Catch up on my Top 100 Games (of all Time) 2023 Edition:

100 through 91

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2023 Edition – 90 through 81

90. Galaxy Trucker

Galaxy Trucker is a fun fast paced game that you can’t take too seriously. It’s about building what you hope is a good space truck and getting across the galaxy, picking up goods, and well, hoping that your ship isn’t blown up by asteroids or pirates. Which, you can do, you can build a great ship. But the ship building is done in real time. So it is easy to mess up your ship and have half of it blown away because of a misplaced asteroid.

Normally I don’t love real time games. But Galaxy Trucker is not against a clock. Instead, you build as fast as you want, and the fastest player determines the speed. And, to add to it, that is only part of the game, the rest is seeing if your ship gets blown up. So the game gives you a breather between the real time elements which I think works well.

Buy Galaxy Trucker

89. Final Girl

Now we’re onto a horror film of a game with Final Girl. Final Girl is a solo only game about what it says it is, the final girl of a horror film. If you’re not familiar with this trope, most horror films end up with a final girl standing at the end of the film after all their friends have been killed. The question is, are they able to kill the bad guy (or deal with them) or will the get killed?

That is what Final Girl is all about. Can you manage your cards, rescue the characters that are not the final girl, and then deal with the bad guy at the end. Van Ryder Games has done a great job of giving you all sorts of films. There is a Hans the killer at a summer camp or you might be at a circus or dealing with a ghost. And they are adding even more with a third crowdfunding campaign going on now.

Buy Final Girl

88. Doodle Dash

Now we’re onto a party game, and I don’t have too many party games on the list. But Doodle Dash is one that I really like because it’s the type of party game I want for drawing. One where it doesn’t matter how good you are because, as the name suggests, sometimes speed matters more.

In Doodle Dash one person is the guesser. They want to guess the image as fast as possible or with as few clues as possible. Everyone else is drawers. And they draw as fast as they can. The first person grabs the first person marker, the second fastest starts rolling a die, and when that die hits stop, everyone else stops. And then in order, fastest, second, and everyone else, the pictures are revealed. More points the earlier on the guesser guesses it, but that is also the worst picture, possibly. So it’s a blast and one good for a lot of laughs.

Pre-order Doodle Dash

87. Calico

Going from something silly, we now have Calico, a game with a calico quilt on the front, not a calico cat, which is an abstract game about making quilts. Your goal is to get the most points by completing goals, matching colors to get buttons, and matching patterns (since cats are color blind or a number are) to get cats on your quilt.

This game looks all peaceful, but it’s a pretty intense game. You need to strategize well to complete the objectives. Because the objectives give you more points if you get both the color and the pattern to meet those objectives. It might be surround a spot with three of one type and three of another. But if you get three of one color and three of another, plus three of one pattern and three of another, that is how you get the most points. A tense game, but a fun one, and it’s pretty.

Buy Calico

86. The Night Cage

Another tense game, The Night Cage is a perfect Halloween game. You, and everyone else, wake up in a labyrinth with just a candle next to you. You know enough that you need to find keys and then all find a portal to get out. But the labyrinth is ever changing and there are monsters and your candle runs lower.

This is a game where as you move around the labyrinth you reveal new tiles, they might have keys, portals, just pathways, or monsters. And As you leave other locations your candle only lights up a space around you, so you lose the tiles before. You need to work together to get everyone a candle. But if you’re too close, the monsters might pop up and blow out someone’s candle, then they are moving blindly around until another player can relight their candle.

All of this is being done while the stack of tiles is getting shorter. There is no way to get tiles back, they represent your candles. And your candles are getting shorter and shorter. So as you watch that happen will you be able to escape The Night Cage?

Pre-order The Night Cage

85. Destinies

Another game that has some spooky elements is Destinies. A game where all the players are working against each other, but not getting in each others ways too much, to complete their destiny. Each of you know what you need to find, so can you figure out on the map where that might be.

Lucky Duck makes Destinies, and they have a great app for it which leads you through the story. And the story has some spooky elements and offers you conversations and challenges to do. And doing the challenges are simple. It’s rolling dice to see how many successes you get. But you can improve your stats as you succeed on checks and get XP to spend. So you can increase your odds. Plus you have extra dice you can roll, but they only come back so often. When do you want to push for that success or do you need to hold them back. An easy but fun story game.

Buy Destinies

84. Ascension: Deck Building Game

My favorite pure deck building game is Ascension. I know for most people it’ll be Dominion. But I like a few things better about Ascension. I like that you have a changing market, that means that I need to adapt to how I play. I can’t pick out a perfect strategy from the start.

Plus, I think that the combos in Ascension are better. You play with four different factions and all of them synergize a lot amongst themselves. So can you build up an engine that allows you to play a ton of cards and have epic turns. I think that is what stands out so much to me, when I get an epic turn, I can buy a lot and fight a lot of monsters which is why I like Ascension better.

Buy Ascension Deck Building Game

83. Canvas

Now we’re onto a game about making art. In Canvas you take art cards, that are clear, and layer them to create masterpieces. Really Canvas is a game about getting the right symbols at the bottom to score a lot of points, or get lot of ribbons that score you points. However, it does this with great artwork and fun pieces of art that you create. I almost like to see what cool art I can make more than get the points. But when you make a piece of art almost no matter what it is cool. Canvas is a fast and fun game for everyone.

Buy Canvas

82. Ecosystem

Next up we have Ecosystem the drafting game on the list. In Ecosystem you are building out, well, an ecosystem with animals and terrain types. Each of them scores differently. Wolves like to be in a pack, so the person with the most gets the most points on them. Rabbits teleport other tiles around, just like real life. But bear want honey and trout, trout want to be by the river.

And the game is fast. You draft a card and you add it to a 4 by 5 grid. That is all the area you have, so how can you pick cards that will optimize your scoring. But it’s also so simple that it’s not a stressful game. Once you have an idea of the scoring, and each player has a cheat sheet, the game goes quickly.

Buy Ecosystem

81. Star Wars: Unlimited

Finally, Star Wars: Unlimited, this game isn’t even out yet. But I got to play it twice at Gen Con and I really like this game. The Star Wars theme certainly helps. But for me, when I compare it and Lorcana to Magic the Gathering, this is the one that gave me more of a feel of being full of combos as you build out what you’re doing. The base decks only had some, but as they’ve revealed more cards, I see more possibilities.

However, like Lorcana it is built to be a whole lot faster. You play out a card or attack with a card on your turn. There aren’t really other options. It’s not do everything on a turn, and your opponent can’t really respond at all. So the game is straight forward and keeps moving fast. It’s something that I don’t always love about Magic, it takes a long time on the turn. Star Wars: Unlimited it’s a whole lot faster.

Coming in Q1 2024

Upcoming Streams

So, 8 PM Central next Wednesday the plan is continue with the Top 100 Games (of all time) 2023 Edition. It’ll be games 80 through 71. I don’t even remember what is on the list, so I can’t really tease it. Join me and see what makes it on the list, will there be new games? Will there be roll and write games? Is the first campaign game going to be part of that section?

And then the other time I stream during the week is Monday at 9 PM Central. Join me then as I play a solo game. I’m not sure what game I’ll be playing. Maybe more Trailblazers as I seek to break 50 points. Or it might be Number Drop. A roll and write game that I can play solo that I haven’t gotten to yet.

But the best way, if you want to know when I go live or a new video goes up (it’s basically always live), please consider subscribing. You can do that here. And click that notification bell on the channel and you’ll always know when I go live.

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How To Play Tiny Turbo Cars

Tiny Turbo Cars is a bit of a tougher game to explain because you are doing a lot and need to pay attention to a lot in the game. The goal of the game is to win the race. That doesn’t mean, completely, be the first person over the line, it means on the round where the first person goes over the line, go the furthest over it. But how are you driving in this game?

The theme is that you are driving little RC cars around the house. You jump over some obstacles, crash into others, and shoot rockets at your opponents. All of this is done through a real time sliding puzzle where you create two rows of actions that you’ll do. These actions are mainly move forward, though you can back up and move left and right.

The first person who completes their puzzle gets to go first. And the last person loses a battery. Batteries are your life that you use up as you crash into things or are the slowest on completing your puzzle. You navigate what you programmed and see what happens. If you run out of batteries you skip steps to charge them back up and continue on in the race.

What Doesn’t Work

The first thing that stood out to me is that I’ve played with two players and I’ve played with more, not up to six yet, but up to five. And the game is much better at higher player counts. It does make the game take longer, but the game benefits from the havoc that more people offer on the track. So this is not a two player game. I think three is okay, but four to six is really where the game is best at. And to get up to six, you need an expansion.

Tiny Turbo Cars has a lot to teach as well. This is a weird knock on the game because it has too much to teach without player aids. If you know the game, you know what spots do. But learning the game the first time, what’s the rule for carpet, fire, what can you jump or what will you just run into? You need to know all of those things. And that’s a lot to hold in your head as well as the sliding puzzle. I wish that it had player aids and I hope someone has made them on BGG.

What Works

Toy Factor

The toy factor for the game is great. This one is a bit of a positive and a negative. The RC controllers that hold the sliding puzzle look amazing. It is going to make it stand out on the table. Most of the time they slide just fine. And I don’t know that there is a way to make a sliding puzzle like that work all the time. But sometimes it sticks, generally if you don’t have it quite flat enough. So there is that element of the game which is mostly awesome but it’s such a unique piece.

The game does feel crazy like just trying to get an RC car to go as fast as you can through a house littered with stuff. Probably not fire in your actual house, but in this game, it’s an option. The real time element feels like that and the chaotic layout and planning attempts do as well.

Real Time

The real time element also works for this game. Yes, your controller might stick for a second, but it works well. And the real time element itself is not a timed element. I generally realize that is where I dislike real time. When you tell me that I have one minute or 45 seconds and it’s basically all the game to get that one element right. This is more like Galaxy Trucker in that yes, you go for speed, but it’s not only speed because it won’t end until someone pushes for it.

Game Speed

Finally, this is not too long a game. Even at five players, which is definitely longer, it’s not too long a game. Once one player has locked in their board other players follow quickly to make sure you aren’t the last person. And then the actual going through the programmed actions is fast because that is following commands versus making decisions.

Who Is It For

I do think that there is an element where you need to be fine with things like sliding puzzles and real time in this game. It is a key part of the game and if you can’t half look at your sliding puzzle and half at the board to plan what you’re doing, you’ll lag behind. But not too far behind because everyone is crashing.

I also think that this is for people who want a chaotic game with a higher player count. To me this is a 4-6 player game. Yes, the board is fuller and you might spend a turn crashing into someone else, but that’s part of the fun of the game. But you need to know that this won’t be a strategic two player racing game.

Final Thoughts on Tiny Turbo Cars

This one I think is a fun game. But I have some reservations about it. Mainly, it plays best with that higher player count so how often will it get played. And with the rules or interactions a bit more complex, does that mean it will get played that often. There is variability in the game and that can be used to fine tune that complexity level. So that isn’t an issue, it is just player count concerns.

I also need to compare this to other racing games. Ready Set Bet, Downforce, Long Shot: The Dice Game, PitchCar all offer different things. And I want to play and pick up other racing games. Mainly I want to play Formula D and Rallman GT, and pick-up Thunder Road Vendetta. Because I wonder if I have room for Tiny Turbo Cars. Does the chaotic and randomness that can come into the game make it one that sticks. Or do I want that bit more control, unless I’m playing PitchCar which is dexterity?

It’s a tough question that I’m not completely sure of the answer on right now. But I think that the randomness, while fun in a fast game, might be a bit more than I really want. Tiny Turbo Cars might be one of those games that I’d always play, but not sure I need to own it. Which is disappointing because I backed it on KS with expansions. But also not, because I have played it and had fun with it and would play it again. It isn’t leaving my collection yet, but I wonder.

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

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Pros

• Theme/Racing Game
• Price Point
• Toy Factor
• Real Time
• Light Game
• Game Length

Cons

• Real Time
• Light Game

The Page

Horrible Guild is a game company that has been on Kickstarter before and a company that has put out a number of games. I have two of the Railroad Ink games that have been put out by them and distributed in the US by CMON. So when it comes to laying out a page for Kickstarter, they know what they are doing.

One of the strong points of the page is that it hits the theme well. I have other racing games, and this could just kind of fall into the category of another racing game, but they make it feel like a toy. The controller piece itself is extremely toy like. And then the section highlighting game play, that is all done as if it’s on an Etch-A-Sketch, which really highlights that lighter racing theme that they are going for with the game. This is meant to feel almost kid like with the game because of the toy factor of it.

The Game

I’ve known about Tiny Turbo Cars for a little bit when I found out about it over on the GloryHoundd discord. Just the images of the game immediately drew me into it, especially the little controllers. I wanted to know how those worked.

In the game you shift the tiles on your controller as fast as possible to create your perfect path and plan. Of course, things might go wrong if you are too fast. Or you might end up getting stuck if you are too slow. You only activate the middle two rows as well, so that gives you a very specific area to manipulate.

The first person to complete gets to move their car first. You try and avoid obstacles that will do damage to your car or terrain that will slow your car down as you follow the instructions that you have programmed. Everyone else is going to deal with you on the track. Then you repeat the process in what seems like is a fast and hectic game.

I don’t always love real time games. Now, they can be fun, I like Fuse well enough though it gets stressful and Magic Maze is clever, but works okay. This one, I think I will like it more. Mainly because it’s not the whole game. I like Galaxy Trucker quite well which has moments of going as fast as possible to build your ship and this game feels more like that than it does like Magic Maze. The downside is that someone who is faster at the puzzle or real time aspect probably will always have the advantage.

Back or Brick

As always, let’s ask the question, is this game a Back or a Brick? It is a Back for me. I definitely get that the real time aspect will not be for some people. Any game with real time is going to be somewhat group dependent but this one looks like so much fun. I like the toy factor for it, I like how fast the game plays, and I love the theme. Plus, it’s a very good price, even with shipping, I feel like I’ll be getting the game at MSRP (manufacturer suggested retail price) and I help make the game come to life. If real time games interest you, I believe that this would be a fun game to back. It allows you a chance to try real time but where it is a major part of the game, but not the whole game.

Is Tiny Turbo Cars by Horrible Guild a Back or a Brick for you?

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Captain Sonar as an interesting game because it’s an eight player game, ideally, though you could play with six, I think any amount less than that would be too little. Each team has four different roles to play in the game. You have the Captain who is giving orders, such as what direction to move in or where to fire torpedoes. Then you have the First Mate who is getting systems ready that can allow you to fire those torpedoes, drop mines, or even run silently so you can make a few moves without announcing them. The Engineer is keeping the systems in working order, but as you move, systems will break down and they have to work them in the right order to keep from damaging your sub and communicating with the Captain about that. Finally, you have the Radio Operator who is listening in on what the other team is saying and is trying to plot their directions to figure out where they are on the map so that their team can hunt them down and shoot them. You can combine the First Mate and Engineer, but I personally think it works best at eight, so it’s a fun, more involved game you can pull out for a big party.

Now, all of that happening at one time can be a bit much for some people, so Captain Sonar does give you the option to be turn based. The downside with the turn based is that it takes out a lot of the stress. That might be what those people need, but having played it both ways several times, in the turn based, you could really plan your move and which ever team figured out where the other was first really had an advantage in winning the game because you weren’t trying to figure it out in a rush. But if you need to play it turn based for a teaching game, I think it works well that way.

Captain Sonar also comes with several maps that you can play on. These maps have different number of islands, and if you aren’t just playing it simply as an attacking game, there are specific rules for different maps, however, it’s just fun to try and blow each other up and keep it simple that way. The maps all have islands on them, and that’s what really starts to give you clues as to where someone might be because when they have to navigate around, they can’t go through and island, and they can’t double back on their route, so you start to get a bigger picture, assuming your Radio Operator didn’t mishear a direction or misdraw it down on their overlay, which is always possible in the rush.

Another thing that I do really enjoy with Captain Sonar is the speed of the game. On Board Game Geek, it says 45-60 minutes, but if you’re just skirmishing, I think that we got two games done in that time frame, and also went over the rules for the players. The game goes fast, though, some of that might just be the pressure of real time. Also, when I’ve played it, we generally haven’t wanted to stop at one game, which makes me think that those times are a bit long, but if you are playing a slow turn by turn game, it might be possible that it’s that long. For that reason, I think that it does work well for a big board game night where you don’t just want to play party games and you don’t want to split into two groups. There are rules to teach with this game, so if your group is a very casual group in terms of the people not being all that familiar with complex board games, Captain Sonar might be the ideal game. But I’ve played with more casual board gamers, and as long as you have a mix of people, it’s been a success, though probably stressed some people out.

I really do enjoy this game. I think that it feels right with the tension in the game, and I enjoy games that make me feel the tension a little bit. I don’t want a game that completely stresses me out, but Captain Sonar certainly doesn’t do that. I do think that Captain Sonar, while being a really good game, isn’t going to work for a lot of groups, if you have too many people who are getting stressed out or if you have too many casual gamers in the group, you might have more issues. And I really do think that the turn based version of Captain Sonar is worse. My rating for Captain Sonar is an 8, but if I were to rate it turn based, I’d put it as a 5.

Overall Grade: B
Gamer Grade: B-
Casual Grade: C+

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