The Spiel Des Jahres is seen as THE awards of the board gaming world. Made up of three categories, this german award almost guarantees a game's future success. The award winners for 2022 have been announced this weekend, but who won this year?

Spiel Des Jahres

The big headline award is the Spiel Des Jahres, which focuses on family playable hobby-style games, which has seen a swing in recent years to more party style games. The nominations this year featured Cascadia, Scout, and Top Ten, with the winner being...

Cascadia!

Cascadia is a peaceful puzzle game of tile placement with amazing nature artwork. It has tonal vibes that resonate with Wingspan, but it's much less weighty in terms of mechanics, and offers high production values. 

Read the full review here

The judges said of it [Translated]: “'Cascadia' is a true feel-good game. The moves are always rewarding, even if the choices offered are not always appropriate. The two-part puzzle task, for which a good balance between the right landscapes and the right animal symbols has to be found, is particularly successful.”

Kennerspiel Award

The Kennerspiel is perhaps most familiar to readers of our magazine, as it's described as the hobby side of gaming, or the "expert" game, won last year by Paleo. Nominations this year included a 2018 classic from Osprey Games in Cryptid, a favourite from last year in Dune: Imperium, and a new deck builder in Living Forest. The winner was...

Living Forest!

Another deck builder that uses some innovative openness in design, allowing card draw each turn that could range from a few to a huge handful each turn – as you only need to stop when you get three solitary suns. Stopping before gives you extra actions, paid for with the symbols on your cards. This, plus the popular ‘eco-whimsy’ style of artwork on the cards made it a favourite. 

Read the full review here

Kinderspiel Award

Finally, the award for the best children's game nominated Auch Schon Clever (yes, you may recognise the Clever style games from Wolfgang Warsh!), Quacks & Co, as a children's version of Quacks of Quedlinburg, and Zauberberg (Also known as Magic Mountain). The winner was...

Zauberberg!

A fun racing game for kids with wizards with a marble-rolls-down-the-course gameplay mechanic. Silly and good fun.

Whilst that might be all for this year, that gives us plenty of time to start looking for next year – and we can't wait. Let us know on social media what your thoughts on these are, whether you agreed with the winners, or whether your award would have gone to someone else entirely. 

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This review came from Tabletop Gaming Magazine, which is home to all of the latest and greatest tabletop goodness. Whether you're a board gamer, card gamer, wargamer, RPG player or all of the above, find your copy here.

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Read More... 

If you want to read more about one of the most hotly anticipated games of the year, check out our interview with Cole Wehrle on ARCS! A new game from the designer of Root and Oath, and we've got all you need to know.

To infinity and beyond

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