17 Games Mini Reviews – Played at SaltCon Spring 2025

I had a great time last weekend playing a bunch of new games with friends at SaltCon Spring 2025.

This year I was able to get in a few games after work Thursday night, a bunch of games for a full Friday, followed by a handful of games for half a day on Saturday.

Most of the games I played were new to me. Some game were hits that I’d love to play again. While other games fell flat and I was happy to move on.

If you’d like to know more about the SaltCon event itself, check out my post from last month covering the many things that happen at SaltCon. This post will focus on mini-reviews of the 17 games I played – in the order in which I played them.

1. Pies
2. Bacon
3. River Valley Glassworks
4. [redacted]
5. Cardline: Globetrotter
6. After Us
7. Star Wars: The Clone Wars
8. Red Rising
9. Trio
10. Power Grid
11. Race for the Galaxy
12. Downforce
13. Riot at the Round Table
14. Relic Runners
15. Akropolis
16. Treasure Island
17. Azul: Queen’s Garden

Pies & Bacon

I eased into SaltCon Spring game playing with a couple of friends and these two quick card games by Allplay.

Pies is a trick-taking game where players play fruit cards over the course of three rounds with the goal of collecting combinations of ingredients to prepare the tastiest pies. After each trick in a round, players claim a card from the trick for their collection – starting with the winner of the trick. But there are also action cards in play that allow players to do things like steal cards from other players.

Bacon is climbing card game where players score based on how soon they get rid of all their cards. The first player to start lays down a combo of cards from their hand (like sets, runs, flushes, etc.). Following players must lay down a higher valued combo or pass. Bacon cards are wild and each player starts a round with two of them.

They’re both very light card games and have a lot of luck in them due to the card draw. That being said, players still have a number of choices to make that will impact the outcome. So there is still a bit of thinking involved (as I discovered with bad choices in Bacon).

 

River Valley Glassworks

River Valley Glassworks was one of the Hot Games at SaltCon Spring. However, I didn’t have to wait for a spot to open up at the Hot Games tables because one of my friends had a copy with him. So he taught a few of us how to play this fun colored glass-collecting game (also by Allplay).

In the game, players draft glass from the individual river tiles. As they claim all the glass on a tile, that tile shifts to the end of the river and is refilled with more glass (the number depending on the number of stones shown on the tile). So the river is constantly flowing with more glass popping up for a claim.

Once players take they glass, they place them on their player board from left to right on the bottom row. Once a color of glass is placed on the bottom row, only glass of the same color may be placed above it. At the end of the game, players score points based on the position and height of the glass on their board. It takes a bit of planning mixed with some luck on the river to score well.

When drafting, the shape of the glass you “pay” matters. When collecting and storing, the color matters. So it’s important to keep an eye on both what you have to spend with and what and when you collect different colors. Fun things to think about, but not overthink. Because the game turns and the game itself plays very quickly.

I was hopeful going into this game and it didn’t disappoint!

River Valley Glassworks is a great family board game and I’d love to get a copy so I can play it again and again.

 

[redacted]

[redacted] sounded like a fun spy game when we saw it in the SaltCon Game Library. We read on the box about spies infiltrating an embassy, moving from room to room, recovering files, and escaping to a helicopter. However, after going through the rules and then diving in, we quickly discovered that the game fell terribly flat.

The ideas in the game sounded great. But the execution was a huge miss.

In keeping the the name of the game, the rest of my mini-review for the game has been redacted (to save you).

 
 

Cardline: Globetrotter

Lest we end the night on a bad note, we hit the SaltCon Game Library again to find a light and quick game to wrap up Day 1.

Cardline: Globetrotter is like the many Timeline games we’ve reviewed before. Players get a hand of cards, but don’t look at the back side. On their turn, they must chose where it goes in the line up of other cards. Once they choose, they flip the card over to see if they’re correct. If they are, they’ve successfully gotten rid of one of their cards. If not, they discard the mistaken card and draw a replacement card to their hand.

The first player to successfully place all their cards, wins.

In the Globetrotter version of the game, the cards are countries. And the back side of each card includes information about that country’s size, population, GDP, and CO₂ emissions. Each time you play, you can choose a different element that you must put in order. For example, the first time we played, we chose population. Thus, we tried to put our cards in order from lowest to highest in terms of population.

Each game only lasted about 5 minutes so we played multiple times before we called it a night.

 

After Us

Friday morning, we started off with a game I’ve been wanting to play since it was published in 2023 by Pandasaurus Games called After Us.

The year is 2083 and the humans are gone. But the apes have survived and have kept evolving. Players are leaders of ape tribes guiding their tribe to collective intelligence.

It’s a deck building game with a unique way to play cards. Like in many deck building games, players start with their own deck of starter cards. They draw a certain number into their hand each round and use them to gather elements that help them acquire more powerful cards to add to their deck. Rinse. Repeat.

However, the unique element in After Us is that once players draw their 4 cards, they arrange them in a row to make combos. Players gain the resources or points that are in completed boxes starting with the top row, then the middle row, then the bottom row. Most cards have pieces of a box on the edge of the card and players can only complete a box by placing them next to another card where they align.

Each round is played simultaneously, so everyone draws their 4 cards and then arranges them at the same time. Then they gain the resources listed on their cards and use the resources to buy new ape cards for their deck. When they gain a new ape card, it’s placed on top of their deck so they’ll draw it into their hand on their next turn (I love that part!).

I also love the simultaneous play to keep things moving along. The downside, however, is that I don’t really pay any attention to what my opponents are doing. I don’t get to see the cool combos they’re putting together. So in that sense, it’s like a multi-player solitaire – where each player is just trying to do the best they can with their cards. There isn’t really any way to impact other players.

But that’s not always a bad thing. My mind was clicking the whole time on how to best optimize my card arranging and which types of ape cards to acquire next.

Overall, I really enjoyed the game. Even though I didn’t score very well, it left me itching for more plays. Definitely a sign of a good game. (Plus, I really like the artwork.)

 

Star Wars: The Clone Wars

I recently bought a copy of Star Wars: The Clone Wars but hadn’t played it yet. So I took it with me to SaltCon to give it a go.

The game is based on the game play of Pandemic. But instead of viruses infecting countries around the world, droids and blockades pop up across the galaxy. Players work together as different Jedi to complete various missions and defeat the villains.

I really enjoyed the game. And not just because we won. 🙂

The general game flow is familiar because of knowing Pandemic. Which is nice. But it’s the implementation into the Star Wars universe that brings it to life as a fun game.

Each game, players choose a different villain to face. And that villain has its own deck of cards that will be used during the villain action phase of each turn. The unique abilities of each Jedi also fits nicely into the game play. But it’s the random missions that you must complete along the way that really make the game unique. Instead of just moving around the board to fight droids, the missions give you other purposes to work on (while also fighting droids). And in so doing, the cards in players hands can serve multiple purposes. Very fun.

 

Red Rising

Red Rising is a card game based on the book series by Pierce Brown featuring a dystopian society divided into fourteen castes. Players represent a house attempting to rise to power as they piece together an assortment of followers through interesting card play.

Each card has a unique power and most also have unique scoring goals. On their turn, a player places one of their cards onto a growing stack of cards. When they play it, they use the card’s deploy ability. The player then takes a card from the top of the card stack in another location and taking the action for that location (also adding the card to their hand).

As such, players are constantly trying to figure out which cards in their hand they want to keep for end-game scoring vs which cards to discard for abilities and actions. It’s an interesting balance because both options are valuable.

It’s also frustrating to see cards you’d love to have in your hand be placed on a location and get covered deeper and deeper in a stack of cards. Because it’s super rare that you’ll get an ability that will let you pull them out from the middle of a stack. Instead, players must be opportunistic with just the cards on the top of each stack when it’s their turn (or a blind draw from the face down deck).

It was fun to play, but it’s not a game I’ll seek out to play again.

 

Trio

To lighten things up a bit, we next played 6 games of Trio.

We didn’t set out to play that many games. But with how quick it plays, and with the fun game play, we kept wanting to play again and again.

Trio is a simple card game with cards numbered from 1 to 12 (there are 3 of each number in the game). Players try to be the first to get three “trios” – a set of 3 of the same number. They do so by asking other players (or themselves) to reveal either their highest or lowest card in their hand. Or they can flip over a card in the center of the table. Players get to reveal two cards this way on their turn. If those cards match, they get to reveal a third card in the same way. If that third card also matches, the player has successfully made a “trio”.

It sounds simple, and it is. But it’s the mix of memory and only being able to ask for the highest or lowest in players hands that bring in the strategic element. And it’s that combo that makes it fun and addictive.

Trio is a game we recently received from Happy Camper and is next on our list for a full review. Usually, with the amount of games we have to review, a new game coming in has to wait a long time for a review. However, with how much fun we’ve had playing Trio with different groups of people over the past month, it’s shot right to the top of our review list.

Subscribe to our reviews, to be notified when we publish our full review this next week.

 

Power Grid

After playing a bunch of light games of Trio and getting lunch, we were ready to dive into the meaty game of Power Grid – still one of my favorite strategy board games.

And it didn’t disappoint!

I took my copy of Power Grid to SaltCon because my nephew said he’d love to learn the game this year. He’s heard me talk about how much I enjoy the game and he wanted to finally play it. And I was more than happy to oblige. 🙂

Rather than dive into a full explanation here, if you’re interested in checking it out, hop on over to our full video review of Power Grid.

(And, in case you’re curious, yes, I did pull out a tie-breaker win in the end. So satisfying.)

 

Race for the Galaxy

After a breather from our just under 2-hour game of Power Grid, I was excited to play Race for the Galaxy for my first time.

The game was first published almost 20 years ago, in 2007. So having heard about Race for the Galaxy for years and enjoying Roll for the Galaxy, when I landed a copy of Race in the SaltCon Math Trade, I thought playing right away was the best way to dig into it.

In the game, players build galactic civilizations by playing cards representing worlds or technical and social developments. Each round, players secretly and simultaneously select an action card corresponding to one phase of a round. These phases let players draw cards, play cards, add goods to worlds, or consume goods for VP chips. Even though every player can perform all the phases chosen that round, the player who chose the specific phase will get an added benefit during that phase.

As the name of the game says though, it’s a race. No matter how much you enjoy expanding your worlds and tech, if you don’t keep an eye on what actually triggers the end of the game, you’ll be left out in space when it matters most.

Game end is triggered either when a player has built a civilization of 12 cards or when the pool of VP chips is exhausted. Each player totals the victory points in their galaxy plus any VP chips earned during play. The highest score wins.

Since enjoy playing Roll for the Galaxy, I was already familiar with the different game phases and selection process. But there’s still a lot to take in during a first play. It will take repeated plays before I feel comfortable with all the icons and what I’m doing during the game. However, I’m more than happy to keep on playing it.

 

Downforce

Since my nephew hadn’t played Downforce before either, I was very happy to teach him how to play – because it’s one of my favorite racing games. We ended up playing twice with 6 players and he won both times!

In the game, players bid in car auctions, race the cars, use special powers, and bet on the outcomes. There’s no dice rolling as it’s the cards that determine which color cars move and how far. And even though you want to favor the cars you bought in the auction, the cards you play will also be moving other player’s cars as well.

So to do well, what you really need to do is place the right “bets” at the three betting points during the game. If the cars you bet on finish high, you’ll score well.

To get a full sense of how the game plays, check out our full review of Downforce from last year.

 

Riot at the Round Table

Riot at the Round Table was a SaltCon attendee game gift this year. Which means that upon entering and getting your badge, you can simply take a copy of the game.

Since we all had a copy of the game, we figured we should give it a go. Granted, you only need one copy of the game to play, but it gave us all a chance to try a game that was sitting in our hot little hands.

The game is a card game where players attack and defend. One player attacks the player to their left by playing a card from their hand. Then the defending player can defend by playing a higher card to block. However, all players can pile on cards if they match one of the cards already in the battle. Yet, all other players’ cards count with the attacker. The defender stands alone.

After the first round of play, I knew it wasn’t a game for me.

The funny thing was that I did the best in the first round and gained a crown. The first player to 3 crowns wins the game. But with 5 players, I could also tell it was going to take a while to get to that point. Sure enough, the game lasted about an hour – way longer than I like for a game of this type.

On my way out that night, I placed my unopened copy back on the shelf at the entrance – for someone else to have who may enjoy it. (I also forgot to take a photo during the game.)

 

Relic Runners

Because of a prior commitment Saturday morning, I wasn’t able to get back to the convention center until about 11:00 am. After I met back up with friends, we dove into another game that I’ve been wanting to play for years, Relic Runners.

The game was published in 2013 by Days of Wonder. Which means it’s been more than a decade that I’ve been curious about playing it (I’m always keeping an eye on what Days of Wonder publishes.) It’s also another game that I picked up in the SaltCon Math Trade, so I was anxious to dive right in.

Players are archeologists scouring the jungle for treasure and precious relics (aka. victory points). The catch is that you can only venture out so far before you need to get back to base camp to stock up on more rations – because uncovering treasure and building pathways is tough business and requires rations.

The game is easy to understand, but it’s the decisions that make you think. Since you have limited rations each time you head out, you’ll only be able to get so far before you have to go back. Building trails of your color lets you move further distances later, so you’ll definitely want to do that. But that also presents a tradeoff with gaining the benefits from some of the early treasures too. The game holds interesting choices throughout.

Since we were playing with 5 players, it was tough deciding which way to venture out because the other players could swipe what you’re after before you get there. While we all enjoyed the game play, we likewise all agreed that 5 players is too many to feel like you have control over your fate.

Since I now have the game here at home, I’m interested in playing it at the 3- and 4-player counts to see how different it may feel.

Like all Days of Wonders games, the components are fantastic too.

 

Akropolis

Akropolis was a game I hoped to play at SaltCon last year but didn’t get to it. So I was very happy to finally get to play it this year.

The friends I was playing with Saturday had already played the game before I arrived, but they were also more than happy to play it again and teach me. So we dove in.

It’s a tile-laying game of city-building. Each tile is made of 3 combined hexes and players place them to build their cities out and up. That’s because at the end of the game, players score points based on the various city sections (as seen from above) and the level that they’re on. The higher the level, the more points. But in building up, you’re also covering some of your city that won’t score. It’s a very interesting tradeoff as you place pieces to get the best score you can.

Another interesting aspect of the game is that the tiles are acquired through a draft. At the start of each round, a number of tiles are set out in a row. On their turn, if a player wants to take the first tile in the line, they can do so freely. But if they want a tile further up the row, they must pay 1 stone for each tile they pass.

Rounds clip by quickly because all you do on your turn is take a tile and place it. After everyone has placed a tile, a new round begins with more tiles being set out.

Each sector/color of the city scores in different ways.

For example, the red hexes are military and only score if they’re on the outskirts of the city. The blue hexes are residential and they all want to be connected. Players only score for their largest connected residential sector. Whereas the yellow hexes are markets and they don’t want to be next to each other. Players only score these if they stand alone. And so on.

Because of the quick “draft and place” flow, a game of Akropolis flies by. And it also leaves me wanting more. So, yes, Akropolis just got bumped up on my want to own game list.

 

Treasure Island

We next dove into a thought-provoking game of Treasure Island. It’s a deduction game of 1 vs many.

One player is Long John Silver who has buried his treasure somewhere on the island (which he marks the precise point on his mini-map behind his screen). The rest of the players are his mutinous crew who tied him up in a tower and are out searching for his treasure. Each round, Long John Silver gives a clue to where the treasure is. To make it even tougher though, some of his clues may be bluffs.

As each round passes, Long John Silver gets closer to his escape. If the game goes that many rounds, then he escapes and races to the spot of his treasure. The other pirates have until Long John Silver gets there to find it themselves and win.

While the game says the pirate who finds the treasure wins the game, we found that it’s really a cooperative search and we counted all pirates as winners when we found it.

The game is packed with goodies. Each player has their own mini map and dry erase marker. They mark personal notes on their mini map but also mark up the main board with their movement and search areas – using rulers, rings, and compasses.

It’s a very well-produced game and we had a fun time playing.

Now that I have a copy, I’m looking forward to more treasure searching.

 

Azul: Queen’s Garden

The last game of SaltCon Spring 2025 for me was Azul: Queen’s Garden. By late afternoon on Saturday, our minds were getting a bit shaky from all the socializing and game playing. So we picked a game that was a bit familiar, yet still had something new to try.

We’ve played all the prior versions of Azul, but hadn’t tried Queen’s Garden yet. So we were familiar with the basic tile-drafting of all the Azul games. We just needed to learn the new tile-placement rules and scoring for this latest version of the game.

What we discovered is that this version of Azul is quite different from the others. It adds a lot more decisions and things to watch for.

For example, in all the other Azul games, only the colors of the tiles matter. Players collect them in color groups and place them in color groups. However, with Queen’s Garden, the symbols on the tiles matter as well.

So players must pay attention to both color and symbol when drafting, paying, and placing on their boards. It’s a bit of a mind bender.

And even after the game ended, I hardly felt like I had build out a beautiful garden. It felt incomplete to me – even though we’d been at it for an hour.

I’m glad I finally got to play it. But for me, I’ll stick with our favorite version – Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra.

 

Another great SaltCon is in the books.

I got to play many games I’ve wanted to play for a while. And I got to hang out with friends and my nephew and his wife for a couple of days having fun. So good.

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