Best Games of 2020! – The Dice Tower Awards

The best board games, card games, dice games, family games, and party games of 2020 have been awarded!

The Dice Tower recently announced the winners of The Dice Tower Awards — the annual crowing of the best board games published last year.

With thousands of new games published every year, there’s never a shortage of great new board games to play.

Top board game reviewers, podcasters, and industry contributors from around the world participated in the nomination and voting process.

Now, let’s see The Dice Tower Award Winners for 2020:

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Break In: Area 51 – Game Review

Congratulations! You’ve successfully completed your mission.

Unfortunately, you left your spaceship behind and the humans have captured it and are taking it apart in a place they call “Area 51”.

You better break in and get it back before it’s too late. Otherwise, you’ll never be able to return home.

What are you waiting for? Get going!

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Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig: Secrets & Soirees – expansion game review

The king is at it again!

More crazy castles to build with your neighbors plus options to go it alone!

Last year we reviewed a fun game from Stonemaier Games called Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig. It was a mash up of two games we really enjoy — Between Two Cities and Castles of Mad King Ludwig. And they did a fantastic job bringing those two games together in yet another enjoyable game.

So of course we were excited to get a chance to review this new expansion, Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig: Secrets & Soirees.

And it’s time to share our thoughts about the expansion game!

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Break In: Alcatraz Game Review

It’s June 11, 1962, the day you’re going to break into Alcatraz.

Yes, you read that right. You’ll be breaking into the most secure prison in the world to break 4 inmates out. Months of planning has gone into this daring operation and now it’s time to act.

At least it will be if you’re playing Break In: Alcatraz!

From the publisher, Playmonster: “Throughout this collaborative experience, you must work together to follow a series of clues and solve puzzles to unfold multiple layers of the game and move deeper into the prison to help your friends escape! You’ll encounter many obstacles and characters along the way…this game provides the thrill and challenge of an escape room, combined with the experience and world-immersion of a movie”!

Do you have what it takes to break into Alcatraz?

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We’re on The Learning Life Podcast!

The board game hobby continues to smash through boundaries. And we’re excited to be a part of it!

Today we made another such breakthrough on a podcast targeted to business leaders — The Learning Life Podcast with Jon Tota.

As you might guess from the title, The Learning Life focuses on the learning industry. They have weekly guests sharing new insight, new stories, and best practices to help organizations take their learning to the next level.

But when Jon saw our 2020 Board Game Gift Guide, he thought it would be awesome to take a break from the weekly corporate learning talk and talk about something fun — board games!

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Healthy Heart Hospital Board Game Review

In Healthy Heart Hospital players assume the roles of doctors and hospital administrators attempting to bring prestige back to Healthy Heart after the previous administration left it a mess.

Prestige is earned by curing patients and expanding your hospital. If players are able to make it through the ambulance card deck, they win the game. If players go broke or run out of places to put dead patients, they lose. 

Do you have what it takes to bring Health Heart back?

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Board Game Gift Guide 2020!

It’s that awesome time of year again when we look for great fun ideas for gifts for family and friends.

With this crazy year, we know many families have already been grabbing a lot more board games to pass the time together throughout the year.

But it’s always nice to get some ideas for fresh games to play too.

This marks our 10th annual Board Game Gift Guide and we love sharing great gift ideas!

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Betrayal Legacy for your teens

When our oldest two boys were in high school, one of them came home one night telling us about the funnest game he had played at his friends house. It was called Betrayal at House on the Hill and they had a blast playing it.

I had heard about the game before but hadn’t paid attention to it until that day.

About a year later, while he was on his mission, I got a copy of Betrayal at House on the Hill in the game swap at SaltCon and looked forward to playing it with him when he returned. But that didn’t stop us from giving it a try while he was gone either. And it was a hit!

When he returned, we took a family getaway trip and all the kids wanted to bring Betrayal at House on the Hill with us on the trip so we could all play it together — since it plays up to 6 people. We had a great time!

Then in 2018, Avalon Hill published a new version of the game called Betrayal Legacy.

It’s a “legacy” version of the game that sounded awesome. So last year we got it for Christmas and have had a ton of fun playing it!

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Back to the Future board games Comparison

What are the chances that two different companies would publish cooperative board games based on Back to the Future in the same year?

Well, it is 2020 – and anything can happen.

Seriously though, we’re big fans of cooperative board games families can play together. So of course we were up for reviewing both Back to the Future: Back in Time by Funko and Back to the Future: Dice Through Time by Ravensburger.

We posted our review of Back in Time in June and posted our review of Dice Through Time this week.

So now it’s time to give you our take on the how the games compare!

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Back to the Future: Dice Through Time game review

Last Wednesday was Marty McFly Day – October 21 – the day Marty McFly and Doc Brown traveled to the future (the 2015 future) in Back to the Future II.

You may not have even noticed. And that’s okay, because it means the space time continuum hasn’t been disrupted!

And even though we’re just now posting this game review, let’s do a bit of time travel of our own and pretend we’re back to a few days ago, October 21, taking a look at Back to the Future: Dice Through Time by Ravensburger.

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