Earlier this month, my husband and I went to Granite Game Summit in Nashua, New Hampshire, for the second year in a row. The weather was very chilly (by desert people standards), but the people and gaming were fire! 

This year, G2S was held on March 6-9, 2025. Chris won a badge last year so we decided to attend again this year after having such a great time last year. We flew from Phoenix straight into Manchester-Boston Regional Airport, which was about a 15 minute drive from the convention hotel, the Doubletree in Nashua. We landed on Thursday afternoon and headed to the hotel where I saw some snow. 

We checked in and said hello to Kimberly, an amazing human and one of the co-organizers of G2S. She said that about 600 tickets were sold for the event. The convention had lots of seating, in both masked and unmasked areas, and two food trucks came to the hotel each day, so lots of food options on site, including the hotel restaurant.

The first game we played was House of Fado, designed by Vital Lacerda and João Quintela Martins. Marc, a local gamer we had met last year, taught the game on the fly as he just took the box off the gaming shelf and started reading. Very impressive! 

The game is set in Portugal when restaurants serve traditional food alongside musical performances of fado, a music genre that can be traced back to the 1820s. It’s a 4P game where players are managing restaurants, attracting customers, and contracting and promoting fadistas and musicians to gain prestige for their fado house. It features a similar bump mechanism as Lacerda’s The Gallerist, and true to a Lacerda game, a lot of different actions need to be done in order to do the one big action you want to eventually do. Over the past few years, Lacerda has been releasing shorter versions of his flagship games. And to me, House of Fado feels most similar to his longer crunchy games, even though it only plays in about 30-60 minutes. 

A group of us then went to get dinner at Chen Yang Li, which is down the street from the hotel. We ordered drinks and multiple peking ducks and feasted like kings! So yummy!

After dinner, a group of us played I’m Stuck in the Lift, a bonkers party game in which you and other players guess which floor the elevator will stop on. But you all secretly and simultaneously have the option to push the elevator up and down floors. If you guess correctly – or get really lucky with your predictions – you score VPs. The game lasts for 11 very quick rounds and plays up to 8 players. 

We then played a 8P game of Chicken!, a unique push-your-luck game about chickens and eggs, but really, you’re really pushing the luck of the next player. Players roll up to two times in an attempt to get the most chickens, but if you roll three foxes, your turn is over. Also, if you get eggs during your roll, you add more dice to your hand, and some of those dice can be higher rewards but with more risks. 

On Friday, we began the day by playing the trick-taking game Fibonachos, taught by Daniel Newman. At the start of the round, nacho cards are dealt to players, and a “spicy card” from a separate deck is flipped over for scoring after the round. The player left of the dealer starts the round by playing a card.

Other players have to play suit if they can, and if they can’t, they can play a fibonacho card instead. The fibonacho card does not become trump though if there’s only one card in the round. A second fibonacho card must be played, and the higher value card wins the trick. I like the unique twist of the uncertainty of being able to take a trick is dependent on if another player plays a fibonacho card. When everyone plays their entire hands, everyone counts their spicy points and if your total equals a Fibonacci number (1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21), then you score the next Fibonacci number instead as your total. 

Next up was Castle Combo. I’ve been playing this game a lot recently and even reviewed it on the latest episode of The Five By where we talk about affordable games. Castle Combo is a tableau-building game where players will draft 9 cards to create a 3×3 grid at the end of the game. There are two market rows – the village and castle – and players can only purchase a card from the row that the king’s messenger is in. Once purchased, players place that card into their tableau, potentially receiving immediate benefits or end-of-game benefits, depending on the card. I really like the spatial puzzle in this game, as some cards give you victory points based on its location in your grid or what it’s surrounded by, and you may spend a few rounds waiting for that perfect card to show up in the market. Players also can receive keys to wipe the market or move the king’s messenger to a different row. A lot of depth in a small card game!

We then played another trick-taking game called Kansas City. I loved the look of this game with its sleek black art deco design and a stylistic representation of different industries in Kansas City. In this game, players are trying to win a fixed number of tricks. In our 4P game, zero tricks is zero points, 1 trick 5 points, 2 tricks 10 points, 3 tricks 15 points, 4 tricks 5 points and 5+ tricks zero points. When you lose a trick, you can designate a card to be trump by removing it from your hand and placing it in front of you. This gives people information about what cards are left in play in people’s hands and also allows you to manipulate your game play to win the optimal number of tricks. You don’t want to be stuck with trump cards after you’ve won three tricks because then that might mean you don’t gain as many points as winning just the three tricks. 

We then headed out for a fun lunch at The Hidden Pig, a gastropub in Nashua. Everything was yummy and these guys are always so fun to hang out with!

After lunch, we played Party Mix, a new prototype from Chip Beauvais where you push your luck to collect your favorite snack mix items. Players get a secret starting ingredient and at the end of the game, those ingredients are worth 2 points instead of 1 point for other ingredients. On your turn, you can stick your hand inside the party mix bag and grab as many items as you’d like. The more you grab, the more likely you’ll bust. For every pair of the same item, you must return another item to the bag. If you collect three pairs of items, you bust and it’s the end of your turn. The items you do collect, you place into your muffin cup and count them up at the end of the game. The player who received the least number of items for the round gets a card that gives you an ability. 

Chris and I then played a quick 2P game of Othello, which was one of the door prizes for G2S, which you receive for spinning the wheel. We also received This Is Not A Hat, which is insanely hilarious but got to play after this weekend. Anyway, in Othello, one player is white and one player is black, and on your turn, you place one of your tokens onto the board. If you trap your opponent’s pieces in a row or column and have one of your pieces at the other end, you flip over all those pieces into your color. Such a fun classic game! And I was reminded that I used to play a lot of this game on a phone app called Reversi. 

We then played the Japanese card game In Front of the Elevator, a game I had purchased during our Japan trip last year. In this game, players are trying to get more of their family members to the front of the line to get into the elevator. The order of who can sneak past another person is as follows: girls can sneak past boys, boys in front of moms, moms in front of dads, dads in front of grandmas, grandpas in front of grandmas, and little girls in front of grandpa. At each elevator, only the first three to four people will score points each round. 

I also brought Before the Guests Arrive, a game where you’re cleaning up your home before people arrive. Nobody likes a messy house! At the start of the game, you lay out 10-13 cards in an interlocking series of rows and columns, and on your turn, you choose a row or column and take all the cards in it and place them in front of you. After taking cards, you can tidy up with one family member, and depending on how many hands they have on their card, that’s how many items they can put away. Each family member can also only up specific types of items, so collecting the matching sets of cards would help score more VPs. The game abruptly ends when the guests arrive, a card shuffled into the bottom of the deck. 

We then played Not It, a very fast-paced card where you play a card from your hand that doesn’t match any of the elements on the three dice that come out of the dice tower. The dice have symbols, colors and backgrounds on them (white, stripes or polka dots). If your card has any of these matching elements, you get a penalty card. The first player to get rid of their cards wins the game. For anyone who has played the card game Set, this is the reverse of that game! 

The last game we played on Friday was Stationfall, taught by the awesome Tiffany Leigh. So glad I got to meet her in real life! Our Stationfall game included 7 people, and it was all kinds of bonkers! In the game, there were 17 characters in play, and players are secretly two of those identities, one being your main person and the other your secondary identity, leaving 3 characters not tied to anyone On your turn, you can activate any of the characters and have them do your bidding, which ideally would be helping your character achieve their objectives for more VPs, but dang, that space station is so large and it takes so long to get anywhere! Also, the game lasts a fixed number of rounds and at the end, the ship blows up, so if you aren’t able to evacuate the blast, you won’t be eligible to win the game. Our game was especially tough as nobody was the medical robot, which make it really difficult for people to heal while the telepathic rat was just running amok on the ship. What an experience!

After our game ended, we spent some time with Kimberly and Suzi just chilling before the convention doors closed up for the night at midnight.

On Sunday, we started the day with a demo of The Transit of Venus designed by Nathan Fullerton, who I had met at SDHistCon last year. Nathan lives in New Hampshire and it was good to see him again at this convention! 

The Transit of Venus is a cooperative cribbage game where four centuries of astronomers are working to see the celestial event. It was a little mind blowing working together to set up the crib for other players because all players need to be able to surpass the Venus peg on the board at the end of the game or else everyone loses. Cribbage scoring rules apply otherwise, and players get milestone cards with abilities when they pass certain spots on the track. Such a neat cooperative twist on a classic game! 

I then taught a 3P game of Fromage, also one of my favorite games of 2024! I love the timing mechanism of the game and how crunchy it is for a game that plays in about an hour. Players have three cheese workers in their hand, and you can place one worker to make cheese and one to collect resources in the cheese board quadrant that’s immediately in front of you. This is simultaneously done and after everyone is finished with their placement, the cheese board rotates, placing a new quadrant in front of everyone. You also only get your worker back when the worker is facing you again at the start of the round. So your cheese worker can be held up on the board from 1-3 rounds depending on the rewards you gain or the type of cheese you produce. 

The big game we played on Sunday was Galactic Cruise, and it took up a majority of the day. Galactic Cruise is gorgeous and very crunchy. It feels like a Lacerda but it’s not, and it even looks like it because the artwork was done by Ian O’Toole! In Galactic Cruise, players are creating cruise rocket ships to send passengers to their favored destinations. Naturally, that requires a lot of planning, and again, much like Lacerda games, a lot of turns have to be taken in order to do the grand thing you want to do. 

Players also have a personal board with bonuses they can unlock as thresholds are met and rocket ships are sent into space. Action spots on the main board have two actions you can choose from, but you can also expand your network to take actions on adjacent spots if you are connected to them. Each player has a little menu of actions available and what all the symbols mean on the board. Had a great time playing this heavy euro, and I really liked all the details they put into this game, from the dual-layer player boards to the unique rooms you can add to your cruise rocket ship, including a board game convention and a massage lounge. Sounds like it’d be a fun trip! 

Chris and I then attended a G2S trivia event. For those that know me, I LOVE TRIVIA, and this was such a delight to join up with gamer friends and collectively pull all the random-knowledge bits stuck in our brain. We had a great group, and we played 2nd in the game. My favorite category was the final category in which board game covers were printed on sheets of paper, but if you look closely, other elements that don’t belong to that board game cover were photoshopped onto it and it was our job to name those other games.   

And with that, Chris and I grabbed a quick dinner and then said bye to friends because it was late Saturday night. We had to leave early for Boston the next morning to catch our flight, and it was also the weekend of the time change, so we were losing an hour of sleep. Chris and I love coming to this convention and we had a wonderful time hanging out with friends and playing new games. All in all, I played 15 games over the course of a few days.

The next convention for me will be Circle DC, which starts on March 28 in Washington, D.C. I’m also excited to do some sightseeing before the con and see some friends in town. Cross your fingers for me that I get to see cherry blossoms in bloom!