My Favourites 2024 Edition

2024 has been a rough year for the world overall, one can only look towards 2025 and hope things may trend better. However, in the world of games we've had a fantastic year, with not one, but two expansions from Adam Poots Games. While the Black Knight expansion is easily my preferred expansion of the two, both it and the Frogdog show a huge amount of growth and maturity in respect to game design. However, here in this look back at the year I want to write about other board games and video games that have caught my eye and stood up enough to be something I want to write about.

Before that, for those of you who are not familiar with it, I am a lifelong player of Magic: The Gathering, its high level of complexity and competitive nature has been a large boon when it comes to playing other card and board games and it's helped me understand the things I enjoy most with games. Complex interactions that synergise together to form a stronger whole than all of its parts. Magic is why I continue to tout the Gear Grid as being the single mechanic that really keeps Kingdom Death standing up in an ever increasing sub-genre. Boss Battlers are becoming a mainstream thing; but continuously the designs of these games fail to adopt the strongest player mechanic. I should probably write an article about that one sometime soon.

Anyway, 2024 for Magic was an incredibly tumultuous time, with high profile cards like The One Ring eating a ban in modern and Modern Horizons 3 upended the entire Modern format and killed a lot of the traditional decks in that format. The largest stain on the game in 2024 however was not caused by Wizards of the Coast (WotC) directly; instead it was the Magic community at large that collectively soiled each other's pants back in autumn. The Commander Rules Committee announced a ban of three specific cards; Dockside Extortionist, Mana Crypt and Jeweled Lotus. These three cards all have two key elements in common, they generate a burst of one time mana. Secondly they also got such a poor amount of reprinting that their prices could reach triple digits in euros.

The banning of these cards, which were frankly overdue, caused a massive backlash from a large amount of players. The players affected included those who had spent a lot of money on the secondary market to help power up their decks, the "mtgfinance" community who looked upon Magic's crazy secondary market prices as a form of investment and players of the Commander format itself who had their pet decks potentially get multiple cards banned out of them with the cards themselves devaluing a fair bit. It was a bad situation, but not one that at all deserved the horrendous reactions that came from some sectors of the community. Threats were issued, personal details of the committee members was leaked and things got so bad that the format, which was a community owned and run format was handed over to WotC directly. It was absolutely horrendous and something I hope never happens to the Kingdom Death community. Games becoming a form of finance or financial security is not something one wants to see, ultimately these things are made from materials that are easily damaged and do not last the ages such as cardboard (Everything from Chip Theory Games excluded here).

On top of all that, we're facing a world where "Universes Beyond" is going to be fully 50% of the main releases in 2025 and the themes of these sets are frankly crazy regardless if they're in universe or not. We know what 5 of the 6 sets are and they're Magic in the Wacky Races, returning to Tarkir, Final Fantasy, Magic in Space, Marvel Spider-Man and a final currently unannounced Universes Beyond product. Out of all those sets, only Tarkir feels like a traditional Magic set and I'm not super excited about it all. While my brother is a massive Final Fantasy nerd, I don't much care for it, but as someone who plays Magic Arena a few times a week, I'm going to have to play against (and probably with) these cards and I'm not super excited about that. I do feel a little bit of a hypocrite though, but I am excited about the Spider-Man stuff and will probably build a Spider-Man cube. It's complicated and not entirely full of negatives, however I do find myself wishing that WotC could manage to release cards like this into the public without having to put them into their main competitive formats. Thing is, they don't sell if they're not legal in those places and money talks at Hasbro.

But, that is enough waffling about Magic, let us get onto some other games, starting with a few Video Games of note.

Menace from the Deep

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2644610/Menace_from_the_Deep/

This Mythos themed deck builder has proven to be a game with a lot of staying power for myself. It wears its Slay the Spire inspiration on its sleeve, and in order to not simply be a direct clone mixes things up not just thematically but also thematically. There's three classes with multiple different starting decks (including a draft to pick your starting deck) and cards level up by using them during the run. This creates a great little mini-game where you're sometimes stalling a little bit in order to get a key card levelled up a bit faster. The game has multiple different playstyles, from rage orientated single target builds all the way across to being at the head of a small pack of minions.

It's not perfect however, there's some frustration where deck building is concerned, you are limited to the number of times you can say "No" to getting a new card into your deck and as anyone who's played these games will tell you, not over bloating your deck with a lack of focus is very important. Because removing cards from a deck also isn't super common, you do find that a playstyle where you avoid fights (the main place where you get cards) is a bit too strong.

However, between the fun story, ease of saving a run and coming back to it later, mechanics and the gorgeous style of the art and replayability I've found this one to come back to over and over.

Tarnished Blood

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2291700/Tarnished_Blood__Tactic_RPG/

Trigger Warning for this Game: SA

Currently on sale, this video game is one of the closest to Kingdom Death we've had while still holding its own identity. The game loop is a short six fight campaign where you level up a small settlement and its inhabitants by fighting against a selection of bosses. There are multiple different settlement types, each providing a different selection of gear and playstyles, and the bosses come in a few flavours plus some variations of those bosses.

However, the game is not just somewhat mature in its themes, it also has one plant boss that has an SA mechanic in it. I was caught off guard by this and I'm not thrilled that it is a part of the game even if it ends up being mechanically beneficial for the settlement as they gain more characters. There's also no way to turn this off, and while it's not visual and the text is easily skipped past I can't recommend this game to anyone who might be justifiably triggered by such an event. It was enough to get me to stop playing for a while, which is a shame because the rest of the game is fantastic. I hope there is a setting introduced to turn off that kind of content.

The game's combat mechanics though were enough to help me get past it (I "solved" the problem by never letting the event trigger during a fight again), you have a 2D vertical environment (as opposed to KDM's 2D horizontal environment) and characters move around by walking or making tremendously powerful jumps.

The real hook though is the game's time mechanic. You have a timeline on the bottom of the screen and you can scroll back and forth to see what happens on a given round. This will show you all of the boss's attacks, where they will happen and who will be hit by them. You can then select when you want a character to take a certain action (they usually have a move and an attack, but that can be different) and see how they will perform that move along with any consequences.

That makes the entire fight one that rewards planning, checking of decisions and is deeply strategic. You're not only deciding if you'll jump or walk, but you're also deciding how far, how high, what kind of jump and where/when you'll attack with each character. It's possible to navigate entire fights without anyone being hit and that's important because the characters are pretty fragile when compared to the monsters.

Damaging the monsters is also neat, each body part has its own separate pool of hit points and you need to reduce a set number of those to zero. This means you're not only positioning to avoid being damaged, you're also trying to time attacks to hit the right parts.

Add onto all of that the way that each weapon has their own mechanics and the crafted gear has a bunch of other implications and you've got a really tight game that feels very rewarding. It means a lot that despite my finding the one element of the game distasteful to the point that I want to mod it out of the game I am still recommending it here. It is not often I do that, last time was with Fear & Hunger and its sequel.

Aliens: Dark Descent

I've had this one for a while, but I ended up putting it down because of frustration during the tutorial mission. It has a stealth section with an auto-death mechanic that made me drop the game. However, I've always loved the Aliens universe, especially the stuff with Colonial Marines, so this year I gravitated back towards the game, read about how to get past that section in the tutorial and discovered that the rest of the game is nothing like that one terrible bit. While there is stealth in the game, it's not 'get spotted and you're dead', so much so that I think the game is let down by including that segment in the opening tutorial mission. This isn't isometric Alien Isolation.

The game has you take charge of a squad of Colonial Marines from a pool of options, you'll deploy them to different sites on a planet where they have various objectives to complete. During these missions there will be Xenomorphs out patrolling, and being stealthy to avoid them is a key mechanic because too many encounters with the xenomorphs will result in the hive attacking you with a large wave of them. This is a much better Stealth mechanic, you're punished for being spotted, but it's not an immediate game over situation.

There are multiple different classes of marines, different weapons, abilities and you can follow different routes to develop your technology. Yeah it's got a settlement phase and a mission phase, something I click with, but somehow this is more gripping than the various X-Com games I've encountered before. I think maybe part of it is you have this 'leave whenever you want' element to the missions. If things are getting too hot you can usually duck out, get back to the APC and come back to the mission later. That feels really nice, it's good to get as much done as possible during a mission, but you can withdraw and regroup if you need to.

Add onto that things like stress, abductions and all of the classic Aliens elements and you've got a game which not only impressed me, but also helped me develop my Kingdom Death perspective even further.

Oxenfree

https://store.steampowered.com/app/388880/Oxenfree/

New to me in 2024 and currently available for 3.90 euros; this adventure game has a group of teenagers arrive on an island for an overnight camping trip only for things to take a left turn. I won't go into the plot much for this one because I really think it's a story that is at its best when you experience it fresh. So instead I'll simply say that if you enjoy a good mystery with suspense and danger then there's a lot to love here.

One of the best parts of the game for myself is the characters, these all are superbly voice acted and feel like a real teen friend group, there's tension between some of them and it is a joy to see how their relationships unfold based on the events of the game and the actions you do (or don't) take during it. There's a sequel to the game that's been out for a while and I'm looking forward to playing that one next year.

Board Games

We've been spoiled for board games this year with some really great games coming out. I've already written about Primal: The Awakening here and it remains one of the best games I've played this year, so I won't be putting that on this list because it's already had its praises sung to the high rafters. Instead I'm using this to go through a few other games that helped me stay focused and hopeful while my health was struggling.

Slay the Spire

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/338960/slay-the-spire-the-board-game

This is already a critical darling of a board game, but I want to join in and add my praises for the game also. This is an absolutely fantastic adaptation of a digital card game which honestly manages to justify its existence. While it is quite faithful to the original, the changes in the medium along with the expansion of the game to allow up to four players to work together to slay that titular spire makes the game stand up on its own.

The single most delightful part is how each player has their own row of enemies attacking them in an encounter, but you can deal damage to any enemy you like. You can concentrate down your own threats, or you can work together by focusing specific threatening targets. This encourages a collaborative team environment with each player focusing on a particular role depending on what class they've picked and what cards they have gained along the way. Single Damage, AoE Damage, Defense/Tanking, Support or Flex there's a bunch of different ways to play.

On top of that, the game maintains the multiple act structure, has a number of unlocks in a pseudo legacy style, has achievements to aim for during plan and has included the Ascension mode of gradually increasing difficulty and you've got a deck building experience that can be customised to suit your preferences and skills.

I haven't had this one for long, but it is already one that has stuck with me and I think I'll be playing it a lot in the coming year.

Spots

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/372559/spots

I'm super primed to like Spots as I enjoy a good dice game and own a doggo. Spots still managed to exceed my expectations as the best filler game we played all year. At its heart you're simply trying to complete six dog cards by putting matching dice on their spaces, you start with two dog cards and can gain more via completing them or through taking an action to draw an extra one from a face up stack.

Spots has all of the classic elements of a dice game, there's a risk of going 'bust' if you roll badly and that will lose all of your dice, meaning any dogs you had partially completed would get reset to zero. Also there's rolling six sided dice and having rerolls, but you're limited in rerolls by the number of treat tokens you have to spend, and you don't roll a set number of dice each turn. Instead you choose a dog trick like "Beg" or "Roll Over" and perform the actions listed on them, this could be as simple as 'roll two dice and after that is completed you may roll one more dice' or it could be something more complicated like choosing between 3 and 12 dice, then rolling that entire set one at a time, only stopping once you've rolled all of those dice or you have unspent rolls equal to the number of [Paw Icon] dogs you have.

There's a recommended set of six starting actions and once an action is picked no-one else can use it until it's flipped back up (which happens when there's only one action left unselected) and if Spots only included those six actions then I probably wouldn't be thinking much about it here at the end of the year. However, four of the six actions can be different each game, with a bunch of recommended combinations provided in the book, but you can also randomize each option at the start of the game. Changing actions really changes the texture of the game and alters the decisions you have to make each game a lot. It's a very impressive "Yahtzee" variant and there's a lot more bite in this game than the cute art would suggest initially.

Arkham Horror: The Feast of Hemlock Vale

When renowned botanist Dr. Rosa Marquez receives a strange sample from the secluded and mysterious Hemlock Isle, her instincts tell her that something is amiss. Following the recommendation of an old colleague, she invites the investigators to join her on a survey of the island. Nothing could prepare them for what they find: deadly, mutated wildlife and a strange, malignant presence permeate the isle, all while the local residents prepare for a festival, seemingly unaware of the danger. The investigators only have three days to find out what lurks beneath Hemlock Vale before its people meet a terrible fate. -- Campaign Blurb

Scarlet Keys (the previous campaign before this one) was a bit of a disappointment for me. It seemed to offer a large, globe-trotting adventure that promised in the way that Eldritch Horror delivers. But when playing it, there's a lot of reading paragraphs from a book, which was one of the weakest parts of Edge of the Earth before it.

Hemlock Vale took another stab at giving players more freedom, with a range of different places to go to for missions. The key change is that instead of turning up somewhere, reading for a few minutes and then going somewhere else; every place lead to a mission and you'd go to all the places. The change was the order in which you'd encounter them, and there is a bunch of different impacts involved in this one.

In short Hemlock Vale manages to feel closer to a sandbox than the Scarlet Keys before it despite it having a more limited environment. The people and places in this campaign have sat with me a lot longer than many who came before and while the final scenario is maybe a smidge too difficult, it's an epic experience regardless.

I do think that the investigator side of this release doesn't perform as well as the campaign does. A lot of the investigators feel a bit weak when compared to previous ones, but the player cards that go in decks include some amazing options, especially the growth that the cursed/blessed strategies gain here.

Arkham Horror: The Living Card Game remains one of my favourite cooperative experiences and Feast of Hemlock Vale has me super excited for 2025s "The Drowned City" which looks to be an incredibly impactful release.

Honorable Mentions

There are a lot more words here than I intended to write originally, so I'll just briefly mention other board games I played this year which I enjoyed. Marvel Champions: Age of Apocalypse was a fantastic capstone to the X-Men arc of the game. Ark Nova continues to be one of the best tableau building games I've played since Race for the Galaxy. Dorfromantik is the cosiest group puzzle I've ever played and I'm picking up Dorfromantik: Sakura next month hopefully because of how good the original was. Freedom Five is an amazing reimplementation of Defenders of the Realm and I hope to at least talk about it at length on The Last Standee and maybe even write about it some time in 2025. I continue to play Fleet: The Dice Game, Cartographers and Roll Players here and there. Each of those games has proven to stand the test of time.

Finally Earthborne Rangers has an absolutely incredible set of systems which show such potential for creating incredible experiences. It didn't get its own entry here though because the core campaign was a bit rough and frustrating in spots. However, I am SUPER excited for the upcoming expansion, it can only grow from this point and I am confident it will overshadow its big tentacled brother Arkham Horror: LCG eventually because Earthborne Rangers' way of depicting the world the players are moving through is nothing short of amazing. I am confident this game will become one of my top campaign games and in any other year it would have got its own entry in this list.

Also final shout out to vanilla Kingdom Death, I've been replaying that with Justin on Playing Board Games (as I'm sure you're all aware) and it's been a delight to experience the game afresh and new with someone who's so enthusiastic about it all (and good at games).