A bit overdue but it’s time for our annual awards: The Golden Standees! With these awards, we’d like to highlight games that we really enjoyed this past year.  So, congratulations to all the winners! 😀

When we got shown Turing Machine at SPIEL last year, we were already quite certain that it would definitely get a Golden Standee for something. It’s an ingenious idea executed in a great way. Whether you’re just doing the puzzles in the rulebook or using the website to play the daily challenge, it’s always a quick and intriguing deduction puzzle. The added quirky details like holes in the game box that show if the alignment of the box lid is correct show how much time and care has been put into the whole project.

Speaking of quirky details, the whole box of MIND MGMT is just covered with secret messages, we love it! If you don’t have oldskool 3D glasses laying around, the award says “Best Subliminal Messaging/Best Comic Adaptation”. The game itself is pretty cool too and we really want to explore the whole Shift card system to see what interesting new ideas are hidden within those exciting boxes.

Sniper Elite is a great hidden movement game and we’re happy to see it was on so many Best of Year lists. When we noticed that you couldn’t hurt the dogs in the game, we asked designer David Thompson if this was on purpose and he told us that it was a very conscious decision not to give players that option. For us, this sort of thinking is worthy of an award. 🙂

And then there’s Xia, a game that’s been on our want-to-play list as long as Semi Co-op exists. Last year a friend bought it and we’ve played it four times so far. While it’s random and has quite a bit of rules but we really just enjoy the exploration and the many options in the game. Every play just generates stories! So eight years after its initial release we still think it’s worthy of an award.

You can check out the Golden Standees of previous years here: https://semicoop.com/?s=golden+standees