Catch Up on the Top 100 Games

100 through 91

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2025 Edition – 90 through 81

90. Wandering Towers

Published By: Capstone Games
Designers: Michael Kiesling and Wolfgang Kramer

Buy Wandering Towers.

This is just a fun simple game of trying to remember where you wizards are hiding and get them to the main tower. I like how easy it is to make it work. You play out two cards and if you have potion bottles filled you can cast a spell. The spells are simple, the cards are simple, you choose to either move a wizard or a tower as far as it says on the card. But it’s still a lot of fun because of that memory aspect and burying your opponents wizards under a stack of towers.

89. Grove: 9 care solitaire game

Published By: Side Room Games
Designer: Mark Tuck

Buy Grove.

This one is two games in one really with Grove and Orchard. I put them together because the games are very similar, though I do slightly prefer Grove. In this game you stack cards to get matching tree types to overlap. As they overlap you tick up dice that are going to give you more points. The more points you have at the end of nine cards, the better you do at the game. Grove adds in scoring cards, and that addition is what pushes it over because it’s bonus scoring, but also how many points you need to beat to win the game.

88. Via Magica

Published By: Hurrican
Designer: Paolo Mori

Buy Via Magica.

It is weird to think that drawing chips out of bag and everyone getting a cube to add to their spells, basically bingo, can make a fun game. But it is great in Via Magica. This is a simple game with powers that you get from completing spells. It’s one of two games that actually has abilities or powers from completing spells on this section of the top 10. But it’s all about drawing those chips and hoping to get the right ones. Or then being smart about the spells you take so you can always use the chips.

87. No Thanks!

Published By: AMIGO
Designer: Thorsten Gimmier

Buy No Thanks!

This section of the list has a few push your luck games on it. No Thanks! isn’t a tradition push your luck game, but it does have those elements. In particular, you need to decide when it is worth taking a card. Cards are bad, cards give you points, so you want to say no thanks to them. But you need chips to do that, so No Thanks! is a game about determining when there are enough chips on a card to make it worth taking. Because, not only a chips needed for saying no thanks, they are also negative one point per chip at the end of the round.

86. Strike

Published By: Ravensburger
Designer: Dieter Nuble

Buy Strike.

Imagine a gladiatorial battle in the Coliseum. Actually don’t, this game is all about rolling dice to get pairs and knowing when to stop if you don’t get pairs. You just want to be the last one in the game and that’s it. It’s a simple game and simple system but it is always fun when it hits the table. I think everyone just likes to make a decision to roll a fist full of dice. And if you don’t get any matches, you can always roll more dice that you held back, but beware the one because when a die lands on that side, that die is gone forever.

85. Marvel United

Published By: CMON and Spin Master
Designers: Andrea Chiarvesio and Eric M. Lang

Buy Marvel United Multiverse Core Box.

Do you want to team-up as Marvel heroes to defeat villains in a fast and easy game? Marvel United is great for that. You pick your hero, the villain to go up against, and a few locations and you are ready to play. This game is all about managing what the villain is doing, and they do some fun stuff, and then chaining off of what your superhero teammates did, because you use the last card played, to have a great turn. This is a great game to teach people cooperative game play because you can really cooperate. And there is so much for it.

84. Homebrewers

Published By: Greater Than Games
Designers: Matthew O’Malley and Ben Rosset

Buy Homebrewers.

I like brewing beer, I did it for a long time. I’m not sure it’s hobby I’m going to return to. But I can still get my beer brewing fix with Homebrewers. This is about brewing the best beers you can. You brew a beer and you go up on a track, then you need to deal with the spent grains, sanitize, get more grains and brew again. All of that is like homebrewining.

But then the game offers different ingredients you add to your brewing. And these cards stick around between brews. So if you brew a porter with almonds, you now always will. And those ingredients give you brew something special that might be more money, or it might be that you move up on another beer. At the end, you just want to be the best homebrewer out there.

83. Chronicles of Drunagor: Age of Darkness

Published By: Creative Games Studio
Designer: Eurico Cunha Neta

Buy Chronicles of Drunagor.

I love my big campaign games. And Chronicles of Drunagor is no expection. It is just lower on the list because one of them has to be and it is one that I haven’t played a ton of. There is so much in the game, but I highlight three things in the video. I want to highlight one here, the activation system. You use different colored cubes to activate abilities of those colors. But when you run out of cubes or need a specific ability, you need to pull back those cubes. Then you cover up a spot so you can’t use it. It’s a unique system that I find a lot of fun.

82. PUSH

Published By: Ravensburger
Designers: Prospero Hall and Brian Kirk

Buy Push Here.

I like simple push your luck games, and PUSH is my favorite of them. This one is just push your luck, but as compared to other simple push your luck games, this one offers just a few choices. Mainly you create three stacks of cards on your turn. But those stacks can’t have the same color or number in a single stack, aka you can’t have two blue cards in a stack. Well, that is easy enough, you could stop early. If you do that, then other players could push their luck for more points. And then there is the die, if you have the roll the die, you might lose cards. It’s all about balancing that risk for points.

81. Potion Explosion

Published By: Horrible Guild
Designers: Stefano Castelli, Andrea Crespi, and Lorezno Silva

Buy Potion Explosion Here.

If you want a game that feels like app game, Potion Explosion definitely meets that need. It is one of those games where if like colors are touching they explode, or in this case, you get them. And it’s all about chaining together colors of marbles the best you can, and then you use them to complete spells. And those spells give you points that you need to win the game, but they also give you one time abilities that you can use to chain together more marbles and complete more spells. This game is just tactile and fun.

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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Top 10 Sneaky Party Games

10. Criss Cross

First of only two roll and write games on the list. And both of them are pretty similar in some ways. In Criss Cross you want to fill in a grid so that you score the most points in your rows and columns. This is done by filling in symbols on two dice that are rolled. The more like symbols in a row or a column, the better you do.

The twist on the game comes in that each time the dice are rolled you treat them like a domino. That means that the two faces of the dice always need to be played adjacent to each other. If you aren’t careful you might lock yourself out of being able to completely fill in your board.

The nice thing about this one is that it’s a short and simple. It is the type of game that you are apt to play a few times in a row which is a nice thing for a party game.

9. Knister

Knister is a fair amount like Criss Cross. You want to basically create Yahtzee style groups of five dice in rows and columns and on the diagonal as well. And this is done by rolling two dice and you place the combination of two wherever you want on your board.

This one I put slightly above Criss Cross for a party style game. Mainly because while both of the games are going to work great in a larger group, Knister is a bit easier to teach. Though the game itself is a bit harder to come by. But more people understand the concept of creating runs and pairs with numbers than doing so with symbols or pairs and sets. Plus there is not the domino type rule that people need to internalize.

8. PitchCar

I might have put more dexterity games on the list, but I wanted to keep it away from just being a list of that for alternative party games. PitchCar is the one I picked. It might be easier to get two copies of Ice Cool and play up to eight that way, it’s cheaper for sure. But I think that PitchCar is easier for players to understand.

This is a car racing game where to race you car you just flick it along the track. If you fall off, you go back to where you went. And when there is traffic you might run into traffic and push someone forward or off the track or into a spot where they don’t want to be.

The great thing about PitchCar is how everyone is engaged. In between your turn sure you are chatting, which is great for a party style game. But if someone makes a great shot, or falls off the track for the fourth shot in a row, everyone reacts. Especially for a great shot.

And there is a ton of PitchCar stuff you can get. If you play it a lot as a group, you can add in things like ramps and jumps, narrower tracks, or even a loop. Of course all that adds up and makes it even harder to store.

7. Strike

Strike is an obvious one for the alternative party games list. Mainly because it’s nothing more than rolling dice and taking pairs. Now, this is a game that only plays up to five. But if you want to play with more you can do like I did and buy another set of the game.

But the great thing, like some other push your luck games higher on the list, this game is simple. It is all push your luck. How many dice do you roll to get a pair? Okay, you didn’t get a pair or set of dice with the same number. Do you roll again or pass and not risk losing more dice. It has that egging people on, and those moments where you clear everything out that is exciting, or those moments where you roll a bunch of dice and somehow manage to get no matches.

6. Unlock Games

This does not need to be only the Unlock escape room style games. I think that Exit games work well as well. I will caveat this a little bit though. If you pick an escape room style game, it should be for when you need a party game at a lower player count. This one makes it on the sneaky party games list because it’s easy to get to the table and everyone generally understands the concept of puzzles and escape rooms. It’s just at higher player counts not everyone can see everything as easily.

The other nice thing is that you can scale or tailor multiple things to your group. Some of it is scaling how hard the puzzle is. They generally give you an idea from easy to hard. But you also can pick a theme. If you know you want to do this with a more casual group but they like The Pirates of the Caribbean movies, there is a pirate themed one. Or maybe they love Lord of the Rings, there is an Exit Game with the Lord of the Rings theme. It will all depend on your group.

5. Deception: Murder in Hong Kong

Now, a lot of social deduction games could go on the party games list. I think that most social deduction games are just party games without much actual game behind it. Deception: Murder in Hong Kong is going to give you both deduction and social deduction as you try and figure out who the murder is.

But this game has a great twist on the normal social deduction games. Each player has four murder weapons and four clues in front of them. And the murder is going to, during the eyes closed time of the social deduction part of the game, pick one murder weapon and clue in front of them.

So how do the players know, the players can figure it out, with deduction, kind of, through reports sent up by the forensic scientist. Of course, the report might lead them in the wrong direction because they don’t know who the murderer is, so everyone is now suspicious.

It’s a great game to get people talking and engaging with each other. Even if it is just in the game it’s simple enough to keep things moving and works really well.

4. Fiction

People like the game Wordle online or at least they did. I don’t think it’s that people don’t like it anymore, I think that it’s more a lot of people just let it fall by the wayside. Fiction, though, is a one versus everyone Wordle style game. And that works as a party game because you can rotate who is the one. That one person is the keeper of the word. And everyone is going to be the guessers of the word.

Now, does that sound like too many guessers? Yes, it probably does. But there is a nice little twist on the game. The person who is the keeper of the word can also lie. Yup, you heard that right, they can lie. But when they lie, they need to be consistent about their lie. So as you go you might be able to track down or figure out what the lie is in what they are giving you as a clue. then when you either win or fail, you pass that keeper of the word role along and keep playing.

3. Push

The next two games are both of the same type. They are push your luck games. And both of them work well. I put Push slightly below the other one because the other one is easier to learn. But I think I like Push as a better game.

Why does Push work as a party game? I know there is an upper limit of six players, but I’ve played with more. So it works well for that larger group. And with a good party style game people need to be invested or engaged in egging others on or giving them grief. And with Push, you are invested. You want the player to stop if you might get something ideal for your collection. Or you want them to push because if they bust, well that is great for you.

2. Flip 7

Flip 7 has many of the same attributes as Push. But it is simpler in what you do. There isn’t the three piles, you just decide on your turn to draw a card or bank the points that you have. That is as simple as it gets. But it still has the same fun of egging someone on to draw one more card. And if they manage to pull that off, then do they push their luck again. And the same goes for your turn. It’s simple but it works really well as that bigger group party style game.

1. Ready, Set, Bet!

I debated about putting it on the list at all, but if it’s on the list, it’s #1. This is a betting game where a horse race is happening in real time and players are throwing down bets in real time. It’s a chaotic time and you would think that watching two dice being rolled over and over again would keep people engaged. But every time I play the game people end up standing and are highly invested in those two dice roles.

The reason it almost didn’t make the list is that it can have a bit more going on in it. There are prop bets that players can bet on and you need to know how those work. But if you don’t want to learn how those work, that’s okay, you can do great by betting on the right horse at the right time to win big.

What Are You Playing?

Now all of these games are going to have different results for you. So I think you need to know your group. Some of them are going to be better for different player counts as well. But all of them will move you away from those more traditional party games.

Is there one that stands out that you’d love to play with your group? Let me know that down in the comment section below. Or do you have a game that you go to that aren’t traditional party games when you need a party game?

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How To Play Flip 7

Flip 7 is a push your luck race to 200 points. On your turn, you decide to either push your luck and flip a card, or stay and bank you points. If you stay, you are done for that round, but you total up your points and that gets added to your total.

If you do decide to flip, you flip a new card. But if the number on the card matches a number that you already have, you bust and you are out for that round. The cards are numbered 0 through 12 and the higher numbers are more common, so if you have high cards to closer you are to busting. That means no points banked to add to your total. There are also special cards you can flip. There are three power cards and a few modifier cards.

Power Cards

The power cards give you powers to use on yourself or on other players. The first is the second chance card. This card lets you bust once in a round. If you bust, you discard the second chance and the card you busted on and keep going. The next is the freeze ability. That locks a player out from continuing the round. They bank their points, but they can’t draw more. Finally there is the flip 3. That you can keep or give to a player to flip three cards, if they bust on that they bust.

Modifier Cards

The modifier cards are a bit different from the power cards, but they aren’t number cards. A lot of them just add to your score, though. Most of the modifier cards add in a number of points, so it might be something like plus 8 points. But it’s not an 8 card, so if you draw and eight you won’t bust. There is also a times two, that one is going to double your score for the round.

So when someone hits 200 they can stop and bank it. But it’s a push your luck game. That means that everyone else can continue. And as long as you are close, you have a shot to catch-up with a great push. One last thing worth noting is that you go through the deck fully before you shuffle again. So it is possible to count cards, though, there are a good number of cards.

What Doesn’t Work

Firstly, my what doesn’t work is really about BGA for this game. This game can work on BGA, but not asynchronously. It is a game where you will want to egg people on to get them to draw more. So when you aren’t chatting away and playing it lightly, it’s not as good. But I 100% see where it’s going to be great for a lot of groups in person and it’ll work for my group in person as well.

But that said, I do think it’ll be somewhat group dependent. How risk adverse is your group? Do you like to give each other grief as you play? Flip 7 is a game made for trash talking and teasing. If you know your group can’t handle that or doesn’t do that, Flip 7 won’t work for you.

What Works

Firstly, the game is simple, and that’s key for a game like Flip 7. I want to be able to teach it in a couple of minute and get playing it. And Flip 7 is even easier to teach as a push your luck game than something like Push which is still also easy to teach. Even the power cards are very easy to teach and pretty much make sense without explanation.

The game is also fast to play. I think that goes without saying for a simple push your luck game like this. But it’s important that it can be a filler type of game. It is on the complexity level of the classic games you maybe grew up playing. This is not more than Uno, but it needs to play much faster than Uno and it needs to be more fun. And it is going to hit both of those things.

I like the powers in the game. Now, I think for some people I could see an issue of the take that element of the game. But even for one of them it’s a risk. The freeze obviously locks someone out for a round. But it’s a good way to help control a runaway leader. And with the speed of the game, it’s not for long. And the Flip 3 is a great card because there is risk. You might want it for yourself. But there’s a chance you bust. But if you give it to someone else, they might get x2 or second chance. Now you hurt your cause.

Who Is Flip 7 For?

Flip 7 is a great filler game. And a great holiday game. By that I mean it’s an easy one to play with a bigger group and with non-gamers and to chat through. But for a game group, it’s a nice filler. The game is fast enough. And if you don’t want to play to 200, play to 150. And it’s a good one for that start of the night as it’s not too long, you play a game and then you play another as people finish arriving.

Final Thoughts and Grade on Flip 7

Flip 7 is a lot of fun as a game in person. I gave my reasons why I don’t think it works on BGA. But that is really if you are playing asynchronously. Even real time, though, I want to play it well chatting with people via Zoom, Discord, or something like that. Because this game is best when you talk a little bit of trash and when you tease someone for not pushing their luck.

I will say, though, that is going to be a pretty group dependent game. From reading the how to play section or just reading that it is push your luck, you’ll know if it works. And for me, I think it is going to work well for my group because of the simplicity of it. I know that not always does push your luck work for my group. Incan Gold, not a hit. But the simple push your luck games like Zombie Dice and Push, they work. And Flip 7 is a whole lot more in that vein than in the vein of Incan Gold.

My Grade: B
Gamer Grade: C-
Casual Grade: A
Strategy: 1
Luck: 9

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As normal, I am using Pub Meeple to do my rankings. You can find their ranking engine here.

Ranking New Games 35 through 5

35 – KADO
34 – Gold’n Crash
33 – Castellion
32 – Harmonies
31 – Pokemon Old Maid
30 – Karvi
29 – Panda Spin
28 – Unsurmountable
27 – Stalk Exchange
26 – The Royal Limited
25 – At the Helm
24 – Ancient Realm
23 – SpaceShipped
22 – ROVE: Results-Oriented Versatile Explorer
21 – Ext: The Game – Lord of the Rings: Shadows over Middle-earth
20 – Circus Flohcati
19 – A Nice Cuppa
18 – Toy Battle
17 – PUSH
16 – Knister
15 – Luxor
14 – Crafting the Cosmos
13 – The Architects of Amytis
12 – 6 nimmt!
11 – Imhotep
10 – Pyradmido: Forgotten Treasures
9 – One-Hit Heroes
8 – Fromage
7 – Schadenfreude
6 – Symbiose

Quick Thoughts

There are a lot of great games in this section. Everything from Old Maid up I’ll gladly play. And I mainly will gladly play old maid because my kid likes it. Also, I realized I have played old maid before growing up, but I never ranked it. So maybe shouldn’t be on the list.

There are some games where I wonder if they would move higher in other circumstances. Panda Spin, for example, at 29 feels low. But it’s also just okay on Board Game Arena. Would it be a better game in person. The downside of that one is downtime as you might not be able to partake in tricks. But that downtime would be way less.

Also there is a huge clump of Button Shy solo games there in the middle. I like those games. There weren’t any where I thought they were actively annoying or not that great to play. At the same time, there are some that are better than the others, and because it’s just 18 cards, they all fall into that similar feeling category, especially the ones that I’ve played on Malts and Meeples thus far.

Top 5 New Games of Q1

5. Pirates of Maracaibo

This game is great. I love everything that is going on in it and I also love how fast the game is. I wrote up a review of this one already and you can read that here. Just a quick recap, there is a lot going on, but the turns are simple. And there are a ton of ways to explore scoring. I like being able to spend time figuring out new ways to score. And each way to score really does feel good, but you can’t only focus in on one, most likely, you are going to need to get a few working together to do well in the game.

4. The Guild of Merchant Explorers

The next one is another one that I’ve done a review on already. You can read my review for The Guild of Merchant Explorers here. This one I love because I can play it so quickly at two players on BGA, as long as the other player is active. And it is a different puzzle each time you play as you get unique cards for each era. And the scoring objectives, which can easily swing the game, help give the game that more variety as well.

3. Zenith

Yes, another BGA game with a review, but the final of the BGA games, is Zenith and you can read the review here. Zenith is a very fun two player game. And while there are other two player games on the list, the lowest at 34, Zenith stands above with the variety of ways to win the game. It really feels like such a great back and forth two player battle. And that tug of war element where you are trying to get the planets to your side and figuring out how to do that best is great.

2. Clank! Catacombs

Next we have Clank!: Catacombs. We already know that I love Clank in all it’s forms. I’ve streamed the digital app this year as well, but Clank!: Catacombs is probably the best version of Clank!. And that’s really driven by the fact that the game is going to change every time. You don’t know how the tiles are going to come out, and you could decide to build things so it goes off into the distance. That is going to make it more replayable without any expansions, and I think it also makes it easier to have expansions.

1. Marvel Dice Throne: X-Men

The final one is another game that I’ve kind of already played, much like Clank!, but it’s Marvel Dice Throne: X-Men. And this one is great for me because it has two of my favorite players. Beyond that, it is still just more Dice Throne, and I love Dice Throne. I need to pull out my other Marvel characters and have everyone battle together and see who comes out on top. That’s another great thing about Dice Throne, it’s really built for a tournament or competitive play. I wonder if there are any shops around me who are doing the Dice Throne league, that could be something fun to join.

Final Thoughts

That’s all of the new to me games that I’ve played this year. And I know that I’m going to play even more. I am trying to learn new games each week on board game arena and I’ve done a very good job of that thus far. It might become harder later, but I think that I can do it.

Based off of these games, are there any that I should be looking out for in 2025 to tryout? Obviously these aren’t all the games that I’ve played, so I might have played your suggestion already. But let me know those down in the comments. And let me know which games you’ve tried for the first time this year?

Looking around me, I have games like Knarr, Finca, Thunder Rolls, Bomb Busters and a whole lot more that I’ve had come in this year. And there are kickstarters as well, like Dragon Eclipse, Lore, Star Realms, Andromeda’s Edge, and The Dark Quarter that I need to get played as well. So I’m at no shortage of games to get played. And I hope to get a lot of those games played this year, plus the oh so many more that have been on my shelf of opportunity for even longer.

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How To Play Push

Push is a simple game where you get two actions that you can do. The first is the most common that you’re going to do in the game. It’s going to be flipping cards, and pushing your luck, where the name comes from, to build out three columns of cards. It might be less, but generally you’ll build three. When you stop you pick one of the columns to take and add to your points. The other thing you can do is bank points you have, because there are ways that you can lose points.

Let’s talk about what happens to the other two columns. Depending on if a reverse was flipped or not, the next two players, either direction get to pick a column. So why not put everything in one column? Because there are rules for how you have to place cards. You can’t have the same number, or color in a column. If you ever do that, you bust, and you get no cards. Plus there is an additional penalty.

What’s this penalty, well, you get it for busting, or if a die card is in a column that you take. You need to roll the die. The die has the five colors on it and a blank side that is safe. But if you roll a color, you get rid of all the cards of that color you have. But you don’t get rid of cards of that color if they have been banked.

When the deck has been gone through, the player with the most points in their banked, and collected areas is the winner of the game.

What Doesn’t Work

This is a lucky game. You draw cards blindly and just have to guess when you want to stop. You might roll the die a turn before you would have banked a lot of points and you lose them all. So for some people that is going to be something that doesn’t work at all. Why, because it’s going to be that random nature that some people don’t like in the game.

What Works

But let’s talk about that luck in terms of what works as well. Because it is lucky and a die roll and go against you at the wrong time, or you might just draw three red cards in a row and bust drawing a fourth, but it’s fast. And everyone is down for the same lucky time that you are. You know if you’re a push your luck fan, this game is going to work for you.

I also like how you can bust. Because, I tend to notice most combinations of what might bust you. But there are times because you might be safe from a red, you only have two, and a four, you only have two. But the right combination comes out, a red four, and now you can’t place that into the columns and you bust. And I don’t notice those all the time.

Plus, with this being a fast game it plays like a party game. And when it’s going well, everyone at the table is encouraging others to push their luck one more time. Yes, you might bust, but imagine how good the points will be if you go further. And that is how a good push your luck game should work. And sometimes, as the person who is creating the columns, you stop because you know the last person is just going to get that die to mess with them.

Who Is Push For

Push is for people who want to play a light, silly game that is almost a party game in a lot of ways. If you are risk adverse, this game won’t work for you. If you don’t like randomness, this game won’t work for you. But is the premise sounds silly and fun, then you’ll probably like it quite well.

My Final Thoughts on Push

I do like Push quite well. I like the randomness of the game. And I think that is really a party game. I find it to be more of a party game than a game like Codenames is, the difference is, you can’t play with as many people, though still a good number. Push is just loud fun, something that I don’t really say about Codenames and some other party adjacent games that are really big group games.

And I like the mechanisms in the game. They are just simple enough to be a fast teach, but it’s a fun decision space to see when you want to keep pushing your luck. You get a four in all the columns you’ll probably stop. But can you spot those sneaky situations that can bust you. Or, can you flip a few more cards and get that one column super juicy for you to take.

Have you played Push, and do you like it?

My Grade: B+
Gamer Grade: C-
Casual Grade: A

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