Armello

I enjoyed my time with Armello, as did the friends I played it with. While it doesn’t quite compete with some of the compelling tabletop games I have played over the past couple of years—and it’s marred by some confusing design choices that stand to stifle some of its more unique features—if you and a group of friends enjoy tabletop games but struggle to find the time to meet up and play them, then you’ll likely find Armello worthy of your time.

Armello picks and chooses a variety of elements from board, card, 4X, and role-playing games without demanding either a familiarity with or a fondness for any genre. It also leaves a lot of room to engage as deeply as you want with the game's guts without feeling like you're floundering if you don't. Whether you're bumbling your way to the top or playing all your cards right, Armello makes regicide ridiculously entertaining.

To be fair to Armello, any turn-based multiplayer game struggles if the players you’re competing against are slow or incompetent. The big problem is that even when it works smoothly, there’s nothing special about Armello beyond its style to elevate it beyond passable. But if anything goes wrong, and its limited communication in multiplayer makes it far too likely that something will, Armello has no safeguards against becoming incredibly boring due to isolating its players from each other.