"I think one of my most-played games is Pokemon Pinball, but the idea to make a pinball game came from Mario... he came to me and say 'JP, I want to make a custom engine for Playdate and we should make a pinball game.'"
Dimension 20 has primarily used Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition across its campaigns, with occasional side quests using other systems. The main cast has only deviated from D&D for the sixth campaign, A Starstruck Odyssey, which utilized an unofficial Star Wars system.
Everbound uses an 18-card construct to fill out the crew of a pirate ship. You start with your Captain and a twinkle in yer eye. And presumably a ship. Yarrrr. You'll take one of two actions per turn. Draw: Take a card from the Dock. Recruit: Play a card from your hand by paying its icon cost.
This is for that friend that finishes the Wordle in three tries and solves the purple clues first in Connections. League of the Lexicon reminds me a bit of Trivial Pursuit - players or teams take turns asking everyone questions from a double-sided card with answers on the back. Questions come in five categories and cover synonyms, word origins, spelling, definitions, archaic words, grammar, linguistic trivia and more.
The last five years have seen a tremendous resurgence of role-playing games, from the turn-based masterpieces of Baldur's Gate 3 and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, to the action-packed Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. And staggeringly, it looks like that trend is set to continue well into 2026. While there's undoubtedly a handful of games we don't know about, even what we do have looks like it's going to make this another banner year for RPGs.
I wish this was a one-off blip in my regimented friendship schedule, but all through 2025 I played the world's slowest game of message tennis. I'd invite a pal for dinner, only for the world to turn, the seasons pass, grey hairs gather at my temples, before a date was finally locked in. This sentiment seems to be common among my circle.
Baldur's Gate 3 is a game that would make perfect sense on the Switch 2. Nintendo's console has mouse controls thanks to the new Joy-Con 2 controllers, and Larian's award-winning RPG would have been a great fit for its point-and-click capabilities. From the sound of it, the studio was down to bring Gale, Astarion, Shadowheart, and everyone else to Nintendo's platform, but someone got in the way.
Your skyport has dual-colored stations that score when airships of the same color land in a corresponding lane next to the station. Getting a couple of tycoons to help boost your score or change the placement abilities doesn't hurt. But, there's a catch. Each airship card's ability rarely allows for getting an airship next to the intended station on the first go.
TPK, a combo brewery and gaming space that opened in 2023, eases entry for newcomers and provides a soft landing for the socially rusty. "Especially coming out of the pandemic, we had a lot of people in their mid-30s [who] were like, 'I have no way to connect with anyone,'" says Elliott Kaplan, TPK's CEO and one of its three founders. "Well, we'll throw you at a table. All the social interactions will be overseen by a GM."
Peninsula uses a deck of 30 icon cards (or 24 if you are playing solo) with icons for each of the landscape features you will be placing on the island. Each card has two icons separated by a river. In competitive play, the active player selects the icon they want to add to their island. The remaining icon on the opposite side of the river is used by the other players.
Oh No, We Crashed! has simple setup and it varies by planet. The spaceship standee is placed in the middle of the table; the system cards are placed face up around the ship and then component cards are placed face down around the component cards. The timer is then set by player count and players read the special rules (if any) on the planet the players crashed.