The verdict is in and the 2021 winner of the Spiel de Jahres award is out.
Today, we’re looking at the nominations and congratulating the 2021 Spiel des Jahres Winner.
MORE SPIEL DES JAHRES WINNERS: 2022 | 2021 | 2020 | 2019 | 2018
Spiel des Jahres 2021 Winner
MicroMacro: Crime City
Congratulations to MicroMacro: Crime City and its designer Johannes Sich for being the Spiel des Jahres 2021 recipient.
Happy people sitting in cafés. Children wanting ice cream from the market stall. Art lovers at a gallery opening. But with our trained detective’s eye, we can see through the supposed harmony of Crime City’s inhabitants.
There are over a dozen murder and crime cases to solve in this enormous bustling city map, drawn in the style of hidden object games. Who had a motive to stab a knife into the skateboarder’s back? Why was the mayor seen just before his death on the waterfront with a large case of money?
Clues and signs give us evidence for the sequence of events, leading to an exciting reconstruction of the crime, all without any text and with minimal rules. Jealousy, resentment, and deceit are the central themes of this cooperative hidden object game, all wrapped up in the sugar-sweet, knowing, and detailed drawings.
Kennerspiel des Jahres 2021 Winner
Paleo
by Peter Rustemeyer
Hans im Glück
Illustration: Dominik Meyer
2 to 4 players aged 10 and up
Life in the stone age must have been tough. Behind every bush with delicious berries, there might be a wild animal waiting to attack. And even without the boar, we need to find out for ourselves whether the fruit is edible or poisonous.
Each round we work together as a tribe to overcome dangers like these, using only the illustrations on the cards’ backs as a guide. Only after turning the card over do we find out what happens in that location. Through encountering these challenges, we grow and learn together. When the day draws to a close, the tribe must be fed in order to survive for another day of Paleo.
There are ten decks of cards offering new challenges which can be mixed randomly, providing a variety which motivates players to brave the perils of surviving the stone age again and again.
Spiel des Jahres 2021 Nominees
The Adventures of Robin Hood
by Michael Menzel
Kosmos
Illustration: Michael Menzel
2 to 4 players aged 10 and up
Zombie Teenz Evolution
by Annick Lobet
Scorpion Masqué
Illustration: Nikao
2 to 4 players aged 8 and up
Congratulations to all of the nominees and the winners! Now it’s time to go try them out.
Have you tried any of 2021’s nominees or winners? What did you think? Let us know with a comment below. We’d love to hear from you!
Kendra has always been a hardcore fantasy nerd. Growing up in the worlds of Tolkien, Sanderson, Jordan, and Abercrombie, DnD & board games just came naturally. She and her husband, Bryan, started GameCows.com in 2018 as a fun passion project that just took over their lives. An avid board gamer since childhood and chronic DnD chronicler for more than two decades, she loves to play, write, travel, and learn dead languages.