12 more great games from 2025

As we round out January, I’d like to wrap up with some of my favorite games from 2025 — the ones that don’t happen to be trick-taking games or cooperative games, at least. And apologies for the lateness of this one; I found myself under the weather last week, so I just didn’t wrap it up.

The games here aren’t particularly deep or strategic, but they’re games I enjoyed all the same. We’ll kind of breeze through a lot of these.

Magical Athlete (Garfield and Ishida, 2025) is a roll-and-move race where your choices are made almost entirely before the race event starts — and you know, it works far better than it has any business. I should spend some time deconstructing that, but if I had to wager an early guess: It’s the magical powers. Each of them changes the game in a significant way, and your role is to decide which four you’ll use throughout the game. Winning doesn’t reflect on your skill. That’s a feature we’ve seen in games for so long, but it so rarely makes for a fun modern game.

What makes it work? Is it the illustrations, which are evocative in a 1970s style (if you’re thinking about Schoolhouse Rock as you play, you’re right on track)? Absolutely, but it’s not just that. Is it the wild powers that influence the game in weird ways? Absolutely, but again, it’s not just that. There’s an overriding sense that there’s joy in play here, and it keeps me coming back.

Designed by Takashi Ishida and Richard Garfield, illustrated by Angela Kirkwood, and published by CMYK.

Hot Streak (Perry, 2025) is another racing game from the same publisher as Magical Athlete, but unlike that one, you’re not playing as a racer — you’re playing as a degenerate gambler placing wagers on the race. And the race? It’s a mascot race. If you’ve been to many pro sports games, you know the type — somebody gets all the local team mascots involved, often for some charitable endeavor, and they engage in one of the weirdest races you’ve ever seen. The mascots are falling down, they’re running into each other, and they’re generally just not racing particularly well. Somebody wins and celebrates rambunctiously, like a cartoon villain or a classic wrestling heel.

Hot Streak is just that, and it’s wrapped up in one of the best racing board game packages I’ve played. You’ll be drafting bets on racers and placing side bets on specific occurrences within the race, which is well enough, but it all hinges on one big thing. See, the racers aren’t just moving by die roll; they’re moving by a subset of cards from the deck, and only that subset of cards will be used throughout the whole game. You’ll get to see those cards at the beginning of the game. And that’s all well and good, and it can give you plenty of room to strategically bet, but all of that itself is underpinned by one more thing: You have a hand of cards, and each round, you get to add one card to the pool about which only you know. That means you’re placing your bets based on some special knowledge you’re holding, but so is everyone else. It gives the game more significant depth, some mystery, and a capacity for real surprise when something happens.

Designed by Jon Perry, illustrated by Cécile Gariépy, and published by CMYK.

Wriggle Roulette (Faidutti and Sasaki, 2025) is a dead-simple bluffing game where you’re grabbing some of wriggling little things (they’re made of wood; they’re not actually wriggling — don’t worry!) from a bag, and you’ll try to ensure that you’re not grabbing too many snakes and grabbing plenty of eels. Eels are points, snakes are not, and if there are too many snakes around the table, the round ends, and the player who’s grabbed the most won’t get any points. If you’re happy with the eels you’ve already grabbed, you’re welcome to drop out, but there’s a constant negotiation you’re having to make with your own greedy self.

Designed by Bruno Faidutti and Jun Sasaki, illustrated by Jun Sasaki, and published by Oink Games.

First-Class Letters (Hayward, 2025) is a breezy word-spelling game with four dice rolled each round, one of which is a letter that can’t be used in the word you spell for the round. The other three are letters that must be in the word you spell. Straightforward enough, right? You’ll get points for having more instances of those three letters, and you’ll double your score if you use each of the three letters, so you’ll want to spend a little time thinking. The big hurdle: Your word list across the game has to be in alphabetical order in order to score maximum points; otherwise, you’ll have to remove words until your list is in alphabetical order. Rough.

Designed by Peter C. Hayward, illustrated by Migy Blanco, and published by GameHead.

Railroad Tiles (Hach and Silva, 2025) is, if I’m allowed to be slightly inaccurate, a tile-driven take on one of my favorite roll-and-write games, Railroad Ink (Hach and Silva, 2018). It’s not just that, of course. There’s more nuance. You’re drafting tiles, placing them in the map you’re building, and scoring points for travelers. As you’d expect from Railroad Ink, there’s a ton of expansion content; similarly, I’m not sure it’s all necessary — the base game has a nice amount of depth and is pretty approachable. The game itself is a little less breezy (and 100% less portable) than its predecessor, but there’s still a great game to explore here.

Designed by Hjalmar Hach and Lorenzo Silva, illustrated by Francesco De Benedittis and Marta Tranquilli, and published by Horrible Guild.

Seven more great games from 2025

• Gazebo (Knizia, 2025) is an abstract strategy game where you’re drawing two-color dominoes, placing them on a board, and claiming patios.
• Oddland (Schumacher, 2025) is a tile-placement game where you’re placing overlapping terrain cards to score points for specific terrain patterns.
• Llama Llama (Miyano, 2025) is a quick-playing card game where you’re passing cards around the table in an effort to get cards that’ll result in a good scoring opportunity. It’s simple, but it’s effective.
• Tearable Quest (Ono, 2025) is a game where each player gets a sheet of paper that they’re going to tear into little pieces with remarkable precision. Or at least they’ll try, and they’ll probably fail, and that’ll be funny.
• Pick ’n Packers (Arishima, 2025) is wild. It’s a dexterity game where you’re playing with each of your neighbors at various times, and you’re trying to lift a little platform with tiny gifts on it, and you can use just a single finger. I’m so bad at this game.
• Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor (Kosch, 2025) is a nice update on the well-regarded Forest Shuffle (Kosch, 2023), and I think I may just prefer it to the original — there’s some more variety in what you can place, adding in moors and plants that thrive there.
• Twinkle Twinle (Anderson, 2025) is a space-themed pattern building and tile placement game. It’s a bit mechanical, but I think it works nicely.