t. (When an Index doesn’t work, it means you have to linearly scan the entire rulebook to find a rule). I guess I’d rather have an Index that not, so maybe I’ll count that as a win.

Player Summary Cards. Seriously, only two Player Summary cards? And they are DIFFERENT? We needed at least four Player Summary Cards! My friends are fine sharing (we usually shared Player Summary cards, one per side of the table), but it was annoying to constantly be going back and forth.

Always Four Players: Gloomhaven did a great job balancing the game for different player counts; there were set-ups for 2, 3 and 4-player games! In this game, there must always be 4 pirates! It works, I understand why they did it, but it makes it harder to play the solo game (even with the comrades rule, you are still operating 4 pirates).

Conclusion

So, what’s a pirate’s favorite letter? C (for the Seven Cs!) for solo mode, and B (for Be eating lemons or you’ll get Scurvy) for the cooperative mode.

It’s probably a 7.5/10 for the solo mode; I still want to keep playing the solo campaign. I was a little bummed when I had to reset the campaign so I could play cooperatively with my friends (yes, you can reset the campaign). It wasn’t THAT much state to reset, and I have taken pictures to keep track of the decks (the state is mostly your choices for base Sea Blessings), but it was a little work. The worst part of the solo mode is just how much work it is to operate four characters AND the bad guys AND do maintenance! You can use the comrades cards to mitigate this work a little, but that gets rid of Sea Blessings which are arguably one of the best parts of the game. So, that workload for the solo players brings down the score a little.

I would absolutely recommend playing this solo for at least 3 Quests (partly so you see ship-to-ship combat) and to converge to the rules. There are a lot of rules, and the rulebook could have been better. The rules are mostly all there. I think diving right in to this with an uninitiated group is a recipe for disaster! Play it solo to learn it, then teach your friends.

Cooperative play is pretty darn good. 8/10. A lot of cooperation emerges as everyone discusses ways to get the best results using their pirates and traits! Each pirate is very different! It’s pretty clear that four players (one player per pirate) is the optimal way to play. I could see doing a 2-Player game (two pirates per player) or maybe a 3-Player game (one per, and a shared pirate?), but I always prefer when I get one character to focus on and inhabit. My group still want to keep playing, so we’ll be heading into the campaign for the next few weeks. So far, it’s been a hit.

A pirate’s favorite letter is R! ARGHHHHH when you are learning the game and coming up to speed with everything; it’s a lot of work. Once you get into it, I think you might enjoy it. Hopefully this review will help you see if this is for you.

Oh yes, this would make our Top 10 Cooperative Swashbuckling Games!

Aeon’s End Ennui? A Solo and Cooperative Review of Aeons End: Beyond the Breach after Full Playthrough

Aeon’s End Ennui is the condition of being sick of so much Aeon’s End! It’s the ennui of yet another Aeon’s End game!

Aeon’s End: Beyond the Breach is the 1000th standalone expansion (okay, I am exaggerating a little; it’s maybe the 16th expansion) for Aeon’s End. This is a standalone game, so it can be be played by itself. You can also use the mages and friends and foes and nemeses from this to add gameplay to other Aeon’s End you may have (and vice-verse). Today, we are concentrating solely on the standalone experience of Beyond The Breach!

Cure For Aeon’s End Ennui

The cure for Aeon’s End Ennui is simply reminding yourself HOW EASY it is to jump into an Aeon’ End game! Each standalone Aeon’s End game comes with the first game sheet above!

That first game sheet clearly defines (at least for the first game) what you need to do to get the game moving! And in fact, the Nemesis deck is fully constructed for you! One of the most annoying things in Aeon’s End is constructing the Nemesis deck, but that first play is all set-up for you! Just grab the the first few decks and set-up!

I am not being glib here; the ease at which you can set-up your first game and get going might be a major reason I still keep buying the Aeon’s End games. It’s so easy to jump in for your first play. Other manufacturers take note: if you can easily jump into a game, it’ll make it easier to play and easier to like.

Unboxing and Gameplay

See box above with Coke Can for scale.

Each player chooses a mage to play. Aeon’s End are all cooperative games where mages work together to take out a big bad.

The base game only starts with the 4 mages above (the extras are from Kickstarter backer extras and expansions that came in the box itself).

The mages battle one of the nemeses (the bad guys) above! To win, they cast spells to try to reduce the nemesis to zero hit points!

There are Friends and Foes that help/hinder you along the way. No player actually plays them, they are just operated by the game and have a mildly good or mildly bad effect when they activate.

This is a cooperative deck-building game: see some base cards above. Gems (like the crystal) generate Aether (the little notes) and that is used to buy bigger and better things; better gems, better spells, better everything. Aether is the currency of the game and is used to buy upgrades for your deck. Aeon’s End: Beyond the Breach is a cooperative deck-building game! For more examples and discussion of cooperative deck-building games, see our Top 10 Cooperative Deck-Building Games!

There’s a whole wide selection of Gems, Relics, and spells to buy! See above. More come out as the game unfolds.

Casting spells are how you do damage to the Nemesis and other bad guys that come along. In order to cast a spell, you have to prepare it into an opened breach: see above as Nook has 4 breaches: 3 of them are opened and have spelled prepped into them! The fourth breach is closed and can’t be used for casting a spell*, but it can be opened (at the cost of some Aether) later on. Interestingly, cast spells on your turn actually go off at the start of your NEXT turn!

The quality of Aeon’s End: Beyond the Breach is great! See components above. The art is a little inconsistent with other Aeon’s End games, but only if you look too closely. Internally, this game is very consistent.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention one of the more interesting things about the Aeon’s End systems, no shuffling! You just plop your discard over and turn it into your deck! Those of you “annoyed” by Dominion‘s constant reshuffling, you (mostly) don’t do that in Aeon’s End! I say “mostly” as foreshadowing … Beyond the Breach actually adds shuffling in at some point … spoiler …

Friends and Foes

In Aeon’s End: The Descent, they introduced one of my favorite new mechanisms into the Game: Friends and Foes! See our review of the original Aeon’s End: The Descent here!

In Descent, the Aeon’s End team introduced us to the Friends and Foes family!

Two new characters are inserted (optionally; it is a module you can choose to play with or not) into the game that help of hinder you … slightly. No one actually plays a friend of foe: the game just operates them for you (with a little help from you).

Aeon’s End: Beyond the Breach continues with this trend and adds more Friends and Foes! See more above!

I still love the Friends and Foes! Even though it makes the game more complicated (because it’s yet another mechanism to operate as you play), it gives the players more choices! When a friend or foe activates, you usually have a choice of two options; so you can choose how you be slightly helped or slightly hindered! It makes the game feel like you have more agency!

The other thing the Friends and Foes does is tamp down the problems with Variable Turn Order. See discussion below.

I am very very glad to see more Friends and Foes being available! This is a modular expansion you can add to any Aeon’s End game!

Sleeve Your Cards!

Aeon’s End games are all Variable Turn Order games: a deck of cards control when entities have a turn. The numbers indicate a player number, and the Nemesis cards indicate when the bad guy has a turn.

Basically, for balance, the players (as a group) always have 4 turns (no matter the number of players), and the Nemesis gets two turns always. See rulebook above as it confirms that!

A deck of cards (the Turn Order deck) controls this.

If you sleeve NOTHING else, you should sleeve the Turn Order deck (see above: like I did above). You handle the Turn Order deck all the time in this game. Learn from my mistake: my original Aeon’s End turn order deck is kinda grody because I didn’t sleeve it!

This is deck-building game too … you usually should sleeve a deck-building game because players handle the cards so much. I plan to sleeve Aeon’s End: Beyond The Breach before RichieCon 2026, but I haven’t had a chance to yet. I did play about 10 games without sleeving it, and it’s still fine, but I will still sleeve it before I let it loose on the convention floor.

Variable Turn Order

We have written many articles about the dangers of Variable Turn Order: see the most recent one here: Variable Turn Order and How to Mitigate It’s Randomness. Basically, Variable Turn Order can be too random sometimes and ruin a game. There are some simple mitigation techniques (usually: don’t allow the Nemesis to ever have more than 2 turns in a row), but it can be an issue.

Luckily, Aeon’s End: Beyond The Breach has a few things that help mitigate the problems of Variable Turn Order. The problem is still there, but it’s much less pronounced.

First, Friends and Foes! By adding two new cards into the Turn Order Deck (see Friend and Foe cards above), this evens out how often the Nemesis comes out! Adding these two cards makes it much less likely to get multiple turns of the Nemesis in a row!

Second, there are new mechanisms in the game that address the problem by allowing the players to alter the Turn Order deck! For example, the friend Lash: The Dreamer has the ability to re-insert a player turn order card into the deck (effectively giving the players one extra turn)! See above!

The Relic card Chronoid allow users to move the next Turn Order card to the bottom of the Turn Order deck. There are a few other places in the game where the players can alter the Turn Order deck.

I like that they have added some new in-game mechanisms to fix turn order problems. I don’t think I ever needed my “The Nemesis never gets more than two turns in a row“ house rule in all the games I have played of Beyond The Breach. Between Friends and Foes and these few extra mechanisms, we may be at the point where it’s not as big a deal? Shrug?

Rulebook

For a rulebook that’s had SO MANY iterations, I still have some complaints. Bigger than I expected.

Seriously, this rulebook gets a grade of C on the Chair Test! Sure it’s got good pictures and good set-up, but it droops over the edges making it much harder to read this on the Chair next to me! This form factor is really not great.

This is a standalone game, right? Sure, it expands the Aeon’s End universe, but you can play this all by itself! So why are some concepts in the game NOT DOCUMENTED AT ALL IN THIS RULEBOOK? The “Recall” keyword (see Chronoid and Atomized Ash above) are not documented in the rulebook! I had to go online and found this BGG link which answered the question: https://boardgamegeek.com/thread/3708173/recall-new-keyword-not-a-question-just-a-lack-in-t

There’s at least a few more; I encountered the Conjure keyword and had no idea what it meant: I had to go Googling. This is unacceptable that the keywords in the game are NOT documented in this standalone rulebook.

I like the IDEA of highlighting new rules in a different color (see rules above), and it mostly works. But this rulebook also makes the error of putting new rules in sidebar boxes outside the flow of the main rules. It’s too easy to miss a rule; usually sidebar floating boxes of text are “examples” or “clarifications”! By putting sidebars outside the flow of the normal rules, I think there are too easy too miss. This is definitely a personal thing for me, so maybe it’s not a problem for you. I encountered this problem in the game Unicornus Knights (see review here and here) and they FIXED the rulebook to eliminate rules from sidebars and put that text into the main flow! It made the rulebook that much better!

Don’t get me wrong: this is a pretty good rulebook. It’s just frustrating that this rulebook (given the number of iterations of it) still has problems.

You will be able to learn the game pretty well from the rulebook.

New Concepts

There are a surprising number of new additions to the game system.

Trinkets: A lot of spells and bad effects cause you to draw Trinket cards (see above). Trinkets are basically one-shot items that clog your deck for one pass but then go away (back to the bottom of the Trinket deck)! The Trinkets are always good currently, but I can see them adding “evil Trinkets” in the future. I liked their use of the word Trinket; it implies it’s a crappy little piece of junk you can only use once. And that’s exactly what it is! I found the addition fun and useful. They were all over the game!

Pulse Tokens: Yet another token. Certain cards give you Pulse Tokens (see the little explosion token on Dezmodia above) which other cards or abilities or powers allow you to spend. I think there might be a mage or few new items that embrace the Pulse Tokens more, but in my 10 games of Aeon’s End: Beyond The Breach, there were a VERY minor addition. Eh. I barely used them.

Treasures: Although Treasures aren’t new, Level 4 treasures are! In battle 5 of the campaign, you get a card that only you can buy! Sounds familiar? You might remember something similar from Astro Knights: Eternity! (see review here). Astro Knight: Eternity called them Inventions, Aeon’s End: Beyond the Breach calls them Level 4 Treasure. I guess it’s not a big surprise since the same company makes both games! It’s hard to tell how useful Level 4 Treasures are since you only use them for one battle (at the very end). The Level 1-3 treasures were much more useful.

Aether Tokens: You can earn Aether tokens (which is basically just Aether). Unfortunately, you must spend all Aether tokens by the end of your turn, or you lose it all! One of the games I played, I accidentally kept them around as long as I wanted! Nope! Learn from my mistake!

Solo Play

So, Aeon’s End: Beyond The Breach supports solo play. Huzzah! (Thank you for following Saunders’ Law).

I still want to complain about the rulebook, but some props: they give solo rules, and they are good! It’s unfortunately an “afterthought” on the very last page of the rulebook, but even after complaining about this in Aeon’s End: The Descent, they STILL haven’t fixed a glaring problem! When setting up the Turn Order Deck WHY do they not address the true solo? They address 2-Player, 3-Player, and 4-Player. You have to “figure out” from context that the solo player has 4 player turn order cards (and those of you who have played the Aeon’s End App might think you only get 3 Turn Order cards!!). Ugh. This is another thing that should have been fixed in this rulebook.

BUT, this is true solo play, where the solo player plays a single mage! Since the single mage has fewer hit points, it’s easier to be “taken out”, so if and when your solo mage is reduced to 0 hit points (called exhausted), you still keep playing! The problem is that Gravehold takes the damage you would be dealt instead! At twice the rate! So, you want to keep your mage healthy, or Gravehold dies quicker! Remember, you lose if Gravehold is ever reduced to 0 hit points!

You can also play multi-handed solo (playing multiple positions). I usually prefer two-handed solo (see my review of Pandemic: Fate of the Fellowship), but the true solo rules are so simple, it’s easy to play one mage and the game flow doesn’t change much! The only “other” rule for true solo (besides Gravehold taking your damage if you are exhausted) is that you are your own ally.

Actually, the rule that you are your own ally is kind of neat; you can strategize different things to do things for yourself! A lot of cards in here help your ally, and if you choose the right spells/relics/gems, you can buff yourself pretty quickly. I chose a lot of upgrades and cards based solely on how well the ally rule helps myself! That Phosphor Nugget (see above) becomes a LOT better when you get your OWN token!

Because you only play one mage in true solo, the maintenance and upkeep as you play is NOT overwhelming. This particular box of Aeon’s End is more complicated than most, so I worry that playing multiple mages would be too much mental and physical overhead (plus the context switching). But since you can true solo, no problem! I never felt overwhelmed by the maintenance playing solo… well… I did when switching between chapters of the campaign, but that problem will be there in the cooperative game too!

I played the entire campaign solo, pure solo the entire way. Spoiler alert: I had a great time! I must have if I kept playing!

Campaign

There is a campaign game here! A Narrative Booklet (see above) describes a story and helps you set-up and get rewards from each chapter. There are 5 chapters to the campaign, each of which is played once or twice.

For Battle One (see example above), there’s flavor text telling the story of the battle (in black and white). The “game text” is in yellow and orange as it describes how you set-up the first battle. At the end of the battle, you will have some more flavor text describing the resolution, and then some “treasure” (both literally and figuratively). At the end of every combat, you will unlock new things that will go into your next battle!

Each chapter of the campaign has its own deck(s) of cards (see above).

.. as well as an envelope with “new stuff” (new mages, new bad guys, etc).

The campaign is completely resettable. After I finished my campaign, I put everything back so that the game was in pristine shape! There’s something “fun” about opening the decks and discovering the new cards as you go! If I come back to this in the future (and I suspect I will), I will want to “rediscover” the joy of the entire campaign. The cards were all labelled from what deck they came from (and they are numbered), so it’s easy to reset the cards. The envelopes are little trickier; I had to take a picture of the contents so I could remember what was in each.

So, is this a good campaign? Yes and No. From the perspective of a “the campaign is a way to play all the contents of this box”, it was a phenomenal success! I played the entire campaign solo and really enjoyed the campaign! I got some great battles with great bad guys! I had some really interesting mages to operate! I tried about 5 different mages over the battle! There were all interesting (but see discussion below.

From another perspective, the campaign was a failure. The story DID no draw me in. I struggled to read the first wall of text (see above).

I even tried the trick I did in Aeon’s End: Descent, where I put the Mage’s pictures next to the text! See above! That trick worked really well in Descent, as it helped ease me into the story when I could see all the mages.

Unfortunately, this trick did NOT work for Aeon’s End: Beyond The Breach. I found the story impenetrable; there was some time travel and meta things going on that just put me off the story. I just stopped reading the story after Battle 2. Remember, I really liked the flavor text from both Astro Knights: Eternity and Aeon’s End: The Descent (see those reviews here and here), so I am not against story … but I just couldn’t get into it here. I feel the campaign story here did not work.

Despite not liking the flavor text, I loved the way the game evolved during the campaign.

I got new treasures all the time!

I saw new Mages! In fact, me and Dezmoda(she came out in the campaign) bonded! I used her for two of my battles I liked her so much!

As a vehicle for pushing new content forward, the campaign worked great. As a story to follow, I feel the campaign didn’t work; I just didn’t like the story and stopped reading the flavor text. For the record, you can play the campaign perfectly well even if you don’t read the flavor text.

Despite the story failing for me, the game was a blast! I had so much fun playing all 5 chapters of the campaign! I played all of them solo and a few of them with other people!

Cooperative Play

I was able to get this played with 4-Players, 3-Players, and 2-Players.

I think that this set of Aeon’s End (Beyond The Breach) worked best at 2-Player when playing cooperatively. I have alluded to this point earlier, but this is one of the most complicated Aeon’s End campaigns! There are a lot of new rules, the cards have many “complex” interactions, and some of the Mages are hard to operate! With all that newness and complexity, it seems easier to cooperate in a 2-Player game.*

Joe and I had a marvelous time playing 2-Player! We were able to combo and use ally-helping abilities very well and just slaughtered the first Nemesis!

On the other hand, the 3-Player game, we got slaughtered! Part of that was because we played Battle 3 (they were helping me wth my campaign), which is harder.

And the 4-Player game was also a loss (see above). After playing 4-Players, I noted that we had to “travel” around the board a lot to see all the cards in the display, and what the villains are doing.

So, when we played 3-Player, we all stayed on one side of the board so we could all see the cards! This mostly worked, although were were bit a cramped. I think I would recommend playing 3-Player all on one side.

A couple of notes: we have played many games of the “simpler” Aeon’s End games at 3 and 4 players and not had any problems. In fact, I have seen the original Aeon’s End game work tremendously well with 4-Players! So, I am a bit concerned that it doesn’t work “quite” as well at 3 and 4 players.

There is one common element to the 3 and 4-Player failings: the mage Stake. See above. All the games we lost had Stake as one of the mages. Andrew, who has played some Aeon’s End in his time, said he didn’t like playing Stake. And notice the complexity rating on Stake: 8!!

It’s weird to me that Stake is one of the original 4 mages you are SUPPOSED to play with! My friends didn’t really like playing him. In a 3 and 4-Player game, it felt like it was it was just too hard to get him going.

Because there are so many Aeon’s End games. this set has to try some new things to try to do something differently. The other mages played were interesting and different, and I had fun playing them. Stake seems like too much,

2-Player cooperatively is probably best, and 3 and 4 player will work, but I don’t think I’d recommend playing with Stake. At RichieCon 2026, I will recommend a 3-Player game WITHOUT Stake.

Conclusion

You might think I didn’t like Aeon’s End: Beyond the Breach from this review. That’s not true! As someone who has played a ton of Aeon’s End and Astro Knights and Invincible, I might see the holes a little too much. Maybe I have concentrated too much on those.

The rulebook is good enough to learn from, but I am sorely disappointed that neither conjure or recall is in there: you will have to go on the Internet to find those. There are some other minor points (Chair Test, sidebars with rules, some missing solo rules) that are triggers for me, but don’t let my personal peeves influence you too much. You should have no trouble with the rulebook.

Beyond The Breach is probably the most complex set of Aeon’s End games; the designers really had to stray from the simple starting premises in order to add variety to this system, but they have succeeded! The price of this variety is extra complexity that can be overwhelming. It’s not too bad, but it is there.

As a solo player, I adored this. I loved playing the campaign! This game will easily make my Top 10 Solo Games of 2026. It might have been even a bit too easy? Luckily, the difficulty can be adjusted: It’s good to know every bad guy can be made worse (wait, that’s a good thing?) With Friends and Foes and all the interesting Mages and battles, this is a 8.999/10 solo for me. (Why not 9? see below)

As a cooperative player, I would say, be careful. We had a good time playing, but there is a lot more complexity in this version. Be aware of what this is; you probably don’t want to bring newer inexperienced players into Aeon’s End: Beyond the Breach! I would argue towards the simpler original Aeon’s End for newer players (or even Astro Knights?), and only bring this out to players who are ready for this more complex experience. Also, be very careful with the mage Stake; unless someone really wants to play him, I would stay away from Stake in the cooperative game. 8.49/10

Why 8.49? Because I didn’t like the story. I stopped reading it. The campaign is a great vehicle to play through all the content, but in the end, the story didn’t work for me.

I think I would give Aeon’s End: The Descent the ever-so-slight nod over Beyond The Breach. In Descent, I liked the story, I liked the mages, and of course The Descent introduced Friends and Foes! But the two are very very very close …Beyond The Breach is great, and if you want more Aeon’s End, Beyond The Breach works well, but just be aware how complicated this set is.

The cure for Aeon’s End Ennui? More cowbell!

Appendix: Playmat

The playmat was an option in this Kickstarter. I really liked it; it helped organize the cards and keep everything on track. If you like the Friends and Foes modules, this especially helps keeping all that straight.

I’d recommend getting this playmat if you do get Aeon’s End: Beyond The Breach: it’s very thematic and useful.

Detective-Heists and Heartbreak. A Solo and Cooperative Review of a new Expansion for Detective: City of Angels

Detective: Heists & Heartbreak is an expansion for the mystery board game Detective: City of Angels. This expansion was originally up on Gamefound as a pre-order December 2025. It pretty much delivered on time in early 2026.

Although the primary way to play Detective: City of Angels is as a 1-vs-many game (the chisel vs the detectives), that’s not the way we choose to play! The base game comes with a cooperative mode (built-in) where the detectives work together to solve the mystery of the week; we always play this cooperatively! And it works great!

There are three mysteries in this box that augment the original game!

Let’s take a look!

Unboxing

The box is probably bigger than it needs to be; see Coke can above for scale.

There’s four case books (one for each player, up to 4 players cooperatively) which include the three new cases.

The Chisel book is included for the new cases … fun fact, you still need the Chisel book for the “final mystery summary” even if you are playing fully cooperatively! It replays the case and all the clues in a final “wrap-up”, kind of like what you expect in your favorite mystery shows like Death in Paradise, Midsomer Murders and other murder mystery shows.

For the cooperative game, there’s a sheet you use to indicate a passage to read … you are basically questioning suspects and witnesses about the murders and getting responses!

The Sleuth Casebook has all the entries for the grid: this is a storybook AND deduction AND mystery game! If you truly want a mystery like Death in Paradise, with all the interactions of witnesses and suspects, this is what you are looking for!

Using sheets from the original game, you make notes to yourself about what you saw and have to solve the mystery!

This expansion fits right in with the original vibe: it looks great! See above.

Case 1: A Twist of the Knife (Solo Play)

So, Detective: City of Angels has both a solo mode and cooperative built-in! Thank you for following Saunders’ Law!

The solo mode for the game is a true solo mode: one player plays one detective, wandering around LA and questioning suspects, searching locations, and searching suspects!

The game balances itself by having 12 “days” to discover the solution, where each “day” is one player taking 4 actions. The solo player has it a little harder, because he has to travel all over the map by himself, but this is how the game balances for multiple players: the players (whether one or many) always gets 12 days with 4 actions per day, no matter how many players. The solo player gets all the actions, but the cooperative players have to divvy those actions between themselves.

I played the first mystery, A Twist of the Knife solo partly to remind myself how to play, and partly just because I love solving mysteries! I watch and read a LOT of mysteries, and I am always try to figure them out! And yes, I figured out the first mystery, but only after a second chance … if you fail to get the Motive, Weapon, and Reason within 12 days, you get a second chance … 3 more days …

The solo player is hamstrung a little on travel, because he’s only one detective having to wander all of LA to find things! That is balanced because the solo detective has the clarity of a single vision to push himself forward. It’s also a little harder on the solo player because he has to look up everything by himself! Look at the grid to find the entry, then find the entry in the Sleuth book, then read to himself! It’s not a terrible amount of work, but the game is more work for the solo gamer.

A Twist of the Knife worked great a solo game, and it reminded me why I love this system so much: I feel like a real detective solving a real mystery; I have to find the clues, do the hard work of questioning, follow my instincts, and make suppositions!

I will absolutely play Detective: City of Angels solo in any form. This new expansion fits right in.

Case 2: Hollywood Heartbreak (Cooperative)

Part of the reason I played the first case solo was to remind myself how to play so I could “re-teach” the game to my friends! I think Charlie and Allison like mystery games almost as much as I do! They are my Escape Room/Mystery buddies!

The best part of the cooperative experience is that we share the load! The active player takes their turn, one other player consults the grid when necessary, and a different player reads the entry from the Sleuth book! This really keeps everyone involved as we play, as everyone is active during a player turn!

Not only are we sharing the physical load of consulting and reading, we are sharing the cognitive load! Frequently, puzzle games like this can be better with multiple players because one player may notice something others did not! We come up with, as a group, the shared story of what we think is happening! This cooperative experience of sharing the physical and cognitive load really just works so well.

It’s apropos that this case is called Hollywood Heartbreak because it broke our hearts that we didn’t solve this! We even took a second chance and still couldn’t break it. Granted, this case is a Veteran level mystery, but we think we missed something along the way; we “somehow” missed a clue. We think it was in the cluebook, and maybe we were SUPPOSED to see it, but we missed it? That one clue made all the difference.

Still, even when we lost, the experience was still great. My friends and I were solving (well, trying) to solve a mystery together!

Case 3: Curse of the Jade Jaguar (Cooperative)

The final case unfolded very similarly to Case 2. The one thing I noticed more explicitly is that three detectives were able to cover a lot more ground than the single detective! By splitting up and covering different parts of LA, we were able to get a lot of suspects questioned quickly! Of course, there is a little less clarity of vision with three detectives trying to come to consensus, so it balances out a little.

I have to say, this mystery was one of my favorite of all time! All the suppositions that flew around the room that were proved and disproven were so interesting! We literally figured the mystery out on the VERY LAST ACTION! I took a chance on my last question, and that proved to be the vital piece of the puzzle! It felt very tension-filled and thematic as we figured it at the last minute!

Then we read the final summary and it felt like such a satisfying conclusion! This mystery was also a Veteran mystery, but we got it!

Conclusion

Why watch a mystery show on TV tonight when you can play one? Detective: Heists & Heartbreaks is the best kind of expansion: more content! You also DO NOT have to get it unless you have completed all the cases from the original game and other expansions! This is like a new season of your favorite detective show! You can watch it after you have watched the previous seasons! (To be fair, the mysteries do not have to played in any order; they don’t depend upon each other).

Detective: City of Angels is truly one of my favorite detective games of all time: It’s #2 on my Top 10 Cooperative Detective Games, but maybe it should be #1! I always come back to this game because it’s so much fun and I really do feel like I am solving a mystery. I might have to move Detective: City of Angels to a 10/10 because I will ALWAYS play it and there is so much content for it!

A few weeks ago, my friends and I really enjoyed LA-1 (see review here); it’s a storybook game with all the trappings of a detective game, but it’s not a detective game … you don’t solve mysteries in LA-1, you explore the city and advance the plot with exploration reading from story cards. But it’s not really a mystery. It’s a great game, but you don’t solve mysteries using your brain.

Detective: City of Angels is a real mystery game with mysteries coming to life with story and clues and intuition. Detective: Heists & Heartbreak is just a new season your favorite detective show and it’s just as good as the first few seasons. It’s still very very very good.

Ace of Spades Solo and Cooperative Review. Would You Call This A Cozy Game?

What kind of crazy person would call this a cozy game? This is set in a hard and unforgiving old west town, with gunfighters battling bad guys! The art is great but kind of harsh, the theme is hard, and the game … just doesn’t look cozy. But I argue that it kinda is! Check out why below …

Ace of Spaces is a solo or 2-Player cooperative game: players battle bad guys using Poker Hands to do damage; bigger and more powerful bad guys emerge as play continues!

Although Ace of Spades was originally released in 2025, the original publication was recalled because of some offensive cards. So, the publisher Devir re-released this game fairly recently in 2026, so we are calling this a 2026 release? I guess?

Let’s take a look!

Unboxing and Gameplay

Ace of Spades is a smaller box (see Coke can above for scale) mostly because it’s just cards (and one giant notater for hit points).

Players use poker hands to do damage to bad guys, so the game includes a “standard” deck of cards (see the fake “worn” veneer above) with a special “Foil” ace of spades card.

There are enemies you fight along the way to the big boss. The starting enemies are simple (like the 5 hit point Mule above) …

… and the final enemy is Lord Overkill (above with 50 hit points!) And that’s the easy boss!!

How do you do damage to enemies? You play poker hands, and each poker hand has a “damage” it does! See above as the Flush does 5 points of damage, the Full House does 6 and so on. You’ll also notice that face cards (JQK) do extra +1 damage, and Aces do +3!!

Each enemy you face has an “environment” (like the one above) which describes how many poker hands you can play, and how many redraws you get. The bullets (4) are the number of poker hands you can play, and the deck arrow (4) is the number of redraws you get.

There are 11 bad guys overall on the way to Lord Overkill!! See above! If you can take all 12, you win! You lose if you can’t take out an enemy with the given number of poker hands.

If you look at the bottom of the cards of the enemies, you’ll see that killing them gets you a “one-time” or “ongoing” power you can use in later combats. For example, if you take out the Sheriff above, you get the ongoing power that Kings to do extra extra damage!

If you can make it all the way to the end and kill Lord Overkill, you win!

It’s really just playing poker hands to do damage to bad guys.

Controversy

So, I didn’t know too much about the Ace of Spades controversy until I got my copy! I got a 1st edition used from a Board Game auction from my LFGS … and it turns out the 1st edition has the controversial cards! One of them is above (the slaver) and the others … I don’t to want to show. One of them is a slave card.

If you want to know more about the controversy, see this board game geek thread. You probably want to get the 2nd edition WITHOUT the slaver, slave, and other cards. It’s the 2nd edition that came out in 2026 and that’s probably the one you want.

When I played with my friend Teresa, we just kinda put the controversial cards off to the side and didn’t play with them.

Solo Play

So, this is either a solo game or a 2-Player cooperative game. See above. Thanks for following Saunders’ Law and having a solo mode!

The solo game unfolds as you expect: you get poker hands and try to damage to your current bad guy! In the solo game, you get a full hand of 8 cards and play 5 at a time (fewer if you are playing easy mode) to play a poker hand to do damage. There are also ways to scale to make it easier and harder.

As a solo game, it was fine. The problem is that you are very dependent on the cards you get! Sure, that’s how poker is, but I found this really hard to win: it was very random. Sure, you can play smart and use the one-shot and ongoing abilities, and sure you can play the odds and get better hands. But I have yet to win a game.

And here’s the weird thing: since I know it’s kind of random and I’ll just have to do the best I can, it’s not stressful. I know that my game is completely defined by the cards I draw, and if I do great, HUZZAH! If I do poorly, oh well. I can try to play smart and I can try to think my way out, but since I know it can be very random … I don’t care? Not in a bad way but in a “Eh, that’s the way it goes”. I am going to make a controversial statement: this is a cozy game. You do the best you can, but meh, whatever.

I have played quite a number of games and haven’t won. I don’t care that I haven’t won … in a good way? It’s kinda fun.

Cooperative Play

As a 2-Player game, the game basically plays the same, but you alternate between the two players. There are still 8 cards out, but 3 are shared between the players, while each player has his own hand of 5. Here’s the thing: you have limited communication between the 2 Players. You cannot communicate what you have, except vague stuff.

I generally don’t like limited communication games; the rules are generally pretty vague except for “you can’t shared exactly what you have”. So, we probably stepped over the line a little. I think I would have preferred some limited communication rules more like The Crew (where you get a single communication per round) or something like that.

There were also no rules for sharing. To be fair, the 3 cards in the middle are shared between the two players, but it would have been nice to have other limited sharing rules.

I actually think (but I am not sure) the game would have been more fun with either some sharing or more explicit communication rules. Having said that, my favorite way to play this is 2-Player. Why? As I said before: it’s a cozy game! I am pretty sure I stuck getting what cards I get, so if I lose, whatever.

Again, calling this cozy is not necessarily a bad thing. I can sit with my friend for hours just playing and hoping we can get a good run to win! But we know the odds are against us. If we win, great! In not, oh well. That’s my definition of a cozy game: I can keep playing and not be stressed. My friend and I can hang out. Since I know the luck of the cards governs the winning, I don’t be stressed because I know I can’t do too muich about it (mostly) and I just play and have fun.

Conclusion

Play poker solo (or cooperatively with your friend ) and beat-up bad guys! It’s a simple premise, and it’s probably easy to get anyone to play it because most people know how to play poker! (Just make sure you get the 2nd Edition so you don’t offend anyone). I really like the idea that I can pull this game out for non-gamers and show them how a cooperative game works using poker hands! That’s a really neat way to introduce people to cooperative games! Most people know how poker hands work!

I also love the art in this game; it’s very comic-booky (Jonah Hex?) and very striking.

I am calling this a cozy game because I know the game is too random to take it too seriously: I will be always be at the whim of my draws, so I can lean back, play the best I can, and say “oh well” when I lose … because I will lose quite a bit. I know! With art and theme like this, how can you call this a cozy game? A cozy game for me is just sitting back and playing and saying “ok” as we play.

In the end, I prefer Ace of Spades 2-Player. It’s a cozy game where I can hang our with my friend and play a friendly (a truly friendly) game of poker. We can play all night and probably lose, but we’re still playing together and hanging out and having fun.

6.5/10 for solo play (too random to want to play all the time), but 7.5/10 or 8/10 for the 2-player game.

Appendix: Coziness vs Agency

I wonder … if we added house rules for sharing and/or communicating if I would like the game more or less? I KNOW the game is too random so I don’t care too much, that’s why it’s cozy for me … I can’t do much about how the cards come out for me and my friend, so I just say “whatever”; that makes it cozy for me. But if I added some sharing rules (“we can give one card per turn”) or communication rules (“we share show one card per turn”), maybe I would start caring more? Then maybe I would be more stressed and it wouldn’t be a cozy game anymore? Or maybe I’d like it more because I had more agency? I don’t know!

Cozy Stickerville: A Series of Fortunate Events

Without embellishment, I can honestly say that playing all the way through Cozy Stickerville has been one of my favorite gaming experiences of all time. It’s easily cooperative, it’s very engaging, it’s truly cozy as you and your friends work together to build a town.

I became aware of Cozy Stickerville from many sources. It turns out the designer of Cozy Stickerville (Cory Koniecza) designed my favorite games of 2023: The Initiative! See review here. So, I was super excited for this! I ended up ordering Cozy Stickerville directly from the website in early 2026 to get it as soon as I could. My friends were excited to play it; I presented the game as “Stardew Valley in a board game!” and my friends, especially Teresa (who is a big Stardew Valley fan) were excited.

The nature of this game meant we had to play it OUTSIDE our normal circles. What do I mean by this? Stardrew Valley … sorry, I mean Cozy Stickerville, is a legacy game lasting ten episodes. A legacy game mean means a couple of things: 1) we’ll be changing the state of game as we play and 2) The game spans multiple sessions, so we’ll have to make a committed effort to get the same group together to play again and again! My playgroups are fairly fluid; people come and go, work gets in the way, and it’s sometimes hard to always get the same group together. So, to play Cozy Stickerville, me and Sara and Teresa had to commit to playing all ten games together, even outside our normal gaming rotations.

Over the course of two months, we played “about” every two weeks, and playing two or three of the episodes of the ten episode arc.

Stickers!

If you aren’t quite sure what a legacy game is, it’s usually tearing up cards and/or adding stickers to things. In the case of Cozy Stickerville, they have completely embraced the sticker part of the game! The game comes with a huge book full of stickers; no joke, it’s about 12 page full of stickers! As you play new games, you add stickers to board and stickers to story points and stickers stickers stickers!

Cozy Stickerville is a game all about building your town. The stickers you put in the board help define the character of the town! The structures you build, the people you choose, the families, the businesses! You put people stickers, flower stickers, bird stickers, animal stickers … on your board! And this is what Cozy Stickerville is! It’s all about making decisions, as a group, about the town you want to build! The mechanism it uses to build the town is stickers.

Gameplay

Gameplay is pretty easy; there are twelve events per episode, and each player takes an event card (which usually forces a decision), and then gets to do “something” in town.

Sometimes the “something” is getting resources (you might need wood to build some business, you might need money to add a new building, you might need food to feed your people), and sometimes the something is adding a sticker!

Each turn is really simple; draw an event, deal with it, then do something. And that’s it! But it’s the conversations that come out of all this are what make this so fun! As a group, we decide what flavor of town we want to build! Each player still has agency on their turn, as they are the final arbiter of what they do on their turn, but we found that we were always talking and discussing!

Each single game (a single episode) only last about 15 to 20 minutes. And that’s it! That’s why we were able to play two to three games (episodes) per session.

To be clear, once we are done playing all ten episodes, the game is done. The game is full of stickers and you have defined your town (but see below).

Cozy

This is definitely a cozy game. It’s not taxing at all to play. It’s simple gameplay; it’s fun and silly to place the stickers. But it’s the overall experience that makes this cozy. Me and my friends are just hanging out, making little decisions about our town, and placing stickers. You might think it sounds “stressful” to build a town … oh, it is so not stressful. You just make little choices and see what happens.

This is probably the coziest game I have ever played.

Conclusion

I wasn’t quite sure where I would land on this, but I think I have to give this a 10/10. I had more fun playing this little silly game than anything I have played in a while. This game became something I looked forward to; it became an event! Teresa would make some crazy food from the Star Wars cookbook, or the Stardrew Valley cookbook, and we would eat and chat! We would reminisce about the last session, as we came up to speed on all the decisions we made!

Cozy Stickerville became an event in every sense of the word; we planned schedules around it, we planned food around it, and we looked forward to each session.

I have to admit to feeling a little sad once our final game was over. It was a fantastic journey and a series of fortunate events made this so fun. 10/10 for me and my friends, and probably my cooperative game of the year.

Appendix (It’s Not QUITE Over!)

It turns out, even after you are done, you can still play the game one more time! You flip the board over and build a new town using the stickers that are still leftover! All the decisions you made in the previous game exclude some of the cards from the game, but you can actually play it again!

A place to talk about cooperative board and card games!

Unboxing

Acrylic Standees

Gameplay

Rulebook

Solo Game

Cooperative Mode

Thematic

Randomness

Reactions

Conclusion

10. Monopoly -> CO-OP: The Co-op Game

9. Poker -> Ace of Spades

8. Scrabble -> Word Weaver Adventures

7. Carcassonne -> Mists Over Carcassonne

6. Yahtzee -> The Reckoners

5. Apples to Apples -> Just One

4. War -> Regicide

3. Spades, Hearts, or Bridge -> The Crew: Quest For Planet Nine or The Crew: Mission Deep Sea

2. Risk -> Spirit Island or Horizons of Spirit Island

1. Chess -> Santorini: Riddle of the Sphinx

Unboxing and Gameplay

Rulebook

Solo Play

Cooperative Mode

Things I Liked

Things I Didn’t Like

Conclusion

#10 Kinfire Council + Winds Of Change Cooperative Expansion

#9. Marvel United or Marvel United: X-Men or Marvel United:Multiverse or …

#8. Good Dog, Bad Zombie (2nd Edition)

#7. Tembo: Survival of the Savanna

#6. Aetherspire

#5. Boaromia: The Cooperative Festival Game!

#4. The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine or Mission Deep Sea

#3. Fate: Defenders of Grimheim

#2. Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring, Trick-Taking Game. Also, The Two Towers!

#1. Just One

Unboxing and Gameplay

Rulebook

Solo Play

Cooperative Mode

What I Liked

What I Didn’t Like

Conclusion

What Is This?

Minis and/or Standees.

Combat

Campaign

Upgrades

Ships

What I Liked

What I Was Annoyed Over

Conclusion

Cure For Aeon’s End Ennui

Unboxing and Gameplay

Friends and Foes

Sleeve Your Cards!

Variable Turn Order

Rulebook

New Concepts

Solo Play

Campaign

Cooperative Play

Conclusion

Appendix: Playmat

Unboxing

Case 1: A Twist of the Knife (Solo Play)

Case 2: Hollywood Heartbreak (Cooperative)

Case 3: Curse of the Jade Jaguar (Cooperative)

Conclusion

Unboxing and Gameplay

Controversy

Solo Play

Cooperative Play

Conclusion

Appendix: Coziness vs Agency

Stickers!

Gameplay

Cozy