Top 100 Games: 70-61
Here’s the next 10 of my Top 100. This list is numbers 70-61. If you missed the last 10 you can see them here, Top 100: 80-71.
70: Final Girl
2025 Rank: New to list
Designer: Evan Derrick, A. J. Porfirio
Publisher: Van Ryder Games
Player Count: 1
The second solo game on the list, and one that nails the tension of a horror movie. You play as the "final girl" trying to survive and take down the big bad of each scenario. What makes Final Girl stand out is how it's sold. You buy a core box with the basics, then pick up Feature Films, which are individual scenarios inspired by well-known horror franchises. The structure stays the same across scenarios. Play cards to take actions, roll dice to see how well you pull them off. But each film throws different obstacles at you that force you to rethink your approach. There's real luck in those dice rolls. You can mitigate it, but you're never fully in control, and that's what keeps the tension high.
69: Deception: Murder In Hong Kong
2025 Rank: 89
Designer: Tobey Ho
Publisher: Grey Fox Games
Player Count: 4-12 (more with expansions)
We played this game so much that the box literally disintegrated. It was our go-to for large groups for years, and we've taught it to more people than I can count. Deception is a team-based deduction game. The Investigators are trying to identify the murderer, along with the means and key evidence, while the murderer (and sometimes an accomplice) tries to hide in plain sight. What makes it work so well is that nobody has to lie or make up stories. There's enough ambiguous information floating around that you can deflect suspicion naturally. Just point the finger at someone else based on what's available. It's perfect for people who feel uncomfortable in other social deduction games. If you've got 7 or more at game night, pull this one out. I love teaching it.
68: Cascadia
2025 Rank: 132
Designer: Randy Flynn
Publisher: Flatout Games
Player Count: 1-4
Cascadia is one of the best introductions to tile-laying games out there. It doesn't restrict where you place tiles the way other games in the genre do, but it rewards players who can place tiles adjacent to matching land types. Each player builds their own ecosystem of different terrain and animals. On your turn, you take one tile and one animal token and add them to your growing landscape. At the end of the game, you score for the largest contiguous section of each land type and for meeting the animal scoring conditions for that session. It's a relaxed, feel-good experience. There's something satisfying about looking at the ecosystem you've built when the game wraps up. I'll always suggest this as the next step up from classic games.
67: Hadara
2025 Rank: 158
Designer: Benjamin Schwer
Publisher: Z-Man Games
Player Count: 2-5
Hadara deserves more attention than it gets. My love for it stems from my love for 7 Wonders Duel. This game captures a similar feeling, but scales up to 5 players. It's a drafting game where each round you're pulling from a different deck of cards, and every player is drafting from a different deck simultaneously, which keeps the pace moving. The cards you draft provide resources that help you score points or improve your ability to draft even better cards in later rounds. There's some set collection woven in, and by the end of the game everyone's tableau looks wildly different. It's been in and out of our mobile library over the years. I think the box cover doesn't do it justice. It doesn't exactly leap off the shelf, which is a shame, because the game inside is excellent.
66: Dice Throne
2025 Rank: 99
Designer: Nate Chatellier, Aaron Hein, Manny Trembley
Publisher: Dice Throne, Inc.
Player Count: 2-6 (best with 2)
Battle Yahtzee. That's the pitch, and it's a good one. Each player picks a hero and fights to the death. Every hero has unique abilities tied to their custom dice. Roll up to three times, keep what you want, then apply the result to one of your abilities. These usually attack your opponent or apply status effects, and because every hero plays so differently, you feel like you're in a completely different game than the person sitting across from you. There are a ton of heroes to choose from, which keeps things fresh. And there's nothing quite like rolling all 6's to trigger your ultimate ability and close out a match.
65: Architects of the West Kingdom
2025 Rank: New to the list
Designer: S J Macdonald, Shem Phillips
Publisher: Garphill Games
Player Count: 1-5
I was surprised to see this wasn't on my list last year. I looked it up and it was ranked 15 the year before and number 8 the year before that. I still think it could be a top 10 game for me, but I just don't play it often enough. Architects stands apart from most worker placement games by giving you a large pool of workers to deploy throughout the game. The more workers you stack at a single location, the better the reward, but the more tempting it becomes for opponents to capture them and throw them in prison for cash. There are also variable starting bonuses that nudge each player's strategy in a slightly different direction, so everyone isn't racing for the same spots. The game is open enough to give you plenty of options on any given turn, but focused enough that it never feels overwhelming. This is probably my favorite in the West Kingdom series.
64: Guild of Merchant Explorers
2025 Rank: 100
Designer: Matthew Dunstan, Brett J. Gilbert
Publisher: Alderac Entertainment Group
Player Count: 1-4
I always say this game has the most forgettable name in board gaming, and I think that's held it back. The artwork, while nice, isn't the most broadly appealing either. But the game itself is excellent. Each round, a card flips from the deck, and every player explores by placing a cube on their board matching the terrain shown. Your goal is to cover as much of the map as possible by building towns that serve as starting points for future rounds of exploration. Each player also gets 3 unique cards per game that push them in a slightly different direction. I wish more people would give it a shot, and I need to do a better job championing it. Maybe someday a new edition will come along with a catchier name.
63: Dead Men Tell No Tales
2025 Rank: 38
Designer: Kane Klenko
Publisher: Renegade Game Studios
Player Count: 2-5
A cooperative game set on a burning, haunted pirate ship. What more do you need? Each player takes on a pirate with a unique ability, and together you're exploring the ship, grabbing treasure, and trying to get out before the whole thing goes up in flames or the skeleton crew gets you. The action system borrows from Pandemic and similar games, but with a nice twist. You can bank an action on your turn and hand it off to the next player. The ship is built tile by tile as you explore, so you never know exactly where the treasure is or what's lurking on the next tile. This is one of my favorite co-ops, and I wish it hit the table more often.
62: Quacks
2025 Rank: 87
Designer: Wolfgang Warsch
Publisher: CMYK
Player Count: 2-4
Quacks is pure push-your-luck joy. Each player has a bag of ingredient chips they're drawing to fill their cauldron. Every chip does something different, and your goal is to get as many into the pot as possible without busting from the white chips. The further you get around the track, the more points and money you earn to buy better chips for future rounds. Push too far and your pot explodes, forcing you to choose between scoring points or gaining new chips, but not both. The new deluxe edition with acrylic tokens is well worth it.
61: Moon Colony Bloodbath
2025 Rank: New to the list
Designer: Donald X. Vaccarino
Publisher: Rio Grande Games
Player Count: 1-5
This is a game where the goal is to lose the slowest. You're building a colony on the moon and things are going badly from the start. You'll construct buildings, grow your population, and try to keep everyone safe, but people are going to die, and fast. Each round, you and the other players can see most of what's coming and prepare for it, but new events get introduced that make survival increasingly desperate. The player who best mitigates the planned disasters while staying ready for the unexpected will outlast everyone else. As long as you go in knowing this is a brutal game about controlled collapse, you'll have a great time.
