The Hungry Gamer's Game of the Year Nominees 2024

0:00 ooh that looks tasty welcome folks today the hunger gamer is back with my nominees for Game of the Year 2024 also in addition to that I'm going to announce my honorable mentions for game of the year and I'm also going to announce right now my expansion of the Year winner and honorable mention because there wasn't much competition as far as I'm concerned for expansion of the year and pretending like I need to play all of them again is No I don't need to but before I jump into to what these are first of all it's very important know that every single person who is nominated is going to get this amazing seal sent to them to do whatever they want with I mean isn't that just gorgeous but when I come back and I announce the winner the winner is going to get this one which is even more amazing and as a reminder or if you've never watched one of these before the way I do my game of the year is my year goes actually from about November 15 to November 15 and that's because in November which we are still barely in I like to announce my nominees and then I take pretty much all the rest of November and all of December to replay those games so I can rank them because

1:30 if I don't do it that way what happens is there's kind of an end of the year bias games that showed up later in the year I've probably been playing more recently because they just showed up well games that arrived early in the year I may love but they may just kind of be on the back burner for the moment so I found that this kind of works the best for me the next thing I'm going to say is unlike most of my review videos where I really try very hard to talk about what works and what doesn't work in my opinion about a game even if I don't love the game there's lots of games that I have reviewed very very favorably because they're doing really cool stuff is just not for me personally but I don't know I'm not so arrogant to think that you're watching this just because you want to play exactly what I like rather because you want to learn about a game and see if it's right for you so that's how I do my reviews but for this this is literally my favorite games I've played period And so that does kind of lock out a lot of types of games a historical war game is probably never going to be on my game of the year list I'm not going to say it can't happen but it probably won't because historics really aren't my jam same thing with direct card Battlers are probably not going to be on my game of the year Rolland rights are probably not going to be on my game of the year doesn't mean it can't happen but probably not the same thing with really light games and really heavy games while I like light games I like heavy games in

3:01 general for me it's kind of that board game geek 2.3 to like 3.5 somewhere in there like that's pretty much my sweet spot and what I like medium really mediumweight games medium light medium heavy you know sometimes a light heavy kind of in there but games that are really light probably aren't going to make the list same thing with games that are really heavy so with that said I want to jump right in and talk about expansion of the year so there's three games I want to talk about here and first I'm going to give you my honorable mention expansion of the Year and that is bullet Paul and the reason that this is an honorable mention is because this is not an expansion that for me changes the game changes the way the game is played in any way it's a more of the same expansion but it's just really good just it's really good and it it just it sings it's a great expansion I adore it I adore the cats doing cat stuff and it's great it's a wonderful expansion so bullet paw is my expansion of the Year honorable mention and they're going to get this amazing seal which is incredible then I actually for the first time since my first game of the year video I actually have a tie I actually have two games two expansions I should say that are expansion of the Year for

4:33 me and they're going to get this amazing seal and in no particular order the first one is distilled Cask strength this is a tiny single small box deck of cards that updates a few of the ingredients you have but it adds this market and it just takes a game that I like a lot I think distilled is as Sol of a game as you can get I will never say no to playing it it's delightful but what cast strength does is it adds this Market that just changes how you have to think about everything that you're doing every single round and I am here for that the upgrades to the different cards and the ingredients that's great but oh my gosh cast strength is amazing I will never play distilled without cast strength again if I have a choice I'll also say the Middle East North Africa expansion I think is absolutely necessary absolutely necessary but the cast strength is fantastic if you are a distilled fan and you don't have this you need to get it if you are thinking about getting distilled you need to get it with this expansion it's it's just great I love it it's such a simple change to the game that just is fantastic and then my other my co- winner for expansion of the Year again getting this amazing seal is Gears of

6:03 corruption for expeditions from stonem games Expeditions was in my game of the year nominees last year it wasn't the winner but it was in the nominees and I really enjoy the game it's one of the few games that has kind of a slow burn a slow build that I particularly enjoy but perhaps a little too slow to start out and then what the gears of corruption expansion I want to give you two new mechs which is cool but what it really does that's really cool is it speeds up the game a little bit it let you it varies what you get to start with it adds a new worker meeple that's a wild so even for some reason you're blocked out of getting a worker on the first turn you still have one that you're able to use and it adds a interesting corrupt Mech that's kind of running around it can of attack you which can add a little bit of interest to the game it adds a little bit of dynamism to the board and all around it's an expansion that I just think really works well again like with distilled this is an expansion that I will never play the game without and so because of that and also because both expansions fit in the core box because of that both of these games are my expansion of the Year winners it it was not close and so there you have it that's those now moving into the main event talking about my game of the Year nominees this year I'm back to having five nominees I know every now and then I'll throw in a six but this year we

7:34 only have five and so in no particular order truly because this is a year for me that I had no standout and not that these games aren't all great they are but often I'll have one or two games I'm like oh if I wasn't going to go back and replay these games this would be the one and that's not always right in fact usually it winds up being wrong when I replay other game like oh nope wasn't what I thought it was going to be but this year I just have a bunch of games I'm like I really like this game I really like this game I really like this game so moving into that but of course before I do that boy I'm all over the place today but you know we're GNA leave this in so you can see just how much of a goober I am if you didn't already know so my honorable mentions for Game of the Year and I have two this year and they're going to get this amazing seal and the reason I have these two games is something that I alluded to earlier one of them is just lighter of a game than is gonna be what I consider my game of the year it's a game that I will play a lot and will have it at every convention that I go to and we'll have it at every game day that I go to and I will play it in a second but for me it just doesn't quite have the depth of a game that is a game of the year for me and that is Murray the frog from Devious weasel designed by Jenna concade and it's it's fabulous you have

9:05 to have at least three players and I think it shines at 45 but it's this very thematic set collection game where you are going to be playing these bugs out little swarms of bugs that's how you're going to score your points you get more points for having like types of flies and then you get even more points for big swarms but the problem is every now and then Murray the frog shows up and he's going to eat somebody's swarm and every time he does it he's going to leave a little tadpole behind which it's just everything about that such so right he's going to show up he's goingon to eat your thing and he's going to leave and oh by the way here's a kid you get to take care of for me I'm out of here and there's ways to kind of mitigate this and there's powers on the different flies that you're playing and moving things around and it's a game to me that one I did not think would be thematic it is amazingly thematic anytime like why is this happening you're like oh cuz Murray's an ass that's the reason that's why it's happening and it's just a blast it is just a blast every single time I play it it has not failed to hit once fantastic game and for that reason it is one of my honorable mentions this year just wonderful and it's I think it's $25 with free shipping from the devious weel website I mean go buy this right now go buy the game it's really really good and then the other one is on the other end of the spectrum and this is game that for me again is not going to be my game of the year because it's so heavy it is a heavier game than I'm going to want to

10:37 be pulling out on the regular and so for that it falls into honorable mention because I think it's really good like really really good it's just pretty darn heavy and that game is a deep shelf from ninth Haven games this is a very complex game it is one of those games where everything that you're doing is a challenge you know that you have to buy this module for your sub well how do you buy the module you need these elements to buy the module okay well how do you get those elements well you have to send your sub out somewhere or have an extractor out in the B on the bottom of the ocean to do this thing well how do you get the extractor you have to have money how do you get money you have to have something to sell and so it's a little bit of the kind vicious cycle to where there's times you're like how do I do anything but you can because it all makes sense sense and it's really satisfying once you figure it out the first couple turns that you play maybe the first half game that you play you're going to be like I can't figure this out but once you do it's really cool it has this really cool action selection system where you're doing two actions every turn there're card- based and one of them you're going to do the thing you're going to pick it back up the other one though you're going to have to lose it for a turn but sometimes it has what's called a power action you're going to overwork it so it'll be extra powerful but it's going to stay there for a while and you're constantly kind of choosing trying to think a turn or two ahead as you're moving around discovering these tiles out there on the

12:07 board extracting these minerals and you're refining the minerals and you're buying stuff and it's just it's very clever and it has a very cool Co-Op campaign that you can also do your different factions are all very different you don't think they're very different they're really different and it's just kind of everything that I want in a heavy game but it's a wheel brain burn every time you play and so for that it is an honorable mention as a fantastic game just heavier than is my general preference so that is deep shelf as my second honorable mention if you're interested in the game I highly recommend getting the metal coins and I highly recommend getting the fifth player faction the yellow faction because it does different things and it's fits right in the core box which is great now moving into the top five games of the year now these are in no particular order and I'm checking it right now on my little my little list here I have either done a review or a preview and or a playthrough of every single one of these games so here we go jumping in again in no particular order just in and you know what I will put it in particular order we will do this alphabetically we'll see if the English teacher can do that on the fly so starting at a we have andromeda's Edge from cardboard Alchemy designed by Luke Lori and this is on the edge see what I did there this is on the edge of weight for me and this might be one that I was

13:39 would say is ah it's a little heavier than I like but I've been playing this game for years and I've seen kind of the progression and how it's grown and how it's changed and I love dwellings of elderil which is the spiritual precursor to this and it was actually my runnerup game of the year a couple years ago and it had has that DNA a lot of people say oh it's the same game but in space it's not the same game this is a crunchier more Tableau focused more track focused game and it's really good the solo mode is incredibly robust and of particular interest to me it has a stunningly beautiful retail Edition that has a humanized box that I am here for to be clear it's not because it has an amazing deluxe version and an amazing r version is on this list it's on the list because it is a very good game and I've yet to play a game where I'm like that wasn't fun I always lose but I've yet to play one that I thought I didn't have a good time and I'm also really here for the improvements to the solo mode over dwellings I love the dwelling solo mode this one is more robust it's more interesting and I think it's just really really good next moving to B we have Buu from crafty games and uh should be CLE clear this one is on the list but with the expansion the ow expansion I think you absolutely must have that this is a blind bidding game very fast game

15:10 plays up to five players and almost the same time you're going to play through with two players it has an interesting little bot that you can add in actually two Bots you can add in to play solo or to kind of expand your game and especially well if the retail version is beautiful and the deluxe version is just stunning stunningly beautiful game stunningly beautiful game everybody it's just gorgeous but it's a bidding game and there's four or five regions who Ed the expansion where you are putting your workers out your your bids and they're all face down so you don't actually know what people are going to do and usually you don't have enough workers to hit every single space and usually you there and often there are bonuses for being the person to win each region because everyone's going to get something from region if they've bid there but if you win the region you're going to get first choice and this is a game where it is not everyone is equal in a spot there are better things actively better so resources if you're there first you're going to get three things if you go last you might get one thing and so it has this really cool kind of trying to figure out what people might be doing what they might be bidding are they just going here so they can take the the god totem because the other part of the game is you're gaining you're Gathering your resources so you can pay tribute to these gods and that's how you're going to score most of your points throughout the game but if I know that everyone around the table is going to go really hard for the green god well

16:41 maybe I bid really hard to claim that totem get the first bid win the forest region then when everyone else is doing their tributes I'm also getting paid out it has a really cool kind of Tableau system that you're building as you're hiring workers and you have to use another space to actually activate the workers but it works really really well it is a fascinating game very fun very beautiful and plays Lightning Fast it is a really fast game and when it's cooking it is cooking again though needs the expansion in my opinion which came with the original Kickstarter and I'm you can get them both but Buu is number two now I know yall have guessed it moving into C we have collab from Dragon portal games now this is a game that I got excited about based off the theme you are kind of a Down in your luck mad scientist or super scientist depending on how you view it and because of that you and a bunch of other super scientists you have to get a shared workspace I.E the coab and the way that plays out is you have these Minions that are going out on the board and in the deluxe version they're little mins that actually hold the dice above their head which is awesome and the dice are different resources and you're putting them around the board worker placement style and you get get something for putting them out and then you're moving your scientist around to the different rooms in between the worker placement spots and you're using resources that you already that you either already have is as kind of wild resources that you've

18:12 put on your player board or dice that you have in your dice pool that you haven't used yet or the workers that are holding the dice above their head and you can use your minions or another player's minions because it's very much you're a mad scientist you don't care oh you minion give me this thing and of course the Min is going to say yes because I don't want to get vaporized or whatever and so you're building up this Tableau of cards inventions that you're building and the inventions will interact with each other they'll do things maybe it's potions that you're can use a potion that let you do something or it's a mechanical thing that actually has a switch like think of those big electrical power it actually has those you put on the cards and it's this beautiful looking game and it's huge like don't you don't play this on a humaniz table it's huge huge huge these great chunky minis they look good the art is spectacular it has a solid solo mode I'm just really in awe of it and it reminds me a little bit of expeditions in one way I when I mentioned Expeditions earlier I said it's a slow burn of a game and collab is that too it's a game that you kind of start out and it feels early on like not much is going on and then maybe a third of the way through the game it starts to ramp up and then suddenly in the last two-thirds of the game like just everything is happening but it's kind of a slow build and they do have some options out there to kind of speed it up a little bit and I have gotten to experiment a little bit with some of the expansion content that they have coming sometime down the road which actually speeds up the game even more but really

19:45 really good game this is one that like I said I reached out and said please can I cover this based on the theme and I have not only not been disappointed I've been amazed that is collab continuing on with the Seas we have Conquest princess is power from fight in Black games this is a crisis management game with the craziest fever dream of a theme you have ever seen the fashion Tyrant Maha is taking over the world and you and your fashion agents of Tiara I can't remember what Tiara stands for you're going to use the conquest princess which is like your Voltron robot that comes together and with the power of friendship and fashion you're going to save the world yeah and I think I'm downplaying that a little bit I mean it's crazy pants but it's this very clever Cooperative bag Builder you're drawing tiles out of a bag and that determines your success or lack of success if you're me as you're playing through the game as you're fighting off these minions and it has multiple scenarios that have different kind of win conditions the lose condition is pretty much the same if you ever run out of things to wear then you lose because this time ship a little doctor who-ish will will stop bad things from happening but every time it has to stop bad things from happening it has to kind of reset the timeline and some of your amazing fashion items disappear out of your closet and look let me be clear I am not a fashion guy but I am so here for this game it is

21:18 spectacular it is hard as hell but it is spectacular and when I initially played it several years ago at kuon it was fine and I was like okay I I love the designer so yeah we'll try it but it has just progressively gotten better and better and better until it's just amazing and it has some of the most ridiculous components that you can get if you go Super Deluxe it's got the biggest playmat you ever saw fantastic game that I just I've known I liked it for a while when I did previews and did a playthrough that you can see but since I've gotten it like they just locked down everything to where it's just if you're into crisis management games and you don't have this you you have made a mistake in your life and then moving into d n just kidding e we're moving to e and that is explorers of nooria from Dr gam so there's the D Dr and this is one that I didn't know what to expect I previewed it and with a full clarity here this is the one that I have played the least since it arrived so this is this is like the real wild card in this list this is a a light heavy game or heavy light game but whatever it is this is at like the very bottom end of the complexity that I

22:50 really really enjoy and it's just this gorgeous again it's gorgeous has this wacky creature art that is is great and you're you're exploring the region you're collecting resources you're playing out cards and this is one that when I previewed it I remember reading through the rules and I was like okay this will be fine and then I played it and I I literally I sat at my table because I just played it two-handed because this was before there was a solo mode there is a solo mode now that came with the one of the expansions and I sat there and I looked at it and I I actually said out loud I was like was this that good and I immediately reset it and played it again again just two-handed because just something about this game everything just connects and clicks and works together and it's just a beautiful game that well it's in my top five it's just a huge surprise to me that it has stuck with me like it has because let me tell you when that thing showed up I was over the moon excited for it and it's great it is a fantastic game that I think is a little bit under the radar actually I think several of these games are under the radar but that's kind of how I do I guess and it's one that I'm really excited to dig into a lot more I think for this game it's going to come down to kind of the solo

24:21 mode and you know how does a solo mode pop is it really going to be kind of where this game lands because competitive it's it's just amazing it's it's wonderful I love everything about it so there you have it folks that is my expansion of the Year winners and honorable mention that is my honorable mentions for game of the year and my five nominees what's going to happen now is I'm going to spend from now and through the end of December replaying these games as many times as I can to be able to put them in order I would love to know down in the description if you've played any of those games and what you think even if you don't like them I'd love to know why let me know down in the comments I'd also love to know what your games of the year are there's a whole bunch of great games that people have commented on one of my posts I made on the YouTube page and the amount and the amount of games that came out this year is huge so there's going to be tons of games that I didn't play there's actually several games that I thought might be a game of the year Contender for me that I just didn't get played in time because I have so many right now that I'm trying to work through but there you have it folks this was a really good year of games I think but it was a year where the top like it's a crowded top this isn't one of those years where there's a couple up here and then okay let's pull some up and see what I think no no no it is crowded at the top and that is awesome so five great games we'll see where they land let me know what you think of those games let me know your list in fact you know let me know what you how you think

25:52 I'm going to rank these games too I'd love to see if anybody knows before I do and gets it right so there you have it folks as always if you found this video useful please like subscribe share maybe become a channel member as always thank you so much for watching have a wonderful wonderful day