16 Board and Card Games Played at SaltCon 2024

The first weekend of March, I spent a couple of days playing a bunch of fun games at SaltCon Spring 2024.

SaltCon Spring is a 4-day event held on the first weekend of March. This year, I arrived Thursday night after work and stayed through Saturday afternoon (taking Friday off work so I could play all day).

Even though SaltCon now hosts game events a few times each year, the spring gathering is the biggest of the bunch and one I look forward to every year.

This year, the attendance hit 2,400!

Read on to get a quick recap of the 16 different games I played and my thoughts on each.

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Similo deduction game review

This time of year, it’s great to gather as family and friends for some light-hearted games.

Similo, by Horrible Guild, fits that very well.

That’s because Similo is a cooperative deduction game where everyone either wins or loses together. It comes in a variety of card sets of 30 cards such as Fables, Myths, Animals, History, and more. All of which have fantastic artwork that add to the enjoyment of the game.

The goal is to make the other players guess one secret character by playing other character cards from your hand as clues, stating whether they’re similar to or different from the secret character.

And because it’s nice and compact, it’s a great game to give as a gift as well.

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Board Game Gift Guide 2023 – 45 Favorites!

We’ve posted a Board Game Gift Guide for the past 12 years. And each year we’ve recommended around 40 games to get your friends and family as gifts.

Which means that through our annual gift guides, we’ve shared close to 500 game ideas!

Well, rather than give another list of new games to check out, we’ve decide to roll back through our 12 years of game gift guides and pick out our very favorites to recommend for 2023.

So, without further ado, here’s our recommended favorites in each category.

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Museum Suspects board game review

As you stand there admiring “The Night Watch” by your favorite 17th century artist, Rembrandt van Rijn, you notice a commotion occurring near the statues display a few rooms over.

A minute later you hear the shrill ringing of the museum alarm and see guards racing in from every direction. Next thing you know, you and many other museum patrons are being questioned by the local authorities about a priceless sculpture that has been stolen from the museum moments before.

In Museum Suspects, by designer Phil Walker-Harding and publisher Blue Orange Games, you take on the role of a detective sifting through a multitude of museum attendees and clues in order to figure out who the thief or thieves are.

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Got any Spies and Turncoats?

“These are the times that try men’s souls.”

I’m sure many people may have uttered that phrase this past year. But we’re not here to talk about last year. Instead, we’re looking back to 1776 when Thomas Paine penned those words in The American Crisis.

Of course, we’re not here for a book report either, but instead to look at a social deduction card game set during the American Revolutionary War — Patriots & Redcoats by Green Feet Games.

In the game, players take on the roles of the Americans fighting to win independence and the British fighting to stop the rebellion. And like in typical social deduction type games, players are secretly assigned which side they’re on and must figure out who to eliminate to win.

But, be careful because players may also change loyalty along the way!

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Break In: Alcatraz Game Review

It’s June 11, 1962, the day you’re going to break into Alcatraz.

Yes, you read that right. You’ll be breaking into the most secure prison in the world to break 4 inmates out. Months of planning has gone into this daring operation and now it’s time to act.

At least it will be if you’re playing Break In: Alcatraz!

From the publisher, Playmonster: “Throughout this collaborative experience, you must work together to follow a series of clues and solve puzzles to unfold multiple layers of the game and move deeper into the prison to help your friends escape! You’ll encounter many obstacles and characters along the way…this game provides the thrill and challenge of an escape room, combined with the experience and world-immersion of a movie”!

Do you have what it takes to break into Alcatraz?

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Escape Rooms come to Puzzles!

We’ve reviewed a bunch of Escape Room type board games and even included a number of them in our 2019 Board Game Gift Guide.

Well, we’ve got a new twist on Escape Room games for you today — Escape Puzzles!

We first heard about Escape Puzzles from Ravensburger a few months ago and just attempted our first one last week. And I had a lot of fun doing it!

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Spyfall & Spyfall 2 Party Game Review

Do you love party games?
Do you love deduction games?
What about a game that combines both elements?

If so, you’re in luck because Spyfall is both a party game and a deduction game!

We included both Spyfall and Spyfall 2 in our annual Board Game Gift Guides in the past because they’re such fun games.

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Make time for a Dinosaur Tea Party

When was the last time you had tea with dinosaurs?

If your answer is “never”, then it’s time to change that!

Dinosaur Tea Party is a fantastic family game of deduction that everyone can enjoy playing.

It’s also another game that quickly jumped into one of our most-played games of 2018!

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