Games 100 Award Winners Announced for 2011

Each year, Games Magazine puts together a list of what they consider to be the best games of the year. They’ve been doing this since about 1980, and it’s evolved into a popular feature of the magazine, something that games look forward to with anticipation, and often, they base their buying decisions on the list.

Games Magazine began compiling the list in 1980, and have done so every year since (with the exception of 1990 when the magazine was on hiatus, and 1995 when they transitioned to a new release date).

This year’s big winners, announced in the December 2010 issue of the magazine, include:

• 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.
• Best New Abstract Strategy Game: Arimaa – Arimaa 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.
• Best New Advanced Strategy Game: Uncle Chestnut’s Table Gype – 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.
• Best New 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 New 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.
• Best New 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. 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 New 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”.
• Best New 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.
• Best New 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.

For the complete list of winners and nominees, check out our 2011 Games 100 Award Winners list.

You can also refer back to Games 100 lists from prior years, including 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010.

Note: This is an archive post; it was originally published on December 3, 2010.