You select all tiles of one color from any of the common spaces at the center of the table, or all of the tiles of one color from the center, and when you fill out a blank row on your board, you can transfer one to the 5×5 area and discard the rest. Players try to fill out as much of their 5×5 mosaic boards as they can, but can’t repeat any of the five tile types more than once in any row or any column. It’s a gorgeous game with very high-quality components, with just a few simple rules that introduce a bit of game theory and some press-your-luck elements as well. The board is different every time, and even the game’s length can vary depending on players’ strategies, but it plays lighter than you’d expect from a game with all of these ideas.ĭesigned by two-time Spiel des Jahres winner Michael Kiesling, who won for Tikal and Torres (co-authored with Michael Kramer) and also produced the wonderful game Vikings, Azul was an instant hit for us and hugely popular at PAX Unplugged in November. Once a train reaches that western edge, however, it’s out of the game. Trains can pick up basic or luxury goods that can be exchanged in combinations for stock certificates in the various railroads, or taken all the way to the west end of the board for large point bonuses. Players move their trains across the board, east to west, adding hex tiles with tracks and stops as they go. Whistle Stop skims the best pieces from lots of different games in its niche without overloading the game with rules, so turns remain quick and there are many paths to victory points. I joked in my review of Whistle Stop that the world didn’t really need another train game, but you should probably make room on your shelves for this one anyway. I’ve also omitted reissues of classics ( London, Torres, Downforce, and a childhood favorite of mine, Stop Thief) and sequels (like Pandemic Legacy: Season 2) so I can focus just on truly new titles. Raiders of the North Sea was reissued this year by Renegade Games, but the game itself was self-published in 2015. Great Western Trail was the best new game I tried this year, but was officially released in the U.S. between December 1 of 2016 and December 1 of this year, although official release dates can be hard to find and I’d rather err on the side of inclusivity. I’ve tried to limit this to games released in the U.S. There were over 700 new titles released at GenCon in August, and over 1000 new titles at SPIEL in Essen, Germany, in October, although I assume there is a lot of overlap between the two numbers.
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Top 10 best games of 2017 professional#
From both a personal and professional level, my thanks go to everyone who has been actively supporting our community and helping it go from strength to strength over the past twelve months.I tried so many new games this year I haven’t been able to come up with an accurate count-it’s well north of 50, between games I’ve received for review, games I tried at GenCon and/or PAX Unplugged, and games I tried with friends. Whether it’s developers revealing insights into the hottest upcoming games, people sharing their experiences with recent and classic mobile releases, or even heated debate over Taylor Swift and Brawl Stars, the TouchArcade Forums and especially the Discord community have been particularly fantastic points of refuge for not only passionate mobile gamers, but also for a lovely group of friendly people. While phenomenal ports of complete console titles have been fantastic to Witness (no pun intended), and the typically strong showing of innovative indie classics have only further emphasised iOS’s strengths as a serious gaming platform, it has been you – the iOS community – that has been the highlight of my 2017. While so much of it was dominated by the demise of many of my favourite childhood classics with iOS 11 and the 32-bit Appocalypse (being unable to play Dungeon Raid anymore has been a particularly bitter pill to swallow), the release of an unprecedented barrage of high-quality games have made 2017’s struggles slightly easier to take.
![top 10 best games of 2017 top 10 best games of 2017](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/id5AWhLRVEw/maxresdefault.jpg)
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2017 has been a year of competing extremes in almost every aspect, whether personal, public or within the world of iOS gaming.