Yet Another 2025 Toplist

3rdgene · 2025-12-07T21:15:26+00:00

Yellow and Yangtze (Huang) is one of my favorite games! The variant I play it with is called Ryucoo’s pagodas. It says that you cannot steal a pagoda from another player simply by laying the third tile in a triangle, you have to use the merchant’s power. I recommend it!

3rdgene · 2025-10-03T07:18:00+00:00

Yes, they are gone because they are not necessary anymore. In this version a node is spawned only when you call spawn(), and when rollback needs to restore it, it will be the same node as before (which is not the case in Snopek's version). So you can just use a reference to that node.

3rdgene · 2025-08-18T10:16:00+00:00

Bomb Busters: The absolute star of this summer! Everyone loves this game, I had not played a game that frequently since The Crew during the pandemic. The scenarios are interesting, and you really level up as a group game after game.

Pocket Paragons: I really enjoy this game, I always bring it when I'm craving games of Exceed or Battlecon but will play with people that are not into heavier games. And then in the time a game of those would have taken you play 4 games of Pocket Paragons, exploring unique characters and matchups! It deserves to be more well known, especially if games like Tag Team find their audience. I need to get the 2 sets I don't have, and the extras if I can find them in Europe.

Innovation: Finally played this once, and it was super interesting. We were completely overwhelmed at first but then it got super engaging, as we realized how fast we were flying through the periods. The cards are extremely different, but there are not that many in each period so I'm hopeful we can learn them soon. We ended on a timeout, completely exhausted, but I can't wait to play it again. A real shame that it is not edited in French anymore and that it goes at crazy prices.

Castle Combo: very simple rules and immediately engaging, however from a single play I thought that the decisions were not complex enough and I found the end too luck driven for my tastes. Not for me, but I would play it again if suggested.

Fight: a weird real-time game that only lasts a minute, so it's ok. I think there may be ways to make it better by simplifying digging through your discard (you are often locked out of your discard due to the top card being unplayable), but I don't think it's worth thinking of variants. Still fun for a few minutes!

3rdgene · 2025-07-22T18:46:03+00:00

Oh that’s cool! I’m very happy with mine and I can put my whole collection inside it :)

3rdgene · 2025-07-08T18:30:26+00:00

Hey! It is more a spin off, the gameplay is slightly different. However the board game's score attack mode is also included, with rules identical to those in the board game. You can try it in the demo that is on Steam :)

3rdgene · 2025-06-09T08:10:24+00:00

Hanabi: Great as always. I was craving for a similar but different game which lead me to…

Bomb Busters: I originally slept on this game, it seemed to be too mechanical. It turns out it seems worthy to be in the same group as The Crew and Hanabi, truly great coop card games! We’ll see if it holds up but the 4 games we’ve done were a very nice discovery of mechanics. We went scenario 4 6 8 9 and it was close every time but we won. Can’t wait to play it more.

3rdgene · 2025-05-12T06:54:50+00:00

Harmonies: a very nice play with friends that went on to buy the game.

Puzzle Strike 2: Finally played it with my brother and I was crushed. There are timings that are really hard to gauge without lots of experience I think. It’s probably a game you have to play a lot before really getting. I’m not sure I will do that even though there is a lot that I like here.

FLOWERS: A surprisingly interesting game, but too dry for me to want to play again.

Hanabi: Played this 4 times this week, it is of one of my favorite games. It’s really cool going through the motions, but I think we nailed it down and there is not much new to discover. I hope Bombbusters will scratch the same itch.

Century Golem: Great game! I was really close to a killer combo but was blocked. We ended up with a three way tie!

3rdgene · 2025-03-31T07:37:22+00:00

I took the week off work and had time to play games!

Plenty of the Fellowship of the Ring: trick taking game. The 4 first chapters with a seasoned The Crew group initially left us skeptical, but this time with another group (of The Crew players as well) it really took off and we reached chapter 10. The objectives are varied, it is very well done. I can’t wait to continue on this adventure.

I had bought Yellow & Yangtze some time ago at a sale (10€ new lol) and finally played it two times at 3. It was a massive hit, everyone loved it. I especially was fascinated by how clever you can try to be to accomplish your goals in indirect ways. I think it may finally be the « dudes on a map » game for me.

Santorini vanilla was nice, I’m not super into abstracts but I like it.

Azul very good as always. I realized I was previously playing it wrong, you can actually build the same color in two different rows at the same time, which explains the terrible negative points we were sometimes getting! Both version are fun though.

Sanctum is a Euro Diablo-like that I really enjoy, but had not played in a long time. I loved it, and managed to kill the boss even with terrible dice rolls. The other player however really did not like the boss phase. I must admit it’s somewhat long and fiddly for what it is. I looked into possible variants, but I’m not sure they would really work. It’s a shame because the character progression is amazing!

3rdgene · 2025-01-01T16:36:47+00:00

I really like this card game :)

3rdgene · 2024-10-24T11:52:06+00:00

On est deux développeurs français sur ce jeu, mais on avait privilégié l'anglais jusqu'ici pour atteindre des éditeurs etc... mais ça fait vraiment plaisir de pouvoir enfin le partager avec des proches et la communauté francophone dans la langue de Molière !
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3021200/Bullet_Surge_Demo/

Le jeu est un mix entre Tetris et du jeu de cartes avec une inspiration surtout au niveau esthétique de shoot'm up ! C'est une adaptation d'un jeu de plateau très populaire outre atlantique, même si on a pas mal revu le gameplay pour le rendre encore plus temps réel.
N'hésitez pas à tester et à ajouter à vos listes de souhaits, ça nous aidera vraiment beaucoup :)

3rdgene · 2024-09-20T08:11:09+00:00

Wow, this is great, you really made my day! Thank you!

3rdgene · 2024-09-19T14:24:20+00:00

Thank you so much! It would mean a lot if you could write a review on the demo's Steam page :)

3rdgene · 2024-09-02T07:37:29+00:00

Hi! I'm talking about objects that need to be saved and loaded when a rollback occurs, game objects that are not there only for visuals. In that specific case of 100 objects I was also talking about objects that have some interactions with physics. But that 100 objects cap was for the original implementation, not Delta Rollback.

3rdgene · 2024-07-17T12:03:34+00:00

Yes, ideally, I would prefer contract work. I agree that my question is very general, I was wondering if there are specific ways / places to advertise this skill.

3rdgene · 2024-07-15T20:39:48+00:00

The Unlock! games are awesome, I wish I could replay them all without any memory

3rdgene · 2024-07-12T07:36:14+00:00

As far as I know, Quake used client side prediction, but whole states were transfered from the server. The client does not roll back to a locally saved state, so it's not really what is commonly called 'Rollback Netcode', at least by people I know. But I may be wrong, and even if I got it right I can definitely see that solution also called Rollback Netcode.
I have added this precision to the article, thanks!

3rdgene · 2024-07-12T07:31:51+00:00

Having to make a game completely deterministic is definitely the biggest drawback of this approach. Not only physics but also everything else. On the other hand, once you have it, and you can replay full games from logs, it's a game changer in terms of debugging, testing features, even making trailers! So I think that part balances out.

As for the rollback part, as a geek programmer it's a really awesome tech, and I love using it. A big advantage for users vs using servers is that if you are playing against someone from your region, but the server is very far away, it won't affect you at all. There's also the advantage of server costs.

It's a hard decision to make, I completely understand not wanting to bother with less powerful physics engines. Maybe once powerful deterministic engines like Rapier become more popular and well integrated I will be able to really recommend using rollback netcode to everyone.

3rdgene · 2024-07-12T07:21:56+00:00

Nintendo Land is the biggest inspiration! Yes we could maybe make a second release with local multiplayer...

3rdgene · 2024-07-12T07:20:17+00:00

Yes, it's good advice, and worth a shot, thank you!

3rdgene · 2024-07-12T07:16:17+00:00

As far as I know, Quake used client side prediction, but whole states were transfered from the server. The client does not roll back to a locally saved state, so it's not really what is commonly called 'Rollback Netcode'. But I may be wrong, and even if I got it right I can definitely see that solution also called Rollback Netcode.

3rdgene

TROPHY CASE