The 49th Origins Awards Cooperative and Solo Game finalists have landed, and they capture an unusually broad slice of where co-op design has gone in the last twelve months. Ten board games made the cut ahead of the Origins Game Fair winners ceremony in Columbus on 17-21 June.
Run game nights? Backseat Gamer handles RSVPs, waitlists, date polling, and game voting so you can focus on playing.
Start organising for freeTopping the list is Vantage, Jamey Stegmaier's Stonemaier-published roguelike that asks 1-6 players to explore an alien planet from a first-person perspective. Eight years in development, with nearly 800 interconnected locations and over 900 item cards, it has been the most ambitious thing the studio behind Scythe and Wingspan has shipped to date.
Pandemic creator Matt Leacock returns with Animal Rescue Team, co-designed with real-life animal rescuer Lisa Towell and published by Play to Z under the Shut Up & Sit Down Presents banner. It is a lighter co-op about evacuating animals from disasters with a fleet of toy-like vehicles, with scenarios drawn from real rescue stories.
Looking for board gamers near you? Browse local communities and find your next game night.
Find events near youThe Tolkien wing is well represented too. Lord of the Rings: Fate of the Fellowship (Z-Man Games) made the finalist list, fresh from winning Strategy at this year's American Tabletop Awards. It joins Renegade's Unstoppable, Ravensburger's Horrified: Dungeons & Dragons, Incredible Dream's Kinfire Council, and four smaller releases: Castle Raisers, Corps of Discovery, Hercules and the 12 Labors and Here Lies.
The category itself reflects how much co-op design has pulled away from the mid-2010s Pandemic-clone wave. Vantage is essentially a single-player open-world game played at a table, Fate of the Fellowship leans hard into asymmetric narrative, and Animal Rescue Team is family-weight with toys and stories. There is no longer one "co-op shape."
Winners are announced at the Origins Game Fair on 21 June. If you want to play any of these before then, find a community running Sunday afternoon co-op sessions.
Sources: Origins Awards | BoardGameWire | Stonemaier Games | Matt Leacock Games
