2025 is coming to a close. How did the year fly by so quickly? It simultaneously felt like the longest and shortest year of my life. It was the best of times, sometimes the worst of times, but there definitely was a lot of board gaming. This past year, I attended a bunch of game conventions, wrote a gaming piece for The Guardian and continued to manage our all stuff, no fluff board game review podcast The Five By. Go subscribe and listen! And with that, here are the 10 games I played for the first time in 2025.
Making sushi deliveries to please the boss and take over the syndicate.
This little tableau builder about delivering sushi so that you can be the top feline clan was a pleasant surprise for me. I barely just played it earlier this month, but I cannot stop thinking about it – and how many decisions I would’ve made differently! Each player begins with one card in their tableau, which gives you an option between two action choices. As you lay down more cards in a pyramid shape, the more actions you get with each round, but you’re limited to the action path you’ve created. Between collecting fish from your supply, transporting them along subway lines, and moving them up for sushi delivery – which sometimes requires rice for nigiri – it’s a hefty little puzzle that makes my brain work overtime. Highly recommend playing with sushi, of course!
That frantic dance when people are coming over and clutter is everywhere!
I often joke that I love having people regularly because that deadline is what keeps me on top of cleaning and keeping the house tidy. In Before the Guests Arrive, this cute little Japanese card game, there’s an impending deadline to pick up all the clutter before guests arrive, and everyone in the household has to help – including the grandparents! The game is played out over a series of cards dealt out onto the table in an interlocking series of columns and rows. On your turn, you pick up all the cards in a row or column, and then you can use one family member to put items away. The puzzle though is that each family member is assigned only to tidy up specific types of items and limited by the number of hands on their cards. One thing’s for sure, this game is much more fun than tidying up!
In Molly House, players take the roles of the gender-defying mollies of early 18th century London. This historical game theme about the queer community from that era is so unique that I never could have imagined it hitting store shelves. I’m so glad this game got published! I love everything this game represents, from the design process as a 2021 Zenobia Award Finalist to the message of the game: finding joy in your community, even if constables and others are trying to destroy it. Players draft cards representing gestures, desires and encounters frowned upon by society, so that they can host festivities with the help of their fellow mollies.
This massive board game offers players the chance to go on a luxury space cruise! As a first-time company, you’re building cruise rocket ships, enhancing the company network, inventing new technologies and growing your workforce. So many things to juggle at the same time – but ultimately, you will need to achieve company goals and keep your customers happy. This game very much feels like it was designed by Vital Lacerda game, in which game play is composed of small actions in order to eventually do a grand action, but it’s surprisingly not. Even the artwork is designed by Ian O’Toole, a frequent Lacerda collaborator, so it has the look and the feel of a Lacerda game. It’s crunchy, heavy and full of iconography. Thank goodness each player gets a personal book player aide for the game.
Racing school mascots! I’m always partial to the bear. Go Bruins!
Who knew a game about racing school mascots down a field – and betting on them – would be so fun? Who will win between the bear, king, hot dog or fish mascot? It’s anyone’s guess, kinda sorta! Players make bets but they also seed the deck of cards dictating actions for each mascot. When the game starts, each card is flipped over one at a time, and the mascots are off the races. It’s chaotic fun – especially when mascots get knocked down, and yes, you can also bet on that, in addition to who you think will win or place. The game is delightful and the packaging equally clever, with the grassy field they’re racing on unfurling from its game box like a giant paper towel roll.
Does Bohemian Rhapsody enter your head when you see this? Just asking for a friend.
Galileo Galilei takes us to the Scientific Revolution where astronomers like Galileo were looking upwards to the sky and observing constellations and major objects, while lecturing at the universities and writing books for libraries. What I love most about this game is the use of the rondel, shaped in a quarter circle for this game using a telescope and its arc. Where the telescope points, players have access to a fixed action and a moving action, and when the turn is over, the moving action part is removed and slid over to the bottom of the arc, where it won’t be in play for a few more turns after a couple more moving actions are used. It’s such a clever rondel mechanism, forcing you to make decisions about how to best combo your next action. But be careful! Having too much knowledge will bring suspicion from the Church, and heretical ideas will be punished with an inquisition.
4. MicroMacro: Downtown Detective
MicroMacro: Downtown Detective. Find clues and solve crimes while on your phone!
MicroMacro: Downtown Detective is an app available at the IOS app store or on Google Play. It’s the digital implementation of one of my favorite games: MicroMacro Crime City, lovingly referred to as Who Killed Waldo? It’s a game played over a large map, where you get a birds-eye view of a bustling city and people going about their business. But if you look close enough, you can see the crime and mischief that residents are up to, and you have to solve the case by observing what’s happening. This app does the same thing, giving you three cases free, and then 22 more with the app purchase. I love solving these mysteries, and now I can do it anywhere on my phone when I have 5-10 minutes of down time. They even released a few more cases as a holiday bonus this month! I successfully found the escaped reindeer!
Working to house the vulnerable populations so they don’t end up in the Corrections system.
Cross Bronx Expressway is the third game of the Irregular Conflict Series by GMT. It follows six decades of south Bronx history from the 1940s-1990s, and how urban development and construction of the highway negatively affected the Bronx population, a shifting demographic with each decade. It has a collective loss condition so players need to kinda work together while working to achieve their objectives, split between the public, private and community sectors. The game is brutal – and there is so much history represented in the game cards. It’s a rich gaming experience that highlights how quickly people can fall through the cracks and neighborhood problems can compound so quickly. Much like real life, there are a multitude of challenges to overcome to keep vulnerable people off the streets and out of the prison system.
Quite literally the game I’ve played the most this year. That’s Not A Hat comes in a small box filled with cards that shows a black and white doodled item on the front and an arrow pointing in a direction on the back. This game is all about gift giving. Everyone loves gifts, right? And, naturally, if you’re receiving a gift, you have to give a gift, too, to someone else. The game is literally memory musical chairs. Cards begin face up in front of you, but as people start giving gifts, those cards go face down – and they start moving around the table in front of a different person. It’s hard enough remembering what’s in front of you, let alone what someone else has given you. It’s hilarious fun, in a brain-melty quick sort of way, especially if there are adult beverages involved.
We found the alien race in S.E.T.I. There is intelligent life out there in the galaxy!
S.E.T.I., also known as the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence, is my top game of 2025. It has all the things I love about strategic games: multi-use cards, technology upgrades, space aliens and a rotating board to represent ever-shifting planetary positions, making timing a key game mechanism. You’re a scientist on Earth upgrading equipment to analyze incoming data more efficiently, boosting telescope signal capacity or increasing resources. The board is laid out with three sets of rings that rotate when technology is researched, making planets orbit across the board, potentially making them farther from where your launched probes need to get to. And as you move through the galaxy, alien races wait to be discovered – and then even more fun begins!
And that’s my top 10 games that I played for the first time in 2025. What have you all enjoyed playing in 2025? Here are also my previous top 10 lists that go way, way back. Thanks for making it down this far, and I hope you had a wonderful holiday season with lots of gaming and merriment. Here’s to even more adventures in 2026!
Chris and I running away from the chaos that was 2025. Happy New Year, everyone!
Last month, I flew to Columbus, Ohio, to attend Origins Game Fair for the first time! It’s by far the biggest convention I’ve gone to – at almost 20,000 attendees – but even though it was large, the convention was easy to navigate and get around in.
The open gaming area on Saturday at Origins.
I stayed across the street from the south entrance of the Columbus Convention Center, so all I had to do was cross the street to enter the building. And that was totally convenient, as it was hot and humid during my time there, something this desert dweller was not at all used to.
My hotel, the Canopy, as well as a bunch of other hotels, was just across the street.
Wednesday
I flew out from Phoenix and arrived in Columbus on Wednesday late afternoon and immediately hit the open gaming room after getting my badge. The convention center had plenty of space to game, whether in the ginormous open gaming space, which had both open tables and tables for scheduled games, or just all the little tables and nooks found around the convention center. I never had any trouble finding a place to sit, game or charge my phone.
Lots of cute photo ops around the convention floor!
I met up with Amanda Panda, and we saw this giant gummy bear in the open gaming area, and I had to take a photo with it. (Please excuse my frizzy hair from the humidity.)
Do not eat the giant gummy bear.
The booth was selling Rummy Gummies, a little card game where you’re trying to make a Rummy-style set of matching color gummy bears. But there are also gummy worms in the deck, which activate if too many are discarded, making you do things like trade hands or go in the other direction.
I picked up Rummy Gummies to play with my nieces.
The next game I played was Rebel Princess, the first game of many played during this con. It was such a hit with every single I busted this game out! Rebel Princess is a trick taking game where you’re a princess trying to avoid proposals from princes and a frog, who is the absolute worst. The game goes on for five rounds, with rules that slightly change each round, and you play this like a normal trick-taking game but you don’t want to collect any of the prince suited cards or the frog, as they will give you point — and you don’t want any points. Unless you’re gunning to be the Rebel of the Ball, then you want all them, and it will subtract to your total points.
The artwork in Rebel Princess is just delightful. Watch out for that frog though. He is the worst.
We then borrowed Panda Panda from the convention library. The goal of the game is to collect a very specific combination of cards, which are lettered from A to G, with the A’s having 10 cards in the deck all the way to the G having one card in the deck. On your turn, you can play a card or discard a card, which may trigger the passing of a card to an opponent. You win if you start your turn with a completed set. I ended up buying the game in the vendor hall when it opened on Thursday.
This cute card game has you building out your hand of cards to be exactly like one on the cheat sheet.
Next up was Fork, a very adorable trick-taking game where you simultaneously play cards in a trick, and, depending on the hierarchy of the animals, you may be able to win cards for scoring. The hierarchy order is is Foxes, Owls, Rabbits and Kale. On your turn, you pick a suit to be played, and then everyone plays their cards. The player who then played a fox can score an owl or rabbit. If an owl survives, it can score on a rabbit, and so forth. Any leftover kale also scores points if it doesn’t get eaten by the rabbit.
Fork is a cute trick-taking game where your animals can eat other animals or be eaten.
I hung out with these cool people that Amanda Panda introduced me to on Wednesday as we played all the previously mentioned card games. And Jamie Daggers hung out with us and painted at the table!
(From left), Cosmic Ben, Amanda Panda, Jamie Daggers, me and Dicey Vim.
Thursday
At the crack of dawn on Thursday (OK, 7:30 a.m.), I met up with Tim Fowler and Patrick Hillier for coffee and 3P cribbage out on a patio at the convention center.
It’s always good to see Patrick (we usually see each other at Granite Game Summit), and I finally got to meet Tim in person!
I am very rusty at the scoring for cribbage, most especially in the morning hours when my brain hadn’t quite woken up yet to math, but I was able to hold my own in the end as white! The scores were so close!
Look at that photo finish! Patrick ended up beating us.
I then met up with Corey (idontknowrules), an old friend who had used to live in Arizona but had moved away to Ohio about four years ago. We miss you, Corey! That morning, Corey, his friend Jon and I had all signed up to play Fort Circle’s First Monday in October, a game about the history of the U.S. Supreme Court. I got a chance to take a tour of the Supreme Court in March during Circle DC, but did not get a chance to play with the designer then, so I’m so glad I got a chance to play it here! First Monday in October was among the many scheduled games offered by Armchair Dragoons in the open gaming area. I spent half my time time there during the con learning historical games.
Kevin Bertram of Fort Circle is teaching us First Monday in October.
The game recreates SCOTUS history from 1789 to present day, and players are advocating for the court cases they want to win and shaping the philosophy of the court, which are represented by four tracks: commerce clause, equality and liberty, free speech, and executive power. Players take three actions per turn, and actions include placing their clerks on cases on the docket track, encouraging justices to retire, supporting judicial nominees or moving up the robing room, which offers benefits during your actions. I really enjoyed learning about the history and made agonizing decisions between furthering my philosophical goals versus the court cases coming through. We all enjoyed the constant push and pull of the court, and bringing down the hammer when you were the last person to take a turn in the round!
We’re influencing the makeup of the Supreme Court of the United States!
We then had lunch at North Market, a cool indoor market with food vendor stalls, that was across the street from the convention center. Lots of yummy options! I ended up getting a Philly chicken steak from Marlow’s Cheesesteaks. The sandwich was so ginormous that I ate it over two meals!
North Market is one block away from the convention center. Lots of food options!
After lunch, we hit the vendor hall, which had board game companies selling games as well as all the cool nerd-adjacent gear such as dice, shirts, puzzles and artwork. The local bookstores even had booths there! I always love people watching, seeing all the different stalls and shopping, of course! I visited the Molly House booth and took this awesome photo with a local drag queen who was at the booth!
Two fancy ladies at the Molly House booth!
That evening, I finally got a chance to play Hot Streak. Omg, this game is such a riot! It’s a racing game about school mascots who run down a field, and the players make bets on who they think will win, place or get knocked down. The game also involves seeding a deck of cards that will provide actions for specific mascots. It’s chaotic fun — we all laughed so hard! It’s hard not to when you’re rooting for a hot dog!
This game is so chaotic but hilarious!
I then got a chance to learn Weather Machine from my favorite game designer Vital Lacerda. This was such a beast to learn! You are scientists who are tampering with the weather by collecting research data, conducting experiments, publishing papers and developing prototype machines to eliminate extreme weather. Like with any Lacerda game, it’s an intricate and complicated series of small steps to be able to finally do one grand action, and hope it scores points or an objective. My brain just about melted— and we probably should not have started learning it at 8 p.m. — but I enjoyed the brain burn and would definitely play Weather Machine again.
I think Weather Machine from Lacerda’s most complicated game, and this is coming from someone who loves Lisboa and can teach it on any given day.
To end Thursday night, we did a quick game of Mountain Goats, a quick push-your-luck game where you’re trying to get your goat to the top of the mountain by rolling a group of dice. You can divide your dice however you want so that an exact total of one or more dice will move your goat up its matching path. The goat meeples were too cute, but I think at 3P, the game felt a little long for what it was.
High on a hill was a lonely goatherd …
Friday
Friday morning, I signed up to learn Littoral Commander: The Baltic, which was being taught in the Armchair Dragoons area. The Baltic game pits Russia against the U.S., and we played the short scenario that included 3 actions per side for 3 turns. It was my first time playing a game in the Littoral Commander system, and there were so many decisions for those few turns, such as outfitting our ships with various technologies and managing resources for battle. Since we only had 3 turns in our game, we didn’t have to worry about using our powerful guns too early in the game, but ultimately, the dice failed the U.S. and we lost to Russia.
We tried fighting off the Russians in the Baltics but we were not successful.
Next up was Power Grid: Outpost, which is a version of one of my favorite games, Power Grid, but this time in space! If you know the base game, this will be easy to pick up because it is similar with a few interesting twists! First up, you have a player board where future power plants and worker shelters sit. Secondly, there is no resource market, but instead just a market for workers. You need workers to power your plants, and if you’re later in turn order, those workers can get very pricey because you’re hiring them each round, unless you have a shelter that can house them in space.
You need to make space for your power plants and shelter by placing these pieces on the main board.
Each planet functions like a city in the regular game except it can additionally house one shelter or one plant. These wooden pieces are removed from your player board and placed on the main game board, so that you can put a plant or shelter card that you won during bidding onto your player board. If you cannot put a wooden piece onto the main board, you do not have room to build a power plant, and thus cannot power cities.
Powering planets in space in Power Grid: Outpost.
We then played two more games of Rebel Princess, one at 3P and the next one at 4P. Each game has been so different based on the round cards and the variety of princess powers. At this point, I had purchased its expansion at the vendor hall, which included even more princess and round cards, as well as some special promos they had including the Carmenisa tile, which has a shiny metallic mirror on it.
Friday night, I met friends at Land-Grant Brewing Company, a beer-garden type place that had food trucks and great beer. I had the watermelon ale, and it was so refreshing! Good times hanging out in the fresh air with friends!
Such a fun brewery and outdoor space. There were three food trucks there that night, too!
Saturday
I started Saturday teaching two games, the first of which was Dune: Imperium. This game is such a solid deck-builder combination and worker placement game, and I am always down to teach it. We didn’t play with any expansions as there was one new person playing it but the game was still a hit!
Dune: Imperium is a solid blend of deck builder and worker placement.
Next up, I taught Arcs, one of my top 10 games of 2024. My two friends had never played Arcs before, and even though it so clearly states in the rule book that you shouldn’t play with the Lore and Leaders cards in your first game, I didn’t listen to it … and I think it created a lot of unnecessary chaos and a little bit of frustration. So listen to Cole, folks! Anyway, there was one point where I had no more ships on the board because they were all on my opponent’s boards and the warlord ambition had not been declared a that round. I eventually got them back, but there was no way to catch up to the person leading by a lot. Everyone still enjoyed the game though, but they definitely said they will try it first without the Leaders and Lore cards next time.
Battling it out in space and declaring ambitions in Arcs.
I then met up with Jason Carr to learn Microverse, a card-driven space 4x game that plays in about 60 minutes. Can you believe it? The game is played with a deck of cards, which have one of four actions on them: Build, Colonize, Explore and Mobilize. Players play as different factions, with a home planet on their side of the universe. On a player’s turn, they can play one or more cards to generate resource points to use toward an action. There’s also a Senate phase after each person takes their turn in a round that changes up the rules for that round. I got annihilated when an enemy traveled seven distance and attacked my home planet. I gotta defend my home turf better! Would definitely play this again, and with such a short play time compared to other 4X games, it would not be a problem to get this on table!
The last game on Saturday was Cross Bronx Expressway. I have been trying to learn this game at the past few historical game conventions I’ve been to, so I was so happy to get in on a demo with Jason. First up, look at that cover! Definitely the coolest board game cover I’ve seen on a historical game. The designer, Non-Breaking Space, had a personal connection with the graffiti artist BG183 and was able to use his artwork for the box.
Look at that cover! I don’t think I’ve seen a GMT game this size that’s done a horizontal cover.
The game follows six decades of south Bronx history from the 1940s-1990s, and how urban development negatively affected the Bronx population. It’s a 3P game where players take on the roles of Private, Public and Community institutions, as they try to save the city from bankruptcy and protect the vulnerable population. At the end of each decade, a census is tallied to determine which factions have achieved their objectives — and at what cost. It is such a rich gaming experience that highlights how quickly people can fall through the cracks and neighborhood problems can compound in the blink of an eye. I cannot say enough great things about this game, and I’m so looking forward to when my copy will arrive. You can still preorder this game on the P500!
The Cross Bronx Expressway board showcases the different neighborhoods in South Bronx.
Sunday
Unbeknownst to me, as it was my first time at Origins, the convention also offers all sorts of panels for people to attend. I started my Sunday at the “All About Self-Publishing” writing panel featuring Sarah Hans, Cat Rambo, Aaron Rosenberg and Laura VanArendonk Baugh. I particularly enjoyed how they started the session by collecting questions from the audience in order to know what types of topics to cover. It was a great discussion about some ins and outs of self-publishing. I wish we had more time, actually to talk more!
The panel included (from left) Laura VanArendonk Baugh, Cat Rambo, Sarah Hans and Aaron Rosenberg.
After the panel, I returned to the open gaming area for the Armchair Dragoons Sunday raffle. You received a raffle ticket every time you played a game that they had set up on the schedule, and there were so many prizes! Alas, I did not win anything in the end, but that’s OK.
Nathan and I have run into each other at the last four conventions I’ve been to!
Journey to Skyhaven is a card-driven cozy herding game where you are hiking across terrain while trying to have the most sparkling, content and plump little creatures when you finish your hike. When you play a card, you move a certain number of spaces while using up stamina. Playing cards in a certain order can combo some victory points or net you some resources to continue your trek.
This is the prototype for Journey to Skyhaven, which will be published by First Fish Games.
Lastly, we played one last game of Rebel Princess with three people. It was good to end the convention on a high note with such a fun game!
The last game at Origins! Like Cinderella, I had to leave the ball (and grab my luggage) to go home.
I went back to my hotel, grabbed my luggage and headed off to the airport. In the beginning, I was a little nervous heading to this con by myself, as my husband had to cancel last minute (and he’s actually been to this convention before), but I was able to easily slip into games and meet up with some friends and make new ones! It was also great seeing people I’ve gamed with at Circle DC and SDHistCon and play historical games with them, and I finally got to meet Armchair Dragoons in person!
Armchair Dragoons had a whole bunch of historical games scheduled. Loved hanging out in this area!
And for those wondering, I did do some shopping at the vendor hall. The Rebel Princess expansion was not the only game I bought! And I totally had to buy the Origins dice set as it had the cute little Origins mascot Crit on them!
Overall, I played 18 games, including a couple repeats of Rebel Princess, which I do not mind at all. I have since taught my local gaming group the game, and they all enjoyed it. Did any of these games tickle your fancy? Or have you played any of the games I purchased at the convention? I have yet to get Galileo Galilei on table, but hopefully soon! My next convention is coming up! This weekend, in fact, is Consimworld, happening right here in my backyard!
I was so amused by this giant Agricola happening at Origins!
