[Note about the Author: Andy Kim is the designer of the recently kickstarted game The Spill, from Smirk & Dagger Games, but more importantly he is an avid board gamer, a champion of family board gaming with his two young kids, and a good friend of the Little Meeples family. We are happy to have him share his gaming experiences with us every year.]
Andy’s Top 10 Games of 2021
In 2021, we still find ourselves in the middle of a pandemic and possibly more staying at home for everyone. And like last year, it was a great chance to get a lot of games played this year and like last year, this year had a great slate of games published if not more. So many, I had a hard time this year narrowing it down to just a top 10 so some got left off.
Again like last year, I have a few honorable mentions but this year, I wanted to start with a couple games that came out in 2020 that I didn’t get a chance to play. Since then I have gotten to play them and there are a few games that would have been a contender for last year’s list so let’s start with those!
Lost Ruins of Arnak – 2020 Honorable Mention
Last year, my number one game of the year was Dune Imperium which is a card drafting game combined with worker placement and the two mechanisms were a delight to play. Also last year, Lost Ruins of Arnak came out with a lot of board gaming enthusiasts comparing the two games putting them in direct competition with each other. After playing Arnak numerous times, I think this was a rather unfair assessment as both games have now found their way onto my gaming shelf as they are both very different games. While Dune Imperium uses the mechanisms to exude the theme of the movie, concentrating the gameplay with jockeying for influence in the Lanstrad and the war for spice dominance on Arakis, Arnak uses those same mechanisms to express discovery, research and exploration. They play very differently too with a different balance between the deck building and worker placement portions of the game. While I still enjoy Dune Imperium more, Lost Ruins of Arnak would have made it into my top 10 of last year for sure!
The Search for Planet X – 2020 Honorable Mention
Oh where, oh where was this game last year! The Search for Planet X is now my favorite deduction game of all time and may even have hit number 1 game of 2020 had I played it last year. The theme revolves around searching for the mysterious Planet X by studying the night sky and doing research. As you inquire about certain sectors, more and more information will become available to you in order to determine what heavenly bodies are located in certain areas in space. As you narrow down your search, your fellow scientists will be racing with you to be the first to publish papers with theories. The Search for Planet X uses an app on your phone or tablet to keep track of the information and as a result, there is no way to mess up the data unlike games like Clue. It’s easy to explain and so elegant that it should have been in one of the top spots on my list last year.
Smartphone Inc. – 2020 Honorable Mention
This game was a huge hit last year and I was a little hesitant to give this one a try and honestly, I’m not 100% sure why that was. Well after playing it with my friends, it was one I absolutely needed to get. I would consider Smartphone Inc. a medium weight game although it may look a little more complex than you may think. The streamlined turn track makes the game so fluid and with all gameplay elements printed on the board, there is very little reason to look at the rulebook again to check anything once you have learned the basic rules. It doesn’t take long to learn but to get good at the game will take a little practice. It’s so worth it! The game also revolves on a single choice you make at the start of each round which is playing this overlapping puzzle to determine what your year will be like in terms of what kind of technologies you will develop, where you will expand your markets, how much stock you will produce and what you will price your phones at. It’s a great game and one of the best games I played last year.
Now that that’s out of the way, it’s time to countdown my Top Ten Games of 2021!
- Roll Camera! The Filmmaking Board Game
This game just oozes theme. Even the box is a clapperboard used when filming a movie. And it’s just so cute! Roll Camera is a cooperative game about filming a movie. You have a time and budget to make the movie with but at the start of every turn, there is a production problem you need to deal with. You need to set up the scene, position the actors, camera, lights, sound, etc to film different scenes that are edited together to make your finished film. You win if you manage to produce a film that is at least “Not bad” to a “Cinematic Masterpiece” but you can also win if you make a movie that’s “So bad it’s great”. Throughout the game, if you are in a jam, you can always call a production meeting so players can submit some interesting and hilarious ideas to help with any issues or complete jobs. It all comes together as a great time with a great story you can tell at the end of the game once your movie is finished. It’s a great game that always has a lot of laughs.
- Canvas
One of the most unique and prettiest games on my list is definitely Canvas. In it you are trying to build a gallery of paintings you put together by overlapping transparent cards that contain “parts” of a picture. Once you have overlaid the cards, you end up with a work of art that will score you points based on different criteria like color composition, expression, etc. The cards you choose to add to your painting are selected using a similar drafting mechanism like a game from a couple years ago called “Century” where you need to give up something to get some of the newer cards, called “Inspiration” in this game. These cards are transparent and can be stacked on top of one another to form a complete painting for your gallery. It’s a really simple game with a really nice ending where everyone gets to compare paintings and tell a story. It’s a lovely game and I’m glad it’s in my collection.
- Maglev Metro
Maglev Metro is a route building, pick up and deliver game where you are building a network of magnetic rail trains. This game has a lot of innovative features in it. One is that the tracks you lay are transparent and can overlap each other so that each player’s tracks can cross other player’s tracks but can be easily identified by the player’s color. However, that’s not even the most innovative feature of the game. Each action you can take such as moving your train, picking up or dropping off passengers and laying track can be upgraded by using the passengers you drop off improving the number of passengers you can carry, which stations you can build to, etc. Planning ahead is key to the strategy in this game and building the perfect route to meet your goals is so satisfying. The components are also amazing with your trains actually being capable of holding the passengers. There is no game like it that I have seen and it is a lot of fun to play around with. Definitely worth trying out if you have not played it yet.
- My Farm Shop
One of my favorite games of all time is “Space Base”, a game that involves rolling some dice but everyone benefiting in some way to gain money and points on every player’s turn. It’s also similar to a very popular game called “Machi Koro” where you build a city instead of a galactic empire. My Farm Shop takes this idea and gives it a really cool twist that works so well. It uses 3 dice instead of 2 where one of them is chosen by the active player to choose an upgrade to their farm and the remaining 2 are used by every player around the table to activate the corresponding spot in their farm to produce milk, wool, eggs or honey or sell them for money which is how you win the game. Each time you are the active player, the decision you need to make is so tough. Not only do you need to figure out what upgrade you want vs which spot on your farm you want to activate but you also need to consider which of your opponents spots are going to activate and if it’s going to give them a huge advantage. As the game progresses, you also need to decide when you will keep producing and when to switch to selling it for large sums of money. My Farm Shop is really fast with games ending in 30 to 40 minutes, so if you are looking for a quick fun game with some really tough decisions, this is a great one to get into your library!
- Riverside
Roll and write games have really exploded on the scene in the last few years. Roll and writes are any game that has some sort of randomized event every round using either dice or flipping a card and then players use the results to fill in a player sheet. If you have ever played Yahtzee, you have played a roll and write game. Riverside has you playing a tour guide on a small cruise ship in a small northern village where you schedule excursions to see things like the polar bears, reindeer or go ice fishing. Each turn you roll 6 dice representing the guests who want to go on different excursions and what the temperature is like. Depending on the tolerance of the guests, you may need to spend more fuel to crank up the temperature to keep your guests happy. Once you have found seats on your smaller tourboats for your guests, you score bonuses and combos that will help you fill in your sheet and score prestige points so you will be the best tour guide on the trip. The game features a lot of actions that will trigger other sections of your sheet and it’s so satisfying when you pull off a huge multi point scoring combo. It’s fun, it’s cute and a great easy going game.
- Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition
Terraforming Mars is one of the most popular board games among board game enthusiasts and it’s a fantastic game that I had for a while. Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition is a smaller, simpler and quick playing version of Terraforming Mars which I have really enjoyed playing it and I can get it to the table much more often. So much so that I recently got rid of the main game in favor of Ares Expedition. Like in the bigger version, players are different corporations competing to score the most points while terraforming the red planet by competing in 3 different metrics: oxygen levels, raising the temperature and forming oceans. The card play is what really makes both Terraforming Mars and Ares Expedition such fun games to play and Ares Expedition uses an action selection mechanism that has players selecting the actions they wish to perform and everyone being able to perform those actions in a certain order to achieve their goals. While maybe not as deep as its predecessor, Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition definitely has it where it counts in terms of thematic feel and strategy and that is why it is one of the best games this year.
- Cubitos
Honestly, I didn’t expect to like this game as much as I do. Cubitos is a dice rolling, push your luck, racing game that has a lot of the excitement of a real race. The strange characters and weird powers add to its appeal. Each turn everyone rolls and re-rolls a bunch of dice (and I mean a lot of dice starting with 9 at a time). You can re-roll dice as many times as you want but you can also bust and end up with a consolation prize. Throughout, you gain money to buy upgrades (better dice) to help you speed through the track or gain more money. There are many strategies that you can take to make it past the finish line and every game I’ve played so far has been pretty close. The last rounds always come down to a nail biting finish with a lot of moments of laughter and cheering. If you are looking for a game that is just pure fun, I highly recommend Cubitos to anyone.
- Hadrian’s Wall
If Riverside was the simple roll and write game of this year, Hadrian’s Wall is the complex one and it’s so good. This game gives your brain a good workout as a single flip of a card opens up a treasure trove of decisions to be made. Hire soldiers, builders, servants and civilians and put them to work to gather resources, guard the wall, participate in trade, put on performances at theatre, build the population’s piety through the construction of temples, negotiate shady deals at the public baths, debate at the courthouse or scout the surrounding regions. Achieving goals in one section will also trigger more results in other sections which may cause a chain reaction of some very satisfying combos which will have you checking off boxes all over your player sheet. All of these will pass onto progressing up your renown, piety, valour and discipline which in turn may trigger even more combos. It is just so much fun and you can play a different strategy each game to explore different possibilities. After even my first play, I loved this game. It is a great addition to my library and deserves to be in my number 3 spot on this list.
- Praga Caput Regni
Sometimes a game comes along that all my friends tell me that I’ll like but I’m just not sure about. Praga Caput Regni was a game that just looked so complicated with so much going on the board that after one look, I decided that it was not for me. Boy was I wrong (and my friends were completely right… I received a bunch of “I told you so” comments from them too). Yes the board looks really busy and it looks like there is so much to do but once I learned the rules and started playing, 3 turns in, I was hooked. The turns are surprisingly simple. You choose from one of the 6 tiles on this rotating wheel which will give you two choices for one of 6 actions to perform on your turn. The wheel where you took the tile from gives you a bonus that you can perform anytime during your turn. That is the turn structure and it is simplicity itself. What gives the game its depth is the fact that you only have 16 turns in the whole game so each turn really matters and doing what you want to do efficiently is key to victory. I have never played a game quite like Praga so it’s a little difficult for me to compare this to another game but definitely give this one a try and don’t be scared off by the really detailed board. If you are just not sure, try it out online on Yucata.de. It plays really well solo and so you can definitely try it before you buy. In fact Praga may have been my number one game this year if the next game didn’t show up.
- Honey Buzz
After a couple turns in Honey Buzz, I knew I was going to love this game. Every turn has you building your personal honeycomb and when you close up a single hexagonal region, that triggers all of these actions to fire performing a bunch of short actions such as spawning larvae (more worker bees), collecting pollen, producing nectar and selling honey. The key attraction for me in this game is the mini puzzle of your honeycomb in order to fulfill the contracts from the forest critters, and goals that you need to meet in order to gain the queen bee’s favor. Use your worker bees (“beeples”) to take the tiles from the central board and add them to your beehive. However, placing your worker bees on spots where your opponents have already been will require more workers which will have you debating if you should just wait until the other players need to collect their workers or just waste the worker because you desperately need that one tile in order to finish a big move. Every turn in Honey Buzz is so much fun and the decisions are really tough. I love puzzling out how to maximize my turns. It’s my favorite game of the year for a reason and I knew this would be my number 1 game after my first play. Honey Buzz gets my highest recommendation and cannot wait for the new expansion coming next year to further enhance my experience!
Every game on my top ten list are excellent games to add to your collection and if you read one that you think you would like, you can’t go wrong with any of the choices here. There were a few games that didn’t quite make the list but I felt like they were important enough for me to mention in an honorable mention here.
Dune: A Game of Conquest and Diplomacy – Honorable Mention 2021
The reason why Dune: A Game of Conquest and Diplomacy is not in the top ten is because technically this game was published 1979. It’s just that this version takes it’s thematic imagery from the 2021 movie by Denis Villeneuve as well as streamlines it from a 5 hour epic game to a less than 1 hour game limiting the game from 6 players to 4 players with even a 2 player mode. It’s still an excellent game that really nails the intrigue and tension of the novel and the movie. The different factions (Fremen, Atredes, Harkonen and the Imperium) play very differently but exactly as how you would expect them to play. If you love anything about Dune whether it be the novel or the movies, Dune is a game that will have you completely engrossed throughout the game and now with the 2021 streamlined version, it is much more accessible for everyone!
Shamans – Honorable Mention 2021
Last year, my number 4 game was “The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine” which is a cooperative trick-taking game like Euchre or Hearts. I grew up playing a lot of trick-taking games and so when a new one comes along, I love to see what new twist they introduce. Shamans is the latest in these types of games and it has a very intriguing mechanism that needs to be mentioned. In Shamans, you play cards numbered from 1 to 6 (or 8 if you are playing with 5 players) in 6 to 7 “worlds” which are the suits in this game. The interesting twist is that one or two players are working against the rest of the group trying to sabotage the others from saving the worlds instead of defending them. At the same time, each player is trying to be the first to score 8 points after playing several rounds. So it gets interesting when players start scoring a lot more points because players might turn on their own team to prevent their teammate from winning the game. So yes, it’s a trick-taking game with a traitor mechanism but it works really well. Definitely will be keeping this in my collection for a long time.
Adventure Tactics: Domianne’s Tower – Honorable Mention 2021
I cannot finish a list of games of 2021 without mentioning the game I played with my kids the most. My best description of Adventure Tactics would be a board game version of a Final Fantasy or D&D but in a family theme with bright, colorful and cartoon-like artwork. What this game does that is different from other similar dungeon crawling games is how each player levels up after almost every scenario. The kids had so much fun leveling up their character or changing their classes and becoming more and more powerful as they went from scenario to scenario. It’s a great family weight cooperative story game that will give you hours of entertainment out of the box.
So Clover! – Honorable Mention 2021
Party games are great games that can be brought out, takes very little explanation, and are quick to play. One of the best party games out there is a little game called “Just One”. If you have not played this game, it is one of my highest recommendations for a great example of a good party game and definitely a must for any game collection. The publisher of “Just One” released “So Clover!” this year and like the previous game, it is a clever and super simple game that can be played with anyone. Each round, players take these clover shaped boards and place 4 square shaped cards on it in a 2×2 grid pattern. The 4 edges of each card has a single word on it so that each side of the 2×2 grid on the clover will contain 2 words. Players now write a single word on all four sides of the clover that will help the players identify the two words on the cards. Once that is done, the 4 cards are shuffled with a random 5th card and the other players need to figure out not only which 4 cards were selected and what the orientation was based on the 4 words given. It’s clever (or “clover”) and often hilarious as players attempt to get into the mind of the other players to know what they were looking at in order to come up with the words they selected. It’s an absolutely fun game and definitely will be a great time at any gathering (when we can have them again!)
So that wraps it up for 2021. I hope all of you are staying safe and healthy. I know a lot of us are stuck at home but if you can get some games to the table, the ones on this list are all winners and I would recommend them to anyone!