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

100 through 91

90 through 81

80 through 71

70 through 61

60 through 51

Top 100 Games (of all time) 2023 Edition – 50 through 41

50. Homebrewers

Homebrewers is a fun game about a theme that I love, homebrewing beer. It is something that I did for year and would love to get back into. We’ll see if it happens some day. But this game is about trying to be the best homebrewer when it comes around to Summerfest and Oktoberfest. Will your IPA, Lager, Porter, and Stout be the best ones?

This is done by rolling dice and taking actions on those dice. And that sounds like a lot of luck, but you can spend a dollar to change the face of a die, and you can build up an engine that gives you money to keep brewing beer. But you want to add in ingredients so that your beer gets better, you get more money, and if you build your recipe correctly, it can help level up your other beers as well. This is a fast fun game with a fun theme to play.

49. Trek 12

Then we have Trek 12 a roll and write game about climbing up mountains. I like this game multiplayer or solo, but not solo with the official rules. The official rules have you play for another character as well and it’s not exciting to play twice to try and beat that score. Instead, I just try and beat my previous score.

To climb up the mountain you are rolling dice and everyone uses those dice to try and create sets of numbers or runs of numbers. To do that, you pick from five options which you can only use five times each of taking the highest number, lowest number, the added together pair, the difference, or the multiplied value, but not higher than 12. And as you go, your options get more limited. Can you not orphan numbers on the mountain but keep them a part of a group to grab as many points as you can?

48. Letter Jam

Now we’re onto one of two cooperative games on the list. Letter Jam is a spelling game that takes from Hanabi where it has cards facing away from you. These cards are the letters that make up your word. One is facing up away from you so you don’t know what it is. Players, all the players, go around and give clues by spelling out words with the letters that they see and wild card ones. Of course, as that happens, I still don’t know what mine is.

That is what makes the game clever. As I create my word that I want to give as a clue, I want to make sure the word is unique enough that it makes sense. If you have an “o” and I make the word “form” then you know your letter is one of “a”, “i” or “o” because you can see “f_rm”. But if I pick the word “from” you see “fr_m” and it makes a whole lot easier. Now you often narrow down your letter and call it good enough to hope that with the whole word together or all the letters you’ll be able to figure it out.

47. Blood Rage

Next up a not at all cooperative game, we have Blood Rage. Blood Rage is a game of card drafting, combat, and area control. But really, I think that this is a game that brings all of those things in, but the card drafting is what makes the game. The card drafting determines what upgrades you get. It might be bringing a monster onto the board, or upgrading your troops so that they are stronger, it could be giving you new ways to score points. And that is where the game is fun.

And there are a lot of strategies that you can employ. You can go after just winning battles. You get in there, you take powerful attack cards, you win, and that is how you get your points. Or there is the option to do the exact opposite, the Loki strategy. You go into battle, you die, and you make points because when your warriors come back from Valhalla you get points. So there are ways for everyone to play even within area control and combat.

46. Betrayal at House on the Hill

Now we’re onto the second oldest game on this part of the list. Betrayal at House on the Hill is not everyone’s favorite game. And I get why people don’t like it, some of the haunts are hard to figure out with the information that they give you. They try and hide some of it both ways from the betrayer and those who were betrayed. That allows you to find out how it works as you go, but it makes it harder to get the rules right or feel like you understand what you need to do.

That said, I still really like the game. Why, because the game just works as a horror film of a game. You go explore an old haunted mansion where nothing makes sense. And as you explore, you stumble across weird omens. One that eventually triggers the haunt and then someone will betray you in the group, the scenario you land on says who. Then it’s a game of trying to figure out the puzzle whether it’s Rocky Horror Picture Show or hunting down talisman or playing chess with death, the options are all there. And I think that makes it really fun.

45. Marvel Champions

Now we have maybe the biggest drop from last year, and thanks to the person in chat who looked this up. I went from #4 to #45 for Marvel Champions. And the big reason for that, and why you see games move, is what I’ve gotten played this year. I play around 150 games a year and a lot of new ones, so ones that don’t get played drop some.

But Marvel Champions is still a great game. I love it as a Marvel themed game that makes you feel like the hero that you’re playing. When you’re Spider-Man you feel like you do Spider-Man’s moves. Same with Thor or Captain America. And that’s something great about the game that way.

But it also does other very cool things. Like when you are Spider-Man the supervillain knows where you are, and he’s going to attack you. And might suck and knock your health way down. But you can always flip back to being Peter Parker. Now the supervillain doesn’t know who you are, so they go to work on their scheme. It gives you a chance to heal up. But when you do that you can’t fight the bad guy or stop their scheme either. So it’s this interesting puzzle that you play with which I really enjoy.

44. Super Mega Lucky Box

Now we’re onto the second roll and write game, Super Mega Lucky Box. Which, I just found out there is an app for, so a great way to check it out. This is gamers bingo where you combo completing rows and columns to finish off your whole bingo card. The fast you do that, the more points that you can get. It’s a really fun game that way and a simple one.

I think that it looks more simple than it is, though. When you fill something in, you need to ask yourself, does this combo into something I need. And as you get more cards, you need to look to make sure you have a good variety of numbers, or a lot of lightning bolts to be able to manipulate those numbers that are flipped up. It’s that combination of things, with easy to follow rules, that puts it this high on the list.

43. PitchCar

Next up we have our dexterity game for this part of the list. Now I don’t have one per section, but I really do like dexterity games. And PitchCar is great because it’s a racing game. And how you race is you flick your car, a disc, around a track, it’s just as simple as that. But if you go off the track, you go back to where you shot from. Flip upside down, it is possible, you go back to where you shot from.

And a lot of the fun comes from how you built the track. You can build a long track with lots of straightaways, or you can put in a ton of turns, it is all depending on what you want to do. In fact, there are even expansions that add jumps, bridges, or crazy loops that you can use as well. So I like to tailor it to how I want to play that night, is it just a quick warm-up game, simple track. Is it the big event, a crazy track.

42. For Northwood

Next up we have a solo only trick taking game. That is a concept that feels like it shouldn’t work. Trick taking games are a lot of playing off of what other people are doing, but For Northwood makes it work really well. Yes, you have no one to play off of, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t a lot of good strategy in the game.

You play in different areas of the woods. Each of them with an animal ruler that you want to impress. To do that you need to win a specific number of tricks. So if I have to think about which section of the woods, from 0 to 7 tricks won, I want to go to with the hand of cards I have. Now, winning all of them is tricky, but you get assistance from the rulers. Some to start the game, others you get as you win locations. And they might add or remove cards from your hand to help you complete your goal. It’s a really good system of solo play and trick taking.

41. Sagrada

To round out these ten games, we have Sagrada. Sagrada is a game about making a stained glass window and one of the prettier games on the list. It’s also a game that has an app which is solid as well and does feel like you’re playing the game.

In Sagrada you draft dice to fill in your stained glass window. To do that, you need to the right colored dice or numbered dice in the right spots on the board. But it’s not just as simple as that. You also need to think about what is around that spot. What you can’t have happen is needing to place a six in a spot with a six to the left, right, above, or below it or the same with a color. And you don’t want empty spots because those are negative points.

The game also gives you goals when building your stained glass window. You might get points for the pips on all your blue dice. And then there are public scoring goals as well, like sets of 5’s and 6’s that you have, columns with no repeating numbers, or rows with no repeating colors. And that changes every time. And there are special tools that you can use which allow you to move dice or break rules in various ways. And those change each game as well.

Upcoming Streams

Let’s run through the stream structure like I normally do. You might already know the schedule but in case you don’t. Wednesday at 8 PM Central I stream either a campaign game, or with this time of year it’s my Top 100 Games (of all time) 2023 Edition. And join me next Wednesday for games 50 through 41, so hitting the half way point. It goes so fast, and now I have so many games that I want to play.

Then on Monday I stream at 9 PM Central time. It’s generally a solo game. Though I’ll also do pack openings for things But normally it’s a solo game and a one off for the game like a roll and write, or sometimes a game like Under Falling Skies or For Northwood, which was on the list today.

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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The first is by duplicating description in the same sentence. or using too much description.

The second is by using large words for the sake of large words.

A couple of examples form books that I started reading and then quit, and one that I am actually continuing.

“The trials are our exegesis…” – A Warriors Path by Davis Ashura

“While thinking internally to myself…” – Ascend Online by Luke Chmilenko

Let’s talk about why these are poor. First, using “exegesis” in a sentence, and I shared this with a co-worker who reads a lot, is not a common word that people know. Learning new words isn’t bad, but there weren’t context clues to provide the answer to what it means. So someone would have to stop reading your book to look it up if they don’t know the meaning. And why weren’t there context clues, because this was sentence number one in the book.

I know what “exegesis” means, and because it was the first sentence, I immediately stopped listening to the book. What the first sentence tells me about the book is that it’s going to be using a lot of big words for the sake of using big words. And it’s supposed to be an epic fantasy book, premise seemed interesting, but if, in one sentence, it feels like the writer is shooting for showing off their knowledge of the English language, it isn’t ideal.

The second example is really about that first one, giving too much description. “Thinking internally” is a redundant statement. Besides that, the Ascend Online book, which isn’t bad thus far, spends too much time going through the fine details of the RPG aspect of a LitRPG. That can be done at the start, but then needs to fade to the background and that’s another way it is overwritten. It doesn’t just imply some things that the writer knows are happening in the background, but instead spells them out in great detail. This is something that happened in the Arcane Ascension series, where the writer would spend too much time explaining something that the characters already know for the sake of the reader.

So how can you avoid overwriting a story?

I think the biggest thing you can do is be a harsh critic of your own work. Not of yourself, but taking a step back from the work, look at it and ask yourself, is this part needed, or is this from a different story that I just haven’t written yet. Just because you’re cutting something, doesn’t mean that it wasn’t good, it just might not be for this story.

Along with that, ask yourself if you need to spell that out for the reader or how easily the reader can understand it. If you feel like a reader can infer what is being written about, for example, when leveling up in a LitRPG, if you’re in a video game, like Ascend Online is, have there be a noise, like a ding, when a skill levels up. As a reader, I’ll know that whatever skill was used immediately prior to the “ding” leveled up, the author doesn’t need to tell me that metal working leveled up when you were just working with metal, that should be obvious to any reader, and if the reader missed if, they know from the “ding” to look back at the previous action to see what it was. Doing something as simple as that will make the story flow better.

Ask yourself, is all this backstory/world building needed at the beginning? That’s another piece of overwriting that I see very often. It falls into the camp of too much description, but ask yourself where and when you need the backstory and world building. Too much of it is front loaded, instead, put it in when it is needed. I suspect what you’ll find, even if you had it front loaded before, is that when you reach the end of the story, there will be world details that still haven’t been put into the story, and that’s awesome. That means you’ve found the parts that were overwritten and don’t matter to your story. Also, by interweaving the backstory and world building into the main body of the story, I, as a reader, am more apt to remember them as if they are all at the beginning, I might just skim over them to get to the action.

The other thing that is often forgotten in LitRPG or with self published writing, is use an editor and copy-editor. The copy-editor is going to cut down on grammar and spelling issues, so not as important for overwriting, but the editor is the person who is going to track down those overwritten bits, question why there is so much detail or why you are using a word. They are going to be harsher on your writing than you will be able to ever be. With that, it’s important that, even if you have a friend who likes to read and is good with English, don’t use them as your editor. They aren’t going to be able to be as harsh on the work as it might need to be, because they know you. I feel like I’ve read several books where they had some editing work done, but the author either refused to trust their editor, or the editor was a friend. So there’s another thing, the editor wants you book to succeed, even if you don’t know them, because they want more work from you. When they suggest cutting something that you really liked, it isn’t because they hate you or what you wrote, it’s because they genuinely should care about helping you make the best book. So find an editor that you can trust who isn’t your friend.

Obviously, there is more that you can do, but let’s spend a little bit of time looking at some books that I really do like.

The Dresden Files – I don’t think these are overwritten. My reasoning for that is because Jim Butcher gives you enough detail but not too much and he doesn’t spend any time at the start of any books explaining something about his world that is going to show up later. There are points where as a reader, I feel like between books he’s repeating himself, but if someone was reading them once and as they came out, they probably would need that reminder. Since I’m reading them after the fact and in a row, I wish it wasn’t there, but it is smart that it is there.

Lord of the Rings – Tom Bombadil. That’s all that I need to say, JRR Tolkien had some stuff that he wanted to get into the book and added to the book that is most certainly not needed. Tom Bombadil was cut from the movies for a reason, and probably should have been cut from the book. I’ll give him some slack for the time frame, but Tolkien does overwrite, and when you think about The Silmarillion, you can see how much he cut and had in backstory that he decided to publish separately, thankfully.

Chronicles of Narnia – I think that this is another example of something that isn’t overwritten. CS Lewis does a good job keeping his series short and to the point in each book. There are a few bits that haven’t always aged the best, but that isn’t an overwriting problem, so not an issue for here. From The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, through The Last Battle, you get the information you need when you need it and the stories are on point. You could argue that The Magician’s Nephew is simply a book of backstory, but it is fairly important backstory for the world, and the book reads as a novel onto itself with plenty of action and interesting moments versus just an explanation of how the world works.

What are some book series that you think are overwritten? Are there some sentences that are really poorly written, if so, share them below, please, I love weird stuff like that.

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