That is easy to answer for me.
Mansion of madness
I have played so many rounds with so many different people. The game is complex enough that each round is different. But easy enough to geht people to start with. Easy to play hard to master.
The digital game master via APP is great. I had so many games in which the last player actions decided the game. After some hours of game time. Your actions feel so impactful.
Touch screens in everything. Give me back the good old buttons and switches.
I don’t want to go to the third level of menus, swipe and then make a three Finger gesture. Often used features deserve dedicated buttons.
I think Final Fantasy 7 and 10. the worlds were so well build. And in current times of terror, climate crisis, wars, so many topics were in the games.
As other games i mention Limbo, Ori and Hollow Knight. The have a really great athmosphere. Just thinking about these games, makes me remember of the feeling playing them.
And the biggest game in my list is Elden Ring. So many wow things in there. And the shear amount of content … Just blew my mind.
I play in several groups of people with very different backgrounds of experience and willingness top deep dive rules.
My main game is mansion of madness. Not the most complex one, but already several hours long with some crucial rules. The game does not need a dedicated game master as that part is done by an app. But the game pieces, cards are physical objects.
I did two things to improve the game experience for every one.
First, the organization of all cards, objects, board material. I have put every thing in labeled boxes. The card are grouped by type and alphabetical sorted . This really really helped a lot to speed the game up. And often there are only marginal waiting times to find things. So the players are way more focussed on the game.
Second, I adapted my play style a little bit. As it is my game, I’m often the Referee and solve ruling question. So I can confirm that often by owning the game you often are the unofficial game leader or game master.
But if I play in a group with experienced players, I can get them involved. As I have everything in boxes, i can easily say: you are in charge of these kind of items and place the box in front of them. Another player for this kind of tokens. For each other player it is only one type of material with it’s rules. But for me I can remove several parts of the rules from my responsibility.
If I play with a group nearly completely with first time players, I sometimes don’t play with them, instead completely focus on the role of game master. It works for me with this game, as it is very interesting to see how my friends behave in problem solving situations or how they solve the puzzles. And in this case I can focus on explaining the rules to them. Check on their train of thoughts. And with this “training”, after the second game the other people are fit to overtake simple tasks.
I don’t know how the game does it, but in so many sessions the last actions are so important. I have often won the game within the last possible action. Such a great feeling.
Going from “easy, everything is fine” to “everything on fire, NPCs dead, several Monsters” in two rounds. Then winning by a clever set oft actions, where several player habe to coordinate, is peak feeling oft accomplishment.