Well its official, its 2017 and the apocalypse has not come yet although thanks to Donald Trump you won’t have to wait too much longer. In the meantime, we may as well presume that the human race will survive another year and talk about games coming to us in 2017.

So here is my list of top 5 most anticipated games of 2017.

Rising Sun by CMON

I absolutely love Blood Rage, it was definitely the sleeper hit of 2015. Eric Lang is an amazing designer in his prime but anyone who knows me knows that while I appreciate all themes, when it comes to my list of favorites medieval Japan definitely has to be at the top of the list. Rising Sun is dubbed the spiritual successor to Blood Rage based in Medieval Japan and that combined with being an Eric Lang games makes this an auto buy! Eric Lang has recently tweeted that the game is complete and is now in development, the final stage of testing and preparation for release. I’m giddy with excitement!

The Godfather: Corleone’s Empire by CMON

I said he was in his prime but Eric Lang is really more like on literal fire making his second appearance on the list with The Godfather. Now I love mafia stuff but mafia games like Star Trek games are typically very bad. My hope here is that Lang behind the wheel The Godfather can be to mafia games what Fleet Captains was to Star Trek games. I’m already in love with the concept and the art work, so assuming Lang is the genius we all know he aspires to be, the addition of fantastic gameplay should not be a problem. Really have high hopes for this was, I want to wack people!

Tau Ceti: Planetary Crisis

A game by unknown game designers, published by an unknown publisher, Tau Ceti’s is yet another among a sea of games that attempts to re-invigorate the 4x space game genre. Now the odds are against it here but the reason I put Tau Ceti on the list is because I really like that “Archipelago” of players competing against each other, but having to cooperate on certain elements in the course of a game. In the case of Tau Ceti, players are effectively trying to do all the usual expansions, technology research, trading and politics that you might find in games like Twilight Imperium, but at the same time they must deal with the crisis that take place on the different planets and colonies in the Tau Ceti system or deal with the consequences for failing to do so.

I love the concept, I don’t know that these designers and publishers are going to be able to pull this off, but they have done a great job of creating a solid concept and developing nice visuals for a game of this type, so it just leaves the really important work of actually designing a good game. I will definitely be keeping an eye out on this one.

Raise Your Goblets

Ok this one caught my eye mostly because of its original (I wish I thought of that) concept. Basically it’s a game where players are sitting around the table drinking from goblets in an imaginary kingdom and the goal of the game is to poising each other by slipping special poison tokens into each other’s goblets. Like a scene from Princess Bride the goblets will be shifted around, players can put antidote into their own goblets as defense and a few other little quirky bits of randomness. It’s a bit of a funny party game for shits and giggles but like is often the case these simpler “focus on fun” type of games usually go over quite well and it could end up being the Sheriff of Nottingham of 2017.

Terra-forming Mars

Ok this is actually a game that is already released but it was received so well by the time I had heard about the awesome concept of a game of terraforming planets, it was already out of print. For those of us that missed the train, we have to wait for god knows how long for the next printing. The game is very pretty, great concept, already getting amazing reviews, people are raving about it like it’s the second coming of Christ. Very excited!