Late summer is the time for barbecues, concerts in the park, and (most importantly) making the trek to downtown Indianapolis to play tabletop games with 60,000 other board game fanatics for four days straight. Gen Con—the biggest tabletop gaming convention in North America—is now in its 51st year, and it’s not slowing down. According to the organizers, this year’s show was once again an attendance record-breaker.
We played a truly obscene amount of games to sort through the noise and bring you this big list of 20 top titles. These games should be available soon; check with your favorite local or online game store for when they’ll be getting them in. (And be sure to check out our Gen Con image gallery if you missed it earlier this week.) Of course, with more than 600 new games from 520 game companies and 17,000 ticketed events on offer, we weren’t able to sample everything. We focused on board games; roleplaying games and miniature wargaming were sadly not in our purview. Nevertheless, we think there’s something here for everyone.
Reef
Emerson Matsuuchi, Next Move Games, 2-4 players, 30-45 minutes, age 8+