Dexterity Games Ranking

7. Jenga

Jenga is probably the dexterity game that everyone knows. Though, the next one on the list people won’t know the game but will know the concept of it. Jenga is a fun game, it is one that I consider to be a brewery game for me at this point. By that, I mean I love it when a brewery has a giant version set-up outside. It’s a fun thing to stand around and play with. I don’t need a copy in my collection, but it’ll be a good time playing it.

6. Slide Quest

Slide Quest, I like it better as a game than Jenga, but I’d probably be less likely to always want to play it. This is basically one of those marble puzzles where the ball rolls and you are tilting the board to try and get it to the end. Slide Quest is that as a board game with different maps that you can use as you progress. The concept is great for the game, the execution is solid, but the game play is just okay. But I’d pick it up if I found it very cheap.

5. Tokyo Highway

Tokyo Highway has been in my Top 100, and I think it’ll stay for this coming year, but it’s dropping a little bit. This is a stacking dexterity game, and one that is just gorgeous on the table. I like too how simple the game is, you either go up or down a level. And you want to cross under or over roads. Overall, it is a nice simple game with just enough stress going on.

4. Catapult Feud

Catapult Feud is now something so different. It’s not flicking, it’s not stacking, you are aiming and launching via catapult or ballista foam rocks at your opponents castle trying to knock down their troops. There are cards in this game, and those cards do add to the game element, but aren’t needed. What’s most fun, not surprisingly is just the launching of things.

3. Sonora

These top three I rank really highly. Sonora is a flicking game for part of it and roll and write for the other, and that combo works really well. You flick discs that are basically like rolling your dice. But you pick what number die you flick and you can try and set it up so that you get what you want. Add in the roll and write part where you fill in on the board, that part is amazing. Sonora puts almost any other roll and write with combos to shame with how many it has.

2. PitchCar

PitchCar is a flicking racing game around a track that you build. And building the track itself is a ton of the fun of the game. But if it were just that it’d be unfortunate. PitchCar, however, is a lot of fun with the flicking. What I really like about this and my top game are that you get excited when other players make a great shot. Yes, it might mean you don’t win, but an awesome shot, that’s amazing.

1. Icecool

Icecool, I doubt that it being #1 for me surprises anyone. This is just a blast of a game where one player (two in an eight player game) is a hall monitor. Everyone else are students skipping class to get a snack of fish. So all you are doing is flicking your penguin and trying to get it through a doorway. And then you rotate who the hall monitor is over four rounds until everyone has been. Really fun game and you can mess around with your shots more than you can with PitchCar.

Final Thoughts

Dexterity games probably won’t be for everyone. Flicking or stacking is a bit of a challenge physically. And for some people that is going to be right out. For other gamers, they will find it too silly. But if you can lean in and enjoy that silliness and lean into the excitement of a great shot. Really, I think that most people can enjoy Icecool or PitchCar, even if you aren’t doing that well in it.

And I am always on the lookout for more dexterity games. I have in my collection Flick of Faith, Catacombs, The Table is Lava, Crash Octopus and Rhino Hero Super Battle. I guess I could put Animal Upon Animal on the list, but that’s the toddlers game.

What is your favorite dexterity game?

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Ten – Skull Tales: Full Sail! – A pirate themed game is interesting to me, as I’m on the lookout for a good one, aka not Seafall. This one seems to have a lot going on with it, and the semi-cooperative nature is definitely interesting to me. I want to see how they implement it before I make much judgement on it. The minis look cool, and the style of the game seems interesting to me. But I don’t know much about the game, so I want to give it a good look.

Nine – Cloudspire – A big game from Chip Theory Games. This one I think I’m more interested to see than buy, but a cooperative exploration game with a modular board, that seems pretty cool. And the aesthetic with castles floating on rocks in the sky is very interesting. Their other games, Too Many Bones being the biggest, looks interesting, though not quite my style, and I’m curious to see how this one works compared to that.

Eight – Anomaly – A horror based board game, this one takes one versus all as some players take on the rolls of kids who are left to deal with this anomaly. There’s hidden movement as well, not just for the anomaly, but for the players as well, which I think adds an interesting twist into it. I always enjoy this type of game, one versus all, and the theme reminds me a bit of Not Alone, where you have astronauts on a crashed spaceship trying to avoid a monster and the planet killing them.

Seven – Slide Quest – Slide Quest looks like a fun and silly game where it’s like a marble puzzle, where you control which sides are higher and lower to get a knight to his goals and to deal with bad guys, but the twist is that it can be played with four players. In this game you can have one person controlling each lever that lowers or raises a side. This one I want to check it out, because it seems like it could be a silly game to play with smaller groups at a board game night, but I want to see it first, because it could be frustrating to some.

Six – The Grimm Masquerade – I found out about this one when they played it on the Dice Tower. The Grim Masquerade seems like an interesting social deduction game where you are playing as various Grimm Fairy Tale characters who are trying to collect three of the item that they need. But the other players are trying to figure out who you are under the mask, and can knock you out of the round by figuring out who you are or by giving you the item that you don’t want. It’s a social deduction game that has more to it, which is interesting to me.

Five – Arkham Noir Case #1 – This one is an odd one on the list, and while I’m not sure it’s an immediate purchase for me, it’s a game that has a player count of 1 to 1. So it’s a purely solo game, and it’s a game where you are trying to solve a mystery. I’m curious to see how this deck of cards is going to work, but the theme and aesthetic, which is very 1920’s noir, are interesting to me.

Four – Walking in Burano – You’re building up the beautiful Burano neighborhood of Venice. When you are building these houses though, you need to match colors and get various scoring cards to create the best looking and most popular neighborhood. Walking in Burano isn’t a big game, but it looks like a relaxing game to play.

Three – Choose Your Own Adventure: War with the Evil Power Master – The name is absurd (and absurdly long, hence forth known as Power Master), but that’s what I want in a CYOA game. And this game appears to have a bit more game to it than the CYOA: House of Danger did. It’s a fun group game where you aren’t doing the same boring party tropes, so I’m excited to get the next one.

Two – Detective: City of Angels – This game is a big detective game, something that we’re seeing more of with Chronicles of Crime and Detective: A Modern Crime Story. But in Detective: City of Angels it’s competitive as players are leaning on possibly witnesses to see if the person running the game has lied to them, and other players can send in a snitch to spy on the conversation to help out with their investigation. Will you be able to solve the case faster than your the other detectives?

One – Hats – This is actually a small game to start, but I like the simplicity of the game along with the game scoring. In this game you’re at the tea party with the Mad Hatter and you’re trying to have to the best scoring collection of hats. You do that by swapping out hats from the scoring track with one from your hand. So, while the game is simple, there seems to be a good amount of strategy to it, it reminds me some of Hanimkoji and Parade in that way.

What games are you looking forward to at GenCon?

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