Ahhh... I think I've just discovered something about myself thanks to this video. I like getting rewarded, a lot! Parks, Clans, Glen More 2, Rajas, etc. A ton of these games have made for my most favorite game experiences. My main gaming partner is my husband, and I lose all the time to him, but maybe highly rewarding games make losing ok for me because at least I felt like I still did well- just not as well as he did. 😂

I think the Ganz Schon Clever series exemplifies this. While it is a very easy game to play, you are constantly earning rewards that often earn other rewards for you. We played this last weekend and it is simply an awesome game.

Rajas really hits that sweet spot, constantly giving you things and making you feel good about your turns.

Cubitos is like Quacks, a rewarding push-your-luck game. One example is that even if you bust (throwing dice without any reward faces), instead of not getting anything, you get to move on the "fan track" that will provide benefits such as an increase in hand size or extra money to spend in future turns. It also has a similar Quacks's rat tail mechanism called red lines that helps players that are left behind by increasing player's hand size per red line.

In “Castles of Mad King Ludwig”, I like the building up rewards that come at the various stages of the game: placing a room (tile), completing rooms, gaining from other particular rooms in your castle, end game scoring based on goal cards and king favor tiles. Lots of rewarding goodness!

I had a hardy belly laugh when I saw the title to this video. Last night we played Atlantis Rising and after the 2nd game my wife said she was done with it. Although we agreed there are some excellent aspects of the game she said she was sick of being punished every turn especially when we set ourselves up for success as best as possible. She further stated that she knows she can get punished in Clank but that it felt different and wondered if that was weird. I explained to her that in Clank it was more push your luck where in Atlantis it was the game itself that was punishing. We then discussed we find ourselves gravitating towards games where you “get stuff”. Tapestry has been our go to game as of late but some non- Stonemaier games that feel rewarding are the Century Golem series, Tang Garden and Raiders of the North Sea.

I love in your videos you put not only your games, but games that do not qualify AND game that do but did not make it. Fantastic factories is one of my favorite solo games. Parks is a smash hit in out house, and at my sister's. She is not a huge board gamer but she has a few. Got her parks for Christmas and she and my brother in law fell in love with it. Thank you for the list Jamey!

Rewarding games must be my jam then. Of all the list I've seen you do so far, this one has aligned the most with games I either own already or games on my wishlist. Thanks for introducing me to Space Base too, I wasnt aware of it and I believe it has knocked Kingsburg off my wishlist.

The game Lanterns fits this category, too. You get something even during other player’s turns. It’s also a calm, soothing game that’s perfect for unwinding at the end of the day.

great list--love getting the bonus of another turn, like when paying exact change in Alhambra.

Lovely! I really like your positive aproach to everything in games. I just decided, that my upcoming game project (If it come up well) is going to be a rewarding game, no punishment! Getting inspired! :D

Fantastic Factories,, Space Base, and Dice Forge are some of my favorite games!!!

Great list!! These are the types of games that work really well for my wife and I. And you've added two more games to my wishlist with Fantastic Factories and Rajas :). One game that could have made this list (but I understand why it didn't because of negative player interaction) is Terraforming Mars. I just played it for the first time last week and toward the end I felt like Scrooge McDuck greedily collecting all those chunky gold cubes at the end of each turn. I didn't even care that I lost because it felt so good!

Thanks Jamey - this is a really interesting list and I’ve added a few more games to my wish list. My nomination would be architects of the west kingdom because you start with what feels like an abundance of workers, the majority of placement spaces hold multiple workers and when you return to spots you get even more stuff. There are also other ways to get a resource you need. I’m guilty of chasing encounters in scythe over actual strategy so there probably is such a thing as too much reward - or maybe I’m just greedy 😀

My first thought was Dice Forge :) not only do you get stuff on everyone's turn, but you never get blocked out of going to spaces on the arena board, you just 'Oust' someone and they get the reward of rolling their dice again! It's great. Good list Jamey, thanks

Great list! The only one that I caught that might not fit here was Space Base. We had a game where a card came up (level 3 I believe), and it takes Victory Points away from the other players. It made the game drag on because of this. We immediately removed it from all future games. Other than that, I would agree that the game is definitely rewarding!

Great list! I have to inspect Rajas

Awesome list! Half of them are already in my collection and I love them! It seems I really need to try Rajas sooner! p.s.: Glen More 2 has a small punishing at the end game scoring, where every player looses 3 VP for each tile placed compared to the player with the lowest number of tiles.

My wife's top 1 rewarding game = Me not buying anymore boardgames

Excellent list. I would add The Red Cathedral which is also a very rewarding game.

These make good family games because usually no one is left in a bad mood feeling like they got screwed over by someone else in the game. All good feels!

Dice Forge does have a couple of take that cards though. It’s possible to get around that by choosing other cards, I just thought I should point that out

Ive been keeping an eye out for Fantastic factories, seems out of stock everywhere but hopefully a reprint happens soon.

One game I thought of right away is the excellent 2 player card game, Mandala. While it is possible that when you break down a Mandala, that one player won't get to pick cards, that is rare. Almost always, both players reap a reward...it's just how much and who picks first.

i think 'kanagawa' also qualifies for being a rewarding game; every turn you get at least one card that will either grow your painting or improve your skills. and often you get more than one card per turn.

Seems like a pretty good list. I'm surprised you don't have a deck builder like San Juan, or, Alhambra which is fun with expansions. Thought they should at least get honorable mention.... take care and thanks.

Hey Jamey, I'm glad you like "Glen More II: Chronicles" so much! :-)

Seems like some open design space for a co-op game that fits this category

Space Base has a "All Opponents Lose 4 (3) Points" card (for Sector 7).

I learned a valuable lesson from World of Warcraft years ago. In their development, they wanted to encourage players to take a break from the game so they implemented a penalty to experience gained after playing for a certain time. Players hated this. So, they changed the penalized experience amount to be the default and gave a "rest bonus" the longer players stayed logged out (up to 8 hours...should have been longer). The two systems were essentially the same, but the players had no problem with the rest bonus. Now take a game like 7 Wonders with its -1 point when you lose a military battle. They could have easily just removed the penalty from the defeated token and added a +1 to the victor's side and the results would have been the same, without any players having a negative score penalty.

Interesting choice of topic... Did you invent the term "rewarding games"? I don't think I've ever heard of it before, but that's a really awesome 'genre' of games!

Hey Jamey, thanks for this list! I just backed Everdell with the concern that there might be some unkindness tucked in the cards somewhere. Which cards did you remove?

Jamey, Glen More has end game negative points. If you have more tiles in your play area than the player with the fewest tiles, you lose three points per extra tiles. I think this is a brilliant mechanism that encourages you to be more efficient. Yet does not fit your no negative points rule :)

Jamey, Have you heard of the game Char? Apparently it’s some ancient chess game. For sale at my local shop for $150 (used) but I can find very little on it... even BGG is quiet on it. Any wisdom?!

Isle of Cats also punishes you if you don’t complete all the rooms.

I had a very unfun time learning Lewis & Clark on BGA because of how punishing that game is. I need to give it another try, but it will be hard to get over the scars of moving backward. Can a tight game fit this category? I feel like The Voyages of Marco Polo fits this category - you never get negative points and you never have particular obligations like feeding your people - and many things reward you like traveling or filling contracts. The game even gives you "compensation" if you roll low. There is a penalty in coins for using a space someone else has used, which I guess might make it questionable for the category. But the game is so tight in terms of gaining the coins, camels, and resources that you need that it doesn't feel rewarding. It's a ton of fun though.

In your honorable mentions, you said that you sat down and played Everdell just the other day. I'm curious if you backed the new expansions on the KS campaign that just wrapped up, or even went all in on the Complete Collection? Also, you have probably talked about this somewhere else, but a topic I would love to hear you discuss further would be how you decide which KS games to back personally (I believe you backed Sleeping Gods, did you not?)?

I think there is one or two cards in Dice Forge which allow you to remove some ressources to your opponents.

I would add glass road to this list.

I've been thinking about pocket rewarding games to introduce to new player, the first one that comes to mind is Ganz Shon Clever. Do you have any other portable rewarding suggestion?

Clever is simple and rewarding.

munchkin would be the antithesis of this list X'D

I've been designing a bit of table top games and have been thinking a lot of one question: What makes a game worth of playing? What makes certain game feel good? Why do we play some games again and again. And others we don't play, though they have a great flow, fantastic mechanics etc. It's such an important *topic all game designers should truly think of*, isn't it? Or actually it's the only thing that matters in the end. All other things (mechanics etc.) is just a way to get to that experience of enjoying the game. But what is that experience made of?? Here are few reasons I could maybe think of: # intense social communication, # doing something together # helping others # being able to make smart, satisfying and successful moves, # thrill # completing something in game even if you don't win (like completing a nice castle, road, business, dish) # ....etc., etc... # And of course: getting stuff is always rewarding, as you well pointed out in this video. :) I would LOVE to hear your thoughts about this, Jamey! This video is really inspiring and very much touching the topic, but it would be a great topic for a full video alone! (If not a topic for serial of videos! :D )

You can lose points in Between two cities! You can be forced to place a two point value factory next to a five-point value house :-)

Mobile games have taken this concept to the extreme with games that literally play themselves and reward players just for tapping the screen. If only there was a way to incorporate micropayments into board games! Just kidding