Top 50 Games Played of All Time – 2026 Edition (#20-11)

It’s time once again for another decade in my Top 50 games played of all time.

It’s been a thrilling ride for me, because I really enjoy sharing the games I love and seeing if anybody agrees with me, or if I’m out on a desert island all by myself.

Also, I’m proud that so far things are looking quite good for me getting these out on a weekly basis.

Remember how stable last week’s list was, where there was only one new game?

Yeah, this week’s almost the opposite.

A bunch of new games to the list and only three movers.

There will probably not be any surprises in it, though.

Well, maybe one or two, because I haven’t talked about them in a little while.

There were a couple of notable falls out of my Top 50, games that I wish I could table more often because they would probably jump right back up.

Yes, both Commands & Colors games that I’ve played (Ancients and Medieval) fell from 30 and 31 to 112 and 124.

Which is too bad!

They are great games, but they’ve kind of left my consciousness a little bit.

They’re sitting at work waiting for a couple of days with Bryan (since we can’t finish them in a lunch) and it just hasn’t happened.

One day, these will get played a lot and maybe they’ll move up the list again.

Anyway, I should give the usual caveats before we move forward.

I’ve played less than 600 games, so there will still be plenty of great games that I just haven’t seen yet.

I’ve upped my plays of the Top 100 to 56, though!

But you Hegemony fans will just have to have your class struggle without me.

Also, some of these games and rankings are after only a play or two (though that’s only relevant to two games on this list, actually).

With that understood (you do understand that, right?), let’s begin!

20) Dune Imperium (2020 – Dire Wolf Digital)

Designer: Paul Dennen

Artists: Clay Brooks, Brett Nienburg, Raul Ramos, Nate Storm

Players: 1-4

2024 Rank: 46

I joked a bit last time about how high Dune Imperium is up in the BGG rankings and how it was barely in my Top 50.

However, constant app play (and another tabletop play in November) has really upped this in my estimation.

The game shines with at least one of the expansions (maybe Rise of Ix)?

But even the base game is pretty good.

It’s a classic deckbuilder, this time with a worker placement sheen to it.

You have your starting deck of cards, and you will be acquiring more, but you will play a card to send a worker to a space that matches one of the icons on the left side of the card.

If you don’t have a card with that icon, you can’t go to that space.

Each round (there are 10 unless somebody hits 10 VP sooner), players will be vying to win that round’s battle, either for VP or spice or movement on the guild tracks, or just money and cards.

Moving up the tracks can get you multiple points as well. All four of them give you a point at the second level.

Plus, if you’ve reached the top tier (the shaded area) and you are the highest on the track, you get that faction’s chip and you have another VP.

This is a fun game and while the base game is missing a consistent way to thin your deck a bit (so you do have to be careful what cards you buy), it’s definitely a joy to play.

19) Final Girl (2021 – Van Ryder Games)

Designer: Evan Derrick, A. J. Porfirio (though future films may have other designers)

Artists: Tyler Johnson, Roland MacDonald (though future films may have other artists)

Players: 1

2024 Rank: Not Played

You had to know this was coming at some point if you read this blog at all.

It was just a matter of when.

Final Girl is the only solo game that has captured my attention and held it.

I did really enjoy Storm Above the Reich and even flew a bunch of missions for it.

But when I lost my space to play it, I didn’t lose much sleep over it.

If I lost my space to play Final Girl, though, I would figure it out somehow.

This is a game where the named “Final Girl” (the girl who survives until the end and ultimately defeats the bad guy) in a horror movie is placed in a location and must face off against a sadistic killer of some type.

The different scenarios come in “feature films” that include two Final Girls, a location and a killer.

The films even have a magnetic cover with the location map on one and the killer’s board on the other!

The locations are often also horror movie tropes, from a space ship where some terrorizing alien being is eating all of the crew, to a suburban neighbourhood which is getting terrorized by a killer who comes at you in your dreams.

The best part of the game is that this is all interchangeable!

You can take a killer from one film, a location from another, and a final girl from a third.

I love that about this game.

I have so far worked my way through the first two seasons (except one film that I haven’t been able to get ahold of and one that I’m going to start playing this week) and it is such an amazing game.

Very difficult, because the Terror cards and everything else can just make the game feel impossible.

But the stories it tells are just wonderful.

Like the time my final girl was on her last health, running away from Geppetto’s puppets…and tripped over a tent peg, ending her life and the game.

It is very luck-driven, but it’s worth it for the story.

18) Magical Athlete (2025 – CMYK)

Designer: Richard Garfield, Takashi Ishida

Artist: Angela Kirkwood

Players: 2-6

2024 Rank: Not Played

When I first heard about Magical Athlete, I would not have guessed it would be anywhere near my top 50.

A roll and move where each racer has an asymmetric power?

Doesn’t sound that exciting.

But then I played it, and wow is it good.

Each player is going to be drafting four racers, because there are four races in the game.

Each race, you’ll choose one of them to run, and then it’s basically a roll and move game.

Doesn’t sound like much, except when you take those asymmetric powers into account.

Coach gives everyone in his space a +1 to their movement, including him (so he’s basically always moving an extra space).

Lackey is great because if somebody rolls a 6 to move, he gets to move 2 spaces first.

That could be the difference between winning and losing!

I have not heard so much laughter during a game as during my two plays of this one.

Skipper, if anybody rolls a 1, they go next! Skip everybody else between the current player and you.

Good for the player next to you on your left!

If you roll a 1, you get to go again as well.

The two race tracks are fun as well.

The first (and third) races are on a relatively normal track with no special spaces.

But the second and fourth races are done on the alternate track that’s full of spaces that move you forward, or maybe move you back, or maybe trip you! That means you spend your next turn just standing up.

It’s the powers that make this game so fun, because you can get into absurd situations like this one:

There’s a character that makes it so you have to roll exactly the number needed to get to the end. You can’t just roll at least the number needed.

The Skipper adds +1 to anybody’s movement in his space.

What if he (and some others even?) end up one space away from the end.

They can’t win!

That character would have to win and then their power’s off the table, meaning the next player wins.

It’s so absurd, it’s hilarious!

And it’s only a 40-minute game, if that, so it’s perfect for lunches.

17) Pirates of Maracaibo (2023 – Capstone Games)

Designers: Ralph Bienert, Ryan Hendrickson, Alexander Pfister

Artists: Christian Fiore, Odysseas Stamoglou

Players: 1-4

2024 Rank: Not Played

It’s rare that I play a new, longer game (not a filler or social game) at a convention, and we end up playing it twice at the same convention

But that happened with Pirates of Maracaibo at Dragonflight 2024!

This game is just so good, with a kind of rondel, but it’s card-based as you are still travelling around the Caribbean Sea from one side to another, but this time you’re visiting cards.

When you get there, you can either buy the card if you can afford it, and add it to your tableau, or if it’s an island you can visit it and loot it or explore it.

If you buy the card, it’s replaced by another one so others can use it.

You are going from one side of the board to the other, until you arrive at the port.

You will be working towards upgrading your ship to get better abilities.

You will also be sending your explorer out on the main island to get as many bonuses as you can and to cross as many rivers as you can to get even more points.

Once somebody reaches the end, players will get one more turn and then the round will end.

Three rounds of this, and then total up all of your points.

Whoever has the most is the winner!

This game was just so cool and I wish I could play it again. It’s come out to a couple of Sunday game days, but there was always something on offer that I really wanted to try so I didn’t get to this one (I think one of them was Civolution).

You can move your ship 3 spaces, and you have to advance forward at least one column, so there’s no loitering.

Did you want to spend more time building up your ship and acquiring cards, or building plantations on some of the islands that will house them?

Did you want to get a bunch of loot and bury it? Though the loot is worth more the rarer it is on the board, so watch out for people refilling those islands to make your booty worth less.

Or maybe explore the main island?

The choices are just so juicy!

It is on Boardgame Arena, and I need to get a game going of it at some point.

16) Resafa (2024 – Delicious Games)

Designer: Vladimír Suchý

Artist: Michal Peichl

Players: 1-4

2024 Rank: Not Played

Resafa is a kind of “trading in the Mediterranean” game, but it has a few twists that make it even better.

Sending your camel caravan along trade routes to various cities is very important, and increasing the size of your caravan so you can sell/buy more goods is even more so.

But it’s not the only way to succeed in this one.

Instead, it’s the innovative card play and action selection mechanics that really make this game shine.

Suchý games always have that.

You have a set of action cards that you will be playing, three per round, and they are double-sided (double-ended? You can see in the picture) with a separate action on each end.

When you play the card, you choose which of the two actions you will be taking, but either one will also give you a colour action in that colour.

The colour action will either let you move one space on that colour track, or take one card of that colour from the display.

Those cards can be used immediately or held on to, though you do have a hand size limit. They can have a bonus effect when you do an action, or actually just let you do an action, or maybe just gain you some stuff.

The tracks are also really interesting because there are four of them. One (the game-end scoring cards), everybody can reach the top of.

The other three?

You have to decide how far you want to go on each track (if you can even do it anyway).

Only one of them can you max out.

Another one, you can get to Level 2 but that’s it.

The third one, you can only get to Level 1.

Of course, the big thing about Resafa is building canals to control the waterflow from the river to the city.

It’s hard to score a lot with these, as concentrating on canal-building might make it hard to score well in other areas, but it can be lucrative.

Especially if you build reservoirs for the water to collect in.

Twice in the game, water will flow from one of the blue cubes (the second time, only if it didn’t in the first). Players with canals where the water flows will get points, and if you have a reservoir it will be going into, even better!

There are other things and ways to score, like building workshops and gardens, the workshops which will get you resources or allow you to convert them, and the gardens for resources and, most importantly, points.

It all ties together so nicely and intricately!

I still don’t know how to play this game well, but I know I love trying to do so.

15) Clank! In! Space! (2017 – Dire Wolf Digital/Renegade Games Studios)

Designer: Paul Dennen

Artists: Rayph Beisner, Rastislav Le, Raul Ramos, Nate Storm, Franz Vohwinkel

Players: 2-4

2024 Rank: 9

Clank in Space (stupid exclamation marks, I ignore thee!) is another deckbuilding game with a board from Paul Dennen.

Both in the same decade!

Though this game has moved down a little bit.

Not far!

I played the fantasy Clank once on the table, and while I enjoyed it, I really didn’t like the “dash in, dash out” possibility for ending the game.

I’ve been enjoying the app a lot, though, and it’s gone up in my estimation.

But for me, Clank in Space is so much better (if longer, which can be a consideration sometimes) because you can’t just go in, grab a treasure, and run out.

Instead, you have to move into two different modules on the spaceship, hack the data ports, and then you can go into the sleeping chambers and steal an artifact.

The cards can be hilarious take-offs of well-known science fiction literary and movie characters, which is also enjoyable.

You’re still using boots to move around, getting stuck in security chambers (ice caverns in the fantasy game), finding secrets and occasionally suffering the wrath of the main villain by having Clank cubes drawn out of a bag.

You’re trying to get in, steal an artifact, and get out before you die.

If you make it to the Hangar Bay where you first entered the ship, then you will get points even if you die.

You just won’t get the 20 points for escaping.

If you die before getting there, though?

You will get no points.

Which some people don’t like.

But I love it!

The game can be long, often clocking in at 2 hours, but if I have the time, I’ll never say no to getting this to the table.

I love the ship modules, so you can mix and match and even change their order even if you’re using the same ones.

And the Cyber Station 11 expansion adds a completely new map (though you can use the old modules for it, I think, as there are still three modules you must place) and lots of cool stuff.

I must get it to the table again soon!

14) Rock Hard 1977 (2024 – Devir Games)

Designer: Jackie Fox

Artist: Jennifer Giner

Players: 2-5

2024 Rank: Not Played

I was so happy to see this game show up high on my list when I tabulated the results from PubMeeple.

At its base essence, Rock Hard 1977 is a straightforward, non-interesting worker placement game.

You put your worker out on an action, it’s blocked from other people that round (unless they have a special power allowing them to go there too)

However, no matter how basic the mechanisms in the game are, the theme comes through so strongly and I do love how it all comes together.

You are essentially wannabe rock stars trying to establish yourselves. You want to gain a record deal and play concerts at huge arenas, but you need to develop your attributes for that.

Each player character has a unique ability, and you will also have a manager that gives you an ability as well.

You get one action a phase, with three phases in the month (daytime, evening, and nighttime).

You can take a candy, if you have one, to potentially gain an extra action (or even two! though you may get sugarless candy and you don’t get any extra actions).

Doing this will increase your blood sugar level, though, and you have to roll. If you roll below your blood sugar, you have to go to Recovery for your next daytime action.

You also start with a job which will be your main source of money at the beginning of the game, though you can skip work if you need to do something else to increase your rock star ability.

You can only do that twice before the third time will get you fired.

The nighttime hangouts are the most fun part of this game.

Horribly random, but also so interesting and you get some great stories out of them.

There is a guide to which hangouts will generally (not certainly) will get you money, or songs or fame or whatever (and Bud’s will usually have a rule-breaking ability that can be done once).

It’s criminal that there is no player aid that will give you all of that information, as my rulebook was getting very worn from looking it up all the time, before I printed out a player aid from Boardgame Geek.

But that’s not a game design problem; that’s a production problem (and may have been fixed in a second printing? I’m not sure).

There is just so much to this game that is gripping and fun to play.

I never play my character (or manager even) well, but I still have a blast doing it.

This is an awesome game, will immerse you in the theme of trying to become a rock star, and will just be a good time.

Highly recommended.

Though be prepared for a really long game if you play with 5 players. It’s fun and I’m willing to do it, but make sure you have enough time for it. It does lead to downtime for those who hate that.

13) Underwater Cities (2018 – Delicious Games)

Designer: Vladimír Suchý

Artists: Milan Vavroň, Uildrim

Players: 1-4

2024 Rank: 17

Another riser, and another Vladimír Suchý game!

You’re going to get tired of hearing his name.

I haven’t played Underwater Cities in a little while, not even on Yucata, but it stays in my head as a top game because of the interesting mechanics, much like Resafa.

In this case, it’s the action selection that is not card-based, but does have some relation to colour of the cards.

You are taking a red, yellow, or green action based on the card that you play.

The action space has to be available, which means you can be blocked.

You can play a different coloured card if you want to take an action (a red card for a green action or something like that), but you don’t get to use the card’s effect if that’s the case.

You just discard it.

Inefficient!!

You are using these cards, and collecting these resources, in order to build underwater domes (cities…oh, I get it now!), as well as kelp farms to help feed them, desalination plants for money, and laboratory for science (or you can upgrade them to get you more kelp, more money and biomatter, and more science and steelplast).

As you’re playing the cards, you’re building a nice tableau of effects, one-time bonuses, and maybe (if you choose the action) the playing of Assistants that can be activated once per era (eras can consist of multiple rounds).

These can greatly help you do things and come in handy.

At the end of the game, you’ll have a really pretty tableau of plastic domes and various buildings around them, all connected by tunnels (hopefully upgraded tunnels!) and it’s really neat.

You are trying to extend to certain milestones that will score you at the end of the game, but hopefully you have been able to obtain some endgame scoring cards as well.

All in all, I find this a fascinating game, and it’s another one that I kind of “get,” in the sense that I rarely do so poorly that I’m disappointed in myself (though it has happened!).

I may not win, but I’ve beaten my friend Cal at it once, so that must mean something!

I love the design, I love the card play, action selection mechanisms, there’s just so much good stuff in this game.

12) SETI: Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (2024 – Czech Games Edition)

Designer: Tomáš Holek

Artists: Lots!

Players: 1-4

2024 Rank: Not Played

And now we get to two more brand new games that have just captured my attention (and my soul).

SETI is a game where you are searching out traces of alien life in the solar system, both on the planets as well as through signals coming in from out there.

I love the board and how the solar system is set up somewhat randomly.

I mean, the planets are in the right order, but the revolution around the sun, they could be in different spots at any one time.

It may be a quick jaunt to Saturn or you might have to go to the other side of the board!

The game is largely card-play driven, though you will also be paying other resources to do other actions as well.

Sometimes the cards will actually give you those actions, which means that you’re paying money for them instead of the resources you would normally have to pay for the action.

You are also launching orbiters to go out and explore the planets, either orbiting them or even landing. Landing will get you a trace of some alien life.

Orbiting will bring you income, though, and sometimes some alien signal data.

The player boards and iconography are quite good and, once you’ve played a couple of times, very intuitive.

Of course, the highlight of the game is the two alien species, which are completely randomized from the five available (the expansion will have more choices!)

Once one piece of each type of data (blue, yellow and red) have been applied to an alien, it’s flipped over and a new set of cards and rules come into play.

I love how all of them are different and concentrate on different things.

The alien pictured above has “danger” and the cards have danger too.

You can play the cards, or you can assign alien traces to the alien and get that much danger.

At the end of the game, you add up all of your danger, and whoever has the most loses 10% of their points!

However, their cards and trace bonuses (shown above) can get you a lot of points and resources.

If you’re going to go high danger, you have to make sure you have enough cushion to lose that 10%, but it is certainly possible.

Another alien has anomalies that are in the solar system and will reward the player with the highest traces bonuses every time Earth is in the same sector as the anomaly.

There’s a lot of variety, and it’s interesting that you can’t really plan for them at the beginning because you don’t know what’s coming out.

All in all, this game is just so intriguing and I am happy to say that my last two games, my score has actually increased, though it hasn’t reached the heights that a lot of people reach.

I’m getting there!

And I would love to keep trying.

11) Galactic Cruise (2025 – Kinson Key Games)

Designers: T.K. King, Dennis Northcott, Koltin Thompson

Artist: Ian O’Toole

Players: 1-4

2024 Rank: Not Played

Galactic Cruise hit the table so hard this year that it almost broke it!

This is another game that was introduced to me by Heavy Cardboard (really, my wallet hates you, Edward, though I have resisted actually buying this one!)

I saw the playthrough of it and knew that I must play that game.

Then it was on Boardgame Arena and I was sated for a little while until my friend was able to bring it to a game day.

Now two of my friends own it so it’s very likely it will get more plays!

Galactic Cruise is very much like a Lacerda game (it even has Ian O’Toole artwork!), but not quite the same. Lacerda was definitely an inspiration (which I think the designers acknowledge).

In the game, you are a cruise company building space ships and trying to give space tourists the ride of their lives, visiting destinations or sometimes just cruising through space, enjoying themselves.

You will gain blueprints of ship parts and then build them, so you can put in a Pool Deck, or a Bounce Park, or even a Game Show auditorium!

Each segment will appeal to certain types of guests, either family guests, active guests, or those who just want some serenity.

The mechanics of the game are essentially action selection, where you have two employees (to start with, though you can hire up to two Expert employees) to put out on the board to do various actions.

Each space will have two actions, but there are also developments that you can buy and place that will chain adjacent actions.

If there is a development of any kind, you can chain adjacent ones (like the top two in the bottom spaces in the picture above).

However, if you don’t have a development there, then it will cost you money (based on your reputation). You pay the other players who have developments there 2 (or 1 or 0 if your reputation is high enough) money to do that.

These actions will be gaining blueprints and building segments, getting resources, possibly getting money for replenishing the resource tower, Agenda cards, buying developments, booking cruises and attracting guests to a cruise, you name it.

Of course, to send a ship out on a cruise, you need your cruise director to book one.

Each cruise will require a certain amount of fuel and have a certain number of spaces, both open space (which will get you stuff based on the type of passengers you have) or locations where you put upgrades.

Once you’ve put together all you need (cruise, resources, money, ship parts, etc), then it’s time to launch!

There are three scoring rounds which will score you points based on how many times you’ve launched a ship and fulfilled one of the three in-game goals, in addition to the game points you receive for stuff like visiting a location where you can spend ads to score each passenger.

I just really love the look of this game, the player boards, the intricate mechanisms. The pieces are nice and chunky.

All the symbology is pretty intuitive after a play, maybe two.

I love how the upgrades are tied to your resource space. So when you build one, you will be making more room for one of your resources, and building columns of them will get you endgame points.

The board above will get 5 points for the column that’s completely empty of upgrades.

Building two more would empty the middle row, getting you 15 points instead.

The actions join together like a Lacerda game. The fact that you can bump somebody else’s employee means that you’re never blocked, but you’re giving that player a bit of a bonus.

Sometimes you haven’t been bumped and you have to “call a meeting” to return all of your workers to your board. Each one of them returning gets you a bonus.

It’s just so juicy!

I continue to play this on Boardgame Arena and will definitely want to play it again on the table.

It’s brand new, and just outside my Top 10.

There you have it.

Next week, we’ll see my Top 10 games played all time, and there may be a few surprises there.

For now, what do you think of this decade?

What’s in your Top 20?

Let me know in the comments.

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Top 50 Games Played of All Time – 2026 Edition (30-21)
Top 50 Games Played of All Time – 2026 Edition (20-11) – You’re here!