You Know the Name

Flip 7 took the world by storm in 2023, touting itself as the “World’s Greatest Card Game.” It backed up that claim in 2024, taking home a slew of awards, including Origins Best Party Game, Golden Geek Best Party Game, and even a nomination for the 2025 Spiel des Jahres award.

It’s also gaining recognition outside the gaming bubble. I recently had an interaction with coworkers in my office who wanted to play Uno, and I asked if they’d heard of Flip 7. To my surprise, more than one of them said yes with immediate excitement. Whether you love it or hate it, Flip 7 is almost a household name now.

It’s only natural that a game in this format would spawn variations to keep the cash coming. Last year, we saw the Dr. Seuss’s Grinch variant, and I have an inside scoop that more reskins are on the way.

Following on the heels of the Uno: No Mercy madness from a few years back, Flip 7 now has its own “mean” version, packed with ruthless cards and more stabbing. But how does it hold up against the original? Let’s flip the next card and find out.

 

Same Flips, New Cards

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One of my favorite things about reviewing games is finding titles where I begin to form opinions, only to pivot as I do additional plays of the same game.

That’s especially true when I hate a game after the first play.

All Aboard! (2025, Devir) is one such title. It’s a family-weight card game that accommodates 2-5 players. The rulebook is a bit too long, which I initially thought would be trouble for a game aimed at an eight-year-old and their family. I got a little worried when I got to the back of the rulebook, and found such a wide variety of card powers incorporated into the game. I knew, immediately, that the game needed but was missing one thing: a player aid. (Remember: EVERY GAME NEEDS A PLAYER AID.)

All Aboard! has many elements of a programming game. Using a hand of cards, players must place one of their animal cards onto a boat in the middle of the table. Each boat (one per player is laid out on the table) can hold three cards, with a weight limit that will be checked later. On the player’s first and third turn each round, they must play a card face-up to a boat if there is space. On their second turn, they play one of their cards…

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For many years, my dear friend and former roommate had a cat named Eilonwy. He —this may confuse some of you, but I promise that Eilonwy was a “he”—was a wonderful cat, with many admirable qualities, but he could not be left unsupervised with water. He could not be left supervised with water, for that matter. Any vessel containing water that was left on a surface he could reach would soon find itself right off. Had they ever met, Eilonwy would have provided Sir Isaac Newton with many an opportunity to raise his eyebrows, tilt his head slightly, and mutter, “See?”. We lost many a glass and many a mug in this way.

It was never malicious. He wasn’t making a statement, it wasn’t some sort of anti-Narcissus performance piece. Eilonwy simply could not help but bat at the surface of the water, and to do so with such vigor that its container would edge closer and closer to disaster. It became a part of the rhythm of the household: the occasional crash, the frantic dash of startled paws, a shouted, “Damnit, Eilonwy!”

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I play maybe a half dozen one-shot/escape room/murder mystery-style games a year. I’ve written so many reviews of these deduction titles that it’s hard to even remember them all at this point!

I know a winner when I see one, and on the heels of some of the best games to hit the market in this category with the entries from the KOSMOS Masters of Crime series, I am continuing to explore the market. I’m sure other publishers are making great titles here…right?

During my visit to Germany for SPIEL Essen 2025, I picked up a copy of My Murder Mystery: A Dead Monkey from the team at Horrible Guild. There’s no getting around it—the title of this game is terrible. I might have even said that to our friends at the publisher…”My Murder Mystery” is the name of the series? “A Dead Monkey”??? What is going on here? Even if some of this was lost in translation (Horrible Guild is an Italian publishing house), I still can’t figure out why they landed on “My Murder Mystery.”

(My 11-year-old heard the game’s title and was horrified by its implication: “do you have to investigate the murder of a MONKEY???”

Don’t sweat it. The title is terrible…but the game here is magic, and it instantly becomes a serious…

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Just One is a game from 2018. It was nominated for many awards, and it won many too, the most prestigious one being the Spiel des Jahres (2019). This is a party game and a cooperative game. The idea is simple. Every round one person plays the active player and needs to guess a word. That word is known to everyone else, and everyone must give a one word clue to help the active player guess

Burst is a light card game that can be described as group Black Jack. That’s just like my game Pinocchio, but in Pinocchio the cards are hidden. In Burst you can see all the cards played.  On your turn you either draw a card or play a card to the centre of the table. You have a hand size of three, so if you have three cards, you must play one. Cards in hand are your points. They are