At The Table With The Dice Tower - Looking Back at 2025

0:00At the Table with the Dice Tower. Episode 61. Looking back at 2025.

0:26Welcome to At the Table with the Dice Tower, a podcast about games and the people who play them. It's time for our year-end episode, looking at our highs and lows of 2025. What was our favorite grab-and-go game? Our favorite take-all-day-to-play-it game? And of course, what were our rosiest roses, our thorniest thorns, and our hoopiest hoops? I'm Eric Sommerer. I'm Julie Ahern. And I'm Tom Vassel and did not name any of the segments.

0:54Already salty. We've just started. Hoopiest hoops? Yeah, we've barely begun. There's a limit. The hoopiest hoops. There's a limit. I've used the same term for the past several years. I probably complained then too. You did. I like saying hoopiest hoops. It's a tradition. I will say this. I think the episode's called Looking Back at 2025. And looking at the show notes, I'm not sure everyone's in the same year. But. Oh, interesting. So anyway, yes, it's 2025. And if you want to know the top 10 games of 2025 and all that jazz, it's on our channel. Even Eric's. Even Eric's. I was surprised at Eric's.

1:32Number one. I was surprised as well, but I can't deny my heart. I can't go against the urges. Number three will shock you.

1:45Is that what we're resorting to clickbait at this point? Good. Excellent. Audio clickbait. All righty. Well, it was a year for sure. There was a lot of things that went on in the industry. We talked about them as we've done this show. ad nauseum. I think, and I hesitate to say this because people always take this and run the wrong direction with it. I think it was a down year, but I don't mean that in there was no good games and gaming is getting worse and blah, blah, blah. There's thousands of great games still. It's fantastic. It's just that compared to 24 or even compared to like 10 years ago, 2015, the slate of games that came out was not as jaw-droppingly amazing many many great games still and i know there's external factors that have to do with a lot of this although i don't believe the external factors have a lot to do with the games that came out this year as opposed to you'll see it more of effect on the future years ah but it was a good year a very good year i just think it wasn't as good as last year but that doesn't mean it wasn't good.

2:51Okay. Interesting. I think I agree with you, Tom. I think there's maybe not as strong standouts this year, but I do feel like there are just so many. There's still an overwhelming number of games, and it's easy to just sort of ignore sections, styles of games or releases that come out. I've learned about things that came out a year or two ago, and I just didn't realize that they were out yet. And that's the sort of landscape we're in. I've noticed, though, that it seems like there's a lot of reprints either coming out this year or in the works, announced for the next year or so. And I wonder if that's because it's more of a safe bet, you know, banking on a known quantity.

3:38I'm looking at all of these Awaken Realms deluxe editions of Eurogames, and like Castles of Burgundy. And isn't there like, oh, what? There was a new Canizia game that just got a reprint announcement that I'm blanking on now. But it seems like there's just tons of these anniversary editions or 2.0 editions of games coming out more so than there used to be. Maybe it's just me. No, it's not. It's not just you. And usually I'm the Pollyanna. I'm going to agree with both of you. and again we're not going to get into the nuts and bolts of it but I agree with Tom that it's because of reasons that still haven't fully resolved so you're going to see a lot of safer like also you said Eric safer bets and reprints because the other thing being if a reprint takes a very short amount of time by comparison to a new game to manufacture.

4:41There's no back and forth of looking, or not as much back and forth of the quality controls and making sure everything. So you can say, I'd like to reprint this, and the factory making them is going to turn it around much more quickly. So for windows of shipping, that's a factor. Knowing how much they sell, That's a factor. And bigger companies have been tending to consolidate towards that. Like Asmodee has a lot of its studios doing that regardless now. So more and more of that being the trend in the last couple of years. But we're seeing a bigger increase in that because of shipping and manufacturing.

5:27Fun things that have happened in the world. Do you also save on that development cost if you're doing an upgrade of a reprint? Like if you're doing a special edition of a particular game, you're not developing the rule set. You're just changing the art out. Does that also give you some sort of savings? Oh, absolutely. I do agree with you, though, Eric. When I take a look at the reprints or second editions or second versions of games that came out this year, you could make a top ten list of that. Hey, I did. It's on the channel. It's amazing. Number three will surprise you. Well, actually, you know, it's funny because I did that top ten list, and I think my number one I played post that list being made, which is the new Awakened Realms version of Puerto Rico, which is unbelievably cool.

6:12There we go. But, I mean, it's not just that. There's just – there's so many games, whether it's another follow-up like FinSpan or another Everdell or whatever. There's a lot of really solid games out there, and Canizia remakes all his games all the time. Like the Phoenix. Yeah, but I mean – Well, there's like entire publishers based around Canizia reprints. Yeah, but they're really good games. They are. I think that these older, solid games are almost a better bet than the new ones. Don't get me wrong. There's still a lot of great new games out there. But what a year for reprints. I think that's my biggest takeaway of 2025.

6:50I think it was the best year for reprints we've ever seen. on a personal level for me it was my year of really purchasing selectively so that i could play the games that i bought yes in a much more conscious way it's a good plan i i always attempt that i still i've also attempted it in years past but this year i was like no i'm really going to do this and stick to it and so you know i can remember this time last year being like i still have more than half my Gen Con games that I haven't played. And this year, I've played all of them and most of the ones I got at Essen. So for me, that's a personal achievement.

7:29I don't know if that's a trend per se throughout the year, but that was something that looking back at the year that I noticed doing and being conscious about and I always hear people talk about it, so I don't know if it's a trend per se. I'm very happy for you. I cannot say the same. Fair enough. Let's jump into Eric's awesome categories. Yeah, I mean, I think Julie gets credit for this as well. After last year's run through, she wanted to do some tweaking. So I think we have to share the blame on this one. I'll take a look at Eric's stupid categories and Julie's awesome categories. Perfect. So let's begin with the best game to play at a convention or on the go.

8:12Yeah, so for me, this year was all about hot streak. Everywhere I went, I played hot streak. Hot streak, hot streak, hot streak. I played it at every convention, multiple times. We almost played it last night at our game night, and I was like, it's 9.30. I need to go to bed. And people were like, please. It's like, next time. And now I'm playing it live in just a few minutes here on the channel. Sure, yeah. That mixed with Lightspeed Arena, which brought back the old game Lightspeed, but with an app that scores it, which makes it amazing, and it's so much fun. And I would take that to a convention, and I took it to the Dice Tower Retreat, and it got played and then the game disappeared from my hands and people just kept taking it and playing it and playing it.

8:53No, no, I mean in a good way. Oh, okay. In a good way. I was like, here, I'm going to put the game away. And it was like, no, I want to play it. And I took it and talked to people. Then those people took it and it was just fantastic. Yeah. That's the one where I could hear people giggling in various places in the game room, which is a massive room, but you can suddenly hear giggling and look over and realize that that's what was happening. Yeah. It's a fun when Tom made me play it at Spiel and good times. He made you? He made me. He's like, Eric, you need to play this game. Come over here. And I was like, I'm standing here.

9:23No, come here. I agree with Hot Streak. That seems to be the convention game of the year. It draws a crowd. There's laughing. There's screaming. Absolutely. The only downside is that it is not terribly portable. It's an unwieldy, squarish box. I tried packing it in my suitcase and it doesn't, It gets in the way of, like, clothes and things. Put it in your swiver. You just don't have a board then. A little more portable. I guess you could maybe, you could just pack it in something. Anyway, no, you need the board. Yep. Smaller portable Ghost Lift, a card-shedding game about getting rid of your cards, riding an elevator up and down.

10:01It's got these cute little ghost meeples, and it's a little more easy to throw into a backpack and just throw it on the table, and everybody goes, ooh, cute ghosts. So that's my selection for on-the-go game. Already making me dial back the whole proud of myself for not getting every game on my list. Since I couldn't get Ghost List, it was already sold out at Essen by the time I got there. Fair. Fine. So I said it last year because I had the Ark Nova version, but it's still Edo. Because for me, I'm not running a convention. I'm attending a convention. It's small, it's portable, and it works with people you know well.

10:41It works with people you've just met. It can accommodate a lot of people, and I have the best conversations and laugh the hardest when playing Edo because of various answers. I'm still never going to forget the things most likely to find under a rock being Tolstoy's War and Peace that somebody gave us an answer, which made no sense. And it was somewhere in the middle of the pack, not like most likely or least likely. Just like it's kind of likely. That's a 52. Yeah. It's never it's never going to leave my brain ever. And it's a good thing he doesn't listen to this podcast. He'd be mad. that he uh so anyway that but i i did say it last year um i'd say 1 a.m jail break was my runner up of games that i also typically had in my bag and would pull out and play which is another card shedding game where you're trying to just uh get increasingly large sets out of your hands and and escape the jail before anybody else uh and that one also worked because of its namesake of when we were playing it late at night.

11:54It just seemed like 1 a.m. jailbreak really. It becomes more thematic the later it gets. People would catch on to the name when I would suggest things that I had in my bag. So those are my two. All right, let's head to the other side of things. This is a game that you need to set aside a whole day for. What one do you clear the calendar for? Big game. There's a lot that could be put into this category, right? Sure. But I set aside a day for Regicide Legacy. It takes a small little card game, Regicide, and turns into a legacy game. It does a really good job at it. I played this one solo for like a whole Saturday.

12:33Ignored my family. No, no, no. I did not. But breaking for lunch and swimming, that's it. And we just played Regicide Legacy. I really like this one. It's a great legacy game that you can keep playing after it's done. Very enjoyable. I still need to try this one. This isn't one that's in the library, though, because it's basically a solo game, right? Yeah. I mean, you can play Regicide with multiple people. I prefer it as a solo game. Okay. But I wouldn't put the Legacy version. And maybe I could put Regicide in the library, but it's also Regicide's a deck of cards. Correct. Legacy changed it up a lot, but you could just take a deck of cards and play Regicide.

13:12Okay. For me, I did not have a lot of time this year. Just it was a very hectic year. And the one game that I did a longer version of that I really did enjoy was doing my father's work, but not just one scenario. There's three different packs in the game. So doing all three scenarios because each one is about two and a half hours. So spending the day to do all three with breaks in between. So you have an act one, an act two, and an act three in effect. that, which I did, and I had a wonderful time doing it. I'm going to say the big crate of a game, The Elder Scrolls, Betrayal of the Second Era, the chip theory games game.

13:57You could do a nice full campaign of this in a day. It's got sort of a three-act structure. Each act takes about two hours, two, three hours, if you're really pushing. And you get to develop your character, add dice, add abilities. You can go on little side quests, find out a rumor in a bar about something you can do in a cave off in the middle of the map while ignoring your main quest entirely. And work your way through a character adventure to a big finale, big epic battle at the end. And then you're done. You don't have to, you know, play this every Saturday for a month. You're done. And so after a day of Elder Scrolls, you can move on to something else or reset for the next adventure.

14:40That's definitely a set-aside-a-day-for-it game. More for setup than anything else, just because there's so many pieces in there. All right. All right. I don't think Tom can complain about this category. The best theming of a game in 2025. This one's tricky because there's so many good themed games, right? But I'm going to spotlight Luthier, or Luthier for those who email me. It's pronounced both ways. Check it. Anyhow. Do it. This is a game about making instruments. and it's a big heavy Euro style game but the theming is still really strong. You have these patrons who are like, how come I'm not hearing any music and I'm paying you money?

15:20And you're like, yeah, you are, but it's coming, I promise. So that's very realistic. And then just making the different instruments, putting them in the different spots in the orchestra. I really like it. I wish there was more music themed games, specifically classical music. I like that a lot. And I don't feel like there's enough and most of the ones that are out there have nothing to do with the theme. So this was a nice one to see. Luthier from 2025. Julie. Nice. You got a 2025 game for us? Subtle. Subtle, Tom. Okay. So many of the games I play are heavily themed and were in other categories.

15:59But my surprise pick at Essen is what I'm going with here. And it's on the other end of the spectrum. You have a very heavy euro. I have a light children's game that takes less than 10 minutes to play. I picked Flo. Huh. I haven't seen this game yet. So it's a kid's game and you can get it on Amazon. It's very – and it's based on the movie. Maybe I'm making fun of you for the wrong reasons. This is a different game than I'm thinking. That's fair. Could be. I'm thinking of the game that has not yet been released from Pika Games. The booth right across from us, Eric. Oh, yeah. I know this is this is based on the animated film.

16:39Correct. So I retract all the fun I made and direct it towards Eric. Sweet. Or you can save it for later. There might be others. I'm fine. Either way. So flow is a game that is a timed real time game where you are putting down tiles and you must take turns and wait for somebody to finish to make paths for the four animals from the corners of the board to the center of the board. there you have some cards that let you um modify some of the the dice the tile playing and you can have scenarios where you move the you know have different things that come out on the board as well but really it's you're doing it at a minute at a time at the end of every minute the wave flows through and eliminates one row in one column you're trying to get to the boat in the center or make a non-stopped path from the corners to the center, or you run out of tiles.

17:36So either you win the game or lose the game. That way it's cooperative. It's super light. But what it does is the movie flow is, you know, animals in a post-apocalyptic world where humans aren't there anymore, but you see plenty of evidence that they did exist at some point in the recent-ish past. and they're having their own chaos and adventures and what have you. And it goes through a lot of thoughts of, I guess, existential dread and chaos, but finding moments of calm and serenity in between without ever saying any words. The game does the same thing where you're frenetically trying to place tiles to get them to the center while the timer is the soundtrack from the movie.

18:24So you have this beautiful, soothing, calm music and the sound of a buoy, bell ringing and the ebb of water. And you're frantically placing tiles to try to get before the timer goes off and wipes out half of what you've done. So to me, Flo was a thematic game. Nice. I'm going to pick Storyfold Wildwoods. This is a solo adventure game working through some decks. But there are a few games that really try to, like from the moment you open the box, create an experience for you. I think the Horrified games have done that by presenting you with something when you first open it up. It's like a splash image on the back of the board.

19:06Storyfold does that as well. It's an adventure where you're moving through different pages of a storybook. But when you first open it up, it just begins with like long ago in a faraway land. And you're folding. The board is actually part of the storybook. It unfolds to a left and a right panel where your cards and decks are going to go. And as you unfold all of that, it's sort of doing the prologue of the beginning of this story. It also is very light on rule book. A lot of the mechanisms are taught through the tutorial and the story and the prologue so that you get it through gameplay and not with reading a bunch of rules references.

19:45I think there is a reference rule book, but it draws you in immediately into this adventure through the woods. and you're focused on that and not on the rules text, which I think is really, really strong and a great storytelling adventure, Storyfold Wildwoods. Yeah, I agree. That's a fantastic game. All right, this is definitely one of Julie's categories. This is a game where we are ignoring the haters. This is our guilty pleasure of the year. We like this game, and we're going to play it by gum. Yeah. No matter what anybody else says. Yeah. Okay. Can I go first? Go for it. Why did you write ha here?

20:28Because my game is Deep Regrets, of which I have none playing it. Ah, ha. I just thought you wanted to say existential dread two times in a row. But you just said that in flow. I do. I have a type. I'm sorry. I'm not. I don't. I have no regrets in Deep Regrets or flow. So Deeper Kits is a game where you're deep sea diving, but in a Lovecraftian kind of ocean. And what you pull up is high risk, high reward. And you have to plan in advance whether you're going to be at sea or in the fishing village. And those will be your action selections for that round. Either, like I said, you're fishing and deciding how deep you're going down and higher risk, higher reward.

21:19the deeper you go. In the village, you are selling things and then gaining points back. But the more you play, the more you gain these regrets, which are mostly flavor cards that then hinder you as the game goes on that you're trying to get rid of. And then at the end, you're having like a set collection of the different things that you've collected for points. so I like the art I like the theme I like the the writing in it which is the flavor is delightful but I also many people don't enjoy the randomness of the game I like a good random game so it doesn't bother me at all I feel like it leans into the idea of the the major point of the game which is you get what you get and you don't get upset.

22:10Or you do, and you pick up a card and read what that upset is. Yeah. In the South, you get what you get and you don't throw a fit. Oh, I like that. I've never heard it. You got to say it the right way, though. No, thank you. How about you? Speaking of randomness, my pick is Moon Colony Bloodbath. This is the Donald X Vaccarino game about running a moon colony. And you are working through a deck, like a central deck. It's sort of a deck-building game, but there's only one deck. And you work through the deck, and it says nasty things that happen to your moon colony. You're going to lose population left and right, but occasionally you get the opportunity to take actions, which will let you build buildings and take resources and try and stave off the bleeding, basically.

22:53You're going to get robots that try to kill you. You're going to get accidents that happen in the moon colony. You're going to get opportunities to maybe turn people into boxes. It's a wacky game. It also, at first glance, does not look that great. They made, I think this is an intentional. I like how you say at first glance. At 20th glance, it still looks terrible. What are you talking about? Somewhere in the middle, it doesn't look great. I think this is an intentional decision to make it look retro. 100 % true ground intentionally makes their games look bad. I agree with you. In doing so, it doesn't.

23:26It ends up, the font is just not fantastic. Anyway, I look past that to the quirkiness of this game. I think it's a roller coaster ride. I love getting through the first couple of rounds and people are like, this is fine. What's the problem? And then by round two or three, you're like, ah, all of my people are getting sucked out of airlocks. And how do I fix this? It's a good time. That's Moon Colony Bloodbath. Tom? Did you name this category basically games you enjoyed despite Tom? Because I feel like that's where this category is headed. I don't have any games like this. I just say what I think.

24:01I don't know what other people – I do know what other people think about games. But most of the games – I want to say a game that I hated despite the enjoyers. That would be Deep Regrets and Moon Colony Bloodbath. Great. So salty. Both of which I put in the library despite my thoughts on it because I want to have games that people enjoy even if Deep Regrets was stolen at Dice Tower East. But we got another one. Ugh. Stop taking my games, people. Anybody that's near the library and wants to be taught Moon Colony Bloodbath, I'm in. I'll teach you that one. It will be on the cruise. Woo! Nice. All right.

24:39Now, here's the category where we're allowed to talk about games outside 2025. This is our favorite classic that we played this year. The only sanctioned one. The only sanctioned one. You know, breaking the rules is fine, but this is the one we're allowed to. This is a classic, a game we played this year that stood out that isn't published in 2025 or even like the last five years or so. An older game that was a gem. Tom? Mine's almost 20 years old, and that's Race for the Galaxy. Is it really almost 20 years old? Yeah, Dominion came out in 2008, you know. Dominion's almost 20 years old. Race for the Galaxy was before Dominion.

25:14I think it was 7 or 6, but anyway. Oh, boy. Yeah, but Race for the Galaxy is such a classic game. There was a few game sessions this year where I was like, I'm sick of the new games. We're playing old stuff. And I played a bunch of the old classics. And this is the one that resonated with me so much that I went around at Dice Tower East and started teaching and playing Race for the Galaxy with people just because I like the idea of playing games with people they've not played before. And Puerto Rico almost makes this list for me too. But I think Race for the Galaxy, that classic just version of it I love so much.

25:49The Tableau building. I like it a lot. That's a good one. For me, we play both, I have At the Gates of Lange and Sentient. Those are games that Robert and I will always, no matter what the day will look like, no matter how tired we are, if we want to play a board game and I don't want to dive into something new, those are always going to get a yes. in our house. I enjoy both of them incredibly much. Nice. Originally, my knee-jerk reaction was to say the Pathfinder ACG. I've talked about it a lot in the last few months. We brought it out with my youngest and sort of rekindled the fire. Had to relearn the rules a little bit, but got back into a few adventures and was like, yeah, this is still a lot of fun.

26:41But looking back at what I had played, this was the biggest surprise of a classic game and the biggest change in opinion. I had written off Your Bluffing, the bluffing card game. I owned it at one point, and I guess it just bounced off the family, and we didn't really like it. I let it go, and I got to play it again at, I think, Dice Tower East for the first time in decades. And really enjoyed it. It is a good bluffing game, with some twists and turns and highs and lows, and I really had a good time trying it again, and I'm glad I did, and didn't just go, So, been there, done that. Your bluffing was a good time.

27:21Nice. All right. This is another one that Julie came up with. She wanted us to pick one of our favorite genres and pick one of the games that stood out to us. And so, I went with deck building. I was really impressed with Bohemians. This is the new one from Portal Games. Because of the way it embraces the theme. You're an artist in Paris, and you're trying to not screw up your life. but still create art. And all of the cards have some very whimsical titles to them. One of the goals in the game is a begrudging, your parents' begrudging acceptance of your new life. That's worth victory points right there.