Top 10 Most Anticipated games of 2021

[Music] hi my name's paul grogan welcome to the gaming rules top 10 most anticipated games for 2021. now i've been asked to create this video by chris the editor of tabletop gaming magazine as part of their series of videos to uh for an event that they're running um but i'm going to be putting this up on my youtube channel afterwards for everybody else to see so yeah thank you very much chris for asking me to create this video now like my other top 10 videos that i do on my channel this is not just my own personal top 10. and because i work full time in the industry if i was to just list the 10 games that i'm looking forward to this year a lot of them are ones that i've worked on professionally i didn't want this video to come across as just a list of games that i'm working on so what i did is i asked my patreon supporters to basically give me their top games that they're looking forward to this year uh got 270 responses compiled all of the results and what i'm going to give you now is their top 10 games in order and then at the end i'm going to talk about a few of mine uh just just to tag on to the end so that's the introduction to the video i am i've got a lot of things written down uh so yeah now this video is going to cover uh games that are coming out in 2021 but also games that are going to kickstarter in 2021 so some of the games i'm going to be talking about on this list are ones which have already been on kickstarter or and are being delivered this year or are just being produced this year and didn't go on kickstarter but also ones that are going on kickstarter this year basically i gave them the option i said look what games are you looking forward to this year and some of the ones that are going to be included on this list are not actually coming out this year but are going on kickstarter this year and after saying that this isn't my top 10 because i don't want to just talk about games that i i'm involved in it turns out a lot of these games that i'm going to talk about i am involved in in some way so just bear that in mind as i start listing them right first of all number 10 is euthea torment of resurrection this was on kickstarter in may 2020 it's from some new designers and a new publisher in the czech republic this is a big box epic fantasy game now i have played this game i've done a couple of videos on my channel and i've played it solo and yeah this is one of those epic fantasy games where you really feel that you're this big powerful heroic character and the play time of the game is is according you know it is to suit that style of the game this is not a quick 30 45 minute game or anything like that this is a game which is going to take a number of hours to play has got multiple scenarios with it the kickstarter was really successful so what that did is it unlocked a lot of extra stretch goals which means there's a huge amount of content in the game people have compared it a little bit to major knight in the it's a fantasy based game with hexes and your heroes and you're exploring but there's a lot more to it than that it isn't just another variation on mage night a lot of the scenarios are competitive some of the scenarios are cooperative and that is going to be delivered um sometime later this year i don't exactly know when now i was approached by the publisher last year to basically as a somebody who creates videos for board games and a number of people when it came out on kickstarter produced videos for the game and i i was one of them but then they found out that i did rule book editing and at which point for the last six months i think i've been i've been helping them with the rule book of this game and it's pretty much almost there um yeah it's been it's been a lot of work over the last six months but as i say it's a big heavy game with a lot going on so if you like your big epic sprawling fantasy based games then this is definitely one to check it out and this was as i say this was 10th on the list of ones that my patreon supporters have voted on right number nine is weather machine now i'll tell you now i'm working on this game right now this morning i've been helping write the rule book for this game so weather machine is vitul asurda's next big box game uh that is the partnership between vital asserted doing the design eagle griffon games doing the production uh iano tool doing the artwork and the graphic design and me doing the rule book and the video okay so i'm involved in this game um i've not been involved in it like a lot of other people vito's been designing this game for the last two years i think and he's been playtesting it for very a lot for the last few months i've only recently got involved literally last week is when i first had my exposure to the game and i'm going to be working on it so this this is not a game which is coming out this year this is a game which is going to be going to kickstarter this year i can't tell you exactly when um because that's not my decision but at some point later this year eagle griffon games will be launched in the kickstarter for weather machine so if you like vittel asurder's styles of games you're gonna like this one because all of his games apart from one that came out last year which was a lot lighter all of his games are heavy complex games with a lot of interlocking mechanisms this one the theme of the game is really interesting it's set in a steampunk uh sort of setting and there is this uh professor called latif and he's built this weather machine and this weather machine he's controlling the weather but it's actually because of the butterfly effect it's causing other extreme weather which is causing problems and the players are working with the government and they're also scientists and they're building their own prototypes they're researching and they're trying to do their own weather machines in order to fix the extreme weather and things like that there's a lot going on normal euro game stuff to play with the most points at the end of the game wins but a really nice theme uh and as i say i'm actively working on this game as soon as i finish filming this video uh i i will be going back to working on the rulebook for that so yeah that's coming out later this year and i'm not really going to show you any pictures of this because at the moment any pictures that i show you are a complete prototype copy of the game and they're going to be misleading because literally it's a prototype copy of the game with completely placeholder graphics and layout that vittle's done himself which are going to be no resemblance whatsoever to the finished version so yeah that's why i don't really want to show any images for this at the moment eno tool will work his magic right next one is sleeping gods a game i'm not involved in in any way just in case you think it's it's all about that so this is although i'm not involved in this game so many people have been telling me about this game for months so sleeping gods designed by ryan lockett who also does his own artwork red raven games is his company and this game i believe is being delivered to backers some uk backers i think have got this game already um so yeah it was on kickstarter last year it did really well uh it's a campaign style game which uses a storybook and and you open the storybook and you use the storybook so it's one of those now ryan locker has done other games before in the past i've got a couple of them from everything i've read about this game and from everything that people have been telling me about this game this is a game that i'm really going to enjoy it's just a case of like like everybody else it's the too many games not enough time but yeah as more and more people started asking me about it and saying paul are you going to be covering sleeping gods on your channel and i was like uh well i've no plans to but i looked into it and yeah it does look uh really good so yeah apparently it can play solo or multiplayer you can have players drop in and out depending on who is available at the time which is great you save your progress it's a campaign game rather than a legacy game i think a lot of people are calling it a legacy game but as far as i'm found as far as i know from what people have told me this morning there's no uh permanent changes that you make to the game so you play a campaign and whilst you might make notes of what's happened you're not physically changing any components like ripping them up or putting stickers on a board or anything like that if i'm wrong apologies but that that's what i've been told so that is sleeping gods next up is dead reckoning now dead reckonings published by aeg alderac entertainment group designed by john d clare this is a pirate themed game that takes john d clare's card crafting mechanism that i think we first saw in mystic vale um one step further and turns it into this big euro game where card crafting is a part of it you're all pirates uh and you're basically you're your deck of cards represents the sailors on your ship they can level up uh and get better and having more more improved skills you're exploring the seas you are conquering islands you're trading you're doing all sorts of stuff the game looks great um it was on kickstarter in the summer of last year summer of 2020 now i helped a lot with the rule book for this game so when the game before it was going on kickstarter i was working with aeg on the rulebook for this game um and i i i remember being very involved in the rulebook including making some very sort of major changes to the structure of the game um but then since then aeg took the rulebook back and made a few little tweaks so uh yeah i i wasn't involved in the rulebook all the way to the end but i was involved in it and it a lot i have played the game i have a prototype uh in in the game in the other room um and yeah i played it i enjoyed it i've done demos of it and that is going to be delivered to people this year i mean because it was on kickstarter this is one of those games where there was lots and lots of stretch goals so i've only played the base game but there is a and again i'm not going to use the word legacy because i don't think you actually physically alter any components but there's definitely things that you can unlock and tuck boxes and things to open and special secrets and like expansion sets and all sorts of stuff going on in the game does look really good um right next up is burn cycle again this is not my list i didn't vote on this list but a lot of these i'm involved in so burn cycle is the latest game from chip theory games now for those people who don't know cheap theory games is one of my favorite publishers they've done too many bones they've done cloud spire they've done hopler marcus as well which i've not played but too many bones and cloud spira are amazing cheap theory games are known for their production quality and also their very interesting off-the-wall designs their games uh there's kind of nothing like them i mean too many bones is a a fantasy cooperative adventure game and there's dozens and dozens of those out there but there's nothing quite like too many bones and cloud spire sure there are tower defense games out there and there are skirmish games out there but there's nothing quite like cloud spire the creative people behind cheap theory games do really really good stuff and burn cycle is their latest one now it was on kickstarter at the end of last year it is due to be delivered this year not anytime soon because they are still working on it and still developing it but the setting of burn cycle is again something that is a very very interesting idea so it's the year 3000 the players it's a cooperative game the players are all robots and humanity has wiped itself out due to our foolish nature and you know messing around with things but the robots have brought us back to life and now we're messing everything up again but basically it's an infiltration style game where the players are members of the 404 which is like a a group of robots that are trying to break into these offices basically steal something from the humans and a game takes place so it's a cooperative game each player plays a robot you've got all of these unique skills um but it's it's in a futuristic setting and it uses a very interesting action system which is the burn cycle for the actions that a robot can take but again setting it apart from chip theory games is other games this is not a combat heavy game like the other ones a lot of the game is moving around and trying to avoid the guards and things like that so yeah i'm going to be working on the rulebook for this as of tomorrow so a recent change this was only announced like you know last week but cheap theory games have approached me in a professional capacity to help with the rulebook for the game so that wasn't known about until until recently but yes that's bone cycle uh i'm thinking that's going to be delivered this year i think it will be yeah i think it will be right next on the list is perseverance castaway chronicles episodes one and two because perseverance castaway chronicles is going to be a four episode game uh this is mind clash games uh latest big creation and mind clash games if you know their games they've done trickerian they've done it anachrony they've done cerebria they do really big bulks really high production quality lots going on right big epic games and this one is no different now the design team for this game is interesting because it's actually if you look on bgg there's actually six people listed as designers of this game i've spoken to them and it is very much a shared thing uh you've got the people at mind clash games themselves david turts has been involved because he works closely with them and yeah the the end result is what looks like a fantastic game and that's going to be delivered uh this year so basically the theme of this game is it starts out that you are well there's there's like one of these uh luxury uh ocean liners passenger voyage things and it gets caught up in like a storm and it finds itself uh sort of crashed on this island and it turns out there's dinosaurs on this island now the reason why it's going to be four episodes is each episode actually is a part of a story but if you're worried about this being a narrative driven campaign game it's not okay there is a story behind episode one but episode one is a euro game and you play the game and it is all of your euro game stuff and then episode 2 is another self-contained euro game so it's basically four separate games all connected together with a similar theme but the story actually evolved so in episode one you've just landed on the island you've found out there's dinosaurs occasionally you get attacked and you have to run around and build your defenses and you know that sort of stuff in episode two it takes place x number of months later uh there's a small town that's been built up and you've you've got these camps established and then you start going in exploring more uh episodes three and four i'm not allowed to tell you about i did manage to convince them late one night to tell me what episodes three and four were about but i can't say anything so yeah so that's coming out later this year uh production quality looks fantastic i love the theme of the game i really really enjoy it and having played it the mechanisms of the game there's dice drafting and yeah it looks really interesting next up is darwin's journey and if we're talking about games that i'm not involved in in any way this is one of them but when i looked at this game after so many people told me about it i was like this is exactly my kind of game it is a medium to heavy euro game it's worker placement designed by simone luciani and nestor mangone which are designers who whose games i've got i've got their games i've got some of the games they've designed before and i really enjoy them so i i know this game is going to be a good game even though i've not really looked into it myself that much but it was on kickstarter at the start of this year so only a couple of months ago it did really well it raised a million euros it's unlocked 46 stretch goals i've had a quick look at it uh and it does look fantastic thunder griff's games are the publisher um maybe it's one i should have looked at at the time more closely but it's definitely one uh which is on my radar as a game that uh you know i'm really looking forward to playing this because looking at the game it's it just seems to have so many of those things that i enjoy in the game and i can see why it was really popular and everybody was talking about it just a couple of months ago right next up on the list is endless winter so this is another big successful kickstarter uh from november 2020 fantasia games so new publisher fantasia games bought with some people who've been involved in the industry for a while the designer is um stan kund kodaninsky but the developer is johnny pack accounting i've been involved in this game a little bit i've been working on the rule book for the game and i'm going to be working on the rulebook more because when i worked on the rulebook for the game it was pre-kickstarter now that after the kickstarter has finished they've gone back they've been doing even more development and tweaks to the game so i'm due at the end of this month i believe to go back to the rule book to find out what's been changed and to and to update it so yeah endless winter paleo americans i think is the is the full title there's a few different mechanisms going on here there's a little bit of set collection there's worker placement there's a bit of deck building there's a few different things going on but everybody i know who's played this game has really enjoyed it uh and it was an honor for me to be asked to be involved in the game uh from a rulebook writing aspect so yeah looking forward to that one not quite sure when that is going to be delivered but in december of this year i have that i'm going to be creating the video for the game so i hope it's going to be out by the end of this year that's that's when i'm supposed to start work on creating the the how to play video for this game next up number two on the list is iss vanguard this is the latest game from awaken realms it is a sci-fi game um and it's the first game that went on to game found so i've mentioned kickstarter a lot in this video but game found is an alternative to kickstarter and it's been created by the team at awaken realms and iss vanguard is the first game which was actually which was on game found as a platform some game game found has been used before as a as a pledge manager i believe but iss vanguard was the first game that was actually on there as a launch replacement for kickstarter type thing and since then loads of other games have gone on to gain found but it did really well uh it raised about five million uh dollars uh it ran at the end of 2020 in fact i think it ran in december and just running over into 2021 now i can't tell you that much about this game other than it's sci-fi the production quality is going to be fantastic the miniatures look amazing but the reason why i can't tell you that much about it is because during the kickstarter campaign awakened realms contacted me and asked me to be professionally involved and working on the rulebook now one thing i like to do when i'm going to be involved in working on the rulebook for the game is i try not to find out anything in advance especially because this is a game that after the kickstarter and there were loads of playthrough videos out there during the kickstarter is being developed and being changed so if i'd have watched any of the videos that were out there i can pretty much guarantee you that those videos are now wrong and i don't this is no disrespect to the people who've made those videos because they made those videos with the information they had at the time and i do exactly the same but after the game has been on kickstarter it goes back into development they start listening to things uh you know feedback from the fans but also they carry on working on the game and the end result of the game is going to be different from what's already been out there so that's why i have avoided most of the information about this game in terms of detail all i know is it's sci-fi the production quality is going to be good and the artwork looks amazing now i was a backer of tainted grail and in the tainted grail pledge that i got there was an art book for uh for this game which i'm going to put a picture of it on screen now and just looking at this art kind of got me now i know that the art of the game just is artwork and bears no relation whatsoever to the game itself but it kind of got me excited about the game so yeah i i was gonna be um you know getting a copy of iss vanguard anyway it was on my list to get but then when they asked me to get professionally involved i was like oh cool i get to be involved so yeah so that's iss vanguard number two on the list and finally the number one game on the list of what games my patreon supporters are looking forward to getting in 2021 there's no surprise about this one and in fact it was way ahead by almost double the votes of everything else and that's frosthaven frosthaven is the sequel to gloomhaven although you could say that gloomhaven jaws of the lion was the sequel to gloomhaven or frosthaven he's building on them the huge success of gloomhaven you can't really have much more success with the game than gloom opens up and he's building on that now i am professionally involved in this game i will be creating a video for the game i'm friends with the designer um and yeah putting that aside gloomhaven is one of my favorite games i absolutely love gloomhaven me and my partner are still playing gloomhaven jaws of the line now and frosthaven for me looks better than gloomhaven and i'm saying that because although gloomhaven is fantastic glovehaven still has a couple of things in it which just not quite perfect now bear in mind i'm you know i i find holes where there are not holes but there's a couple of things about gloomhaven which make it for me a 9.5 out of 10 game and not a 10 out of 10 game frost haven from speaking to isaac those things have been fixed right those little small issues that i had with it have have been fixed and he's changed the what one of the things that about frost having that i'm really looking forward to is you're actually crafting in the game so you go out and you find supplies during the campaign you find like bits of wood and bits of metal and you can use them to craft and build buildings and things like that i love crafting in games and although you're not crafting items you're kind of crafting buildings but you get to build up the town of frost haven by putting buildings on the board as your party of adventurers goes out and gathers resources that that sounds fantastic but frost haven is going to be even bigger and even more epic i was going to say epica um than gloomhaven it's got more scenarios on it it's got more content in it i'm actually a guest designer on one of the scenarios i worked with uh rado richard hamm and we sort of worked on a scenario idea together um and yeah it's gonna be great and on one hand i can't wait for it to come out because it's going to be great and we love gloomhaven and it's just more of the same but but better and on the other hand i'm thinking oh boy when it does come out i'm going to have to put months of my life aside to get this played but yeah frost haven number one on my patreon supporters list of most anticipated games for 2021 right so just before we wrap up i just wanted to add a few extra ones of my own and these are all ones that i'm involved in but these are ones that i am personally excited about for one reason or another and the first one is a game which you might think is not a kind of game that should be on my list and that is batman gotham city chronicles season three now batman gotham city chronicles has had two releases before and season three it's going back to kickstarter um and he's going to have some new expansion content but it's going to have a completely new rulebook because one of the criticisms of the game has been that the rule book for the game was not great and i'm saying not great and i'm being kind um the rule book for the game has been a stumbling block and an obstacle for people learning how to play the game and actually getting the game to the table i was approached uh by the people at monolith to say paul would you like to work on our rule book we have a reputation for our rule books not being good we'd like you to work on this rule book okay and i can tell you now that me and a couple of my uh team have been working on this rulebook and we have collectively put over 280 hours of work into this rulebook which blows my mind because i think hang on a minute how has it taken so long this is an existing rulebook and all you're doing is making it better well no what we've done is we've actually ripped thrown the rulebook in the bin and started again from scratch it's been a huge amount of work we've been working on it for the last six months and the reason why i'm excited about this game is that because i've worked on this game so much i've actually got to quite like this game and i i whilst it's not my kind of game it is a sort of a two sides skirmish scenario-based tactical combat game set in the batman dc universe now that is not the kind of game that i play and this is not a game that i would have gone out and sought to play myself but having worked on the game a lot and spoken to a lot of the fans of the game i've actually got a lot of appreciation for this kind of game and although it might not be one that i would generally play myself i can i can see what the game is trying to do and you know the good parts of it and it's my job to turn that rulebook into one that people can get and actually then learn how to play so i'm excited about it going on kickstarter later this year because i got i kind of got dragged into it and i'm now part of the team that's helping this uh be a thing and i'm actually really um excited and a little bit nervous about it going back onto kickstarter or they might use game found i don't know later this year to see what happens to it so that's batman gotham city chronicles the next one which i'm actually really surprised wasn't on the top 10 list uh voted on by my patreon supporters it was it was in there it did get about four or five votes but it didn't get enough to make it into the top ten and that's frost punk now frostpunk is a board game that was on kickstarter last year uh is coming out this year i think and it's glass cannon unplugged which is a new publisher but the people behind it again have had a lot of industry experience and the design team behind it is a very strong uh you know pedigree of designers behind the game but frostpunk is one of my favorite settings frostpunk is a is a computer game and this is the board game version of the computer game and frostpunk for me is one of the best computer games i have ever played it is a city building survival game set in an alternative history victorian england where extreme weather and you're struggling to survive and i just absolutely love the computer game so when i heard they were doing a board game version of it i was like wow this is this is going to be fantastic and it was the kickstarter did really well how much did it make did i write it down two and a half million october 2020 uh and yeah they contacted me and i'm professionally involved because i'm helping them do uh the rule book for the game i might do some videos as well uh later on i mean i've done some videos now already but like i was saying earlier on the videos that i've done on my channel were using tabletop simulator because i didn't have a physical prototype um and it was an earlier version of the game that video is now wrong because they've they've changed a number of the rules but yeah frostpunk a game i'm super looking forward to especially with all of the stretch goals that got unlocked and i'm professionally involved in it and hopefully it's going to be coming out later this year and finally two games on my list which i'm personally really excited about are the first two games in the stefanfeld city collection stefan feld is one of my favorite designers he's done loads and loads of brilliant games i've probably got about i don't know 12 15 of his games and i love his games and he's made an agreement with queen games that over the next few years they are going to be publishing a series of games in what's called the city collection the first two games in that collection are hamburg and amsterdam which are actually uh second editions effectively or redone versions of two of his previous games bruges and macau now bruges and macau i've played them loads and i like both of them okay bruges i felt could have been a better game and a lot of other people felt they could it could have been a better game and that's what hamburg is hamburg has taken bruges and for me not at my request but just coincidentally has fixed a couple of the problems that i had with bruges specifically the card draw was a little bit too random now you choose which stack of cards you're going to be taking from but anyway that's hamburg that's going to be coming out later this year and amsterdam is a new version of macau now i'm curious as to what they do with it because for me macau didn't need changing unlike bruges which i felt was a great game but needed some tweaks macau i think is a great game but i can't see how they're going to make it better so we'll we'll see um now i am due to create the official tutorial videos for these games in fact personally i'm very excited because queen games have asked me to be the one to create uh the tutorial videos for all of these games all of the games in this series for the next few years and as i said earlier i'm i'm a huge stefan feld fan so for me this is this is an honor to be asked to do this and i'm due to create the videos for these first two games uh sometime in the next few months so i can't say exactly because because the videos that i make will probably be with an advanced prototype rather than the finished copies i don't yet know i'm still in discussion with them but both of those games should be out later this year and that's everything so that's ten games that my patreon supporters voted on and to be honest if i did my own top ten i would probably agree with a lot of those ones that they mentioned most of those games i have some kind of professional involvement in that you know that's just how it is the two games that i didn't have a professional involvement in darwin's journey and sleeping gods both look fantastic so i can see why people are excited about them but that is everything i hope you found this video useful if you have any comments on it please let me know if there's any games which are in your top 10 uh which weren't listed here please leave them as a comment below and if there's any games that we talked about which you don't think should be in the top 10 no just keep it positive just tell us about games that you're excited about uh which we which i didn't talk about today but that's everything so again thank you very much to chris from tabletop gaming magazine for asking me to create this video and to all of my patreon supporters for making the content that i create possible if you like the content that i create and you want to support me and help help the channel and help make more videos like this possible then check out the patreon page at patreon.com forward slash gaming rules until next time take care and thanks for watching gaming rules is proudly sponsored by game toppers upgrading your gaming experience visit gametoppersllc.com

Channel: Gaming Rules!

Views: 14,833

Rating: 4.936842 out of 5

Keywords: boardgame, board game, gaming rules, paul grogan, top 10, top 10 games of 2021, Top 10 Most Anticipated games of 2021, 2021 board game releases, 2021 anticipated board game releases, best games of 2021, best board games of 2021, Euthia, sleeping gods, dead reckoning, 2021 kickstarters, burncycle, perseverance castaway chronicals, Darwin's Journey, Endless Winter, iss vanguard, Frosthaven, Batman Gotham city chronicals season 3, frost punk, hamburg, amsterdam

Id: 6qtYyLZPx0k

Length: 31min 18sec (1878 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 29 2021