Each year since 1980, GAMES Magazine has published a Buyer's Guide to Games in their year-end holiday issue. The article lists and reviews one hundred games each year, and is therefore known as the "Games 100". The list features the very best games published in the last year.
This is a list of the games selected by Games Magazine for the year 2011, courtesy of Funagain Games:
Game of the Year: Jump Gate
Explore far-away planets. Discover what resources and surprises they hold. Be the first to set foot on a new planet and claim it as your own. Collect resources to gain fortune and fame. All of this comes courtesy of: the Jump Gate.
Players are spaceship captains that are competing to be the best at claiming new planets and collecting the resources found at those planets.
Players score points at the end of the game based on the number of planets they scanned and claimed, and their combination of resources collected. Each type of resource has a different method for being scored -- so, collecting sets of the same resource is encouraged ... and disrupting other players’ collection plans is good strategy.
Best Abstract Strategy Game: Arimaa
Arimaa is a game where stronger animals like elephants and camels try to push and pull the weaker ones from the opposing team into traps while one of the rabbits tries to sneak across the board and harmlessly reach the other side. The first player to get a rabbit to the other side wins.
This may sound like a simple kids game; and while it is easy enough for your kids to learn and enjoy, you will find that it is also a very deep game that can take a lifetime to master.
| Winner: | |
| Runner-Up: | |
| Nominees: |
Best Advanced Strategy Game: Uncle Chestnut's Table Gype
In his Autobiography, G.K. Chesterton mentions "the well-known and widespread national game of Gype" which he and H.G. Wells invented. Specifically, Chesterton mentions "I myself cut out and coloured pieces of cardboard of mysterious and significant shapes, the instruments of Table Gype; a game for the little ones." Almost 100 years later, Eternal Revolution has published Table Gype as an abstract strategy game with a random element. Players try to move their pieces from their home row to the row directly opposite. They may jump their own pieces or those of their opponents, but every jump randomizes the playing pieces that were jumped over. Uncle Chestnut's Table Gype is played with a cloth gameboard and 32 playing pieces in 4 colors. Each piece, a six-sided die, can represent any of 6 "mysterious and significant shapes" that move differently.
| Winner: | |
| Runner-Up: | |
| Nominees: |
Best Family Game: Burger Joint
In this two-player game, each player runs a chain of fast-food joints: one specializes in burgers and the other in pizzas. As each expands, he takes on some of the menu items of the other in order to compete for customers. Later, each can open family restaurants and even high-class dining establishments. The most successful chain will win in the end!
Best Family Card Game: Jaipur
Jaipur, capital of Rajasthan. You are one of the most powerful merchants of the city. But that's not enough, because only the dealer to the two Seals of Excellence will have the privilege of being invited to the court of Maharaja. So you must measure yourself against your competitor by buying, bartering and selling at better prices than him, while keeping an eye on your respective camels.
| Winner: | |
| Runner-Up: | |
| Nominees: |
Best Family Strategy Game: Valdora
Hidden far away from our time lies a valley full of unimaginable riches. Adventurers from all over the world set off to try to make their fortune here.
Players purchase equipment and commissions in Valdora's cities. Only with the help of special equipment can they dig for gold and various gemstones. If a player undertakes a commission and delivers the requested gemstones to the house of the patron, he receives victory points. Additionally, he can hire a craftsman. Each craftsman specializes in gold, silver of specific gemstones. The first player to have enough craftsmen with the same specialization may open a workshop. Workshop owners receive bonus points. At the end of the game, players receive victory points for their workshops, craftsmen and gemstones. The player with the most points has made his fortune in Valdora.
Best Party Game: Telestrations
Easy to learn, simple to play, Telestrations is the hilarious sketch and guess party game that offers up instant fun and laughter! Includes 2,400 entertaining words from "cheeseburger" to "love handles".
| Winner: | |
| Runner-Up: | |
| Nominees: |
Best Puzzle: Anti-Virus
Choose 1 of 60 challenges from the game booklet and arrange the pieces as indicated. You must manipulate the pieces so that you can push the red "virus" piece out of the game board through the exit in the top corner.
| Winner: | |
| Runner-Up: | |
| Nominees: |
Best Historical Simulation Game: Battles of Napoleon: The Eagle and the Lion
For twenty years, from 1796 until the final defeat at Waterloo in 1815, Napoleon Bonaparte and his generals fought on the battlefields of all Europe. Battles of Napoleon is a gaming system that allows two players to recreate the most important historical battles the era. The Eagle and the Lion, the first game in the Battles of Napoleon series, gives you all you need to recreate many of the major clashes that saw the French and English armies -- sworn enemies -- face each other on the battlefields of Belgium, Spain and Italy.
No less than 10 battles are featured, each of them based on a major historical event. In Battles of Napoleon -- The Eagle and the Lion, the two players control the French and English armies (sometimes supported by allies of other nationalities) in a specific battle. Planned as the first in a series of products that combine principles and mechanics from board and miniature games, each subsequent release will be standalone two-player games that can also be combined with others for larger battles.
| Winner: | |
| Runner-Up: | |
| Nominees: |
See Also: Other Award-Winning Board Games, Games 100 Winners for Other Years
