While the proverbial oven of 2023 continues to cool down (insofar as I continue to write it in date fields), one more slice of pie remains: it’s the return of the Golden Pie Game of the Year awards. It’s been a while since I’ve taken the time to celebrate my favorite games, partly in anxiety of not having played enough of them. Most of these weren’t even released in 2023, but board games are particularly sensitive to supply and demand, both of physical copies and of eager players. In no particular order, these were my favorite games, first experienced in 2023.

Point City

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While I’m an advocate for eating one’s vegetables, I don’t find them particularly satisfying without a little protein. Similarly, Point Salad left me wanting, an incredibly streamlined and accessible game, that just didn’t have enough friction for my tastes. So I was quite pleasantly surprised to find the follow up game Point City evolved the concept in satisfying directions.

This is still a streamlined exercise of drafting cards, with the addition of an engaging spatial puzzle in selecting two adjacent cards from a grid. Now, rather than forming a simple set collection of resources, you’re trading them in to construct buildings that in turn provide permanent resources and other bonuses. This feedback loop is simple yet satisfying, escalating with more complex cards for a wonderful sense of progression and differentiation between players. It makes for an excellent introduction to engine building while still providing just enough challenge to those looking for a little more tension.

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Cat in the Box: Deluxe Edition

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In many regards, 2023 was the year of the trick taker, my rediscovery of the genre, and the institution of a tradition to start each game night with one as an amuse bouche. This tricky trend was led at the start of the year with Cat in the Box: Deluxe Edition, Bezier Game’s remaster of 2020’s game from Japanese publisher Ayatsurare Ningyoukan

Cat in the Box presents you with the quantum conundrum of cards with no inherent suit, just a number with a fuzzy sense of potential (or is that just cat hair). In playing a card to the trick you must assign it a suit, removing that option from the communal possibility space (if I declare a 3 to be red, then logically, none of the 3’s in your hand can be red). This delivers a delightful amount of agency, especially when you can declare yourself out of a suit on your own whims in what can feel like the thrill of getting away with cheating.

Throwing a wrinkle in space-time is the fact that there are more of each number than there are possible suits – be forced to play a number that’s already fully accounted for and you’ve got a paradox going baby. Not only is this a punishment for anyone getting a little too daring, but acts as a degree of unpredictability for how long a round will go – there’s nothing like a little timey-wimey chaos to get in the way of the perfect plan to match a bid.

I did find the gimmick to wear a little thin on repeated plays, the hand you’re dealt will look very similar game to game, and one too many paradoxes can tilt the balance a little far towards chaos. But I found Cat in the Box to be an absolute thrill to teach to a new group and seeing their minds blown. It’s a game best taught with a degree of theatricality and a knowing wink to maintain the illusion (“The cards DO have a suit, you just have to truly observe the card to find out what it is”). Bezier’s production is also wonderfully helpful in visualizing the information to ground players and prevent them being overwhelmed amidst the quantum mathematics.

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Woodcraft

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I managed to scratch several seasoned designers off my bucket list this year. On Mars was my first Vital Lacerda game and was fascinating in its elements of sandbox simulation but was an experience that my mind is still decoding months later. Leaving a much better first impression was playing Underwater Cities, my first Vladimir Suchy game. It’s use of hand management in optimising worker placement was an immediately satisfying puzzle (an elegant solution where several similar games have used extraneous decking building). But I was left feeling that it wouldn’t hold up to the pressure of repeated returns to the underwater well (check out our podcast review)

After having a similar experience with Praga Caput Regni, the true highlight of my sojourn through Suchy’s backlog was his most recent game (in collaboration with Ross Arnold), Woodcraft. Where many heavier euro games derive tension from a tight economy (including Praga), Woodcraft hews a new path in showering the player with free resources. Taking centre stage is a large action wheel, whereby you can broadly select any action tile. By some clever cardboard clockwork however, a variety of bonuses are gradually revealed alongside action tiles chosen less frequently, that might convince you to pivot from your plan or provide the perfect solution out a jam.

Compared to the more miserly medieval action wheel of Praga (in both size and stinginess) that can leave players feeling punished by luck, Woodcraft’s feels like a giant roulette wheel, where everyone wins. That isn’t to say it’s without challenge or tension. With multiple tasks to try and complete within a limited number of turns the puzzle becomes how best to utilize the bounty you’re provided with.

Woodcraft also sports one of my favourite Suchy trademarks: player interfaces to plug a components into. Each player has their own wood workshop board with a special space for every upgrade, helper card and tool token. This just further adds to the constant little dopamine hits this game delivers, like the joy of tidying your toolshed (or reorganizing your games collection). There are a few extraneous mechanics glued on to the sides (such as the income tracks) but it’s all presented with a wonderfully whimsical forest folk theme that’s hard to stay mad at when it’s so generous. 

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The Wolves

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I like to consider myself a logical and empathetic person: I know that the concept of Alpha wolves is debunked, and don’t like to be mean to other players in games. But there is after all a second wolf inside me, the Wolf of Id, and he can get a little…bitey. The Wolves let’s you indulge in those primitive impulses, hiding a deviously thematic experience beneath the sheepskin of an abstract area control game.

Players move and influence their pieces on the board using a series of double-sided cards, each face showing a terrain type. To move or place a token requires one to flip a certain number of cards showing that terrain. This in itself provides a satisfying little puzzle that appeals to my more logical side. Taking a simple movement action might get your wolves into position but may also flip enough cards to the right terrain to place down a den in a key location. 

However each player also has one card locked to a particular terrain, giving them advantage there, especially for the powerful ‘dominate’ action that lets you convert another player’s wolf to your own pack. In the early game (before wild terrain tokens come into play), this gives you complete dominion over your chosen terrain, which encourages a certain territorialism, eying off any player daring enough to step into your domain.

This can result in a fierce tug o’ war as players jostle for control. At any given moment two regions are designated to score points for the most presence. However the timing of this is dictated entirely by the number of pieces removed from the board. Scoring is also immediate, no ‘one more turn’, no drawn out battles. So while dominating another player can feel mean, (especially to newer pups who haven’t learned the tricks of the older dogs), it’s typically quick, a surgical strike that leaves everyone scrambling to the next scoring region.

Each region only scores once, each scoring phase triggering new regions to be highlighted, and players’ attentions turning like the cycles of the moon. So begins the great migration, giving the game a wonderfully dynamism, as players move around the board with shifting seasons. Especially cunning canines might forgo one scoring region entirely and get a head start on marking their territory in the next. 

It can feel incredibly chaotic and it’s treatment of wolfishness leans more on pop culture tropes than scientific fact. But with it’s fast and dynamic play space, I had a wonderful time unleashing my inner wild side.

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Oathsworn: Into the Deepwood

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With the proliferation of so many mediocre ‘big box o’ minis’ games these last few years, I was bracing myself to regret going all in on backing Oathsworn, having been caught in the glamour of it’s more gimmicky features (minis with swappable weapons! mystery boxes! narration by James Cosmo!). While the depths of it’s several enormous boxes certainly held numerous surprises, the biggest was that the game has met all expectations so far.

I’m only a few missions deep into the thicket of Oathsworn’s lengthy campaign, partly a result of my attempt to paint each mini before we play with them (have you seen the size of these things?), and the need for 4 characters regardless of player count. But the foundation has left an incredibly strong impression. In principle, Oathsworn is playing on well-worn ground of grimdark fantasy and throwing dice at monsters – how many roleplaying games have started with fighting rats? But it’s executed here with a deftness and competency rare for a first time publisher.

Combat is of the boss battle variety, a single protracted fight against a single powerful foe (often flavored with a few minions), rather than the traditional sprawling dungeon crawl. It’s a relatively new trend that’s still rather novel, with a wonderful sense of scale and stakes for each beastie you face. 

Its tactical combat is incredibly flexible, with players able to take their turn in any order, and take as many turns as they can afford to before each enemy action. Taking any action beyond movement means playing a card to the ‘battleflow’, a sequential series of slots that temporarily locks them from further use. However any card you add to your battleflow immediately bumps any that were already in that slot one space closer to being back in your hand. In this, there are plenty of opportunities for feeling clever, both as a team in setting up synergies, and individually with how you manage the cooldown of your cards. 

Need to roll dice to attack an enemy? Roll as many as you’d like to deal extra damage, so long as you don’t roll 2 blanks which triggers an immediate miss. Players can push their luck as much as they need to, which can create some incredibly thrilling moments. Oathsworn gives you an incredible amount of empowerment, and you’ll need it, because the monsters have plenty of their own nasty tricks.

Before each boss battle is a story chapter that has you exploring town, gathering intel and otherwise preparing the party. My once great excitement for huge tomes of text (such as Tales of Arabian Nights) has worn thin over the years, the writing quality in board games being rarely elevated beyond serviceable, especially where quantity is called for. Low expectations aside, I’ve found Oathsworn’s writing so far to be genuinely engaging, taking itself seriously while maintaining a balance of pathos, genuine laughs and likeable characters.

As in the battle tactics you have quite a lot of agency in how you approach the story, both in explicit decisions and open-ended exploration. Provided with only vague clues of your goal, it becomes something of a puzzle to navigate your way around the city. I played the first scenario solo as practice before my 4-player campaign and was shocked how differently things turned out, with completely different locations, characters and set-ups to be paid off later. I can’t wait to continue our trek into the Deepwood, with hints of many more twists and turns to come.