New to Me: Summer 2013

It’s been another quarter, and thus time for another listing of games that were new to me — mostly including new releases, but also including a few older ones that crossed my gaming table. As always this is an assessment of how much I like the games, rather than whether they’re great or not. I tend to prefer light to medium euros that don’t make me work too hard.

As you can see, there’s still a bit of emphasis on cooperative gaming; that’s because I was finishing up a complete book on the design of cooperative gaming. I hope to talk more about this in the future, but this could end up being the first “Mechanics & Meeples” branded game book! To keep up-to-date, I encourage you to join the Mechanics & Meeples page on Facebook that I’m now putting together.


The Great

Hanabi (2013). A cooperative game about playing fireworks cards to the table in the correct order. It’s a terrific game because it’s all about trust. The other players have to tell you what to play, but the language that they’re allowed to use is so deeply constrained that you have to have faith that what you think they’re saying is what they’re actually saying. Did I mention that it won the 2013 SdJ? I’d prefer to see the SdJ go to games with a bit more meat … but this game is so clever and innovative that I nonetheless have to say it’s well deserved.

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