My Top 10 "Light" Board Game Releases Of 2024!

0:00 hey friends it is Jenna what is up and welcome back to the board game garden and welcome to finally my series of my top games from 2024 so typically I do this around this time about like early March late February um I think I did it at the same time last year and that's because I just like to have an opportunity to play as many of the releases from the prior year as possible but with that being said I still have not played close to um all of the 2024 releases so these are just going to be all of my favorites from last year that I have played and I am going to be doing a few videos in this little series the first one is going to be the one that I'm doing today which is my top 10 lighter games of 2024 which in this category I put any small card games or um any like party games and then I also included this year games that were not necessarily those other two but just other games that fell in the light category on the board game geek complexity rating or the weight rating so I looked at all of the games and if they were um or if they like stated light in the complexity area then I included that in this category and I say both of those things lighter and heavier in quotations just because that might not be how you qualify them but these are my videos and that's kind of how I uh categorized them so yes without further Ado if you guys want to see my top 10 lighter games of 2024 these are

1:33 2024 releases then just keep on watching give this video a big thumbs up if you enjoy Also hit that subscribe button down below if you've yet to do so we'd love to have you here in the garden and then also comment down below your favorite lighter games of 2024 do you agree with some of the ones that I've have included in my top 10 let me know down in the comments I'd love to chat about that but yeah without further Ado let's get in to my top 10 lighter games of 2024 shall we all right so I am starting off this video with an honorable mention because I am pretty sure this game technically didn't come out in 2024 um but this kind of addition of it did get released in 2024 and this game was brought to North America in 2024 and the game that I'm talking about is the rebel princess deluxe edition so this was published or brought to North America by beer games and they made it a deluxe edition CU they did add some princesses and they also added more of the rule cards so if you guys do not know what Rebel princess is um it is a trick-taking game where basically everyone is going to be a princess and you are trying to avoid proposals from princes which I think is the funniest thing ever and I just love the art in this game I love the theming of it it's very thematic and just a lot of fun because this is it plays primar L as a standard trick-taking game where there's going to be one player that starts with

3:04 a suit that's going to be the lead suit and then players have to follow with that suit and then if you win that trick you're going to put it in front of you but the thing is is that if you win a trick that has any princes in it those are going to be negative points so you are trying to if you see princes being played into a trick you are trying to avoid winning those tricks so it kind of turns that on its head and makes you think differently about you know winning losing tricks and stuff like that but then additionally with this game which is one of my favorite Parts is that each round which you are going to be playing five rounds of this game um each of those five rounds are going to be you playing out various tricks um but each round is going to have a rule card that is going to be different and it's going to completely change the rules each round so I think it's so cool that you can play a trick taking game and my my like personal kind of favorite thing about trick- taking games is when a trick- taking game does something different than other trick taking games and this is great because every single round you're kind of being um introduced with a new rule and almost feeling like a whole new trick-taking game that you're playing each round which I just absolutely love so yes really really enjoyed Rebel Princess um it would have been in my top 10 if it uh was not already technically a release that was released before um but also with this one you do get asymmetric powers that you can use once per round um with the

4:34 different princesses so yes that is Rebel princess deluxe edition my honorable mention all right so actually now moving into my top 10 lighter games released in 2024 and starting with number 10 this is one that I actually started playing a little bit later in the year um but I've really loved this game and I feel like it has not gotten like too much attention and I do think that people need to try it out cuz it's a very fun um like card game with multi-use cards and stuff uh but the game that I'm talking about is Arctic so this is published by ludena not and this is like I said a multi-use set collection kind of card game which has some really cool and unique mechanisms where basically on your turn you're going to be playing a card into your pile and your pile is going to kind of be built um out of these different animal cards and at the end of the game you're going to score victory points based off of what is in your pile so you are kind of it's I guess like a pile building game which is pretty cool U but you are playing a card into your pile and that card is going to be a specific type of animal I think there are six different types of animals and basically you're trying to get sets of animals all kind of piled on one another because at the end of the game you're going to be scoring four sets of all of the different types of animals so if you manage to get let's say five foxes stacked on top of one another that's

6:06 going to be your biggest group of foxes and you're going to get a certain amount of victory points based off of that um so then you're going to be scoring your biggest group of every single one of those animals that you have in your pile and then also you're going to score for the different animals that you have in your pile so if you're able to get all six types of animals into your pile you're going to get more victory points um but the cool part of this one is with all of the different things that happen when you play that card into your pile so when you play an animal card into your pile it is then going to State how many cards you pick up from the market it's also going to tell you what two animals you're going to have to move on this track because everyone at the beginning of the game gets a secret animal token and they are trying to get that animal token um up the track as much as possible to gain the most victory points as they can but people are going to when they play down a card have two an animals that one of them they have to move up and one of them they have to move back so if people kind of catch on to what animal you're trying to get up the track they might start playing cards that allow them to move that animal back so that it avoids you from getting too many victory points which I think is cool and then Additionally the card is going to tell you how many cards you can play on your next turn and the kind of difficult part of this is that you're going to have a penalty pile if you ever have to pick pick up cards more than what you can hold in your hand whatever excess you have is going to go into your penalty pile and then also if you ever have to

7:37 play any more cards than you have in your hand the excess is going to go into your penalty pile as well so if I have to play five cards but I only have two you are then going to have to take three cards off of the draw pile and put them into your penalty pile um and then the penalty pile is going to get you negative victory points at the end of the game um and I just think it such a unique game it is very fun it's very satisfying and then also additionally which I haven't even touched on is the fact that each animal is going to have a special ability that when you play that animal on top of your pile you are going to have that animal's special ability until someone else plays that animal on top of their pile and those animals abilities are going to be different for each of the animals and I just I love this game and it's so wonderful and that is why I wanted to include it in this video because I feel like it needs more attention definitely check out Arctic if you have yet to do so um because it is great and it plays two to four players and I definitely recommend so that is Arctic my number 10 moving into number nine so this I think is actually my only party game on this list but I think this is my favorite party game of 2024 I really enjoyed playing this with various groups um and the game that I'm talking about in my number nine is three of a kind so I actually ended up purchasing this myself from packs unplugged towards

9:07 the end of the year but I played it various times before then and I think I was actually introduced to this by Grant from Grant's gamerex which I definitely recommend going and checking out his channel um but shout out to grant for introducing this one because it was a lot of fun um I think I played it earlier on in the year um when did I play that I think it was probably like July or August but anyways this is from weird City games and like I said I purchased this from uh packs unplugged and it plays two to eight players and basically three of a kind is kind of similar in a way to green team wins where you are trying to answer the same things as the other players and what you're going to be answering is basically there's going to be one player that chooses a category so it might be kitchen utensils this is always the the like example that I give but the category might be kitchen utensils and then the next three players in turn order are all going to choose an adjective and then you're going to have to answer three different answers for those three adjectives with the category so it might be laziest kitchen utensil or uh the kitchen utensil to most likely be in a zombie film The shyest utensil different things like that so you're going to have to answer three of those different answers and then once everyone is finished answering you will go around and say what your answers are and then the more people to answer the same thing the more victory points all of those

10:38 people will gain so for example if three people had the same answer they would all get three victory points um and it is just so much fun it creates a lot of amazing memories and a lot of funny moments of like the answers that people think of and I just have loved playing this with like I said a bunch of different groups um within the last year so that is why my number nine and actually my favorite party game of 2024 is three of a kind moving into number eight so this is again a game that I haven't heard a lot of people talk about the name in the cover kind of suggests that it is a party game but it is definitely not a party game it is a uh Cooperative card deduction game which makes me extremely happy cuz I absolutely love deduction games but the game that I'm talking about and my number eight is Expressions so this is published by Barn made games and this is a 15minute game plays uh two to five players and like I said it is a Cooperative deduction card game where basically you are going to be working as a group to deduce what cards are in everyone's hands and your goal by the end of the game is to have more cards in harmony than you have in agony and how you get cards into those those two places is basically every player on their turn is either going to guess a card from another player's hand or they're going to take one card from their hand and place it in front of them

12:10 in one of four directions and the direction that they place that card in front of them is going to give all the other players a clue as to what is in their hand so they might place a red three down um in a configuration that tells the other players that they have other threes in their hand or that the three is the only red that they have in their hand or it is the highest card of that color or it's the lowest card of that color different things like that there are four different ways that you can place them down and then every card that a player has placed in front of them at the end of the game is going to go into Agony so the more kind of clues that you have to give to the other players the more negative points you're going to get um but as you give those Clues you are going to be able to more and more d uce what is in everyone's hands if a player does guess correctly at a card that someone has in their hand that player is then going to be able to place that card down into harmony so that's going to be a positive point and then the player that guessed correctly then gets to take a card from their hand and place it out into harmony so that is then going to allow all the other players to better deduce what cards are in everyone else's hands the more cards that you can see on the table in front of you so yes I absolutely love loved this game and I've enjoyed playing it with a bunch of different groups I still want to play this with more and more players I will say there is one small thing that annoys me a little bit about the game um but I do understand that

13:40 they want the like shelf presence of this game to be a little bit bigger than it actually is but because it is just a card game the box that it comes in is a little bit bigger than the actual game because the actual game is in this little card box here that is then within this larger box so I will say that I typically just take it out of the box and have this for travel which is pretty nice and then uh when it's here at my house I just have it in here um you have the instructions actually printed out in a rule book but then if you have this they have a little QR code on the backs that you can scan that and then have the rules um on your phone so that's like the only one thing but it's not like the hugest negative because it actually is pretty nice that you have this box for when it is just at your house but then you can take out that smaller box and bring it with you traveling um so yeah anyways that is my number eight top light game of 2024 Expressions all right so number seven is I think the smallest box of all these there are a few other small boxes but this one I think is the smallest of them and this game really caught me off guard cuz I didn't think I was going to enjoy it as much as I did but it does make sense cuz this game is actually designed by the same designer as Nana and Nana is a fantastic game game and it's just such a great game to get to the table easy to teach easy to play everybody that I've played it with has enjoyed it a lot and it's just such an engaging card game and then this one

15:12 is just as engaging and I enjoy it a lot so the game that I'm talking about and my number seven is panda panda so this is a tiny box game from allplay they published a few different Tiny Box games and I do believe that they are publishing some more in 2025 so excited to see what other games they have in store but like I said this one is designed by the same designer as Nana and this game is actually a reimplementation or a reprinting of a game called cat poker is it cat poker yes this one's cat poker I also have dog poker which is another fantastic game um but this like I said is a reprinting of cat poker and it is just this very fun engag game just like Nana like I said where basically you were trying to be the first player to um have your hand of card be one of the specific sets that it says on this uh card that you have and once you have that set of cards in your hand if it comes back to your turn and you have that set you can put it down and you win that round but the thing about this game is on your turn you can either discard a card in front of you face up or you can draw a card either from from the middle draw pile or from anyone else's um discard pile and the crazy thing and the thing that causes all of the chaos is the fact that if someone discards an a card everyone has

16:43 to pass a card from their hand to the person to their left so it's always this fun puzzle and sometimes annoying puzzle of trying to get the cards that you need in your hand but then if you do have all the cards in your hand that you need you have to wait until it comes back to you hoping that no one discards an a because then you'll have to pass one of the cards that are in your hand that you needed for your Set uh before it comes back to you so it is so much fun it is easy to teach easy to play it's in a super tiny box so it's great for travel and I cannot wait to play this one with my family I haven't played with my family yet but I feel like this one will be a great one to play with them and just friends and family and all of that so yeah that is why panda panda is my number seven all right so moving into my number six so this is actually a game that I just recently got a physical copy of and I'm so so happy that I have a physical copy of it now because this game is so stinking cute the theme is just absolutely amazing um and it's actually a really great introduction into like Tableau building and engine building um but the game that I'm talking about in my number six of 2024 is is Cafe baras so this is published by ktbg or kids table board gaming and this is a game where you are building up a cafe and you are a capara um and I just can't get over that theme it is

18:13 absolutely amazing um but like I said this is a great kind of Tableau engine building game where basically you're drafting cards and you're going to be playing cards in front of you that are going to build up your Cafe and you are trying to get certain icons to then be able to serve different customers and this has a little bit of multi-use cards in it as well cuz you can always use the cards in your hand um to play down into your Cafe as an icon or you can use the card to uh serve a customer so at the bottom it's going to have an order of what icons you're going to need if you have those icons in your Cafe you can then serve that customer and then based off of the icons and different things you're going to get coins for serving that customer and you're going to need those coins in order to play Down the cards there's also a little bit of um like different scoring things that are going to happen there's different like decor and furniture that you can add into your Tableau for your Cafe that are going to get you more victory points and more money um so yeah I just I just love this game so much it is absolutely adorable the one thing that would make this game even better is that if there was a solo mode um I'm pretty sure that they have another smaller box game like this called diced veggies and they came out with a solo mode for that a little bit later so maybe eventually they'll come out with a solo mode for coffee bars um but I do think that like honestly it's an easy enough game that I could probably come up with some sort of solo mode even myself so uh yes or even

19:47 someone has already made one on BGG but anyways that is my number six light game of 2024 that is Cafe bars all right so moving into my top five lighter games released in 2024 starting with my number five so this is actually one that I picked up in Japan and I'm really happy that I picked it up in Japan cuz I love having a like Japanese version of a really wonderful little game um but my number five is Pixies so like I said this is in Japanese but the game only includes numbers so it is all good the only issue is that it didn't come with English instructions um so I do have to look them up on my phone whenever we play um or I just need to you know remember the rules but yes Pixies is a wonderful little card drafting game where you are building up a tableau of nine cards in front of you and you are placing them in the specific spots 1 through n so it'll be uh top to bottom left to right 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 you're going to be drafting those cards and then you're going to be gaining various victory points based off of the color of the cards the placement of the cards obviously the numbers have to be placed in these specific um places but if you are able to uh have like a verified location so that is basically that you have drafted a second card of that number and then you can decide which one stays on top and then the other one will

21:18 get flipped over and placed underneath that card and that ends up being a verified card I think that's what it's called and you're going to be able to then score points for that card if it's verified if it's is not verified you do not gain the points for it um also you're going to gain victory points each round for your biggest group of a specific color um so I think each round it gets more and more victory points um and I think there's like three rounds and then you're also going to gain victory points for these little swirly symbols and then there's going to be some cards that gain you additional victory points for every other of that uh color in your Tableau and then there's also X um icons on some cards that are going to be negative points so on and so forth and you're just going to be gaining victory points each round for your Tableau and then at the end of those three rounds Whoever has the most victory points is going to be the winner so this plays two to five players plays in about half an hour and it is just such a satisfying easy to teach easy to play game um again in a really small box so it's easy to bring traveling and it plays good at two players also plays great at five players as well I I think it overstays its welcome a little bit too long with five players I wouldn't recommend playing it on five players unless you are down for a a little bit of a longer card game um but you guys will see with my next game that I'm going to be talking about that one's a little bit longer of a card game as well and I'm personally okay with a long card game as long as I'm enjoying the gam

22:49 playay and I really do enjoy the gameplay of pixies so that is why Pixies is my number five moving into number four like I said said this is another card game and it is a little bit long that's my only like slight negative about it but I think I enjoy the game play so much that I just like don't care how long it is because it is a fantastic trick-taking game um but my number four is fishing so this is published by real Grande games and it is which I don't think I mentioned Pixies is published by bomix games but yes fishing is real Grande games and it is a fredman freeze game you guys can tell by the green box and this is such a fantastic trick-taking game that brings in a little bit of deck building in a way it's like a deck building trick-taking game where basically all of the cards that you win during a round that you win with tricks go into a pile and that is then going to be your hand for the next round but everyone has to have a certain amount of cards in their hand so the more tricks that you win the more cards you're going to have to um like pick up from a drop pile but if you don't win a lot of cards you're going to have less than what you need in your hand for the next round and if that is the case then you actually get to take cards from a deck to get into your hand and those cards that are in that deck are going to

24:20 be stronger so it's this really cool kind of decision of do I want to win a lot of tricks because because every card that you do win in tricks each round is going to get you victory points but then the less stronger more upgraded cards you're going to have for your next round and then the people that don't win as many tricks are not going to get as many victory points but they are going to have those stronger cards for the next round which I think is just so so cool it introduces like higher cards in each of the suits in that pile introduces a trump suit in that pile and it also introduces some additional cars that you can play into a trick that then changes things up so I just think it is such a fantastically designed game it is so so much fun like I said it does take a little bit of a long time if you do play it with that Max player count um but honestly I enjoy the gameplay of it so much that I don't mind that it's a little bit of a longer trick-taking game and I just think it is so so fun and I definitely recommend checking it out if you have yet to do so so that is my number four fish in number three is going to be a very fun Tableau building game I have fallen in love with this game and it makes sense because this is a pretty similar kind of game to another game that I really enjoyed last year and that was far away and I actually do think that this is designed by the same people I could be wrong um but the uh

25:51 game that I'm talking about and my number three of 2024 is castle combo so castle combo is published by ketchup games which is the same publisher as far away you guys can also see that it is distributed by pandasaurus games I believe that is who is Distributing it here in North America but castle combo like I said has a similar kind of feel to far away where basically you are drafting cards and placing them into a tableau that are then going to get you victory points in various ways in this one kind of similar to Pixies you're going to be creating a 3X3 grid of cards in pix you are doing that based off of numbers but in castle combo you can build off of anywhere and place cards anywhere it just has to build up into a 3X3 um grid of cards but this game is so so much fun because you are drafting cards and where you draft your card is going to be dependent on where this little guy is he moves up and down to two different kind of rows of cards that you can draft and wherever he is is going to be the row that you have to draft a card from there are two different types of cards there are the gray cards and the brown cards um I don't really think there's like much of a difference between the two it's just based off of where he is those are the cards you're going to have to choose from but there's also going to be cards that score based off of the color of card so I guess that is what makes them different but uh yeah you're going to draft a card and that card is one going to get you some sort of instant benefit

27:23 um it's either going to get you coins based off of something or it's going to get you Keys based off off of something coins you're going to need in order to purchase the card that you are drafting every card that you draft is going to require a certain amount of coins for you to draft it some of them are going to be zero coins but most of the time they are going to require you to spend coins so you're always going to try to or you're always going to need to try to get more coins so you don't run out of coins um but then also some of them are going to get you Keys which keys are going to get you victory points at the end of the game based off of cards and stuff um but also you can use a key on your turn in order to move the little guy to the other Row in case you want to draft one of the cards from that row or you can spend a key in order to kind of uh wipe the row that you're in and get new cards so if you didn't like the ones that were out there you could wipe it and get new ones um so you could spend keys in that way so whenever you draft a card you're going to gain keys or coins and then once you're finished with that instant benefit you're going to place it in one of the nine spots in your Tableau and then based off of where it is and the kind of Victory Point conditions of that card cuz every card is going to have some sort of endgame victory points that you're going to gain for something so it might be gain three victory points for every orange symbol in this row or this column and each card is going to have one or two of those different colored symbols some of them are going to be like gain six victory points if

28:54 it's in one of these spots uh gain nine victory points if you don't have this certain colored symbol in your Tableau different things like that there's also cards that allow you to place coins onto those cards and then you're going to get victory points for every coin that's on each of those cards so on and so forth so very similar to far away you just trying to place things into your Tableau to best gain you victory points at the end of the game based off of where they are and all of that so this is just such a fantastic game it's easy to teach easy to get to the taste um and just has a lot of variety in it every single time I play this I have a completely different strategy and kind of Tableau that I'm building out so yes that is why castle combo is my number three of 2024 all right moving into my number two this is the like biggest box game but this is one that the rules are very simple um and it is a considered light game on BGG and the game that I'm talking about in my number two is is River Valley Glassworks so this is published by allplay so allplay actually has two games in my top 10 good job allplay um but this was a game that I was introduced to back at the end of 2023 I tried this for the first time at Pax unplugged and I absolutely loved it I fell in love with it the moment that I played it at Pax unplugged and since then I have played this game so many

30:25 times both physically as well as over on BGA I play this constantly on BGA and there's just something about this game the rules are so simple but I have played this so many times that I have discovered that there is pretty deep strategy when it comes to the glass that you're placing into the river and the glass that you're picking up and putting into your little Glass Works basically you're going to have different shapes and colors of glass and you're going to be placing one or two of those pieces of glass into the river um into the spot that matches the shape of the glass and then you can then take from one of the other two adjacent spots in the river you can take all the glass from that spot and then you're going to be placing it into your little glass works and then where you place that glass into your glass works or onto your player board is then going to get you victory points in various ways at the end of the game you're trying to get different colors in rows and then the same colors in columns cuz you're going to uh gain victory points based off of your two highest columns if the columns are more to the right they're going to get you more victory points um and then also you're going to gain four rows of different colors the more rows that you can complete the more victory points you're going to get um and I just think it is an absolutely fantastic designed game um that again has extremely Simple Rules so you can play this with people that are new to the Hobby but then also there's a really deep um like strategy in it as

31:55 well that I've discovered um that you can really get all of those like season Gamers into it um and have a great time so that is why my number two light game of 2024 is River Valley Glassworks and finally moving into my number one lighter game of 2024 which when I first heard of this game I was like there's no way I'm going to enjoy that there is no way that this would be a top game of the year for me I was like no that's not going to happen happened but here we are with this game being the top game of 2024 for me which is crazy um but the game that I'm talking about is and my number one is the gang so this is a game published by Cosmos and this is a Cooperative poker game which Cooperative one thing I usually don't enjoy Cooperative games um and then also I've never played poker in my life life but there is just something about this game I have played this game the most out of all of these games that I've showed you today and I can just not get enough of this game I've played it with so many groups of people and it's just that type of game that like you will play it once and then you'll be like okay let's play it again so you play it again and you play it again and I have played this game for hours and hours on end and it is just so so good and I just I don't even know if I'm

33:25 going to be able to explain it and like Express how fun it is but personally to me it is just such a great game basically you are trying to rank everyone is going to have a uh pocket pair so you're going to have your first two cards and you're basically playing Texas holdam where you're going to put out the Flop which is going to be three cards on the table and then you're going to put out the something and then the river I always forget what the second thing is but I think it's like flop something River um and basically by the end of that you're then going to have to rank your uh hands from worst to best and you're going to be doing this by with your pocket pair you're going to have a bunch of chips in the Middle based off of your pocket pair you're going to take one of the chips from the middle to show how uh well you think your uh cards are going to rank compared to everyone else's so for example if I had in my first two cards I'm not allowed to say anything about what my cards are I'm not allowed to show my cards everything is secret you're not allowed to talk about what you have in your hand um you are just expressing the information based off of the tiles that you or the chips that you are drafting so if I ended up having let's say an ace which is the best card that you could have and a jack which is one of the other better cards that you can have I would probably want to take one of the best chips to tell all the

34:56 other players at the table hey I have some really good cards in my hand um that could potentially get me to the best hand by the end of this so you would take one of those higher chips to let everyone know that you have some pretty good cards um once that was finished you'd put out the next set of chips and then you would put out the Flop everyone would then look at the cards in their hand as well as the cards on the table and you would then take another chip to let people know how your hand is working out basically by the end there's going to be five cards on the table two cards in your hand and you're going to be combining the five cards that are either out or in your hand to make the best hand possible and then as a group with that last set of chips those are going to be the final chips that are going to determine the ranking for your hands once everyone has agreed which this is another thing that is interesting about the game is the fact that if someone takes one of the chips that you actually think uh you are you can actually take it from them and you can kind of Exchange change chips until everyone is happy with the chips that they have so by the end once everyone is happy with the chip that they have you are then going to reveal your hands in that order and then if you were able to rank them successfully from worst to best hand then you do successfully open one of the vaults if you are unable to do that then you trip an alarm and basically as a group you are trying to open three vaults before you uh trip three alarms um if you were able to do that then you win the game um but

36:27 additionally there's some like different cards that you can put into the game that give you benefits and different Boons if you do well it gives you a boon um and if you do bad then it gives you a benefit to help you with the next round and it is just like I said such a fun game I have played it so so many times with so many groups I introduced this to my family um I introduced it to francis's family some friends and everyone has really really enjoyed it so yes that is my number number one light game of 2024 the gang all right friends so that is going to be everything for today's video those are my top 10 light 2024 releases so hopefully you guys enjoyed if you did please give it a big thumbs up also hit that subscribe button down below if if you yet to do so we'd love to have you here in the garden comment down below if any of these games that I chatted about today are in your top games of 2024 did you enjoy any of these are some of these new to you that you now want to go and check out please let me know also if you have any other different games that you enjoyed in 20124 let me know I would love to know down below um but yeah I love you guys so so much remember you are somebody's reason to smile and I will see you in the next board game video bye friends