Top 100 Games (of all time) 2023 Edition – 80 through 71
The next part of the list went up last night. Wednesdays at 8 PM Central on Malts and Meeples YouTube is when the new chunks of ten are coming out. I believe that there’s no new game this time around. Join me, watch through the list, and see which of the games is the most interesting to you. It’s time for the Top 100 Games (of all time) 2023 Edition – 80 through 71. Plus, there are three games with exclamation points in the title.
Catch up on my Top 100 Games (of all Time) 2023 Edition:
Top 100 Games (of all time) 2023 Edition – 80 through 71
80. So Clover!
So Clover! is a cooperative party game where players are working together to solve a puzzle. Of course, the puzzle is only as good as the person who created it. Now, that might sound mean, but everyone is put into the position of creating the puzzle.
Each player is given a two by two grid of cards that have words on each side of the card, top, bottom, left, and right. On each of the sides of that grid you’ll have two words. So each player writes down a word the best that they can which connects the two. So if you have “hot” and “dog” you might put down “ketchup” for example. Then the cards are removed and players need to try and put it back together.
That doesn’t sound too hard, but what happens if you have “dog” and “marshmallow”? How do you connect those two words? And that’s where the tricky nature of the game comes in. Plus, even if you got the perfect clue for that, there is a mystery card added in that the person writing the clues doesn’t know what that is. So your clue of “ketchup”, in the original example, is now way harder when randomly the new card has “mustard” on it. It’s a fun game which keeps everyone involved and working together.
79. Small World
We go from a cooperative game to a game which is about taking your fantasy race or creatures and smashing your opponents. Of course, as you do that, they’ll be smashing you back in Small World. It’s an area control game where you are gathering gold from taking over areas and holding them. Of course, to get more areas, your friends need to take over your areas.
Now, it might get sucked getting your area knocked off the board. But unlike Risk, you don’t need to hide. Instead your fantasy race can go into decline and you can grab another fantasy race. Then with a new group of characters and a new special power, you can hop back onto the board taking over what your friends have built up.
The game is very in your face, but it makes it not bad because it is for everyone. And when you get beat down, you come back in with a vengeance. And, each fantasy race has it’s own power along with each special power to make them unique and different. So flying giants might work out great one game. And you’ll have underground halflings another time, or you might change from that into bivouacing trolls.
78. Dice Forge
Now we’re onto a game that dropped a little bit. I think that this one dropped because I haven’t played it in a few years, but Dice Forge is a fun game. It’s a game where you are building out your own dice. Now, you don’t start from scratch you have basic things on your dice. But as you collect resources you can use them to buy cards, often how you get points, or add new sides to your dice.
Now that doesn’t take them from six sides to eight sides or mean that you get a new die. No, you remove the side of one of the dice you have and put a new side on it. It might give you more purchase power or more points, how you build it is up to you. And that is what makes the game fun, it’s a gimmick that really works. And there are a lot of strategies in what you can do.
Another thing that works really well is that when it’s not your turn you roll your dice. So on every other players turn you get a roll and collect resources. So it isn’t a slow build of adding sides. After a few rounds you can start to leap up in what you can buy. I also like that you decide where it goes on your dice. You might get more purchase power and ignore gold and point faces completely on the dice. Or you might load up one die so you always get something better.
77. Asking for Trobils
This is another one that as I talked about it, I want to play it more. Asking for Trobils is a pretty simple worker placement game of building traps to catch Trobils. All with a familiar but different sci-fi team on top of it. By that I mean that they take a ton of things from popular sci-fi culture and just tweak it slightly. You want classic UFO looking worker ships, you can do that. Or you can get Planet Express for the Serenity.
But I like how this game game is simple. What you do on your turn is place out a worker and take an action. Most of the time that is collecting a resource, like space carrots. Or you might trade in resources for credits or to get a trap that you need to help capture a Trobil. And once all your ships are out, you pull them back for at turn. But the game does add in theme with pirates or characters who you can hire that’ll help you and hurt your opponent. It’s not too in the face though, which is nice.
76. Just One
Now to another cooperative party game. I was going to say it’s the highest party game on my list, but I don’t think that’s right. I’m not sure if Just One is even my highest party game or not on the list. Just One, though, is the party game that I recommend most readily for people who maybe don’t like party games that well but have a group of people who like to enjoy them.
In Just One, one person is “it” they are trying to guess their word. Everyone else is going to write down a single word clue. And from the clues, the person is going to guess their one word. The twist to the game is that there can only be just one copy of a word for a clue. If there are two, or more, all of them go away and those clues will be lost. So you want to be creative, but if it’s too obscure, that might confuse things as well. It’s a great balance that way for the game that makes it better than other party games for me.
75. Roll Player
Now we’re onto a competitive game where you’re trying to create the best RPG character. Roll Player is a dice drafting game where you use those dice to create the best character. Now, each character has certain things that they want. If you’re a rogue or a wizard, you wouldn’t want 18 strength now, would you? Or you might, but that’s not the stat that you care about the most and you get points for getting it in a range.
But it isn’t just about getting dice in the right places. Because sometimes you might not get the right number. You can also get points for getting the right colored dice in the right places. Or, you get money to buy equipment that gives you points. But some of my favorite is buying spells or traits to get your alignment to the right spot as well as to give you more control over the dice that you’re placing.
It does a good job of taking an element of making a character from the RPG and putting a fun game around it. So it’s two things that I enjoy.
74. T.I.M.E Stories
Now another cooperative game, this section has a nice mix. I know for some people TIME Stories will be lower because they’ve played it all. I haven’t played all of the scenarios, but the ones that I’ve played I really like. TIME Stories is a time travel game where you’re an agent whose consciousness is sent back through time, or across the multiverse, or ahead in time to a point in time where someone is messing with time.
Yes, I said time a lot there. But in a lot of ways the game is like a puzzle or escape room that you can play through multiple times. And while you have to go back and collect items, because they drop you in at a point in time, that you’ve found before, the knowledge you gain stays with you. I really like how that works thematically.
73. Point Salad
All Eevee is the way to play this game, not really, Point Salad is a great set collection, open drafting game. And it’s really simple. On your turn you take two vegetables (or Eeveelutions) or a scoring card. And that’s the majority of the game.
What works well in the game, though, is that when you take your veggies (or Eeveelutions) those spots are refilled. And the cards that are used to refill it are the cards with scoring on them. The cards have scoring on the back and veggies on the front. So if you take from a column, there are three columns, it’ll flip down that scoring card. You can use that to get rid of scoring card someone else might need, but of course, they can do that to you. So when you take scoring and when you take veggies is an interesting puzzle for the game.
72. That’s Pretty Clever!
Now we’re onto the roll and write game for the list. And the last one of the four Clever games to make the list. I’m not sure if Clever 4Ever will make the list, I need to play it more. But I really like That’s Pretty Clever as a roll and write game. It’s a good balance between a roll and write game that has enough in it and one that is too simple. It does give you a lot of combos to play with.
To me, I think that there might be elements of the others I like better. But in terms of being able to pull this game out and play it solo, That’s Pretty Clever! is the best. And I like that I can play it on an app but also that I can get people up and playing it quickly in person as well.
71. No Thanks!
Finally we have No Thanks! a game about not getting points. You want to pass on the card, you have to put a chip on it, kind of a mini poker chip. But once you run out you can’t pass and you’ll have to take the card. Sot he game is a balancing act of when there are a lot of chips on a card, is it worth taking it?
The chips themselves are worth -1 point, so if you have a lot of them, you’ll counter some of the higher points. Or you can use them to avoid getting other higher cards when someone else might be stuck taking it. I really enjoy how each group sets this market, how many chips is enough to be worth taking a card that has a 30 on it, is it 10 chips or is it 20? That depends on the group you play with. You also can create runs which only score the first card in the run. But there is also a chance that the card you need in that run might not be in the round, so there is a push your luck element there as well.
Upcoming Streams
I’ll be doing more of my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2023 Edition on next Wednesday and Wednesdays for a little bit. That is always going to be at 8 PM Central. Next week it’s going to be 70 through 61 and we’re getting close to the half way point which always seems like it’s faster than I expect.
And then I also stream on Mondays at 9 PM Central time. That is going to be for smaller solo games. I’m hoping to do Number Drop next week after opening up some Doctor Who Magic the Gathering packs last Monday. So what I stream on Monday is always all over the map.
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