Top 10 games I played for the first time in 2025
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.
10. Neko 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!
9. Before the Guests Arrive
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!
8. Molly House
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.
7. Galactic Cruise
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.
6. Hot Streak
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.
5. Galileo Galilei
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 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!
3. Cross Bronx Expressway
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.
2. That’s Not A Hat
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.
1. S.E.T.I.
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!
