Gen Con is essentially E3 but for board games. It’s one of the world’s biggest tabletop game conventions, and it features everything from traditional pen-and-paper games to board and card games.
If you want to look at part one of my list of board games from Gen Con 2023 that stood out to me, you can follow the link here. Let’s look at part two of my most anticipated board games from Gen Con 2023 – enjoy and may your wallet remain strong.
Dead Cells: The Rogue-Lite Board Game
Dead Cells: The Rogue-Lite Board Game is a dungeon-crawler that offers a cooperative rogue-lite experience inspired by the Metroidvania genre and the video game of the same name.
The game can be played with between 1-4 players and will last about 45 minutes. The essence of the game is simple: Explore. Kill. Die. Mutate. Repeat.
Players will choose one of the four Beheaded and then explore biomes. Players must choose their path wisely within a sprawling, ever-changing castle to try and find new weapons and powers.
However, the castle is infested with abominations, and each character class has unique power sets and a deck of action cards. Loot equipment, gold, scrolls, and Cells from the corpses of enemies and get stronger. Still, health is limited, and death is inevitable.
When players die, they will lose all their scrolls, equipment and gold, but they will also get the chance to use any cells collected to buy permanent mutations that will give them more power and start the game again with their new permanent mutations to exact revenge on whatever killed them.
If this seems like the game for you, you can check it out here: Kickstarter
Disney Lorcana
We’ve all had that moment when we’ve considered starting to play a trading card game but found ourselves intimidated by what’s already out there – precisely what Disney Lorcana aims to address.
Disney Lorcana is a trading card game, perfect for newcomers, that features Disney characters in original and reimagined art styles that live in an all-new world with unique and magical gameplay.
The game is set in the rich and fantastical world of Lorcana. Players will take on the mantle of Illumineer, a powerful sorcerer, and band together Disney characters from Lorcana’s The Great Illuminary, a treasury of all Disney songs and stories ever made.
Disney Lorcana has players attempting to be the first to gather 20 lore, a resource that can be acquired by sending characters like Mickey Mouse, Aladdin and Frozen’s Elsa out on quests.
On a player’s turn, they can put cards onto the table – if they have the ink, one of Lorcana’s primary resources – or put a card facedown into their inkwell, converting it into a single ink.
Characters can be used to either quest by exhausting them or challenge any of an opponent’s exhausted character cards. Players can also play cards to help support their existing characters or give them various other benefits.
If this seems like the game for you, you can check it out here: Disney Lorcana
Expeditions
Expeditions is the standalone sequel to the beloved strategy game, Scythe and will send players on a new adventure into Siberia, where a massive meteorite crashed near the Tunguska River, awakening ancient corruption. [Known as the Tunguska event, the meteorite crash really happened. Check it out. – Ed]
An expedition led by Dr Tarkovsky ventures into the taiga to learn about the meteorite and its impact on the land. Itching for adventure, heroes from the war privately fund their expeditions to Siberia, hoping to find artefacts, overcome challenges, and ultimately achieve glory.
Expeditions is a competitive, card-driven, engine-building game of exploration. Players need to play cards to gain power, guile, and activate unique worker abilities, as well as to move their mech to mysterious locations and gain cards found among the tiles. These cards will also be used to use workers, items, and meteorites to complete quests, allowing them to enhance their mech and, hopefully, defeat the corruption.
The game is designed to evoke similar feelings to Scythe, even though the mechanisms are different. The game will come with five mech miniatures, five mech mats, 20 location tiles, 123 uniquely illustrated/designed cards and an achievement sheet with a unique journal entry on the back.
If this seems like the game for you, you can check it out here: Stonemaier Games
Freelancers: A Crossroads Game
Freelancers: A Crossroads Game is the latest entry into The Crossroads series of board games, a collection of loosely-connected titles that all share the same core gameplay system.
The most well-known game in this series is Dead of Winter, a horror board game in which players attempt to survive a zombie apocalypse. Freelancers: A Crossroads Game takes players to a version of Earth abandoned by humanity, with players becoming one of the beings left behind.
The idea behind the game is to condense the adventure of a tabletop RPG down into a more straightforward and shorter experience. As one of a collection of unusual freelancers, players will venture across the Earth and through the ruins of humanity to complete various jobs.
From slaying monsters in abandoned towns to searching for the trash left behind by humans, players will need to complete it all, gather what loot they can and return home – all to do it again the next day.
Players can create characters by combining aspects of their species and job, rolling dice to overcome challenges and exploring new environments.
Rather than having a game master narrate and run the story, players can use a companion app to tell the narrative. Freelancers will come with five campaigns designed to be replayable, with many branching paths for players to discover.
If this seems like the game for you, you can check it out here: Board Game Geek
District Noir
Designed by Nobutake Dogen and Nao Shimamura, District Noir is a two-player game with bluffing and set collection.
Each round, players will receive five cards in hand, and each turn, they will either play one card from their hand to the end of the line or collect the most recently played five cards.
Once all the cards from hand have been played, give each player five cards and start the next round. After four rounds, the game ends.
Some cards have positive or negative numbers, and players score those points directly. Other cards are numbered 5-8, and players will score 5-8 points for a value if they have more of those cards than the other player.
While typically points decide who wins, In District Noir, if players collect all three unique cards — each of which is worthless on their own — they will win immediately.
If this seems like the game for you, you can check it out here: Pandasaurus Games
Isofarian Guard
If you’ve been looking for a solo game with more meat on its bones, Isofarian Guard is the game you’ve been looking for. The Isofarian Guard is a solo/co-op narrative-driven adventure board game for 1-2 players.
The game is set in Isofar, a wildland severe in its beauty. The Isofarian people take great pride in their ability to flourish among their mountainous home’s hostile wildlife and cruel elements. As a member of the Isofarian guard, life is always exciting.
You must try to keep the peace among fellow Isofarians and deal with constant threats from the aggressive Falmund Empire to the south.
Players will be guiding eight different Isofarian Guards throughout five interweaving campaigns that span over 30+ hours as they deal with a power that threatens not only Isofar but the entire world.
Isofarian Guard has full voice acted narration and orchestral score that immerses you into the story, powered by the Forteller app. The game has everything from Bag Building, Card and Tableau Building, Caracter customisation and an evolving Enemy AI System.
If this seems like the game for you, you can check it out here: Kickstarter
Lord of the Rings: Adventure to Mount Doom
In Lord of the Rings: Adventure to Mount Doom, players will follow the story of Frodo’s perilous journey to destroy the One Ring in the fires of Mount Doom.
With the clever use of dice, players will work together to move the figures across the gameboard in this cooperative fantasy board game where the only way to win or lose is together.
At its core, Lord of the Rings: Adventure to Mount Doom is a lightweight story-based game set in the world of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings.
Players will work together to guide Frodo to reach Mount Doom and destroy the One Ring. The game uses black dice and encounter cards to add threats and suspense to the game, requiring players to be strategic as they make decisions together.
Each page of the game book will feature a new board and objectives inspired by important moments from The Lord of the Rings.
If this seems like the game for you, you can check it out here: Thames & Kosmos
Redwood
Redwood is a game of movement estimations and the important photographic principle, angle of view. In this game, players must take pictures of wild animals to compose the most beautiful panorama. The game is for 1-4 players and can last anywhere from 45-60 min.
The premise of the game is that you play as nature-loving photographers who music travel great distances in order to capture pictures of animals in their natural habitat.
During their turn, each player must choose between different movements and their angle of view to catch the animals in the picture without disturbing them.
The game ends after five turns, and players will be rewarded if they meet certain conditions to earn more points, with the player with the most points being awarded the overall champion.
If this seems like the game for you, you can check it out here: Kickstarter.
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Just like that, we’ve reached the end of part two of my top games from Gen Con 2023 that are staying on my radar. Did any of these games grab your attention? Let us know in the comments.