Top 50 Games of 2025 (30-21)

It’s that time of year again for what might just be the most prestigious gaming award that can be given out by mere mortals! Welcome to the NoRerolls Top 50 Games of 2025 list; an arbitrary ranking of the games that I love.

This is a list of my personal top 50 games at this point in time.  My choices are not limited to games from this calendar year, but instead, represent my current thoughts on the top 50 games to me.  Next year, some of the games featured may move up and down as my opinions change and I get the chance to play more games or revisit old favourites.

This series will comprise 5 posts, each covering 10 games as we work down from number 50 to number 1.

• Part 1: 50-41
• Part 2: 40-31
• Part 3: 30-21
• Part 4: 20-11
• Part 5: 10-1

This year, this section of the list has one new entry and then a few games that have moved around on the list. Let’s kick things off, shall we?

30: Escape the Dark Sector

Previous 30 (no change)

Year: 2020

Designers: Alex Crispin, Thomas Pike, James Shelton

Publisher: Themeborne

Plays: 1-6 players in ~45 minutes

I first picked this game up on holiday in 2022, but I never got it to the table until late 2023. I should have made more of an effort to, because I really enjoyed it when I did and it was November 2023’s game of the month.

It plays like a choose your own adventure-style book, with randomised events that present decisions and challenges to players as a narrative begins to unfold. The game did lull me into something of a false sense of security, starting off pretty easy, but it then quickly ramped up and started beating us down. It hurt!

The experience was really great, though I imagine this is the sort of game that would benefit from expansions. I could see the appeal of, once the game has been played a lot, adding in more events, characters, equipment and like for the sake of variety and replayability.

29: Star Wars Rebellion

Previous Position: 24 (-5)

Year: 2016

Designer: Corey Konieczka

Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games

Plays: 2-4 players in ~180 to 240 minutes

Rebellion falls further down the rankings? Say it ain’t so! This game was twice my number 1 game, and it remains an amazing two-player experience that is essentially “Star Wars in a box”. This slippage should not be taken for a dismissal of the game; it was my Game of the Month for January of 2023, after all! 

There’s a lot of potential combat in the game but, like Scythe, it’s not really a war game. It’s basically a game of hide-and-seek. The Rebels are doing the hiding and the Empire are the seekers. Combat along the way just acts as a speedbump. Both factions are a lot of fun, and this is great as they are also such different experiences. A game as the Empire is totally different from one as the Rebels, and asymmetry is something I’ve always really liked in games.

I’d call the expansion to this game pretty compulsory. Even if you don’t like the Rogue One characters (I quite like them, I suppose), you will want it for the improved combat system and some of the newer, more interesting missions.

28: Fiasco (Classic)

Previous Position: 20 (-8)

Year: 2009

Designer: Jason Morningstar

Publisher: Bully Pulpit Games

Plays 3-5 players in a few hours

Fiasco is an absolute smasher of a game, that I love, and which is loved by friends as well. Credit to the group I learned to play it with, as they were wonderfully creative, knew each other well enough to play off one another’s characters and were always cooperative in working towards a great story.  That Fiasco gave us the scaffolding to build such a story and have a fantastic time in the process is a credit to Bully Pulpit.

It also saw a fair bit of play during lockdown, and I learned how to design and create a Fiasco tool for playing on Roll20.

Mechanically, the game is really simple is the rules are just there to support the storytelling.  I also like the plug-and-play nature of the playsets, and put out a couple of my own.

27: Eldritch Horror

Previous Position: 18 (-9)

Year: 2013

Designer: Corey Konieczka, Nikki Valens

Publisher: Fantasy Flight Games

Plays: 1-8 players in ~120 to 240 minutes

Eldritch Horror is an expansive game of cooperative awesomeness. Players work together to defeat an evil threat to the world. This is often, for me and my group, an exercise in utter, doomed futility, but that’s ok. I love how this works. I love that there are a lot of moving parts going on. I love how characters develop as the game goes on.

I particularly like playing this when there’s no time pressure and with a group that will really get into the spirit of the game. Just reading the mechanical implications of the cards does work, and it’s probably the fastest way to play. I prefer properly reading each card as, in adding up all of the horrific events that these characters go through, you end up with quite a story developing in each game. Eldritch Horror is fun and it is difficult, and I continue to love it.

26: 1960: The Making of the President

Previous Position: 17 (-9)

Year: 2007

Designers: Christian Leonhard, Jason Matthews

Publisher: GMT Games

Plays: 2 players in ~90 minutes

When I first got the game, after only playing it once or twice, I just saw it as a lighter, simpler Twilight Struggle. I questioned why, with most people, I would choose this over TS. Since then, I’ve played it a lot more and, although I still prefer Twilight Struggle, I see the value of 1960 far more clearly than I did. It has players taking on the roles of the Kennedy and Nixon campaigns in the 1960 US presidential election. It’s actually quite unique and offers a different experience to Twilight Struggle. It is a little lighter, but it’s interesting in a very different way.

I love the back-and-forth of the game. The idea of taking the candidates and zipping them here and there across the US is a lot of fun. As with Twilight Struggle and Washington’s War, I really like the card-driven nature of the game. I’m a lot better with Nixon than with Kennedy in this game. Tricky Dick’s had my back.

25: Raiders of the North Sea

Previous Position: 31 (+6)

Year: 2015

Designer: Shem Phillips

Publisher: Garphill Games

Plays: 2-4 players in ~60 to 80 minutes

I first played this game back in December 2023, when my list for that year had already been written. Last year, it entered the list in the top 40. Today, we’re in the top 30. I think Garphill Games’ big presence on my list this year is probably one of the most exciting developments between last year and this year.

This game is tricky, but I love it. The resource management is tight, in a good way. You really have to consider how you use and commit your workers, who take up slots in your crew, and when to go a-viking. I’d love to get this to the table again in the near future, because the game has really gone in very different directions for me each time I’ve played so far.

24: Dominion

Previous Position: 34 (+10)

Year: 2008

Designer: Donald X. Vaccarino

Publisher: Rio Grande Games

Plays: 3-4 players in ~30 minutes

The big daddy of deck-building games has risen back up the ranks this year. I love this game. It’s just the purest of its kind, and it’s a game I can play with lots of different people. It’s also great that my wife loves it, so it can make it onto the table quite often. I’ve not gone overboard with expansions, but I kind of wish I had. There’s still time…

The biggest thing that sets this game apart from many other deck builders is that you actually have to make decisions about what cards to play and what cards to buy. Games like the DC Comics Deck Building Game and Star Realms, although both fantastic, give you no reason to not just play all of your cards on every turn. Dominion only allows you to play one action card and make one purchase as standard. I’ve written about this before, at length, but it really does come down to the structure. I like Dominion’s structure and the decisions it forces the player to make.

23: Ticket to Ride

Previous Position: 25 (+2)

Year: 2004

Designer: Alan R. Moon

Publisher: Days of Wonder

Plays: 2-5 players in ~30 to 60 minutes

The ultimate example of a solid gateway game, Ticket to Ride continues to make me happy in my heart.  We’ve picked up so much of it!  The original game, Europe, Rails and Sails, Germany, UK, and Nordic.  I also picked up several of the other maps at the bring and buy at Tabletop Scotland 2019.  Nordic is my favourite map.

I love that I can break this out with any group and it just works.  I love that This is a game my wife will play, my gamer friends will play and my parents will play.  I love that it’s just so beautifully produced.  I will, at some point, pick up more of the maps, but I don’t even really need them.  I’d be happy playing the original version over and over and over again.  The maps are just gravy.

22: Dungeons & Dragons

Previous Position: Returning to the list

Year: 2014 (for 5E)

Designer: Jeremy Crawford, Mike Mearls, Bruce R. Cordell, Peter Lee, Robert J. Schwalb, Rodney Thompson, James Wyatt

Publisher: Wizards of the Coast

Plays: Ideally 4-6 over however long you want. Again, RPGs…

After years of feeling worn down by its omnipresence, Dungeons & Dragons has found its way back into my top 50 list for 2025, landing at number 22. The burnout was real; its dominance in the hobby often felt (and continues to feel) stifling, overshadowing smaller systems and narrowing the conversation around what tabletop roleplaying could be. Yet despite that ubiquity, D&D’s core strengths remain undeniable: it’s a gateway or a shared language. It’s a sprawling toolkit that continues to inspire new players and designers alike.

What brought it back wasn’t nostalgia so much as recognition of its resilience. Even when I drift toward indie systems or experimental formats, D&D persists as a cultural anchor, a game that can still deliver memorable campaigns and accessible one‑shots when handled with care. Its place at 22 reflects a balance, acknowledging the frustrations of its dominance while celebrating the enduring creativity it enables. In short, D&D may not define my gaming life anymore, but it earns its spot by continuing to matter, even when I resist its gravitational pull.

21: The Dresden Files Roleplaying Game

Previous Position: 13 (-8)

Year: 2010

Designer: Leonard Balsera, Jim Butcher, Genevieve Cogman, Robert Donoghue, Fred Hicks, Kenneth Hite, Ryan Macklin, Chad Underkoffler, Clark Valentine

Publisher: Evil Hat

Plays: Ideally 4-6 players over several evenings, preferably with food and drink

FATE rocks. It’s a great system and I continue to collect lots of the variants and supplements and whatnot that Evil Hat continues to put out. I love Evil Hat. They are one of my favourite game companies. They just put out great stuff.

The Dresden Files is one of my favourite book series. I suppose it should come as no surprise that an RPG from one of my favourite publishers, based on one of my favourite book series, will end up being one of my favourite RPGs. 

Dresden Files is one of the best implementations of the FATE system, although it does use the previous edition of the rules. That said, the core of the system is, for me, the aspect rules, and this game uses them just fine. The aspect system makes the game easy to run in a way that is directly personal to and inclusive of each individual player character.

The Dresden Files RPG books are also great objects in their own right. They are full-size A4 books (unlike most FATE books, which are A5) and are full of lovely artwork and lots of notes in the margins from the characters from the series. These production values make the books fun to slip through, even when you’re not playing or planning to play the game.

See you next time for part 4, featuring games 20-11