The 55th annual Gen Con convention is in the books and gamers across the world are slowly recovering. When not at the booth, several of the BCW staff wandered the exhibit hall, looking for fun and interesting games. Here is a sampling of what we found.

Andrew enjoyed It’s a Wonderful Kingdom, a 1-2 player card drafting game from Lucky Duck Games. It uses a “I split you choose mechanic” where you draft cards to either build or pitch for resources. The layers of strategies plus the addition of the quests make for a challenging, yet fun, fast game.

Rick found Chonky Donkey appealing. It is a 3-8 player party game where the goal is to not laugh. The player flips over the top answer card and reads it out loud. The other players then pick one of their question cards from their hands and reads the question card out loud to match with the answer card from the active player. If the active player laughs, they win no points but if they can control the laughter, they will score a point.

For myself, my pick is Valiant Wars from Strange Machine Games. The game is a mix of deck-building strategy and press-your-luck gameplay. Players generate gold to buy soldiers and champions, and use swords to win victory point granting locations. The game also becomes harder to win the closer to victory you are, which reduces blowout games.

This year was a return to form, with over 50,000 gamers filling downtown Indianapolis for the best four days in gaming. As usual, the convention was fun but exhausting. We hope to see everyone next year as well.