The 2026 American Tabletop Awards (guest: What's Eric Playing?) | Ep 175

0:00 So, thanks for locking me out today when I was trying to get home. Shu, somebody wanted to keep me out of this podcast today.

0:06 We're running a little late with our guest today because we had a little mishap cuz I locked her out of the house.

0:19 Welcome to the Going Analog Show, where industry guests bring a topic to discuss. And today we are going to talk about the super recent announcement of the 2026 American Tabletop Awards. So excited to talk about them because we are part of the selection committee. Right, Shu?

0:35 Yeah. Christina was being a little sarcastic there in case that wasn't clear. Uh

0:39 we're late to it because we've been busy. Yeah. The announcement talk about it. It's been a while.

0:43 The announcement of the winners came out a few weeks ago, but we just had guests booked and we couldn't get our guest today on until now.

0:51 He's been super busy. So, our guest today

0:57 um is Eric Jüko, one of the main organizers of the American Tabletop Awards. So, uh you've been on, you know, this is your third time that you've been on to talk about them, I think, on our show specifically. So, we got to keep the tradition going. So, welcome, Eric.

1:12 Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be back.

1:14 Yeah. And so, Eric is a prolific content creator with uh the blog What's Eric Playing? where he has reviewed many many games over a thousand. Um we are going to make you

1:24 and he's a great photographer

1:25 and he's a fantastic photographer. So check out some great board game photography on his blog. Uh also my board game nemesis. So you know that's still consistent.

1:33 Yeah, we have a blood feud. I'm currently losing the blood feud cuz I think that that we've now shifted from games I'm okay at to games you're much better than me at, which is fine.

1:44 It gives me room to improve.

1:46 Mhm.

1:47 Yeah. See, like on board Game Arena where you two are playing, uh, I have my friends that are like recurring games. Like as soon as one's over to lose or picks the next game, but you two play, you put us all the shame cuz Christine's every day is like another story about, oh, I couldn't beat Eric at this or she's mad or she's like, I got him here. I'm like, man, you are playing all the time constantly.

2:08 We could keep a second game going where you can be competitive cuz right now I finally convinced him to do Arknova and I have a head start on that. will say

2:15 we just need to get back to innovation cuz I feel like innovation we had like a we have a nice push and pull to it.

2:20 Yeah.

2:21 Also, I just like two-player innovation. It's fun.

2:29 So, let's start with our game picks that we always like to start with um to highlight something we've been playing that's interesting we want to talk about. So, we we always start with ourselves cuz you know um I don't know going down. So our game pick is vanity plates this time. This

2:47 or vintates.

2:50 Sure. Yes. Vinty plates. U. So it's a really fun party game that we got from 25th Century designed by Clarence Simpson. Um, one of our favorite newer designers. And we had a really good time with this. We brought it over to a big game day played with seven people. Um, and you, it's one of those sort of creative, clever party games where you're trying to come up with an as obvious as possible vanity plate pretending you have a certain role. Could be like a firefighter or you could be something very specific. Uh,

3:23 like the Grinch,

3:23 like the Grinch or something like that. But it, you know, with that you're like, "Okay, fine. That's fine. Whatever. Vanity plates." But there are some very set rules that make you have to be more creative. So there are absolutely no vowels allowed, no spacing, no symbols, and you have a goal like two letters and one number that you have to work into your vanity plate.

3:43 Yeah, this is a card that you draw. These are your requirements. So that's what makes the game really good because you don't have cart blanch to write anything that your mind could come up with. You have to use those letters and numbers that you draw into this eight maximum eight character long vanity plate. But so when after you write your vanity plate, uh then you'll put your roll, the roll that you're drawn into the middle of the table face down.

4:07 After everyone puts theirs in, you draw six more in to mix in their so there's a bunch of red herrings and dummies and things you don't know what. You'll flip them all up, give everyone at the table a chance to look at all the different roles and characters and occupations on the table. Then let's say it's my turn to be the act player. I'll show everyone my vanity plate. everyone else at the table racing to analyze it. Look at the table and be the first one to shout out like you're a fire firefighter or you're the game on top of it.

4:37 Yes.

4:38 Yes. There's a speed on it. But what's nice is it's doesn't get too chaotic because you only get one guess. So if you guess incorrectly

4:46 yourself,

4:46 you just sit out of that round and then everyone else at the table still competing. But if you're the first guess correctly, you score. And then they check if you did your vanity plate by the rules, then you score as well. So, when I first we didn't even request this game. They uh 25th Century sent it to us and I'm like because I've heard of the game. If you look at the box, by the way, if you're looking for this, it looks like a license plate, but it's spelled V N T Y P L. The number eight and S. So, it's Vanity Place. It's clever. It's just showing you right away what the game's about.

5:19 But I was like, this can't be fun. Like,

5:22 so negative. I had this I had this like this preconceived notion like this can't be that fun.

5:27 Someone's a bummer.

5:28 Yeah. But we were I read the rules and also I'm like I got to give Clarence Simpson the designer some credit here because um he's has a good track record. So he's been on a tear lately. I just have been seeing a lot more games from him.

5:42 Yeah. So coming out at the same time.

5:44 So that gave gated some credibility there. And then when I read the rules I'm like, "Oh, this actually sounds really fun." And then we ran an eight player game last week and it was a blast. Everyone really really thought it was clever. It was a lot of laughter and it doesn't take long to play like in I think probably 20 minutes or so. Uh we went through three rounds of all eight players going and we were done. Very fun game. Vanity plates.

6:07 So new party game. I was baffled the other day because I was driving uh on the 520 in Washington and there was a guy in front of me with a vanity plate that was just your mom and I was like, "Oh, I I thought that the like cuz I've seen a lot of on things on like Instagram and other places where like the D the DMV will show what vanity plates got projected this year." So I there is some oversight process, but apparently whoever is doing oversight was like you are. All right, that's fine.

6:34 Mhm. It could mean so many things. You are a mother perhaps.

6:39 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

6:39 It's possible. Would not work for me, but I imagine that there are other people that would be very excited about it.

6:45 Mhm.

6:46 And so what game did you bring for us, Eric?

6:48 So this time I brought Micro Macro Kids Crazy City Park. So uh I've been a big fan of the Micro Macro series for a while now. Similarly, I was skeptical when I first started when I first heard about it. Everyone was talking

7:03 Yeah. Yeah. Well, everyone was talking it up and I was like, but isn't it just kind of where's Waldo maybe? And I actually tried it and I was like, oh, it's significantly it's like it's a very fun, engaging. I think the thing that really uh changed my opinion on it is um you know, Rey, one of the content creator folks, uh she does she used to do a lot for CGE and now she's over at the OP. She was doing a stream with Micro Macro. So, what she would be doing is she'd be like slowly panning across the map and letting people like try and buzz in with what quadrant they saw, whatever they were looking for. And I was like, "Oh, this is a lot more like intricate than I expected." So, that was good. But those are all super murdery. And so, they made uh the kids version Crazy City Park. And the thing that I like the most about the kids version, let me dig this out real fast.

7:52 It's always very exciting to be digging through something on a video call. But uh instead of the like they so basically how Micro Macro works for those of you who haven't played is you got this big map of a city where everything's happening at the same time and there are multiple crimes, there's murders, there's all sorts of stuff happening. And so you need to either figure out what crime is happening, what caused it, and what the outcome is. But since everything's happening in real time essentially on this printed map, you can trace a pathway from like a guy walking home from his job at the burger store, but oh no, there's a guy with a bat behind him and oh no, he's hitting him with a bat in the parking lot and oh no, he took his wallet. That sort of simple trace through. Uh for Micro Micro Kids, they did a lot fewer murders, which weird.

8:39 Yeah, it makes sense. But all that stuff's on cards and so you flip between the cards each time and you have to do this pre-prep step where you get this big stack of cards. You have to put them all in these like sealed envelopes. It's irritating. For Micro Micro Kids, they just made this big ass investigator book which has, you know, please don't pause for spoiler reasons, but has all of the uh cases preprinted inside, which I think is great. It's just a much better way to access the information. And they did pack a little thing of these detective tokens, these translucent little things that you can put on the map to mark stuff that's important that you've already seen.

9:15 It makes it a lot easier to play with a group of people than the original Micro Macro. And I think those are just both like big quality of life improvements for the series as a whole. But I also I I like that it's a little bit friendlier in terms of theming. Like one of the cases is like a robot's gone a muck and so it just like you can see it like filling up its pump in one part of the town, then it's spraying someone else with water in the other part of town or it like picks up a guy's car in one part of town and throws it on a roof elsewhere. It's a little bit more whimsical, which I like. And I think it's a it's it's not significantly easier than Micro Macro, but the thematic like the thematic detail has been lowered to a more familyfriendly level, which I think is nice. So yeah, just overall I was very impressed by it.

10:00 Okay,

10:01 that's interesting because I like the con I've only played the original and I like the concept a lot, but we I think we played it four player at the time and even though it's a big map that covers up most of the table, I just found it I I just kept thinking this would probably be played this would probably be more fun if I just played by myself because sometimes someone else sees something. Sorry.

10:24 So it sounds like a grump.

10:25 Yeah. Well, it it's just because other people will see things across the table from you and then you're not participating at that point. It's like, "Oh, I see this and that goes to this." And then maybe you're talking to the person next to you, but then I'm across the table like, "What's going on over there?" Like, so it just felt a little detached and you just didn't get to enjoy 100% of each uh case that you're solving. So,

10:47 I think that's reasonable. I play it a lot with my um I have a friend of mine and we do all the like exit games together. So, I'm used to splitting off some of the work and not necessarily getting to touch every individual part of it. So, I do I will say that bothers me less in this context, but I can see how it would be an issue if you get all four of them. Um I don't I know Pegasus spiel published it and I do not work for Hashet. I have no insider knowledge at Hashet, but I assume that if they published Micro Macro originally and Hashet has taken it over that they'll probably publish the like bonus box that Pegasus spiel did, which takes all four of the Micro Macro maps and combines them into a truly massive map with its own set of cases.

11:30 I I do think four people there would probably be critical cuz like we're not talking about like the original micro macro map is like the size of your dining room table, right? A four-way map of that is essentially the size of your dining room.

11:44 Like it's probably what, like at least two or three feet on each side.

11:50 Okay. Yeah. Massive. I I saw they also have a jigsaw. So, that one's a little intriguing, too.

11:56 Yeah, I got the jigsaw over there. I need to still play it. I think they have two now.

11:59 Mhm. So, thanks for sharing that game with us. And you get to be the guinea pig for a new segment we're going to throw into our podcast. Uh because we also do the board game quiz show which is a board game quiz show on YouTube and we are getting to season five one day.

12:17 Six.

12:18 Six. Whatever. I'm really on top of it. Uh

12:21 you're so good at getting to season five that some would say you've already done it.

12:24 Yeah, I'm so good at it. So, we're going to have all of our guests from now on just answer one trivia question for fun.

12:31 So, we can work in a little trivia into every show. So, you know, Eric has rated over a thousand games on his blog. So, you know, I wanted to ask um which of the following games have had mo the most absolute number of reviews on Board Game Geek. So, we're talking about lots of reviews for you, lots of ratings on Board Game Geek. And so, I'm going to give you multiple choice though. So, think about it, right? So, we've got our options are A Pandemic, B Carcasson, C Wingspan, or D Katan. Which one do you think has the most number of ratings?

13:11 So, when you first said Pandemic, I was like, "Oh, Pandemic." And then you said Carcassone, Wingspan, and Katana. I was like, "Oh, never mind." Um, like Carcasson's got a lot of longevity, but it's split across a number of versions. So, I'm probably going to NYX that one. I'd say that my most likely outcome is probably either Wingspan or Katon for Wingspan's sort of pervasiveness recently and Katan's longevity. But, I'm I'm going to flip it and go for Katan just because it's been around the longest. And I feel like just like I did, I feel like everyone who has an opinion on board games feels like they need to have an opinion on Katon at some point.

13:51 And you were right. So, you know your stuff. Very nice. Very nice. It has currently 142,248 ratings on board game. It's a lot. A lot of people have opinions on that.

14:03 Mhm.

14:04 I just I feel like if you're going to have an opinion on a board game, you need to have an opinion on kind of the like modern board game, you know?

14:12 Though I will say my opinion on Katon has softened over the years. I like I really liked it when I got started. I had a dip. And now that I'm playing with people who like Katan again, I'm like, "Oh, right. I remember why this was fun. It helps that we got the Soccer Fever expansion.

14:27 Oh, cool.

14:28 Mhm.

14:28 Yeah, we're hoping to trick you because Katan is the most popular game of those four and which she asked me. I'm like, is that too obvious an answer? But um yeah, that was it.

14:39 That's why I wanted to talk through my thought process cuz that way even if I was wrong, I still had a good justification for why I picked it. Though I think I saw somewhere that they're making like Bluey Katon in 2027.

14:49 Sure. That was supposed to be a move a movie. Uh that's Katan also.

14:54 Oh yeah, I heard about the Katan movie.

14:56 I'm I will say every time Katan does something weird, I get more intrigued though cuz I feel like we've done it's similar what Pandemic's doing, right? Pandemic keeps doing all these games the Pandemic system and every time they do something I'm like Lord of the Rings Pandemic, sure it's pretty popular. But I'm like Bluey Katon.

15:17 Sure.

15:18 Why not? Blue is great.

15:20 That's what all my very adult friends tell me.

15:23 It is really

15:24 It is very

15:25 That's what all my That's what all my 40 plus friends tell me. They love Bluey. And I'm like, "Y'all got any kids you're watching with?" And they're like, "No." And I'm like, "Okay,

15:33 kids start watching with children."

15:36 That's what they all say.

15:43 Okay. So, we are here for the American Tabletop Awards and talking about um you know a quick background on the process that we go through to select the winners and nominees and the recommended games and then we like to talk about the actual games that we that ended up on the big list and our personal opinions about it if they differ, if we agree, etc. So, uh what are the American Tabletop Awards, Eric? [snorts]

16:08 Yeah, so let's go through it. Uh, the American Tabletop Awards are sort of a jured board game award from media folks, content creators, reviewers, and otherwise. Um, basically just highlighting a lot of games that are coming out in the States that people are pretty excited about. Um, it's partially it was partially designed because, you know, there are a lot of games that come out every year and I think that as the industry expands, there's also a desire to know like what games are particularly interesting or good. And also, I do think it's just fun among like content creators to jockey with like, okay, what was [snorts] your favorite game of the year? You know, everyone's got like a top 10 list. They've got a like best games of the year. They've got gift guides and getting a chance to consolidate that with a lot of my like favorite content creators and favorite people has been a real blast for me over the last like what seven years, six years. I'm bad at the subtraction math so it's fine.

17:07 We've been uh lucky to be a part of the selection committee for the last several years. And so there's like a whole process of nominating games that we like in different categories, then sort of narrowing down that field and trying to categorize cuz then on top of that, you know, what counts as a strategy game versus a, you know, uh, a lighter game or heavier game, etc.

17:27 There's always a fight and I am just relieved that I have figured out in the last like 3 years how to resolve that much more peacefully.

17:36 Less bloodshed. We're not done fighting about it cuz I have some complaints

17:39 and that's and that's fine too. Yeah. No, the original the original process was if we disagreed on what category a game would go be in, I'd have to go to the Slack and get five people to vote on it. Like I have to get enough buy in there and that was just an incredibly lengthy turnaround time. Like we're talking like you know people are busy. They've got their own lives. They've got jobs. They've got families. And so like getting them to vote on something would occasionally take a week turnaround. Now I just incorporate those distinctions into the the voting process. So we do it in three phases. We do a nomination phase where everyone recommends five games up to five games in four categories. Then we do sort of a round one vote where everyone rank orders all the games from that have been nominated by everybody. And we use that to break t or to also distinguish what games go in what categories. That is the longest and most difficult part cuz rank ordering 39 games takes a while. And then once we get that down to a more limited list, we do a final round and then we're left with our uh winner, our recommended, our nominated games in each category.

18:43 It's all I originally called it rank choice voting, which isn't quite correct from a technical standpoint. It is a ranked choice ranking. So,

18:53 it's rank choice voting but happening recursively. Uh

18:57 there's an algorithm. It's fine.

19:00 It's not AI, I promise. It is Eric. Um,

19:06 it's AE actual Eric.

19:07 How many people are in our selection committee now?

19:10 Uh, I believe 10. There's occasionally some like folks who may have to sit out a year or folks who are inactive for a little bit, but um, generally speaking, the number tries to hover somewhere between like 10 and 12. I prefer odd numbers because it's harder to tie with an odd number, but that's also a weird factor weird factor to select on. So, we do what we can.

19:35 Smart.

19:35 Okay. And our four categories will be the early gamers, casual games, strategy games, and complex games. So, we're Yeah, we're just going to dive right into it. So, for early gamers, um they're intended particularly for younger players, typically 12 and under, and players that might be new to modern board games. Uh we're talking usually shorter games between 15 to 45 minutes and that was the selection sort of category that we were going for for early gamers, right?

20:04 Um and so we had several very fun games. We have the nominated Sand Castles of Burgundy, um Splendor Kids for Recommended. We had Duck and Cover and Cascadia Jr. and the winner was Magical Athlete.

20:20 Right. And just to be clear, when we say nominated here, it's sort of like the second tier of runners up versus a true runner because there's multiple everyone like there were a lot of nominations, right?

20:33 So they made that cut. Yeah. This is top five. when when American tabletop Awards calls it the nominated, they're kind of like the the runn and nominated for all the games that were picked by various members of the committee and then we have the big and nominated for what actually earned our nomination for the uh award.

20:51 Fair.

20:51 That's not confusing at all.

20:53 No, no, no, no. Everybody got that. Okay. So, we would have to say like we only played two of these games from because we don't have children, so we're not playing as many of the the younger games, but we did play Duck and Cover and uh actually you've played Magical Athlete and I actually haven't,

21:11 weirdly, but yeah.

21:13 Yeah. Uh, I'd like I would have voted I did vote for magical athlete out of this group because a lot of it and the point of what Eric's doing with a large group of judges is that we can cover each other's blind spots, right? Because there's none of us have played everything that's come out. But Magical Athlete is a roll and move game with these funky crazy characters. And that sounds really boring. And if you just looked at it and someone told you how to play it, it would probably sound still really boring. But each character has one unique ability and there's things that might happen on the board and then it just becomes chaotic because you might want to cause problems for other players where you might want to land on certain spaces that lets you teleport a little bit. There are a ton of different characters that all have different powers and that's where the fun comes in is how they compete cuz you're going to create a crew of racers and then you're going to race through several legs of different uh races and then at the end you see who wins. But you have to figure when do I want to play which of these four characters

22:15 decision.

22:15 Mhm.

22:16 Yeah. There's there's a lot to be said for a game concept that is a very simple game concept but everyone is allowed to cheat in a very specific way. I think Magical Athlete really nails that in a way that's very satisfying for a lot of folks because everyone's got a silly power. I think gosh maybe it was Rob Davio who said to me once like that when he's designing for variable player powers the ideal outcome for him is that everyone at the table looks at someone else and says I wish I had that ability at the end of the game

22:46 and I think that's a really really good insight for part of why magical athlete has such like resonance such staying power with a lot of folks

22:56 and the publishers the MKY also just has this really fun art for it so I never played it, but I've been at game days where people were playing it. Super eye-catching, really fun, colorful, and people are always laughing or yelling at each other. So, I think I would enjoy it. I just haven't had the chance to.

23:13 CMYK gets table presence. And I think that especially in a like in a industry that's, you know, not dominated, but very heavily influenced by, you know, creator culture and conventions and like store and like store presence. table presence matters a lot for a lot of people because it's what gets you engaged to come over and play the game.

23:35 Yeah, the there's a game. Have you played DC Breakout Arkham Asylum?

23:39 No. I was like I was like that's so many words

23:44 DC Breakout Arkham Asylum. So

23:48 dash a Batman deck building game period legendary. It's basically Magical Athlete if they took the exact same experience, but you pick two different characters and you sort of mash them up and move around the map that way. Same exact idea. I like it better from a gameplay perspective. I think it's a better game uh in all ways except Magical Athlete has the table presence. It has the really colorful chunky wooden pieces that will draw your eye. Like the other one, the DC breakout game does not. It looks really cheap by

24:22 Yeah, it's tough sometimes, especially with licenses. I was going to say that's part of where like tag team excels as well, right? In Arkham DC Breakout Asylum, um [snorts] they they it says you sound like you could pair two characters up and I think tag team lets you do that as well. I do like the idea of I have character with ability A and character with ability B.

24:42 Find that combo.

24:43 Yeah. And find a good synergy that works.

24:45 Mhm.

24:46 Like in Arkham Breakout DC Asylum. Yeah, exactly. You've totally hit it.

24:51 Mhm.

24:51 Yeah.

24:52 Uh but magical athlete, I think, would be really fun to play with kids because that they could grasp that pretty easily. Um and then for the recommended and the nominated, we did get to play Duck and Cover um you know, quite a while ago. And it's a fun little tiny game where it's like the sliding sort of game. You put play these cards out and you like sort of slide numbers around until you get it in as uh to try to cover up as many numbers as possible to get a low score. Um, so yeah, it was a very clever, cute game with like themed duck art. [snorts]

25:24 Yeah, I was I was surprised to see it. I didn't know a whole lot about it, but it had a lot of traction with the committee, so that was that was interesting to see.

25:33 I've played it a couple of times and I was surprised to see it. I did I I a lot of people we know do like the game and they like it a lot and there's been times where I'm like, I don't want to play that game.

25:45 See, you're so grumpy.

25:46 Yeah, I am. I am a grumpy. Yes. But yeah, I it's fine. But I didn't I don't

25:51 If I see something that surprises me, I usually blame Ruell or Jonathan. So, it's it's fine. I'm like, Ruel is down in LA having fun.

26:01 Are there any other of the recommended and uh nominated that you wanted to call out that you managed to play?

26:07 Uh I' I've actually I've played all the other ones. So, uh I I played Splender Kids, San Castles of Burgundy, and Cascadia Jr. I think between them, I'm probably most enthusiastic about either Cascadia Jr. or Sand Castles of Burgundy.

26:21 I like Sand Castles of Burgundy.

26:24 I like Castles of Burgundy a lot. And I think Sand Castles of Burgundy does a really nice job taking the semifamiliarity of Castles of Burgundy and condensing it down to something that is still like fun for kids and the folks playing with them. Like it's a really it's nice, it's pleasant, it's simple, it's got a big crab on it. It's like a lot of fun stuff there. Cascadia Jr. I was actually really impressed with um I'm generally impressed with like stuff with the stuff that Fessa works on and of course Spill the Arts Warner Center. Cascadia Cascadia Randy Flynn is Spill the Arts Warner Cascadia Randy Flynn. Uh what I like the most about Cascadia Jr. though is that there's a completely unnecessary like tableau where you get little animals and you can make a little like Cascadia scene during the game. It has no impact on gameplay. It's just there for the vibes. And I actually think that there should be more things in games that are just purely for vibes cuz it's a nice little distraction when it's like not your turn. You can be like fiddling with your landscape and being like, "Okay, let me do this." And it really, especially in a game where people are making like spatial choices or picking tiles that actually

27:33 Yeah. It's like being able to play with your phone, but not in a rude way while someone's taking forever on their turn.

27:38 Nice. So, moving on to casual games. Casual games are approachable and appealing to gamers at all levels of experience. When we're aiming for play times, typically within the 30 to 60 minute range for this category,

27:58 in case you're listening to this just audio, Christina is reading this, by the way. That's why it sounded so weird.

28:03 She's just she's just really good at this particular thing.

28:06 Yeah, she's she's locked in. Mhm. So, for the casual games, we had a huge winner, popular with us, Hot Streak, um, also from CMK Wide Games. And for recommended, there was Flip Tunes, A Place for All My Books. And for nominated, Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring Trick Taking Game, more words, and seven of awful title for a game. Like, no disrespect to whoever named it cuz I understand why they had to name it that way. And I assume that because of like the Tolken estate and such, they have to name it a very specific way. But boy howdy, that is so many words.

28:46 Yes.

28:47 By the way, did did you hear Christina just say CM KY?

28:51 Well, did I say the wrong way?

28:52 I think she did say CM.

28:53 See, he's been doing that. He's been naming your game wrong. The DC Arkham Breakout. What are

29:00 you talking about? Breakout DC Asylum Arkham.

29:03 I'm saying it right every time.

29:04 Mhm. You're right. Yeah. So, that winner, we have shown around a lot uh for a hot streak. We are super into hot streak. I will always be down to play Hot Streak. And it is just a ridiculous racing game, but you are not a particular mascot. You're betting on the outcome of the race uh between these sports mascots that are like these great figurines. Um but all this random crap will come out as we sort of collectively build a deck of their movement. Um, they will randomly come out and then we are sort of trying to guess what's going to happen, but a lot of them will step on each other, they'll fall down, they'll have to go backwards, they'll moonwalk. It's all sorts of crazy drunken mascot shenanigans, and it's always very hilarious.

29:46 The inevitability of Hot Streak was sort of like I I knew it as soon as I saw the box and I saw that weird little hot dog man, and I was like, "Oh yeah, this is happening." and like just just like it was truly inevitable regardless of what I may have wanted for casual games. I feel like we were I feel like almost everybody was locked in on hot streak from the start and I really like I was just like yeah it's hot streak. I don't know what to tell you guys. Like

30:13 yeah I think it kind of has that same table energy as ready set bet which is a betting on horses horse racing game but the it just you make some bets. It's very simple hot streak. It's just you want to bet on certain mascots. The first people that pick up these betting uh tiles will have better payouts. You could take a risky version of the bet. You can bet on whether certain things might happen in the game. And then it's just chaos and you get to feed the deck a little bit of what might happen. So you might know, oh, I put in a thing that's going to make the angler fish go backwards. And you're hoping you're hoping that card will get drawn and you won't bet on Dangler in that case. So, but everyone else is doing the same thing. So, you you just don't know. It's going to be random how these cards play out that show how all the characters move and everyone's screaming and yelling and then all of a sudden your character is right about at the finish line and they'll stumble. They'll get up. They'll start moving backwards and running backwards and it's just a lot of fun.

31:10 I also want to offer a clarification where I called the weird hot dog man a weird hot dog man. I want to just say that I know for a fact that it is not actually a hot dog. Just to make sure that I'm I was doing a lot of research on Hot Streak when I was writing this stuff up for the American Tabletop Awards website. Finding out that he's not a hot dog. Very worrying.

31:30 But I think it's okay to call hot dog.

31:32 He's a hot dog looking guy, but he is not. He is formerly not a hot dog. I do really like though at the end of the game, however much money you made or lost determines what your life outcome was and there's like a table of life outcomes that you can read for what happened. I think more games should have in general a here's how much money you made as a person what happened. Yeah.

31:52 Uh and it's just packaged so wonderfully. Like when you take it out, everybody's like, "What is this for the first time?" They're super excited because the racetrack like rolls out from the bottom of the box. You see all of the mascot figurines through a clear window. Everything's built into the box. It's just just chef's kiss basically.

32:12 I do hate a clear window from a photography perspective. Just it's it's

32:17 nightmare with glare and angles and like do you put the pieces in the box of the photo? Do you take them out and have this weird gaping hole? Regardless, again, CMYK gets table presents. There's just they like when I heard they were picking up Quacks, I was like that makes sense, too. Quack is a game that is a big part of his table presence and CMK is going to crush it.

32:40 Yeah, it makes sense.

32:41 People got fussy about the new art, though, which I was like,

32:44 it's a silly game. It should look a little goofy.

32:47 That's true. For the uh we have played all of the other games that were recommended and nominated.

32:56 Yeah. Yay. Yay. Yes. Um, super super into flip tunes when if we first got it at Gen Con. Played it so many times that Shu grump that he is got tired of it.

33:07 I Yeah, because it is a fantastic game, but you can't play it at every game. Like we'll have sometimes we'll post five, six times a week and then there's like different people like I got to show you Flip Tunes or we got to show you Flip Tunes. And then after a while, like two, three, four weeks straight of that, you're just like, "Okay, I need a break."

33:25 I was still fine with it. We were still playing it on BGA for a while, two player. And we got to point where we drew through all the the deck, too, which I normally would not happen in another game. So,

33:36 right. I will say for this set like like gun to my head any one of these games if you had like if you rotate this set of five any number of times any one of these games could have taken any spot like I do think hot streak was inevitable but I like flip tunes I mean I think it's a fantastic deck builder especially for like an introductory crowd a place for all my books got Barnes & Noble's game of the year for I think extremely obvious reasons

34:06 uh Lord of the Rings Fellowship of the Ring tricktaking game. Uh it's just Yeah. Oh, it's I've heard nothing but good things from people who've played it. I'm not a huge Lord of the Rings fan myself.

34:19 Mhm.

34:20 So, it didn't cross my table. And then Seven Wonders Dice I actually think is a really good distillation of Seven Wonders into like a Rolland Wright style game. I was very

34:29 I was okay with it. Yeah. Like I I enjoyed Seven Wonders Dice. I actually would prefer still playing Seven Wonders. of course, Seven Wonders Duel, too. Um, but yeah, it it it did give you some of the same vibes. Uh,

34:41 I think it's easier to pick up for newer players than Seven Wonders. I do I will say Seven Wonders is a more intricate game, though. Again, gun to my head, if I had to play a drafting civilization building game, I'd probably prefer Hadara.

34:54 Okay.

34:54 But

34:55 Mhm.

34:56 It's fun. Uh, but I think Seven Wonders Dice is easier to pick up. I do wish there was some more variety between the boards, though. Yes,

35:03 I'm with you on Southern Wonders Dice. I'm not too keen on it, but I've only to be fair, I've only played it on board game arena, and that doesn't always

35:12 give you a good true representation of how you would feel cuz just sometimes having the physical version of components, rolling dice, and all that stuff does not a little it's a little worse in person. Okay. Like, no, please no one kill me. the um the way that you shuffle the dice is inside of a little box. And so you shake the box, but the box has like kind of weird dimensions, so it doesn't necessarily it doesn't shake [snorts] the right way. So you have to kind of shake it horizontally in a motion that I probably shouldn't do on video. Um and then uh the pens are the pencils are grease pencils. They're not like dry erase pens, so they kind of gouge into the player boards a little bit. There were just a bunch of really interesting physical design decisions that were made that I was like, "Oh, I wouldn't have done any of those things."

36:04 Okay. I played it once in person at a con and so I had the con copy and it was like, yeah, I I played it and I was like, that was fine. That's how I felt about it. Yeah. So,

36:14 yeah. But the others are great. Like the the trick game that's like one of our favorite co-op games and card games is The Crew. And this is very much like a spiritual successor. different designers, different company, but it's sort of like if you play the crew and like the crew, this is the next game you should absolutely play.

36:30 And it has such good Lord of the Rings theming. So like as you play the different scenarios, you are playing through parts of Fellowship of the Ring. Uh and it's just really well done. We had a lot of fun with that.

36:41 Yeah. [clears throat] Yeah. We both really really like A Place for All My Books. Just a cute charming game about organizing.

36:48 So cozy.

36:49 Yeah. organizing books and stacks around the house and then until your social battery is completely charged because you're kind of an introvert in this game.

36:58 Kind of. You are.

36:59 You are. You go to town to buy more books or pick up more books and you're just trying to arrange them in different ways to solve different puzzles and uh or object meet certain objectives and it's a very fun game.

37:10 Mhm. I've shown it to so many people. It's like that it re really blew up with the book talk folks and uh we've been doing really well. So

37:17 I Yeah, like I said, I think like it's not that I think any category is ever weak. I just I do think that this casual category this year was particularly strong.

37:28 Like just looking at it, I'm like I think there's a lot here for a variety of gamers. There's also a variety of types of games which I really enjoy. Like Hot Streak is very different than Flip Tunes is very different than A Place for All My Books is very different than is very different than Seven Wonders Dice. It's just too many words. I'm trying to conserve time. Um, so yeah, great category. Would recommend all of those. Uh, for me personally, Seven Wonders dice a little bit less.

37:55 It's just it's got the four times in the title of the game. Four thus, the Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship of the Ring. Why didn't they call it the trick taking game?

38:08 Oh, yeah. I should have gone for all of it. Moving on to strategy games. Uh we're starting to get a little bit heavier. That's sort of where Shu and I play a lot of games, too. So, these are the strategy games are ones that take a step beyond casual. Um and so the play time is moved up to about 45 minutes to 2 hoursish. And so, our winner was Lord of the Rings, Fate of the Fellowship. Uh then the recommended games were Moon Colony Bloodbath, Knitting Circle and nominated were Critic Critter Kitchen and Kinfire Council. So I found this category very wide ranging in terms of uh like strategic depth and time involved with the games. It was a pretty varied category, I think.

38:58 Mhm.

38:59 Yeah, cuz and I think in terms of them like thematically, in terms of scope, like I I I completely agree. Like I'm not terribly surprised just from what I've heard from other people to see Lord of the Rings Fate of the Fellowship at the top of the list. Like like I said, I think it speaks to the fact that it seems like Middleear Enterprises has been opening up the Lord of the Rings IP a lot more lately, which is

39:23 I mean there are a lot of Lord of the Rings fans. Um and I know people Yeah, I was say I know people who are Lord of the Rings fans.

39:30 Um and they're very excited about this. So I think that's good for everybody. Um, otherwise I actually hadn't heard of Moon Colony Blood Bath until this sort of started gaining a little bit more traction here, but everyone that I've talked to has said very positive things about it.

39:45 Love it. I love that game. That's a fun game. Yeah. So, for Lord of the Rings, Fate of the Fellowship, we did get to play a prototype like quite a while ago. So, um, we played it so long ago that I forgot that we played it was an issue.

40:00 To be fair, that's the best kind of NDA is just you forget [clears throat] everything.

40:04 It's true. But, uh, when we did play it, it was like super super thematic. Um, and so it's using the pandemic system. Uh, but you know, with Lord of the Rings, uh, IP for sure and then theming on like what why you're doing what you're doing. We're not just trying to corral cubes anymore. We've got to bring that ring to Mordor, etc. Right.

40:24 Yeah. And it it's you almost have to look a little deeper to find the connections to pandemic. it is a pandemic game. But a lot of pandemic games I'm like this is a very simple rethe or it's like clear

40:37 now with water and canals or whatever.

40:40 But this one is like there's more depth to it and there's more window dressing and it just like you almost have to do a second look or a double take to be like oh yeah this is a pandemic game.

40:50 I think that's exciting though because it means that like the system is robust and resilient enough that you can start stretching it in more interesting ways. And I think that that as an evolution on the pandemic idea is very it's very compelling to me, right? Because I like I like Pandemic a lot. I like pandemic system games a lot. I'm very interested to see now that we're doing we're we keep you know they keep tooling the system and trying it out to see what they can do with it. And the further they get from core pandemic, the more interested I am to see what the next thing is. Who knows, maybe it'll be uh Pandemic Bluey in 2028.

41:24 Please don't make Pandemic Bluey. that would really stress some people out.

41:27 I mean, there have been Yeah. very Yeah. stressful movies about that sort of stuff already. Um, I am interested in going back to play this because since we only got to play the prototype, um, there's just so much that we never dug into. Um, and this would be the finished full copy. And I remember uh Matt Lee uh, somebody was telling me uh that he considers this one of his his like magnum opus. the amount of decision making and design put in the designer of this game and Pandemic of course feels that this version is like, you know, a synthesis of a lot of the game design things he's learned. So

42:02 Mhm.

42:02 Yeah.

42:03 It's also just a really nice looking version. Like, you know, I think the art's good. I mean, that is one thing I've appreciated about a lot of the American Tabletop Awards winners over the years is that we're also getting a lot of good art. We're getting a lot of good gameplay. We're getting games that are richly connecting their theme to their gameplay. And it's just it's I'm happy to see those sorts of things.

42:24 Mhm.

42:25 Quick thoughts on the other games before we move to the last one.

42:28 I mentioned that I love Moon Colony Blood Math because it is ridiculous. This is designed by Donald Varino who designed uh you know very famous Dominion and it is a deck building game but you are trying to mitigate losses on your moon colony. uh things bad things will definitely happen and a lot and you're just trying to have the most survivors at the end. So, normally I would feel like that's very negative. I don't like really negative feeling games, but it's just ridiculous. The robots are going to uprise and kill all your colonists. All these disasters happen and it's just very funny. I don't know.

43:04 Yeah, your people are constantly dying, so you can't avoid it. You can't protect them. You're just trying to die less than everyone else. I think it was very wisely said by a comedian I was watching at one point where she said that she does not want to be one of the first like 10,000 people to go to space and I was like yeah I'm inclined to agree with that. Yeah, I think the only thing that I could say is knitting circle was a lot of fun. I do think that it's ironically a little weirdly disserved by calling it a calico game because it's it has some of the same puzzly elements, but it's a different enough game that I feel like lumping it into the same thing kind of doesn't let it stand enough on its own. You know what I mean?

43:46 It is just as cute. But yeah, I agree that the gameplay is quite different. Yeah.

43:50 Yeah. Yeah. And it's it's odd for me because it's very much me going like, well, you know, sometimes you do that so you can like get get buy in from the original audience or you can sell more games. But it's it's flat out they've got pedigree just from the strength of their publishing. So I'm interested as to why they made that decision there. But that's more of a market targeting thing than an actual game complaint.

44:12 Mhm. Uh we loved Critter Kitchen. Uh designed by a friend who's been on the podcast before. Um, co-designed by Peter C. Hayward and Alex Cutler. Right. And

44:24 I noticed you said friends singular.

44:26 Friends. I know.

44:27 And there's two of them. So, which one's the friend?

44:29 Who do you like better?

44:32 Uh, and so it is very very adorable with art from Sara Tang who did Flame Craft. So, here you are uh animal chefs and you're organizing them to like collect ingredients and impress some food critics. It has this the the main gameplay is quite fun where you're selecting which area you're going to secretly and simultaneously. So when you all flip it, you see, hey, did I end up at this area by myself cuz I get the most rewards or if I ended up with lots of people, you get diminishing returns. So you're trying to like guess a little bit where people are going to go so that you can maximize the cool dishes that you're going to make. Um I am very bad at that sort of guessing what people will do. So that part's very hit or miss for me. Um, but it's very fun and the theming is so adorable. I walked by when our uh when Peter was showing this game to somebody and the first player marker is a tiny little wooden uh pepper mill shaker and a pepperm thing and I was like, "Okay, I need to play this like immediately."

45:32 I think the other big thing about this game is it's not only where you decide to put your workers and trying to avoid people. It's you have a small, medium, and large size workers that aspect too. The small cook can only grab one ingredient,

45:43 but they go fast.

45:44 But they could go earlier than the other ones cuz they're faster. The big one could collect up to three ingredients, but they're slower. So all those ingredients you think you're going to gather might be gone by the time that character gets to activate. So there's a deeper aspect of like I have to be very careful about where I put these things because I I could get lucky and get a lot of stuff or he could just be completely screwed.

46:04 Yeah. Um, really cute and there's a lot of fun puns on like celebrity chefs as animals and stuff. So, I enjoyed that.

46:13 Okay. And then real quick, Kenfire Council.

46:16 So, this is based on the Kinfire uh air world. Have you played the Kinfire games?

46:21 I have not played many of them. No.

46:23 Okay. So, we have not played uh the first one, the original one uh Kinfire Chronicles Chronicles. We have played Kenfire Dell the the smaller and those are great the cooperative dungeon diving games. Kenfire Council is in the same world but it's a worker placement. It's very unlike the other ones. It's a competitive [clears throat]

46:44 worker placement game. You have this three tiered city. You have to make decisions but it has a cooperative semi-ooperative aspect in it. So, I described it this game like this feels like a co-op game that's competitive because there are threats that you have to manage if you're not careful. The cultist could win the game, but you can also join the cultist and then join them and win with this outside force that's not one of the players and there's all these threats that you all have to manage and you'll get rewarded for it. So, you want to be the one that contributed most to doing things together with the other players

47:19 but still win by yourself. I'm intrigued by the thought of bureaucracy. How much bureaucracy is actually in the game?

47:24 You're not negotiating so much. Uh I but I suppose you could if you sort of like

47:29 Well, I just mean more like I want to do like councly tasks like like assigned public work.

47:35 You are a council member, but you have these seekers who work for you and you're placing them out. In in a lot of ways, on the surface, it is a very straightforward worker placement um with, you know, very interesting takes on everything. And it's a beautiful, beautiful game. The production value with Incredible Dream is amazing. Um and it's quite crunchy. Like I liked I like that game a lot.

47:57 Mhm.

47:58 So

47:58 that's cool.

48:05 Finally, we are into complex games. So these are deeply strategic games. Uh especially appealing to experienced players and they can have lots of game mechanisms and lean toward longer play time. So, generically longer. So,

48:21 truly one of our fussier categories.

48:23 Yes, it's just real heavy basically.

48:26 It's well it's it's everyone likes a like there's it's hard to make those distinctions between like strategic games and heavy games and like we're trying to avoid too much inside baseball terminology. So, like strategy games versus complex games. It's not saying the strategy games aren't complex. It's just saying that these guys are like strategy plus+.

48:49 That's fair. That's fair. And the winner was Molly House. Uh recommended were Above and Below Haunted, Galactic Cruise, and nominated were Tidal Blades 2: Rise of the Unfolders, and Covenant. So, a huge variety of games here. Also, uh, we and and luckily we just played Above and Below Haunted. We didn't play it in time for voting, but we actually just played it.

49:13 Classic.

49:14 Yeah.

49:14 I'm surprised that game is in this category.

49:18 It's lighter than Canire Council.

49:20 I would think so.

49:21 Yeah.

49:22 But this is how people voted.

49:24 Yeah. I'm not I'm not terribly surprised that I think that for some folks seeing Above and Below and thinking of it as like a a story focused game may take away from the actual like depth in the mechanics of it. So it does it makes a certain amount of sense to me in the complex category, but I probably personally would have also put Kinfire in

49:45 the complex category.

49:47 We did originally when we voted. So

49:49 that's what we did.

49:50 Yeah. But starting with the winner, have you played Molly House? Cuz we have not.

49:54 I have. I have not, but I read a lot about it as I was doing this. As I, like I said, whenever I do this, whenever I do this up, I have to write about all the games. So, I have to do a surprisingly in-depth amount of research. Once again, no AI was used in that research. I did it all with these hands.

50:11 Give us the elevator pitch on Molly House.

50:14 So, it's semi-ooperative. Um, basically inside of It's been a while since I wrote this, so I apologize. I will be consulting the research that I already did for it. But um basically

50:27 [snorts]

50:27 uh you're playing through I believe the queer community in early 1800s London. And so there are these Molly houses where there are gallas and celebrations within that community. But there's also the sort of overarching pressure from I believe it's called it the society of manners or something. Society for the Reformation of Manders.

50:52 Lots more words. Again,

50:54 sounds vaguely fashy, so that's a go with what you will on that one. But um you can uh either be pressured or join up with them to sort of rat out on these houses and sort of help break apart this community, but also like those people want to do active harm to you and your community. So, it's the question of prioritizing the self or prioritizing the community at expense of harm to yourself. And I think that it's unfortunately very topical, but also um I think that there's there's a lot of complexity inherent to that. And I'm not surprised Worldly Gig never shies away from either complexity or like indepth exploration of a game's theme through its gameplay.

51:40 I've heard it's amazing. I just haven't had the chance to play it.

51:43 It's It's really something. There's a lot to it and I think it's it's both critical uh it's critical right now but it's also a very welldesigned game with a lot of complexity to it.

51:58 Okay, well we're running out of time so let's go through these other ones real quick. Above and Below Haunted we briefly talked about. Shout out to Amanda Panda for showing it to us. But we loved Above and Below back in the day and this is just a spookier spookier version

52:13 and smoothed out version I think in a lot of ways.

52:16 So you're placing workers to go either recruit more workers build houses and you're ultimately wanted to build you want to build your village out in a way that produces the most points.

52:25 But you have a town above and caves you build out below of course that's the name

52:30 and those are the ones that you're exploring and you get little story bits. So

52:33 yeah. So it's really really well done. It remind I hadn't played Above and Below for many years, but a lot of the themes came back as uh you know, Amanda Panda was teaching us the game and I was like, "Oh, I really like this." There's just this added element now where uh ghosts will be haunting some parts of your town. So, you have to banish them or uh and you get to assign one to your neighbors. So, I think it it addressed the fact that there was very little interaction in the original Above and Below, so now there's a little bit more. Uh, still really cute, great art, and uh, the little ghosties are very cool looking, too. They're these little ghosties.

53:09 I always speak about above and below specifically as a game, but when I need an example of a game where the fun thing and the thing that you do to win the game are different, cuz when I'm playing above and below with my friends, everyone just wants to go to the caves every turn and then no one actually does the village building. And that's not that's not inherently a problem with the game cuz everyone walks away from the game having had fun. But I'm glad that in like LaCat's later games, especially Near and Far,

53:34 he was better able to integrate those two into something that was more coherent.

53:40 They do add that to Haunted a little bit where uh sometimes you can discover some missions that sort of are ongoing in the way of using cards. So, I think it's really clever. Really enjoyed my play. Uh Galactic Cruise, which was the other recommended one, was

53:53 Have you played this one? Do you want to talk about it, Eric?

53:56 I have not played it. Yeah, complex is a little outside of my wheelhouse especially this last couple years.

54:02 Yeah, so it was my heavy game of the year for last year. I really really enjoyed it. It is a definitely heavy investment in rules in the beginning. Uh it felt almost like uh a like lera weight for people who played really heavy games. He's known for having these like intense rules, lots of things interconnecting for scoring. Um this is not a Lerta game, but it uh was beautifully done. I think the theme is so fun. You're building up a bunch of galactic cruises to cater to different kinds of space tourists and then you can make a really fun cruise at the end uh if you do it well. So, it's a it's really well done. I had a good time. I would play it again.

54:39 Mhm.

54:40 Very pretty game, too, in terms of

54:41 Yeah, it looks it I I like I kind of I always really like that retro kind of aesthetic, especially for like retro futurist stuff and it really pops here.

54:50 Yep. For [clears throat] sure. And we are currently in a campaign mid mid second half of the campaign I think.

54:56 Grant was saying we're twothirds of the way.

54:58 Yeah. Look at us for Tidal Blades to Rise of the Unfolders which is a campaign cooperative game which is not normally our wheelhouse but um you know our friend James Hudson who's been on our podcast and he was our former neighbor. Um you know he like his company put like does all of the Tidal Blade games and they're beautiful. We love that universe. We started to play uh Title Blades 2 with Grant uh Lion, our friend nearby, and we are doing a we're really intent on finishing this campaign, and I'm very excited. Um it's got a really fun activation system. So, we are asymmetrical um tidal blades trying to figure out what's wrong and save Niri, the this beautiful sea town. And we are various water cre anthropomorphic water creatures with good fighting powers. Um but the activation is really neat. You have a deck of cards. You you draw some at a time and as you place them onto a grid, you're going to activate either a row or a column. So, you get to combine a lot of different powers strategically. Uh we've been having a really good time with it.

55:59 Excellent.

56:00 Have you played it?

56:01 No, I have not. I since I moved to Seattle, I've had to like rebuild a lot of my game groups and we're currently it's an ongoing process. So, we're currently working like if I dropped something like even above and below haunted on the table, I think I would stress some people out.

56:18 Okay.

56:18 So, it's an upward It's an upward mobility thing.

56:21 And then the last dominated game, Covenant,

56:24 she was played a lot. Mhm.

56:26 You played this one?

56:26 No, I haven't played a few times.

56:28 Yeah. Yeah.

56:29 Uh this is a diver game about um being a dwarf.

56:34 Dwarves mining into a mountain, reclaiming their ancestral throne. And so the the basic idea is there's so many combos in this game. If you like combos, you'd owe it to yourself to check out this game. I really enjoy it because it feels like every move leads to two or three or four other rewards. very rewarding.

56:57 Yeah. So, it's just like, okay, I do this which will give me this which will let me pull out one of these things which makes this track more powerful and it makes me move off that on this track and this track will trigger another reward. And then so you're building this engine and just doing all these super combos is very very cool and a lot of cool thematic things but also hard to learn because that rule book is one that will

57:21 So that's our warning

57:22 that it's burned into my head forever. So go watch a tutorial video or something because that's a tough tough

57:29 I think the last heavy diver game I played was Lacrimosa and I do remember really enjoying Lacrimosa.

57:34 That one's good too.

57:35 Yes, we like Lacrosse a lot too. Uh so hopefully this gave some people some background on the American tabletop award winners and nominees and recommended games. A lot of really great games there. Huge variety. I wish I could have played all of them, but we played a good good chunk of them. And uh yeah, take take our our recommendations with a grain of salt, but collectively the all the awards are going to put you in the right direction. I think so.

58:01 Yeah, that's one of the reasons I really like the like set of 20 that we end up with every year is I think that it's not necessarily, you know, here's every great game that came out last year, but it is a if you were going to play, if you're looking for a good game, there's got to be something in this set that will like really work for you or your group depending on where you're at on this sort of scale of complexity. Exactly. And so where can people follow you, Eric?

58:26 Yeah. So if you want to follow just the add us, I know we're on Blue Sky and our website is american tabletops.com. For me personally, uh I'm on Blue Sky at what's eric playing. I don't use social media that much anymore. Um just

58:42 healthy.

58:43 Yeah, it's it's actually really good as it turns out. But I'm on Blue Sky. I occasionally post my in my reviews to Instagram which is also what's eric playing or you can check out my website what's ericplaying.com and that's two reviews every recommendations. Yes, lots of recommendations there.

59:00 And I have been working on discoverability. So we've added an archive that lists just all the names of the games that I've reviewed. I've added hub pages that for different genres of games there are like bigger categories where you can look at my recommendations for those genres. So we're trying, you know, there's over a thousand reviews as you said. So trying to enhance discoverability is kind of my project for this year.

59:21 Awesome. Thanks again for joining us and giving us perspective. Um thanks to Mike Zipkin, our amazing editor, for helping us out. And now thanks to you for listening to us. You can stop listening and go play a game.

59:34 Bye.

59:34 Have fun.