2025 Gaming Overview Part 1

Now that my Top 10 list is done, I thought I'd do an overview of 2025 just as a record of what I've been doing for the past 12 months.

Looking over my 2025 BGG stats, I noticed I had a decent 2025.

New Board Games:

• Fortune and Glory
• Dark Quarter
• Final Girl
• Widower’s Wood
• The Zorro Dice Game

(I have played other board games besides these but these are the new ones I want to highlight.)

Note that I’ve owned Widower’s Wood and the Zorro Dice Game since the Kickstarters delivered but I’ve not actually played them... until now. Widower’s Wood was delayed because I wanted to get the minis painted first. Zorro Dice Game because… oh! Look! Shinyyyyy….

Out of these, I enjoy Fortune and Glory more as a multiplayer game and it can actually handle 8 players (although I shudder to think how long that will take!) It's the best Indiana Jones board game that isn't titled Indiana Jones. I mean, come on. Who wouldn't be excited to grab the treasure of the Helmet of the Sacred Stone while overcoming dangers like a Fiery Wreck, Yeti Attack and a Rolling Boulder? 😉

The Dark Quarter is primarily a choose your own adventure solo game no matter what it says outside on the box and once it’s played through… there doesn’t seem to be any more replayabilty there. However, the publishers have been pretty good at supporting their games long term and there’s a promise of a scenario builder down the line so we shall have to see. the game bills itself as an urban fantasy/horror story in 4 chapters. Each chapter seems to take about 3-4 hours to play and ... yeah, it really is a CYOA game book blinged up for Kickstarter.

Final Girl needs more modules for replayabilty and the promise here is that you can mix and match the Final girl + Location + Big Bad for infinite variety and deployability. Since I only have one set of Final Girls, I can’t speak to that and need to buy more to test it out. Overall game play is OK. It's in the horror/slasher genre and while I'm not a fan of that genre in the movies, it works as a board game.

Widower’s Wood uses the Warmahordes combat system and lore and factions. If you like the games, you will like this one. If you don’t… you might still wanna give it a try because as a board game it plays very differently compared to the tabletop game.

The Zorro Dice Game is simple and it’s basically a dice placement game that got blinded out to the max during the Kickstarter. There might be the core of an interesting campaign type game somewhere but it needs to be fan-made.

New Skirmish Games

• The Silver Bayonet
• Five Klicks From the Zone
• Port Royal
• 02 Hundred Hours
• Talomir Tales
• Sector AL-IX

Out of all these, I think Port Royal was the only game I was really excited for, and painted and played the game when I got my hands on the Kickstarter. Very unusual for me because as everyone knows I’m the King of Procrastination. It’s a fun game and I need to get my act together to get s few more factions painted so I can actually play a campaign which is where the game truly shines. As a one off, it’s a competent historical skirmish game. +2 if you love pirates in the 17th century.

I’ve owned 5 Klicks on PDF for yonks but played 5 Parsecs and 5 Leagues first. As always with this system, the random tables do the heavy lifting to actually produce an emergent story so what will draw you to the series will be the theme: sci-fi, fantasy or post-apo? You can’t go wrong with any of them but do note that 5 Klicks is the least supported of the bunch.

I’ve also owned Talomir Tales from 2 hour Wargames for several years now and only just gotten to play it. I’ve given my thoughts in my Top 10 2025 Solo Skirmish games countdown and there’s not much more to add. That same can be said for The Silver Bayonet. 

I shockingly overlooked Sector AL-IX in my 2025 Top 10 list… but maybe it’ll make an appearance in the 2026 list. It’s an OK game and the designer is active on Discord so any rules ambiguities should be answered there. It’s a fun little self contained game and there are now 2 campaigns available to play through.

I’ve been curious about 02 Hundred Hours for its promise of solo stealth gaming since it came out and the only aspect about it that gave me pause was the historical part. Thanks to the owner of my local FLGS, I’ve been able to scratch that itch and it’s not a bad game. If you don’t own anything similar, you can give it a try (or read more about it in my Top 10 rundown). Note it’s designed as a 2 player game with DIY solo support from the game’s publisher.

And that's it for Part 1 of my 2025 overview. Coming up in Part 2: new RPGs and hobbery progress.