Gen Con 2024 Review
Table of Contents
Another year, another Gen Con! I think if I had to classify this year, it’d be a Small Game Year for me: I picked up a few big boxes, but many of the stand-out games were smaller, less expensive titles. It certainly made packing my bags on the way back a bit easier!
Heading into the convention, I had a curiously shorter list of games to demo than in previous years, but the upshot of that is I got much farther through it than I do most years. I don’t think my shorter list is indicative of any real trend in the available games—there were still plenty of great games this year—but it may reflect my changing tastes or growing collection (i.e., with more games on the shelf, it’s more likely a new game duplicates something I already own).
My favorite new games⌗
As usual, this list is only games that released since last year’s Gen Con, and that I played at this year’s Gen Con. I’ll comment on games that don’t quite fit both of those criteria in another section.
1. The Gang⌗
Publisher: KOSMOS
Links: BoardGameGeek
The Gang was this year’s runaway favorite among my group. It’s most succinctly described as “cooperative Texas Hold’em”, but that may fail to express the magic of this game. If it sounds even remotely interesting to you, buy it. Don’t hesitate. It’s already paid back the $15 I spent on it and then some.
Unlike normal Hold’em, instead of trying to convince the table that your hand is the highest, here you’re trying as a group to accurately order all the hands at the table, using a clever set of communication limits centered around a set of numbered chips. You’ll guess the relative strengths of hands after each step (initial deal, flop, turn, river), but only the last one matters for scoring. The first three guessing rounds help you get a sense of how a player’s hand has evolved in a similar way as betting rounds in classic Hold’em.
The Gang is
- Short enough that when you’re done, someone will just start dealing out the next hand without asking. The loop is tight and fun, and it’s easy to just keep going.
- Simple to explain. It leans so heavily on Texas Hold’em that if you’re playing with a group that’s passingly familiar with the structure of a Hold’em hand, you can be playing your first round inside of 2 minutes. That is not an exaggeration.
- Extremely portable. The box is already small, but for playing the base game, all you really need is a standard poker deck and the 24 poker chips used for ranking hands. It needs almost no table space; in fact, less space is probably better.
And if you need one more bit of praise to push you over the edge, the first time I sat down to play this game with 4 friends in a hotel room, the other people in the room had to ask us to quiet down.
2. Trio⌗
Publisher: Happy Camper
Links: BoardGameGeek
(I’m stretching the rules a bit here since this game’s been available in several different versions outside the US for a little while, but this is the first I’ve seen of it here.)
Trio is a memory game about trying to find 3 sets of 3 cards among players' hands and some common cards in the middle of the table. It’s abstract enough and simple enough (teaches in minutes, only components are a deck of 36 cards) that it feels like it could’ve been invented a century ago. A modern classic, in some sense! Happy Camper’s version is beautifully designed. I bought it after playing a friend’s copy because it feels like the kind of game you can get the whole family to play, it plays well in an airport1, and it works well with 3 players. I’m always on the lookout for any games that can fill all of those niches.
3. Mycelia⌗
Publisher: Split Stone Games
Links: BoardGameGeek
(Not to be confused with Ravensberger’s 2023 game of the same name, which I’m sure is lovely but I haven’t played.)
Mycelia is a beautifully illustrated mushroom-themed area control game with light engine building and open drafting. There’s some player interaction (other players can block your movement, or even use your spores to grow their mushrooms under certain conditions), but a lot of it seemed to come from space constraints, which naturally relax as the board grows. It reminds me of Wingspan in terms of flavor and atmosphere, but with simpler engines and all on a shared board.
4. Tír na nÓg⌗
Publisher: Grand Gamers Guild
Links: BoardGameGeek
Tír na nÓg is a drafting and set collection game themed heavily on Irish folklore. Mechanically, it has a unique spin on drafting (you claim adjacent pairs of cards from a grid, then pick individual cards from each pair) and scoring sets (you play cards into a tableau where each row scores differently), but it may not be different enough for every shelf.
For me, though: game is gorgeous and fun, and I want to own it. I ended up buying it online because it sold out super quickly at the con.
Games I bought but haven’t played yet⌗
The eagle-eyed among you may have noticed some shrink-wrap in the photo up above; every year I end up picking up some more speculative games. Sometimes a game is just cheap enough that I’m okay being wrong about it, and sometimes I’ve just heard enough good things that I’m comfortable with the risk.
Arcs⌗
Publisher: Leder Games
Links: BoardGameGeek
The buzz around Arcs has been loud and consistent. I picked this up on the strength of those reviews, plus the experience of some of my friends who got in on the Kickstarter.
It’s an area control/galactic conquest game with a trick-taking game jammed into it. It’s got that charming Kyle Ferrin art. It’s mostly symmetrical by default, but has a variable player power option packed into the base game to add variety. I’m excited to get in a few sessions2 of this!
Parks: Roll & Hike⌗
Publisher: Keymaster Games
Links: BoardGameGeek
I do enjoy a roll and write, and the components of this game were just too sweet to ignore. The rulebook is a park guide! The sheets are in little stitched field journals! The included pencils say, “Remember the Journey,” and the eraser says, “Forget your Mistakes”! Just too cute. They got me.
Dark Tomb⌗
Publisher: Kozz Games
Links: The Crypts of Aurelian (BGG) // Bloodthorn Island (BGG)
Dark Tomb is a series of tiny multi-stage dungeon crawlers that fit in little tins. I’m a sucker for a mint tin game (or really any small game with an extreme economy of components), and these even have inserts for organizing the bits! I picked up both adventures, and I’m hoping to try them soon.
Compile⌗
Publisher: Greater Than Games
Links: BoardGameGeek
I was originally turned off of this game by the name and theme (too much computer-y technobable can do that for me), but a few of my friends bought it after a demo in the expo hall. I heard good things from them, and apparently one of the design goals was “every turn of Compile should feel like some of the best turns in Magic.” I have no idea how well it delivers on that promise, but that was compelling enough to separate me from $20.
Plus, the box is cool-looking and fits sleeved cards.
Dro Polter⌗
Publisher: Oink Games
Links: BoardGameGeek
Bought this one on a whim while picking up Moving Wild from the Oink Games booth. I’m a big enough fan of Oink that my bar for buying one of their games is pretty low. Dro Polter looked like a cute, simple little dexterity game, but after reading the rules I noticed one little detail that grabbed me: points are represented by little bells, and you have to keep them in your hand while playing the game! If you drop one of your bells, you lose that point! Incredibly charming.
Games I wish I’d tried out (and still want to!)⌗
There’s never enough time for all the demos! Fortunately this year there were only a few games I feel like I missed out on.
Gnome Hollow⌗
Publisher: The Op games
Links: BoardGameGeek
The concept of a worker placement game where you build out a board out of hex tiles and expand the set of work sites in the process is intriguing, and it was definitely a popular game this year! But the expo hall demos were ticketed events, and I prefer my Gen Con demos not to require specific scheduling.
Mistborn Deckbuilding Game⌗
Publisher: Brotherwise Games
Links: BoardGameGeek
The designer in me is somewhat interested in how they render the magic system of Mistborn into a resource system in a deck-building game, but I never got a spare moment to run by the room where they were doing demos.
Kickstarters I’m excited for⌗
A short, unordered list of the games I checked out that aren’t available yet. I’m not 100% sure I’m jumping on all of these, but I’ll definitely be looking up early reviews and play videos when they launch.
Defenders of the Dictionary⌗
Publisher: Adam’s Apple Games
Links: BoardGameGeek // prelaunch
Cooperative Scrabble as a legacy-style campaign. Will it be good? No idea, but it’s certainly a unique and interesting concept.
Clandestine⌗
Publisher: Brookspun Games
Links: BoardGameGeek // mailing list signup
I talked about this last year, but their Kickstarter still hasn’t launched. Fingers crossed for their current target of Fall 2024.
Other games of note⌗
Landmarks⌗
Publisher: Floodgate Games
Links: BoardGameGeek
A new twist on the cooperative word guessing genre: the player giving clues is trying to use those clues to guide the other players across a map. It’s fun, and I picked it up because my shelf has room for multiple variations on that theme, but for me it’s never going to displace Codenames or So Clover or Just One.
Gun It!⌗
Publisher: Randy O Games (self-published)
Links: BoardGameGeek
A frantic game of hopping in a getaway car and, well, gunning it! I didn’t get a chance to play this myself, but a few of my friends got to try out a demo copy in BGG’s Hot Games Room and even happened to get an intro by the game’s designer. They loved it, so I’ll have my eye out for when it releases (estimate is currently 2025).
Flock Together⌗
Publisher: Sea Cow Games
Links: BoardGameGeek
Flock Together is a co-op PVE survival game. The players are all chickens whose farmer has died, and they must take the continued survival of their flock into their own hands. Unlike some other similar games, the predators in Flock Together don’t attack unless you hit them first. Instead, the pressure comes from a turn timer: defeat 4 boss predators before 3 seasons have elapsed, and you win.
The magic here is in the execution of the theme, the characters, and the art. Every character (including the bosses) can level up and is represented by a small book with each level on a new page. Chicken puns abound—the pawns are “cheeples”, characters include Annie Yolkley and Wyatt Chirp. If the theme appeals to you, I think it’s a clear buy.
Dungeon Kart⌗
Publisher: Brotherwise Games
Links: BoardGameGeek
Dungeon Kart is to the racing game genre as the Mario Kart series is to… uhh… the racing game genre. Visually, it’s clearly a loving tribute to Mario Kart 64, and I think it captures the arcade racing feel quite well, once you get into it. The first few turns are a bit awkward and confusing, but after you learn the game’s language the turns start to flow better. The killer feature for me is the spellbook mechanic (this game’s answer to Mario Kart’s items), which like its inspiration scale up sharply in power as you fall behind the first place kart.
Ultimately I decided not to buy Dungeon Kart. While it’s good fun, the box is large, the footprint is large, the setup is long, and there’s a lot of things to track. It’s all a lot of effort, and I think that effort will mostly pay off for people who play it more often than I would personally expect to.
Food⌗
I generally enjoy the food trucks in the Gen Con Block Party area, but for ages now I’ve been mostly keeping to the old standards, trying a few new ones each year. Well this year I found a new favorite, Lumpia Queen.
It’s rare that one of the trucks impresses me this much. The food was great, and even with a line it was fast. Gen Con is a serious test of a food truck’s capacity and throughput, and Lumpia Queen passed that test and then some.
Looking now, it seems like they’re based in Dayton, OH, so Indy was certainly a hike for them. I hope we made that trip worth it, and I hope they make it back next year! They’ll be a new staple for me.