Recently I was reminiscing about the games I played at my debut Gathering of Friends in 2004 and was surprised by how many have fallen by the wayside.

My initial thought is that games are simply better now. But what I suspect is true is that if you’re playing a lot of new games to sate your lust for variety, it’s easier to find enough games that you like so that it *seems* like games are better now. You don’t have to sate your lust with dross.

The best games from 2004 are still classically enjoyable. They’re also simpler. What we thought were heavy games back then are mid-weight games now. If you went back and played all those games again, not just the ones you like but all the average/bad ones as well, would you still rate them the same given all the gaming experiences you’ve had now, and knowing better now what you prefer in a game, and being less prone to put up with things that are just ok because there are now so many better games you can play instead? The answer may be yes but whenever I play these older games the rating invariably drops a point or two due to the above. Case in point is Sticheln which until recently I last played a decade ago. I rated it an 8 when it first came out and we played it a lot because it was novel. Playing it again recently, it’s just slow (you can play any card, and card counting is crucial) and it’s mean – you can choose to effectively knock a player out of the game in the first round. I now rate it a 6.

I do believe the best games are better now though – their depth and engagement make their play more memorable. You’d never have got a Terraforming Mars (or whichever big game you love) back in 2004 – gaming wasn’t ready for it and the hobby had to evolve to get to them.

Because there are so many more games being published, if you play a semi-random collection of games (like at a con) you’re likely to play a bunch of average games still. But I also think that the average games being produced now are better than the average games of 20 years ago. I mean, we used to play a lot of what would be 5’s if they were released now because that’s all there was, but we gave them 7’s because we were just so happy to being playing anything cool that was better than Monopoly and Life!

Anyway, I believe gaming is better now.

That’s despite what’s going on in the list below. New-to-me games played recently include …

COMBI-NATIONS (2022): Rank 9387, Rating 6.9 – van Moorsel

You’re filling your board with tiles (1-3 hexes) that feature the 4 terrain types, score your biggest area in each terrain type, lose points for unfilled spaces, get points for any special score tiles you’re placed. There’s some replay in trying to determine how best to place your start pieces which can be any which way and this drives choice later on. The centrepiece is the tile pickup, which is a 12 space circle you move around, picking up any tile 1-3 spaces in front of you, ignoring spaces where other meeples are. Once during the game you can switch direction if the tiles ahead aren’t helpful! It’s enough to carry what is otherwise a standard but nicely done Euro.

Rating: 7

DUNGEON MAYHEM (2018): Rank 1745, Rating 6.9

Get a unique deck, play-1-draw-1 each turn with symbols that variously inflict hits on a player of your choice (we do LH neighbour to prevent it getting personal), putting shields on yourself, play another card, etc. Last one standing wins. Down-points for being mindless and elimination. Up-points for recognising that and being quick about it.

Rating: 6

LOOT (2024): Rank 23527, Rating 5.5

An uninspired roll-and-write with an alleged theme of visiting Essen booths. The die roll allows you to move your meeple around your grid ticking off squares, aiming to complete shapes, rows and columns for points, all without landing on squares you’ve ticked off before. There are only two bonuses to shoot for – a die modifier and the ability to wrap around the board. Which made it a rather dull affair with obvious look-ahead to plan for. I find it unlikely that this fairly represents the usual Essen experience for gamers (for one, where are the crowds!). And of all the possible clever titles, why pick one that’s been used 57 times before!! Sheesh.

Rating: 5

NIMALIA (2023): Rank 2314, Rating 7.1

The love child of Honchu/Hokkaido (place a card with 4 biome quadrants that must overlap an already placed card) and Cartography (each round you’ll be scoring two of the four categories, being the usual fare of this biome next to that etc). Pass cards 7 Wonders style each round. All these are games of fine pedigree but … we’ve seen it all before and this doesn’t capture any new magic given your fate seems even more luck-of-the-draw driven.

Rating: 6

PUPPY PILE (2023): Rank N/a, Rating N/a

Reveal a card from the top of the deck and shift dog breed cards around the queue per its instructions, Guillotine style. You win if your secret dog is at the head of the queue when a score card is revealed. It gets a bonus rating point for having a cat disguised as a dog labelled “Totally A Dog” which is pretty funny in itself but doubly so because it also beautifully summarises the game. I’m sure there are groups who would have fun with the on-and-on randomness this provides but it’s one-and-done for me.

Rating: 3

RAIL PASS (2019): Rank 6600, Rating 6.6

You’re loading up and handing little model trains loaded with coloured goods cubes to your neighbours, and when you receive a train you’ll unload cubes of your colour in your warehouse for points. Sounds easy except for all the rules … it’s real-time and you’re on the clock, nothing can hit the table, you need to pass the trains through bridge and tunnel obstacles, big trains can’t stop in little platforms, engineers that travel with the train can’t move more than one station away, and so on. A little mental rehearsal and some practice helps. It gets bonus points for insisting that all trains ready to be passed must be accompanied by a “toot toot”. It was surprisingly fun but it won’t get a lot of play due to the real-time aspect … we like to relax with our games rather than be laser-focused under time pressure.

Rating: 6

ROLL FOR ADVENTURE (2018): Rank 3455, Rating 6.7 – Dunstan / Gilbert

This was simple dice-rolling, monster-killing fun in the best kind of way. I really liked the re-rolling decision – you get to use all of one number and re-roll the rest, but which number to use can be tricky. You need to commit dice to fulfilling the combos the board requires to acquire jewels, and you need to fulfil them quickly, but you need to kill the monsters before they kill all your dice. We played it 4 times in quick succession, each a level harder. I liked the double-sided mix of boards. There’s probably not enough depth or inter-game variety for an 8 to tell the truth but I don’t care, it was fun, and I can see it coming out regularly as a 40-minute dice-rolling romp.

Rating: 8

ZOMBIE CHICKENS (2023): Rank 18886, Rating 7.3

We played the co-op version of this really basic (as the theme would suggest) tower defence game. The defence cards protect against various chicken traits (slow, flying, etc) and you play 2 each, then draw an increasing number of zombie chicken cards each round hoping that the chickens’ traits come out in the same proportion that you’ve played for and you kill them all off. If 5 get through you’ve lost. It’s a guess-and-see-what-happens type of game which hopes that the fun theming will make up for lack of substance. It doesn’t quite get there, going too long given there are so few interesting decisions to be made.

Rating: 5