The Meeples Choice Awards is an annual game award that has been voted on by a group of gamers since 1995. The purpose of the award is to select the group’s three favorite designs from the previous calendar year. The first stage of the voting for the 2023 awards has been completed and 34 games have been nominated. (Usually there are only 25 or so nominations, but this year there were a large number of games tied for the last few spots.) The group will now vote on their favorites from the nominated games and the three games which receive the most votes will be declared the winners. The winning games will be announced next Friday.
Here are the nominated games in alphabetical order, together with their designers and publishers. Congratulations to all the individuals involved!
- 12 Chip Trick (root) – Mandoo Games
- Age of Innovation (Helge Ostertag) – Feuerland Spiele
- Apiary (Connie Vogelmann) – Stonemaier Games
- Cabanga! (Michael Modler) – Amigo
- Darwin’s Journey (Simone Luciani, Nestore Mangone) – ThunderGryph Games
- Daybreak (Matt Leacock, Matteo Menapace) – CMYK
- Dune: Imperium – Uprising (Paul Dennen) – Dire Wolf
- Earth (Maxime Tardif) – Inside Up Games
- Evacuation (Vladimir Suchy) – Delicious Games
- Expeditions (Jamey Stegmaier) – Stonemaier Games)
- Faraway (Johannes Goupy, Corentin Lebrat) – Catch Up Games
- Forest Shuffle (Kosch) – Lookout Games
- FTW?! (Friedemann Friese) – 2F-Spiele
- Great Western Trail: New Zealand (Alexander Pfister) – eggertspiele
- Hegemony (Vangelis Bagiartakis, Varnavas Timotheou) – Hegemonic Project Games
- Hooky (James Miller, Friends of Aseema) – Rio Grande Games
- Knarr (Thomas Dupont) – Bombyx
- Kutna Hora (Ondrej Bystron, Petr Caslava, Pavel Jarosch) – CGE
- Magic Trick (Chris Wray) – Self Published
- Nokosu Dice (Yusuke Matsumoto) – Engames
- Nucleum (Simone Luciani, David Turczi) – Board&Dice
- Path of Civilization (Fabien Gridel) – Captain Games
- Sail (Akiyama Koryo, Kozu Yusei) – Allplay
- Sky Team (Luc Remond) – Scorpion Masque
- Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game (Caleb Grace) – Fantasy Flight Games
- That’s Not a Hat (Kasper Lapp) – Ravensburger
- The Fox Experiment (Elizabeth Hargrave, Jeff Fraser) – Pandasaurus Games
- The White Castle (Israel Cendrero, Sheila Santos) – Devir
- Thunder Road: Vendetta (Daviau, Jacobson, Chalker, Myers, Choen, Keifer, Neff) – Restoration Games
- Ticket to Ride Legacy (Rob Daviau, Matt Leacock, Alan Moon) – Days of Wonder
- Tipperary (Gunter Burkhardt) – Lookout Games
- Unmatched Adventures: Tales to Amaze (Jason Hager, Darren Reckner – Restoration Games
- Voidfall (Nigel Buckle, David Turczi) – Mindclash Games
- World Wonders (Ze Mendes) – MeepleBR/Mundus
