So, I decided, what are the Top 10 Demos that I want to check out at GenCon? Keeping in mind that Fantasy Flight hasn’t announced anything yet, and I know there will be more added and surprises that are showing up there.

Ten – Zona: The Secret of Chernobyl – A long title, but an interesting sounding game. You are going through and trying to collect secrets before you go into the sarcophagus of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The first person to succeed wins the game, but it’s possible for time to run out and everyone to lose the game. It seems like an interesting race against the clock.

Nine – Calico – For something complete different, this game is about cats and making quilts. It’s going to be more of a puzzle game, but the artwork looks very cute and the game just have a very satisfying look and seems like it would be a relaxing game to play. I think with it’s theme, if it’s a good game, it would be a good entry level game.

Eight – Deranged – To start, the artwork on this game looks very cool. It’s creepy and monstrous, but not gross. Second, this game has people turning into monsters, having to hunt down and kill the other players characters to turn back into a human themselves. It seems interesting, a modular board and variable player powers make me want to check out this game. I also like the weird horror theme that it has going on.

Seven – Arkeis – Arkeis seems like it’s a super natural adventure game, but instead of it being Lovecraftian, we get ancient Egypt and exploring a tomb. It looks to use the box as a game board and I’m assuming different games can be played in different configurations. But any game that has that adventure and exploration feel, it seems like a lot of fun, and it seems to be driven by storytelling, which is great.

Six – Nemesis – This one is already out, but it’s just for demo at GenCon. From Awaken Realms, Nemesis is an Aliens game, just without the IP for Aliens. You’re trying to navigate a ship back to Earth (or some planet), but everyone has their own secret objective, and did I mention, there are aliens on the ship that are most definitely trying to kill you.

Five – IT: Evil Below – I don’t know much of anything about this game. And it’s a game built upon an IP (intellectual property), which can be hit or miss, but I’m a big fan of Stephen King and It, so I want to check the game out and see if it can take any of the creep factor from the book and add it into the game.

Four – Mystery House – What makes Mystery House so interesting is that it uses it’s box to create a game board where you can’t see everything in it. So you’re going around blind searching for things, and it seems like it’s going to build up a good amount of suspense. There’s also a companion app for it, which I find interesting. It seems like a game that is going to have some wow factor on the table.

Three – Sleeping Gods – From Ryan Laukat and Red Raven Games, this game is in the line of his storybook games like Near and Far, and Above and Below. His artwork, as always, is amazing, and the idea of sailing around and completing missions, it seems interesting. It’s also a campaign game as you go through and explore the world. Definitely one that I want to see on the table.

Two – Iron Forest – This game is from the same company as Ice Cool and uses a lot of the same mechanisms as Ice Cool. But instead of a nice high school, it’s a board that goes up levels, with an elevator that you launch yourself from the first floor to the second floor and spots to drop back down. This game just seems like a lot of fun to see and demo.

One – Floor Plan – This is a roll and write game, but it looks interesting. It’s a game where you are building your floor plan (hence the name) for a house. Adding in bedrooms, living rooms, kitchens, etc, but you have to make sure you’re putting in doors, and other features to score you more points.

It’s kind of crazy to look at all of those games and this doesn’t include any RPG related stuff, gaming adjacent stuff, etc., these are just the games. So with that many games, plus panels and events, the odds of me getting to all of these games, there is now chance. So I wanted to talk about a couple of different things with the game count.

The first is super simple, set-up a budget, there are so many things that it would be possible to spend way too much. I have a budget of what I’m going to be able to spend on games. And I’ve been setting aside money basically the whole year for this, once I knew I was going, and I am sure there will be some things that seem kind of cool that I won’t get because I have a budget. Also, with budgeting go around and look, don’t just buy immediately, or use the Board Game Geek preview to help sort through what you might want to rush and get.

The other thing, and more important, that I just mentioned, is use the Board Game Geek list. The person I’m going with hadn’t looked at the list yet, and was surprised when he realized that there were 396 (at that time) new games to buy and demo. We’re actually going to hangout sometime so that we can go through the list and figure out what we really want to see and possibly demo.

That’s the big thing, demoing games is going to take time. While you can probably walk around and see almost everything or at least glance at almost everything, if you don’t look at the list, you’re going to have no idea what to demo or what you might want to track down early for demoing. You want to know where a game is going to be, and if you are willing to wait for a demo.

So, how do you use the list?

First off, if you are interested in board games, I would highly recommend using Board Game Geek and set-up an account. It’s a great way to keep track of your collection. It also helps you find games based off of what you like and I will probably do an article on Board Game Geek later.

The reason for setting this up is that once you have it, you can use the “must have” and “interested” or “not interested” options. I tend to think the “undecided” option is a bit weird, that just means that I wouldn’t have marked anything, and I actually don’t use the “not interested” option either, but it could be useful. This allows you to easily see what you’re interested in, and in fact, you can download a list of everything that you’ve selected and how interested you are in them. But it doesn’t just give you that, it also tells you the publisher, the location, the price. That’s great, because, again, going back to budgeting because you can see how much you’re interested in, though not every “for sale” game has an MSRP.

For example, how I’ve used it, I have 60 titles on my list (I think it’s missing a couple of them). Of those, I have 4 must haves. Of those 4, 3 of them are for sale. I can see what their booths are, and of all of those, I know that one of them costs $25. That means that I have 56 games that I’m interested in. Of those, 14 are demo games, and 42 are games that will likely be for sale there. I can see that 6 of them are at one booth (all expansions to Welcome To…). I can also use that, for when I’m there, to sort out what booths are near each other to make a plan of attack for visiting things on different days or in a certain order.

Now, that’s just what I’m doing to make things easier for myself when I’m there. I do plan on just wandering around the dealer floor and seeing what is there. I would definitely miss stuff if I only used the list. However, the list is helpful and I feel like the budget is a must.

What games are you looking forward to at GenCon? Have you looked through or used the GeekPreview before from Board Game Geek?

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