Top 10 Boardgames | 2026

0:00 Hello everybody, and welcome to a new video. Today, I'm going to show you my top 10 favorite solo games of the last year. If you're new here, hi, my name is Iris, and I love to play solo board games. I love board games in general, but I do mostly play solo games, and every year I make a video where I share with you the top 10 games that I enjoyed the most in the past year. So, I've done two of these videos already. So, if you haven't seen those, you can check those out if you want to. And so, this is not a top 10 all-time favorites. It's the games that I played in the past year, so that's important. Sometimes people ask me like, "Why is Final Girl not in your top 10 video?" Because it was in the first video I ever made.

0:48 The first top 10 video. So, that's why it's not in this one because it's not a game that I discovered in the past year. So, it's all games that were new to me in the past year. Um and I'm going to talk to you about them. I don't often do, or I almost never do, top 10 videos. I only do top 10 solo videos because it's hard for me. I feel like I'm choosing between my children. I It feels unfair. Ranking them feels unfair. It's very It's It's very hard for me. That's why I don't often do them, but I do like to do one once in a while also just to see in the When I look back now on my first top 10 video, it's fun to see which games were my favorites, and which ones I enjoyed, and sometimes I'm like, "Oh, damn, I really need to play that again." So, it's fun to see how my taste develops, which games I discover. So, I do like to do them just once every year. As I said, it's hard for me, so these top 10 games are just all the number one spot. Okay?

1:51 They're all number ones. They're all great.

1:55 I try to put them in an order that kind of works, but it's they're all amazing games. All right, let's jump right in. Number 10 is Flip Voyage. This is a flip and write game where you are in a submarine and you are in the waters searching for treasures, fighting other ships, and you are trying to score the most points. This game is wonderful. Um there is another game by the same designer publisher, which is called Flip Town, and that one is like a western style game. I personally enjoy Flip Voyage more than Flip Town. The I just feel like it's more manageable for me and I like the theme better. So, this one for me is great. It's easy to just whip out and play, which I always enjoy. I don't like it when a game has a long setup time. So, Flip Voyage is that perfect game.

2:55 Number nine, we have a newer game on the market and that is Enchanted Ivy. Now, I absolutely adore this game. I think All Play did such an incredible job with this game. It is a very small box, but the game inside the box packs such a big punch. Don't get it twisted, you need a large table to play this, okay? The box is deceiving you because you will need quite a bit of room for all the cards to play it. So, keep that in mind. In Enchanted Ivy, you are an innkeeper and you have an inn called The Enchanted Ivy Inn. And you are trying to please your guests by placing them in rooms where they want to be. Every guest scores in their own unique way, making every game very different because it is a kind of like a legacy style game where there are levels or chapters and each chapter tells you how to lay out the inn, so which shape you need to create, and which guests you will be receiving for that chapter. So, every chapter you will have new guests, different guests, a mix of different guests, a different layout, and different challenges that you're trying to complete to earn stickers.

4:15 Yes, you heard that right, stickers. The stickers are completely a like a It's like a gimmick addition. It does nothing for the gameplay. You're just putting in stickers for fun. But, I love that. Let me put in some stickers. I love stickers. So, an absolute I love the puzzle element. It's very satisfying. The story elements are great. There's truly ways that they're trying to tie in these characters in a story, which is so cute, um and it's just lovely. It's It feels like I'm reading a cozy like whimsical fantasy book about an enchanted inn, but I'm actually playing a game. Even though the story element is very small, it still feels really immersive. At number eight, we have Hercules and the 12 labors. This is a roll and it's not a roll and write, but it's It's a dice game.

5:12 Um and it is a boss battler where you are trying You're Hercules, basically, and you are trying to get through the 12 labors. Such a great game, very clever, very difficult. Don't think it's going to be easy. It's really not. Um and you're trying to get to the end, basically, to get to all the labors, but that's hard That's hard to do. You can definitely like stop in between and then continue from a certain point onward in trying to complete everything. The artwork is absolutely stunning. Um I really like the dice manipulation that you get to do. So, the more you progress, the more like special powers you get from defeating enemies, the labors. Um and you can manipulate your dice in certain ways that will make future labors more manageable.

6:04 But, it is a very tricky game, very difficult, but so so fun. At number seven, we have Wok and Roll, which is a roll and write game where you are running your own wok restaurant or noodle restaurant. Um and I absolutely love it. It is one of my favorite games. I whip it out so quickly, and you play it solo probably maybe in like 5 to 10 minutes. It's That's maybe Let's say 10 minutes. But, it's so easy, and I mean, I love roll and writes and flip and writes. That will be obvious in all these games. Especially for like a cozy solo moment, they're just so easy to grab and play, which adds to the experience for me. Um absolutely wonderful. I love Wok and Roll. It's very cute. I have the expansion as well. Definitely worth getting if you only have the base game.

6:58 The expansion is definitely a fun addition to the game, just giving you more restaurant, basically. At number six, we have another All Play game because I love All Play, and it is River Valley Glassworks. This is an older game that I really should have gotten into way sooner in life, but I did not, and that is sometimes how it goes. Um but, River Valley Glassworks is a masterpiece, especially solo. I think it is so wonderful. It gives you certain difficulty levels in the solo mode, which is so fun, which really diversifies the gameplay for the solo mode. The multiplayer is more monotonous. Mon- Is that the word? I'm not sure if that's the right word, but it is more I feel like the replayability in the solo is way higher than it is in the multiplayer because of these different levels that you're playing against. So, they all have all the characters that you can play, you can flip them, and they will have a solo AI system. And in the solo, every character has its own like unique way of taking glass from the river and scoring points for them, which makes every level very different, which is so great, and it's just very cozy. I love the tactile glass pieces that you're putting in your little scoring area, and it's just a wonderfully beautiful beautiful game. At number five, we have the Voynich Puzzle.

8:30 This game is crazy, but I had to put it on here because it's so good. This is a very heavyweight game, at least for me. I play a lot of light-to-medium-weight games, but this is definitely my heaviest game in my collection, but it is so satisfying and so good. You are There's this thing called the Voynich manuscript. In real life, there's a Voynich manuscript that like researchers and scientists have tried to study, but they don't really know what it is or what it means. Um and this is basically a board game based on that concept. You are a researcher, you are trying to decipher the Voynich manuscript. There's different It's like a big game with mini games in it, but everything like makes for a chain reaction. So, you place something in this area, and it makes you able to do things in other areas, and it is madness, absolute madness, but it is so good. It's so beautiful. It will melt your brain. It will. I Fair warning, you know, play at your own risk because my brain has been melted from it. Um but it is just so good. It does take a bit to play and it takes a bit to set up, but when I do it's just a magical time. At number four, we have Cozy Sticker Ville. Now,

10:04 this game really took me by surprise. I saw it a lot on the internet, but I was very skeptical because it's a game where you place down stickers. That's basically all that you're doing. You're putting down stickers. It is called Cozy Sticker Ville and you're like building your town. I was very skeptical because I was like, how is this going to be any game play? How is this going to feel like I'm playing a game? I didn't think it was going to work very well. I just didn't get it. I was like, even though I love the the cozy theme and I love stickers, so it should have been perfect, but I was skeptical. And then I was like, okay, I'll play it. I'll get it. People told me, you're going to love this. I was like, fine. I'll try it.

10:51 So, I did and it was so good. Wow, so wonderful, so much story elements. You can play the game twice, but then it's done because you're placing these stickers. You have one playing board where you put down all your stickers and the back side has this has also has a map, so you can play it twice, one on either side of the board. But then you will have like the replayability is literally that. You can play it twice. But it does take you a couple hours to get through. I would say I don't remember. I think there's like eight chapters or something. Um and I would say each chapter will take you about an hour. So, it is quite a bit of game maybe an hour and a half even.

11:38 So, there is quite a bit of gameplay going on. There's a lot you can explore. Um, and it makes me excited I'm so excited to play it again. I wanted to save my replay for like the winter cuz I know it's going to be the perfect cozy game to play when I'm it's like cold and I put on the candles and I have my blanket around me and it's just like blah blah blah. So, I'm very excited for that. On to number three, we have Daydream. Ugh, Daydream. What an amazing game. Again, a roll and write but my favorite one by far at this moment in time. Uh, it's so great. It is very puzzly. The art is stunning it's so beautiful and it is basically six games in one. The board expands in certain ways but you can play when the board is completely closed, you can play just that side of the board.

12:32 You can completely extend it playing a bigger game. You can fold the board in different ways like changing up the way you play, changing up the way you score. It is so clever. I the the person I mean the designer of this game was so clever about this with the folding of the board. I've never seen anything like that so unique and the play style is basically a Sudoku style game where you're rolling dice. You put the numbers that you roll into your puzzle but you cannot have the same numbers in the same like rows and columns. Um, and you're trying to score points in the best way that you can. But again, every way that you play, every level I suppose, gives you new ways to score points or different ways to place numbers that will give you points in different ways.

13:28 If that makes sense. It's wonderful. I highly highly recommend it. Number two and number one. Ooh, how exciting. These basically are tied, but you know, I had to put them in some order. It's hard. Um number two, we have Vantage by Stonemaier Games. I love this game so much. I've played it a lot. People might be surprised that it is in this video because I have been playing it for a while, but I did only discover it after my last top 10 games, but I just discovered it quite quickly after that. But still, it deserves a spot in this video because it is one of my all-time favorite solo games to play. I You can play this game multiplayer, but it definitely doesn't do the game justice in my opinion. I feel like this is a perfect solo game. You are exploring a strange planet where you crashed. You're like with your crew on a mission, but you crash on this planet.

14:26 And you don't know anything about this planet. You have never been there. You don't know who inhabits this planet, what the wildlife is like, what the nature is like. You don't know anything. And that's basically how you start the game with no info. And then it's just like, go ahead. Go and explore. And it is just amazing. It feels like I'm playing a video game in the best way. You're searching for items. You're searching for potentially some friends along the way that can help you. You do get a mission at the start, which kind of helps you, you know, cuz else it's just like an open world vibe where you have no goal. Um but it does give you a mission at the start, which can be like, befriend three animals or make sure you have 30 money, or make sure you have certain number of items that are worth a certain amount.

15:27 There's different goals that you can get um and then when you complete the goal, you will get like an additional thing to complete. It's hard to explain. But you're basically just wandering around this planet, moving around. And it has a lot of cards, visuals that you can like take and it's just I can't explain how this game feels because it is so unique in gameplay, in feeling. It is just one of my favorite board game experiences of all time and I absolutely love it. On to number one, let's go. It is Nusfjord. This game is so good and I don't even understand why it's so good, but it just has that certain feeling. It scratches that itch.

16:22 It The art is not even great, in my opinion. I think it's a pretty ugly game.

16:27 [gasps]

16:28 And this once again proves that gameplay trumps art for me personally. I mean, I would prefer that every game is as stunning as Daydream or A Flamecraft or whatever. Um but it's not and art is also very subjective. So, one person might think it's stunning and the other might think it's ugly. So, that's a difficult, you know, field to branch, but um Nusfjord, in my opinion, doesn't look that great, but the gameplay is a 10 out of 10. And you're basically in this fishing village and you're fishing for fish and you're selling fish and you're giving fish to your elders so you so they can eat something cuz they're too old now, I guess, to get their own fish. You're expanding your fleet with more boats so you can catch more fish.

17:24 And you're trying to score points. You're building buildings to optimize your fishing.

17:34 And it's it sounds so boring, but it's so good. It's just so good and it plays very quickly, way quicker than I thought it would play. It plays in like 20 minutes, 30 minutes. And every time I pull out this game, I play like three, four games in a row because it's so good. I just can't stop playing. I'm just like, yep, let's go again. And let's go one more time. Okay, so maybe one more time and then we're done. Okay, now we're done. It's just It's just great. I absolutely love it. I really need to check out more of Uwe Rosenberg's games. Um I have a bunch on my list that are all recommendations from you guys. So thanks so much. Um I have a bunch that I really want to get to. Um but you know, it's hard. There's so many games, but I definitely want to get more like classics or more older games that I think will really, really work well for me. Um so I'm very excited about that new journey in my life. But yeah, I hope you guys enjoyed. This is my top 10. Um I hope it wasn't too boring me yapping.

18:40 I tried to keep it short as much as I can. So apologies. Um I'm not going to apologize, but okay. Thanks so much for watching. I hope you guys enjoyed and I'll see you guys soon with a new video. Bye.