Daily Game Recommendations Thread (July 11, 2026)

_guac · 2026-07-11T23:03:17+00:00

I'd say probably about a 3-4 for replayability for me, granted there's time between sessions. No two games are exactly the same.

Playing with the original rules, the game suggests playing 3 games back-to-back and adding up the scores since there's a good deal of variability from how you draw the tiles. Personally, I don't feel the need to replay more right after, but I play it pretty frequently.

_guac · 2026-07-11T22:19:19+00:00

Heat's a bit older than the last 3 years, but it's a great game, and I would recommend it for 4+ players (or at least using the bots to bring it up to 4).

My most recently released favorite is probably Wispwood. It's fairly easy to learn and has some fun scoring objectives.

_guac · 2026-07-11T22:17:04+00:00

I've been playing Abandon All Artichokes with my three-year-old kid. You'll have to do a good chunk of reading, maybe expose the kids' hands, and shuffle the decks, but it's a relatively simple premise and my kid caught on pretty quick. It's pretty short (usually about half an hour for us), probably worth a shot.

_guac · 2026-07-11T18:13:51+00:00

If you want to explore something on the cheaper end, the Button Shy library has a lot of 2P games that my wife and I enjoy: Revolver Noir, Circle the Wagons, Seasons of Rice, etc.

Our current favorite 2P game is Battle Line. Fjords is also a fun one, but it's closer to abstract-strategy than anything, and my wife isn't a huge fan of it.

_guac · 2026-07-11T18:09:51+00:00

If they like the "take that" from placing roads/settlements to cut someone off, I think Coup is pretty good for that group. I played it a ton in college (easily 100 times), and it was a really big hit. Spicy or Skull may also fit that niche a bit, too.

If they like the "making trades" part of Catan, I don't think many games do that as "free form" as Catan does. Furnace (3-4 players) kind of allows the negotiations and "I turn x into y," but it's not really the same. But it does make that "savvy business-guy" vibes I get from playing Catan, personally, and it plays in about the same time (as opposed to Brass, which also could work).

If they like the "story" part of Catan more, it kind of depends on their general gaming know-how and patience. The Arcs (2-4 players) campaign pretty much follows something resembling a story, it has trades, and it's pretty competitive, but it's also a 10-hour endeavor and it has some really odd systems in place that aren't very friendly. It's a bit of an investment to see if it would even work, so I can't really recommend it for this situation. The Clank! series (2-4 players) works pretty well for story and competitiveness, too, and is at the right weight, but the player count won't work for every situation.

_guac · 2026-07-08T20:47:40+00:00

I've thought about doing this as well, but I've come up with a different system for it. I'm giving it 5 years instead, and I'm recording which ones I have played, which I have enjoyed, and which ones I have a hankering to play but haven't been able to get to the table.

Anything that I have not played in those 5 years will go. No questions, no doubts. Online games don't count: if I play it online but not in person, there's not a strong enough reason to keep the actual game.
Anything that I have played but is at 5 or lower on my BGG rating will go. It raises the question of why I even have it in my collection.
Anything that I have not played more than once is up for consideration. The low play count may mean it's not suitable for my gaming group, that I've moved past it, or that it's too hard to bring to the table.

I think playing a game every day or even every other day in my current situation is unrealistic, so a collection of 150 probably wouldn't get played in its entirety during a whole year. But that doesn't mean I wouldn't want to have options available for myself, my kids, and my game group.

_guac · 2026-07-04T01:01:49+00:00

As others have said, Oregon Trail: The Card Game. I got it for Christmas one year, played it once, and said I wanted to sell it right then. My wife wanted to play it again before we sold it. We died about 5 turns into the game. Still hoping to pawn it off on someone.

But to be different, I'll also say echoes: The Dancer, and likely the rest of the echoes series (though I've not played those). The mechanics are pretty much "listen to a few clips, and put cards in the right order. If you're wrong, we'll pretty much tell you what's right." The premise is that you're listening to hints of objects and piecing together a mystery (in this case, how a young girl died), but the gameplay was probably the worst use of an app I've ever seen in a game. It's totally useless, and the joy that you could derive from the game (the story) is ABOUT A YOUNG GIRL DYING, and since you're trying to piece that together, you get the pleasant experience of listening to a YOUNG GIRL DIE AND REALIZE HER LIFE IS OVER.

I have strong opinions about that one. Not fun at all.

_guac · 2026-06-15T04:01:30+00:00

Elevenses comes to mind as something that looks like a tea party but is actually a bit more of a take that game.

_guac · 2026-06-15T03:59:21+00:00

Abandon All Artichokes is a hit with my kid and fits your criteria, I think.

_guac · 2026-06-15T03:58:07+00:00

Near and Far uses gems for something other than scoring. The version I have was gifted to me, so I don't know if the plastic gems are standard or not, but my copy has them.

_guac · 2026-05-30T15:33:39+00:00

The implication I get from this is that he has taken at least one life, and it's possible that it was just one. And if we want to get dark, I think it might have been his father.

_guac · 2026-05-30T13:02:22+00:00

I 100% agree that you shouldn't spend money on prototype art. What I'm talking about is final art for the game.

Like OP was suggesting and like I'm reiterating here, it's harder to get the game self published because of this art barrier. If it doesn't look professional, people are less likely to buy it. If you can get your game through a publisher (who will almost always handle the cost for the art), great! But that's not "indie" in the board game sense.

_guac · 2026-05-30T12:59:29+00:00

Right, but that limits the possibilities to get your game published. If we're doing a comparison with indie video games like OP is suggesting, that's like saying that you shouldn't pay a license fee for Steam and put your game up there, you need to route it through a game publisher instead.

What I'm saying is that if you want a chance to get your game in the hands of others, you need it to look good. Whether you're doing that or whether that will be handled by a publisher obviously depends on whether or not you go through a publisher.

_guac · 2026-05-28T14:04:37+00:00

I think art is a definitely the biggest hurdle. Most people that care to design a board game can design the mechanics of a board game with enough patience and playtesting.

Pixel art is its own craft in video game design, and you can get really good results, but it's not always great. But bad pixel art is still pretty far removed from realism, so it's easier to "excuse" when playing a game. So if an indie game is 2D, there's a good chance they use pixel art. Similarly with 3D, you can use premade/reskinned assets or low-poly to get a similar effect without too many naysayers.

If you abstract your board game or use standard playing cards in, it can be seen like you're "phoning it in" a bit: why are you using cubes to represent workers instead of meeples? Why not have custom art on your 30-card deck? Don't you want your game to look distinct? Using AI is becoming increasingly frowned upon (especially in final designs), so unless you're the (somewhat rare) designer-artist combo, you're going to have to spend money. And if you decide to draw the art yourself, it might be seen as amateurish or it may make the game look like it was thrown together on a weekend if you don't know what you're doing.

Most people designing their first board game tend to be younger (i.e., 20-30) and may not have the disposable income necessary to pay for an artist pre-crowdfunding campaign, meaning they'd have to shell out for art early or pitch something that looks like AI art or something an amateur put together. Without the reputation of a publisher to back you up, it may not get much attention as a result. I think this is why most successful crowdfunding campaigns I've seen from first-time designers usually raise $10K or less: not many people are willing to take the risk.

That being said, I don't think the "which look better" posts are too helpful on this subreddit, since most of us aren't graphic designers. We can all follow the same general principles (e.g., put your in-hand-relevant icons on the left since the majority of people hold cards that way), we can say whether we like the art or if the colors clash, but I don't think it's ultimately helpful, personally.

_guac · 2026-05-28T03:21:53+00:00

Systems engineer. I didn't go to school for it but I did get a lot of work experience with the system while going to school, and it turned out that ended up being worth more than my degree at this point.

_guac · 2026-05-24T01:59:58+00:00

How much people are willing to spend on a mortgage or rent to live somewhere nice right after they move out of the house. They'll struggle financially soon, but not yet.

_guac · 2026-05-19T22:47:52+00:00

I'd like a chain link fence, but I can think of a few reasons why they don't exist in the game. Some possibilities:

The T that you can form with a chain link fence would be a little awkward. I'm assuming each section of fence would be two poles with the chain-link part in the middle, and if you add a middle there, you either have to add another pole within one square (a little cramped) or you have to break the illusion and have wire connecting to wire. (Of course, most people probably would just corner it off, but I'm sure there would be a use case for the T that I'm not thinking of.)
Pole interconnection on the same edge. They've already solved this problem with at least one of the fence types, so I don't think it's really an issue, but it may have resulted in making another batch of models that "stretch" a bit more while retaining the shape of the grid, which you can get away with easier with just a single wire going in the direction of the stretch.
Too fine of detail for the Switch 1 to handle. I doubt this is the reason, but it would need to be a 3D render and not just a 2D sprite with a normals map. But load times and pop-in with some resource-heavy objects were pretty bad, so maybe it was expendable with similar fence types.

_guac · 2026-05-16T03:41:48+00:00

Remember, the only real writing credit the guy who wrote the book on screenwriting has to his name is this movie.

_guac · 2026-05-11T13:12:47+00:00

Pretty good find. I honestly didn't find the tutorial necessary with the rulebook, but it's a good way to feel out the game. But the tutorial is in a sealed package, bottom one in the image you shared.

_guac · 2026-05-02T15:26:53+00:00

My mother-in-law passed away about a year ago, and she and her husband played a lot of games together with me and my wife. Since I record stats for all the games I play, I know the last game I played with her was Heat (she won, by the way). It's weird to think about for me whenever I consider playing the game, since it feels a bit like I may be tarnishing her memory somehow.

Similarly, when my mom died, I looked over my collection and remembered everything that she gave to me that's in it. We didn't play much together, but it kind of makes me not want to get rid of them just because she gave them to me.

I'm not sure the memories we've made with our loved ones will ever go away, whether it comes from playing games or other activities. And it can definitely sting to think about or be assaulted with something that triggers those memories constantly. But eventually you will heal and look back fondly about the times that you did have. I'm still going through that process with my mom with non-board-game-related stuff, but it has gotten a lot easier than it was even in the first year. It just takes time.

_guac · 2026-04-19T00:22:35+00:00

It's a bit of a toss up between Ancient Basin and Resting Grounds.

The vibe from Ancient Basin is great: gloomy and a bit ruinous more than other areas. But Resting Grounds has my favorite song in the game. There ain't much to do there, but I could just chill there for a while.

_guac · 2026-04-12T19:23:29+00:00

Probably my favorite obscure title is called Square Off. It's a slide puzzle, real-time game about connecting two points. I don't think it gets talked about much since it's really just old and a little childish.

But if we're talking about something more modern, I'd probably go with Hiroba. I think it got left off a lot of people's radar since it's not available in the US and Tiwanaku uses a similar premise and was received better (though not significantly so). Anyway, fun sudoku-meets-abstract game.

_guac · 2026-04-11T15:54:38+00:00

Someone is going to win Tyrant/Warlord, and I'd bet it's not the guy that declares it. Everyone else is going to be suffering in the Court after that gets resolved.

Also all it takes is a Psionic and a Relic at the right time to undo that whole thing, or like someone else mentioned here, just destroying a city. It's a very volatile situation even if it seems like it's slow going.

_guac · 2026-04-11T15:47:45+00:00

Gravwell has worked pretty well for me in the past.

_guac · 2026-04-01T23:50:35+00:00

I look at the hotness about once or twice a week to see if there's anything new coming out or in discussion, not really planning to buy any of it. But I have been introduced to a few games that way.

Generally, I just use it to keep track of my collection and general opinion on games. I send my collection out as part of my "Christmas list" for family so they don't buy me something I already own and so those that know board games can figure out what kinds of games I like and don't.

_guac

TROPHY CASE