Day Four! Puzzle Time!

Now that’s more like it! Right away, there are two big misses on my part. First, Abdec lacks the appeal of Blaž Gracar’s superior LOK and Herd, and shouldn’t be immortalized alongside those titles. Everything Gracar designs is fascinating, but sometimes his experiments disappear like an ouroboros that’s gotten a little too cannibalistic. Abdec is probably the poster boy for that syndrome. Second, Paperback Adventures is a good game that’s just messy enough that I would bump it down on this list. It’s probably horribly out of place to say this about a word game, but once you learn the deep lore of how words are assembled, the actual letters become secondary to the cards they’re printed on.

The title I feel bad about is Chroma Mix. It was such a clever little game that never received the exposure it deserved. I don’t believe we’ve seen much from Jorge Zhang since. It would be a pity if he’d decided to stop making such peculiar games.

Total hits: Fliptown is still one of the best flip-and-writes ever designed, a fact that became all the more apparent when Steven Aramini’s follow-up, Flip Voyage, failed to impress. Dawn of Ulos is also as strong as ever. If anything, its merger of stocks and Tigris & Euphrates-inspired conflict acquits itself even better three years later.

The beetle in my bonnet, though, is Pilgrim. Because Pilgrim is amazing. But for whatever reason, Pilgrim has spent the past three years languishing on the secondary market, its price ticking up and up, rather than securing a new publisher. (And, sure, maybe the tiniest bit of extra development.) On rare occasions, my coverage will boost a game enough to help it take off. That didn’t happen with Pilgrim, and it’s one of my bigger professional what-ifs. I know that’s an unreasonable expectation to put on my tiny shoulders, but still. This one sits on my Forever Shelf. I wish it could sit on many more.

On the final page, we’re talking about “war” games.