about

I’m splitting 2024’s “recap” up into separate posts by topic, and this one is about the games I played in 2024, including the results of parsing of my daily “played log” journal. Each of the 2024 recap posts will go into the game logs category, (assuming I actually write more than just this one), so you’ll be able to find any other 2024 recap posts that way. That category is also where you can find previous year recaps, which at this point I’ve done annually since 2019.

played log

In 2024, I once again logged playing games every day. I do think there were one or two days where I forgot to enter the games in my log (usually while traveling), and I did my best to re-create the log on the next day when I noticed.

Anyway, here are the high-level stats:

• 391 unique games logged.
• 286 games played on only one day.
• 209 games I first played in 2024.
• 124 days with new-to-me games played.
• 184 days I played Picross.
• 9 game reviews written.

Of these categories of things I tracked this year in my log:

• games I played (and on what platform)
• whether I played games on BGA
• whether I played games on AbstractPlay.com
• discreet puzzles I solved (more about these in a bit)

The log only does a good job of tracking the first bullet point (games I played). The other things are shoe-horned in there, and I’m somewhat debating whether or not this is even the appropriate format to track those kinds of things.

top games

The list of games I played the most (not including board games or puzzles):

1. Diablo 4 (Xbox): 114 days
2. Satisfactory (Steam): 46 days
3. Legend of Zelda: Echos of Wisdom (Switch): 40 days
4. Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor (Steam): 40 days
5. Vampire Survivors (iOS): 40 days
6. Book of Hours (Steam): 24 days
7. Love and Pies (iOS): 10 days
8. Cozy Grove (iOS): 9 days
9. Balatro+ (iOS): 9 days
10. Stitch (iOS): 8 days

I talked about Diablo 4 in last year’s update, and it was my most played game again this year (after excluding some other categories of game I’ll talk about later). I play with a couple of friends, and now one of them has quit to play Dragon Age, so unless she starts back up again, I can’t imagine it’ll be on the list next year. I think both myself and my friend Mike are also kinda sick of it, we just don’t have another game lined up that scratches the same itch.

I had played Satisfactory previous to this year, but it finally came out of early access and “released” on Steam. I enjoyed my play through immensely. If I had to pick one, I would probably call it my game of the year. (Feels kinda like cheating though, because I’d played through some of the content at least a couple of times before.) I even joined some friends on their server(s) a few times, and that was quite enjoyable too.

I ended up playing Zelda: Echos of Wisdom during my workout for most of December, and watched the credits on one of the last days of the year. I would recommend it! It probably skews younger (and easier) than most of the other recent Zelda releases, but I liked the copy mechanic a lot, even though it made almost all of the “boss battles” kind of ridiculously easy. The story was nothing to write home about, and I probably won’t be re-playing it. (I could play more on my save for 100%, but I did everything I wanted to do, I think.)

Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor was another of my favorite games played this year. It appeared in several variations in the log (with/without both a ‘:’, and also a trailing ‘s’), but once I collapsed all those versions, it turns out I played it on 40 days, including one day in February where it was the only game I played that day! (One of the few days I didn’t play my BGA turns, apparently.)

Vampire Survivors made the list again. (It also appeared in my most played games in 2022, when I was playing it on the Steamdeck.) I started from scratch on my iPhone, and it’s been a nice one to pull out for a few minutes here and there. (Feels like there is a lot of new content since I last played it.)

top platforms

Games played by platform:

1. tabletop – 128 games on 86 days
2. iOS – 49 games on 115 days
3. Steam – 36 games on 145 days
4. Apple Vision Pro – 20 games on 16 days
5. Xbox – 17 games on 128 days
6. Playdate – 12 games on 12 days
7. Switch – 9 games on 220 days
8. wowcube – 8 games on 3 days
9. Quest – 3 games on 2 days
10. ps5 – 1 games on 3 days

I was surprised to see “tabletop” at the top of this list, but I did play a lot of board game prototypes this year. I’m quite sure regularly attending the “Design Day” events twice a month did a lot to bolster my number of tabletop games played. Not to mention attending TWO local Protospiel conferences, and at least 3 board game industry conventions (GAMA, GenCon, and Essen)

Sadly, the Apple Vision Pro didn’t change my life. I’m glad to have worked on a game for it, but haven’t had much compulsion to polish it up beyond what I’ve already done. (Or to spend any time/effort promoting it, which is probably what would be required for more downloads/attention.)

Apparently the only game I played on PS5 this year was Animal Well. I can see the appeal, but I didn’t get sucked in.

board games on BGA

I played games on BGA on 353 of 365 days in 2024. In that time I finished 424 games, most of which were played asynchronously (one turn at a time across many days). Looks like the top 10 were:

1. Splendor Duel: 63 games
2. Oxono: 39 games
3. Azul: 34 games
4. Gizmos: 26 games
5. Yoxii: 21 games
6. Innovation: 18 games
7. Stone Age: 16 games
8. 6 nimmt!: 13 games
9. Umbrella: 13 games
10. Ticket to Ride: 12 games

Notably, OXONO and YOXII are very short abstract strategy games that I played in person with some of the folks who also helped demo games for Adams Apple Games at Essen this year. After we all got back from Essen we continued to play them regularly on BGA. It’s likely that all, or most of the plays of those two games are since October. I own a physical copy of OXONO, but not YOXII, and have been tempted to pick up YOXII now that I’ve played it so much. I do slightly prefer OXONO, however.

I don’t think there’s anything terribly special about Splendor Duel, other than that it was new to BGA this year, and I hadn’t played a lot of it (despite owning a copy) until then. It’s 2-players only, and I had regular games going with a few folks at various points throughout the year.

The only other observation I’ll make is that I only started playing Umbrella in December, and randomly decided to take part in a tournament of it, which is certainly why I played so much of it. It’s the kind of game that I wish I’d designed, and does some things that I really like.

board games on Abstract Play

I played turns on AbstractPlay.com 322 of the days last year. Looks like total, I finished 108 games there. It’s a little harder to see these totals than on BGA, and I had to manually count some of this. Anyway, here’s a top 10 list:

1. Catchup: 27 games
2. Scaffold: 13 games
3. Amazons: 10 games
4. Dameo: 9 games
5. Connecticut: 5 games
6. Dag en Nacht: 4 games
7. Root Bound: 4 games
8. Adere: 2 games
9. Cephalopod: 2 games
10. Furl: 2 games

All the games in the top 5 were games where I took part in a tournament. It’s a feature of the site, and I’ve found it’s a nice way to get in a bunch of games. A lot of the games on the site are the kind where one game will get you an idea of how the game works, but you won’t have any idea what kind of strategy (or even tactics) you’ll be wanting to employ. You might not even get that from a bunch of games. (Once or twice, I started a tournament without having finished a game previously, and I don’t really recommend that. Good way to loose a bunch of games at once!)

Obviously, since I wrote an app that plays it, I’d played a lot of Catchup previously, and I’m not too proud to admit that it’s more fun to play because I’m fairly decent at it. (Still plenty of players that can give me a challenge though.) Of the others, Amazons is probably my favorite. It’s a game I’d played prior to this year though.

board games in-person

Top in-person (tabletop) games played:

1. Go: 21 games (+ another 8 on BGA)
2. Glory to Rome: 7 games (+16 on glory-to-rome.com)
3. ChessXGo: 6 days
4. Collide-A-Scope / Takeover: 6 days
5. Defenders of the Dictionary: 5 days
6. Stackable: 5 days
7. Shogi: 4 days
8. Tatsumi: 4 days
9. Gizmos: 3 days (+ 26 on BGA)
10. Harmonies: 3 days

My most-played in-person tabletop game this year was Go. At the beginning of the year, I made a deal with my then-13-year-old to play one game a week with me. (I don’t remember the terms of the deail!) It looks like we made it to about 16 games. Then I played some with other folks, so I probably played about 21 games of Go in 2024.

I also played a whopping 7 games of in-person Glory to Rome this year. As near as I can tell, I also finished at least 16 other games played with friends on glory-to-rome.com.

I’ve been super into researching Go Variants, and I am probably due for a blog post about that at some point. I designed the game I played the 3rd most often, and I’m calling it ChessXGo. (I posted the rules for it, as well as a photo over on the BGG Abstract Strategy forums.) It’s both a Chess Variant and a Go Variant. I’ve been telling folks that I’m super happy to have designed a game that feels simultaneously like two of the most beloved games in the world. At least a few of the days this was played I got in more than one game of it, so my total games played is likely higher than 6.

The next game, Collide-A-Scope is another of my prototypes. I’m assuming I’ll at least mention this in a future blog post, but one of my goals for 2024 was to pitch more games to publishers. Collide-A-Scope was actually with a publisher for evaluation for a bit of this year, and I thought for a while that it was a good contender for my next game to actually see publication. I kinda burned out on playing/pitching it though, and it hasn’t seen the table for a few months now. Stackable is also one of my prototypes, and it plays in about 2 minutes, so I’m quite sure I played two or three times the number of games as the number of days shown.

Defenders of the Dictionary is a game prototype (not my design) that I was helping demo for Adams Apple Games. The game was shown at both GenCon and Essen. I’m not much a fan of cooperative games, but this game is essentially cooperative Scrabble, and I enjoy it quite a bit. While demoing it, I’ll sometimes point out this is how my mom and Grandma have always played Scrabble: “That’s your word? You can do better than that! Show me your letters.”

Tatsumi was another game I demoed for AAG, this one at Essen only. I knew about the game previously, and had playtested a much earlier version, but this is shaping up to be a game that I really think I could see my friend group playing. It’s got beautiful artwork by Shirley Gong, the same artist who illustrated my game Thrive, and the gameplay falls into a similar level of strategy to games like Azul, Splendor, or the more recent Harmonies. I can’t guarantee it’ll be a winner, but I sure enjoyed demoing it, and can’t wait to get my copy.

puzzles (daily & otherwise)

This is a category of activity that I currently want to keep track of in my played log, but definitely don’t do a good job of it at all.

Sometime in 2024, LinkedIn launched some new “games” (which are actually puzzles). Of the ones I’ve checked out (at least 4 so far), I ended up playing a lot of two of them:

• Queens (solved on 234 days)
• Tango (solved on 84 days)

I also played some of these kinds of discreet puzzles on Puzzmo, which I subscribed to early (when you could still get a Lifetime subscription), but sadly I didn’t do a great job of tracking those in 2024. (I only logged any games that mention Puzzmo on 3 days, and I’m quite sure I played some puzzles quite a bit more often than that.)

Once again, I played so much Picross this year (usually during my workout) that I left it off my list of most played games. I ended up playing some form of Picross 184 days this year. Picross S10 (they’re calling it SX) has in-app purchases, and it seems like that’s the direction they’re going so I’m probably done purchasing games from them. Instead I’ve been going back through the series and trying to complete all the puzzles. I got the 100% complete notice on at least 3 of them this year. I believe S9, S2 and S3. (Think I already had it on the first one.)

I also keep a “pen and paper” puzzle book on my “currently reading” pile next to the couch. The current one is The Mammoth Book of New Sudoku, and I’d say I pick that up and work on a puzzle somewhere between 2 and 7 times per week. Unfortunately, I logged that I did that exactly ZERO times in 2024. (I’m going to try and be better about logging working on these kinds of physical puzzle when I do so.)

Related to the above, one of the items I put on my Giftster wishlist this year was a subscription to GAMES magazine, and I’ve already got my first issue. It’s absolutely packed with these kinds of puzzles, and I’m excited to have a bounty of new types of puzzle to solve. (Not to mention there are sometimes articles about them too!)

other games

A random list of other games (in no order) that I really enjoyed, but that didn’t make any of the lists above:

• Little Kitty Big City (Xbox) – I finished this in 3 days. Like a more approachable (and admittedly less cool looking) version of Stray. Reminded me (in a good way) of the wonderful A Short Hike.
• Jusant (Steam) – 3D Platforming up an atmospheric tower in some (possibly post-apocalyptic) future. I’ve been meaning to play more of this.

looking forward to 2025

I don’t have any particular goals for playing games in 2025, but I would like to think more about the journaling I do. I implemented the goal from last year of keeping track of games that were new-to-me, but I didn’t do a great job of doing anything with that information. All of the categories listed above have a long-tail. There are dozens of games I only played once. Which of those were worth a second look? I have no idea, and no way to find them without going through them one-by-one.

Maybe this just means I should write more reviews. (Looking at the 9 that I wrote was nice, and I wish I’d written more, even if they were short.)

I’m also going to try and be better about including pen and paper puzzles I work on, even if I don’t solve or finish them. (It’s either that, or give up tracking that kind of thing entirely.)