Catch Up on the Top 100 Games

100 through 91
90 through 81

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2025 Edition – 80 through 71

80. Rock Hard 1977

Published By: Devir
Designer: Jackie Fox

Buy Rock Hard 1977

Do you want to be a rockstar? Rock Hard 1977 is all about being a rockstar and the designer is legitimately a rockstar. In this game you place out workers in day, evening and night activities that help take you from garage band playing little local shows to playing sold out stadiums. The player who can make the journey the best is going to be the winner of the game. And each part of the day is going to let you do different things, in the day you might record a record, evening perform, and night go hang out at a club.

79. The Night Cage

Published By: Smirk & Dagger Games
Designer: Christopher Ryan Chan, Chris McMahon and Rosswell Saunders

Buy The Night Cage

I like a good spooky game. The Night Cage gives you that spooky feeling by creating tension as you race to get out of an every changing labyrinth. Can everyone get their keys and get to a portal before the candles run out and the players are lost in there forever. That counting down of tiles as they leave the board and new ones are placed out as a timer is great in this game. And it is spooky, which is hard for a board game to do.

78. Cthulhu: Death May Die

Published By: CMON Global Limited
Designers: Rob Daviau and Eric M Lang

Sold Out on online retailers, look for sellers on the Board Game Geek Marketplace or eBay.

Maybe your spooky is better with lots of giant monsters and a scenario where you know an elder being is going to come eventually. Cthulhu: Death May Die, called CDMD or Death May Die in the hobby, is a big game with minis and madness. You want to push your insanity up a little bit so that you unlock new powers and abilities to defeat the ancient horrors. But too much insanity and you knocked out of the game. This is a good beer and pretzels sort of game.

77. Captain Flip

Published By: PlayPunk
Designers: Remo Conzadori and Paolo Mori

Buy Captain Flip

Moving on from the spooky games, we have Captain Flip. This is tile laying game about filling up your pirate ship with crew. Every crew member is going to give you points, positive or negative, in some way. When you draw a tile you see one side. Then you decide do you want to place that onto your ship, or do you want flip it? If you flip it you are stuck on that side and have to put that down. It’s this balance of optimizing your score, playing out pirates, and pushing your luck as you flip the tiles.

76. Cartographers

Published By: Thunderworks Games
Designer: Jordy Adan

Buy Cartographers

Cartographers used to be my Top Roll and Write style game. Now it is dropping a bit, some because there are so many roll and write games that I like, and some because I haven’t played it recently. But I really enjoy this one and really enjoy making a map. I like the interactivity of the monsters who I play it on my opponents board in the worst spot possible for them. And I like how you score four different things, but depending on the season you score two and the season determines the two. It’s one I need to play again.

75. Letter Jam

Published By: Czech Games Edition (CGE)
Designer: Ondra Skoupy

Buy Letter Jam

Do you like word games but it seems like some people are just better at them? Letter Jam is a cooperative word game, so everyone needs to work together. In this game you don’t know the letters or the word you have. But everyone else can see one letter of yours at a time, and you can see one letter of everyone else’s. You all need to give good clues of words so people can figure out what their letter is. Say you have an “O” if I give a clue that shows you that the word uses the letters “FR[your letter]M” you can figure out what it is. But everyone needs to figure theirs out and figure out their word.

74. Can’t Stop

Published By: Eagle Gryphon Games
Designer: Sid Sackson

Buy Can’t Stop

Can’t Stop is another push your luck game to make the list. I like a good push your luck game like this one, Push, or Flip 7. They are easy to teach and play. In this one you want to get to the top of 3 columns. If you do that, you win. How do you do that, well, you roll dice and then split them into two pairs of two. The twist is that you only move up on three numbers per turn. So I might roll and get a combo to make ten and eleven, if I am not going up on ten or eleven, I lose my progress. But if I play it too safe, I lose.

73. Under Falling Skies

Published By: Czech Games Edition (CGE)
Designer: Tomas Uhlif

Buy Under Falling Skies

Do you like the movie Independence Day? Did you grow up playing the game Space Invaders. Under Falling Skies is a game that gives me the feel of both of those things. You need to research how to stop the mother ship while keeping too many of the smaller ships from making it to earth. And it uses an interesting die system. The higher the die, the more powerful the actions you can take are. But also the faster those little ships descend towards earth. I love that balancing act puzzle of the game.

72. So Clover!

Published By: Repos Production
Designer: Francois Romain

Buy So Clover!

So Clover! is a cooperative party game. It is one that is easy to teach in person and hard to explain. Basically you create a grid of cards that have words on every side. So you need to connect the two words per side with another word. Then everyone else is trying to get those words back onto the board in the right order, but the twist is there is an extra word thrown in. Plus often times the words are not easy to match. The better you do that as a group the more points you get.

71. Rallyman: DIRT

Published By: Holy Grail Games
Designer: Jean-Cristophe Bouvier

Buy Rallyman: DIRT

Finally rounding out this 10 is Rallyman: DIRT. This is another push your luck game and a racing game. In it you plot you course down the track and then get a choice. You either roll one die at a time which allows you to stop before you spin out and bad things happen. Or you roll all the dice at once. Why roll all at once? Well, when you roll all at once, you take negative one second to your time per die rolled. So you can reduce your overall time if you don’t spin out.

Join Next Week

Just as a reminder, I am streaming my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2025 Edition every Wednesday night at 9 PM Central Time. The next few videos have their links up, so you can click notify on them to know when I go live. Or you can subscribe to the channel and click notify to know whenever a new video comes out. Currently I am playing through Legendary Kingdoms on Monday and then my wife and I are playing Baldur’s Gate 3 on Fridays. So join us for those videos.

And thank you for checking out the video and articles. Let me know what your favorite game from this chunk of 10 is and which one you would love to get played.

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Is Crowdfunding an Investment or a Pre-Order?

This is a challenging question yet a simple question to answer. Crowdfunding was created to be an investment system. And it is still that. However, some companies treat it as a pre-order system and that muddies the waters. But at it’s heart it is an investing system into a small company or individual to help them support a dream.

Why Does This Matter?

Well, if it is purely a pre-order system, then a company 100% owes you a board game at the end of the process. And the board game should be basically ready to go. A pre-order should be for a fully designed game that just needs to get over the finish line.

And investment, it is going to come with more risk attached to it. The game is not going to be completed, it is going to be developed enough to show it off, but it won’t be ready to hit print once the funds are transferred over. And for your investment that expectation is the game will be produced and you will get a copy. But that is the expectation, not the demand.

But the Waters are Muddied

The tricky thing is that some companies use it as a pre-order system and that changes how it’s handled or perceived for the other companies where it truly is an investment into their success. Now, because Queen Games is shipping out big boxes quickly, or Claustrophobia was ready to ship and in a warehouse before the campaign was done, people see it as a pre-order system. It’s been that way for other companies, why not for company X? Well that company actually needed it for an investment.

So What Should Expectations for Crowdfunding Be?

I do think that on both sides there needs to be a resetting of expectations. Why, because we’ve seen companies go under. The standard for companies needs to change as we look to crowdfunding in the future. And the expectation of investors (backers) needs to change as well.

Backers

Let’s start with the backers, because a lot of the issue and responses I seen do lie with the backers. Firstly, for the majority of companies, even more of the larger ones than you think, they couldn’t produce the content they do and the amount of content that they do without being invested in with crowdfunding. Companies are not getting rich from board games, in fact, the margins are razor thin on crowdfunding because crowdfunding platforms take some of the money.

So let’s get back to the mindset of what this is. It is an investment. And if you are not able to invest the money to back a game and not get that game. Then don’t invest the money in the first play. We’re seeing some of that right now with smaller campaigns often not funding because people are choosing what to invest in. But back before inflation started increasing rapidly, people are still getting mad that an investment they made then isn’t fulfilling now. If you can’t afford to lose that money, you can’t afford to back it.

Or if it’s about not getting the game. If you are worried about that loss, buy it at the 150-300% mark-up later on eBay. If money isn’t the concern, it’s the concern that the game might never deliver, then change your strategy and buy it second hand on eBay, Board Game Geek Market, or elsewhere.

Companies

Companies, I don’t think that this expectation really shifted that much. But it is the most important thing you can do right now. And I will say, that the amount you do this and what you share in this matters a lot. Keep your backers informed all the time. Even if there is nothing to update, you need to update a minimum of once a month post campaign. For me once a month is ideal, but twice a month might satisfy some people more so.

And you might think that most people don’t read those updates. Let me let you in a little secret, you are right. Most people don’t read the updates. But you still need to do them. Firstly, it reassures people that you are still there and care. Even if they don’t read it, the fact you’re updating shows that you are still active with the project.

But the other thing is when things do go sideways, inflation happens, COVID happens, the shipping crisis happens, production costs go up, materials go up, last mile shipping goes up, you can talk about it. You let people know what is happening early and often, people will be more forgiving. And if, heaven forbid, your company goes under or a game won’t deliver like planned, or you need to ask for additional funds to get pushed over the last little bit, now you have already warned people.

Yes, people will still be mad. But that is one them, that goes back to what I wrote above. If you don’t communicate, though, that’s on you. If you pretend that everything is fine, or go radio silent when things aren’t, that is on you. I am your investor, I want to know how my investment is doing.

The Sad Truth of Crowdfunding

Let’s wrap up with the downer bit, right now we are going to see more of these small companies going out of business. Holy Grail Games and Grimlord Games are two that I can think of with outstanding projects. Also the company that made Alba a puzzle book story as well. And I would not be shocked if Mythic Games follows that direction shortly.

I am privy to three of those. Alba was cheap, I don’t mind losing that money, though sucks because it is a book and should be a more stable project. But when that company went under the one who bought their assets talked about how the numbers were low. Grimlord Games, they didn’t communicate at all, don’t be like them.

Finally, Mythic Games, this is one that they haven’t gone under yet. I’m just waiting on HEL: The Last Saga, if that will ever come. I expect to be asked to double my pledge. But let me be clear Mythic Games. Start communicating right now. Communicate heavily about finances and about cost increases, decreases, and changes you might need to make. This is on your to try and save your reputation. Because with Darkest Dungeon and 6Siege, you haven’t done that.

And like I said, I expect to see more, mainly smaller companies this happen to. When it does, remember, these people aren’t stealing your money to get rich. They work with thin margins hoping to bring you something they are passionate about. Probably without business knowledge they should have. So try and give grace, be frustrated, sure, but don’t be mean. That doesn’t help our hobby grow and at the end of the day, that is what we want.

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