Note: This article covers my most played board games played from December 22nd, 2023 to December 22nd, 2024. Any games played after this date aren’t included in this review.
Introduction
This year has been quite an interesting one. While I mainly focus on solo games on my page and will be sharing my top 20 solo games of the year later. I wanted to dedicate some space to the games I played the most. These aren’t necessarily the games I like the most, and they aren’t all solo games, but I think they deserve some attention.
For many of these games, my plays came from the board game club, where I obviously don’t play solo games, and from Board Game Arena. So consider this my top non-solo games list, ordered by play count.
I should note that I play a lot of games throughout the year. It’s my hobby and something that gives me a lot of joy. I don’t think anyone should necessarily play this many games, but when you do, you start to get a good feeling for what you like and don’t like.
This list gives a very clear picture of what I like as a gamer versus what I like as someone in a social setting. As I’ve found those two can be very different and impact the games I choose for certain situations. But let’s get into it, because that’s the most fun.
The Games
1. Disney Lorcana
First off, we have Disney Lorcana, a collectible card game featuring Disney characters. You play as an Illumineer who summons Disney characters using ink. You spend your ink to play cards and use them. While it’s obviously a TCG (trading card game), it’s more accessible because it’s just starting out and has that cute Disney theme. For me, as someone who had never played a trading card game before, it was a perfect starting point to get into the genre without feeling overwhelmed by the community and everything.
At our board game club, we have dedicated Magic players who play every week, with tournaments and all kinds of different play styles. I was always a bit too intimidated to start with Magic as my first TCG. With Disney Lorcana, I was able to get in right as it was starting out. Making it easy to learn alongside other people at our club who were at the same level. We did a lot of sealed and draft tournaments, which I enjoy the most since I don’t have an extensive collection and don’t want to buy single cards to build the perfect deck.
I still play now, but after that first excitement of getting into a new system, I’ve noticed it takes up a lot of time – both playing tournaments and studying different card combinations and the current meta. For me, that’s a bit too time-intensive, so I just do a sealed or draft every now and then. It’s fun, I can expand my collection, and I still enjoy playing, but it’s tapering down because I can’t keep up with what other players are doing. That’s definitely a me problem though – the game itself is good, really pretty, and easily accessible. If you want to get into trading card games, it’s definitely a good option.
2. My City Roll and Write
My City Roll and Write is a dice version of the legacy game My City. You use dice to build your city on a personal sheet, marking buildings and scoring points. It has a mini campaign you play through with multiple sheets, one after the other. I started playing it on Board Game Arena, which was perfect because you can play it between other games. You can just look at the board state and decide where to place your buildings. After enjoying it online, I got the physical game and now enjoy it as a solo game too. You can play through the whole mini campaign, a few games at a time, and it’s just a relaxing game you can pick up anytime. It works great as a filler solo game.
3. Harmonies
Harmonies is quite a new game that generated a lot of buzz. It’s a game where you build landscapes by placing coloured wooden discs and create habitats for animals. You have habitat cards that you need to match, placing cubes to mark them. The challenge comes from thinking carefully about how you build your habitats and where you place your cubes to fulfil as many habitats as possible.
While it’s a gorgeous game, and many people compare it to Cascadia because of the shared themes of animals, colors, and habitat-building, I think I’ve played it too much in a short time. After lots of plays on Board Game Arena, I’ve noticed that certain strategies really work and others really don’t. If you get cards that align with working strategies, you’re fine, but if you don’t, it becomes very difficult. There’s also quite a bit of luck involved with token draws. In one recent game, we didn’t see a single pink disc until the final few turns, which made it impossible to complete several of my objectives.
For me, Harmonies is on the way down. I’d rather play Cascadia at this point. While it’s still a beautiful game that I’ll occasionally enjoy, playing it intensively has shown me it’s not the game for that kind of frequent play (for me).
4. Earth
Earth is a card-based game about building an ecosystem where you create habitats and chain together combinations of plants, trees and terrain. You’re building your ecosystem through beautiful artwork and components, creating an interesting engine with cards of different colours that activate when you trigger that colour.
This is just the kind of game that challenges me without overwhelming me. It’s perfect for playing at the end of the day when I want something relaxing and enjoyable, but that will still challenge me to think carefully about what I’m doing and how I’m doing it. This is especially true for the solo mode, which ramps up pretty quickly and can be really difficult to master. That’s exactly the kind of challenge I enjoy. I’ve also played it on Board Game Arena and really enjoyed it there too. While it works perfectly online, there’s something special about having it on the table and physically building up your trees higher and higher – that’s just fun to look at.
5. Lost Ruins of Arnak
Lost Ruins of Arnak remains one of those games that I just really enjoy. It’s a deck-building and worker placement game where you’re exploring and researching an ancient civilization. You have to manage resources, buy cards, send your workers out to discover artifacts, and overcome guardians. It combines a lot of different mechanisms, and there’s just something about this game that keeps pulling me back in.
I know there are certain strategies that work better – like the importance of going up the research track – but even knowing these optimal strategies, I still really enjoy the game. I think it looks beautiful, and everything works together so well that you always have an enjoyable experience. The campaign that you can play solo is wonderful and really makes you want to play another game right away. I think overall this game just still works. It’s been years of me loving this game, so I don’t think it’s going anywhere.
6. Archeologic
Archeologic is a fairly new game for me. It’s a competitive deduction game where you have to find the exact location of buildings in a city using polyominoes on a grid. You need to figure out where every polyomino is on that grid by using a dial to research certain truths. It works similarly to Turing Machine, and I really like the puzzly nature of this game.
It’s really a pure puzzle. When you get everything right and can solve it in just a few turns, it’s so satisfying. You have to figure out everything about every little symbol and polyomino tile and how they work together. You think, “Okay, if I put that one on the left side, then I need to put that one in the middle. Then I have a few that can go on the right side, but oh, that one cannot go there, so it must be there.” The pure brain power needed to figure this out is just a lot of fun for me. I really enjoy pulling this out when I want to feel properly challenged.
7. Dutch Resistance Orange Shall Overcome
Dutch Resistance Orange Shall Overcome is a cooperative board game set during World War II. You take on roles in the Dutch Resistance fighting against the Nazi occupation in the Netherlands. Being Dutch myself, it’s obviously fun to see names and places and themes that I’m familiar with. But I also think it’s just a really good game.
We got it at Spiel in ’23, and we decided to take our time and play through all the missions. Sometimes doing a mission two or three times. We’re really enjoying the game both from a gameplay point of view and from a historical perspective. I haven’t tried it solo yet, and I’m curious what that would be like. But as a multiplayer game where you have to work together to save people, smuggle things, and tackle different scenarios, everything just clicks. It’s a historically accurate game that really teaches you about how this all worked. I think the designer deserves real props for how they made this game.
8. Feed the Kraken
The last game is Feed the Kraken, which is a hidden role game where you’re either a pirate, a cultist, or a sailor. It’s social deduction where you have to try to steer the ship toward your goal while also finding out what the other players are. The cultists want to be fed to the kraken so they can win that way. What makes this special is that it’s social deduction with a board and really clear instructions that help you get to the social deduction part of the game.
It’s a great introduction to social deduction games, which is exactly how we use it at our board game club. So it gets played a lot, and we have a lot of fun with it. It’s not overly long or complex, but there are still plenty of laughs and fun trying to figure everything out. This is the kind of social deduction game that convinced me that social deduction games can be fun. It definitely deserves all the praise for doing that, and I think it will be played a lot more in the year to come.
Conclusion
So those are the games I played the most this year. They aren’t necessarily the games I might rate the highest, but they are the games that get to the table a lot. I think that says something about these games, about their replayability and the enjoyment you can get from them.
Stay tuned for my upcoming article about my real top 20 solo games. The ones I would say are the best, not necessarily the most played.
And of course a shout out to Gamers.Online for connecting me with people to play all of these games with!
