Microdot Games

As a Microgame connoisseur I love any challenge that highlights the value of small box games, and so I have loved watching people put together these collections.

The One Cube Collection challenges you to fit games for all your gaming needs into one section of a Kallax shelf: a 33.5cm x 33.5cm x 39cm near cube of boardgame goodness.

Let’s unpack the shelf and see when we have ended up with:

There are a few general types of games I want to include: Euro games, Party games, Adventure games, Family games and Staples. Let’s take a look at each group of games.

These are the more complex, longer games which I feel anchor the collection, and give it options for when you want to go a bit deeper with strategic gameplay.

Concordia is by far the biggest box in the cube, but had to be included as one of the cleanest, most satisfying games around. Your cards give you both actions and scoring opportunities as you build a trading network around the Mediterranean. It’s so good it escapes the black hole of a cliché the theme has become.

Brass Birmingham is the heaviest game on the list and appears in many other similar challenges as it’s such a slim box. This route building and trading game is top of the BGG list for good reason, as a variety of strategic choices sparkle against the dark smokey board of industrial age Britain.

The Castles of Burgundy has inflated box size (and price) a couple of times since I got mine, but this classic edition from alea packs all the dice action goodness into a modest enough size it had to be included on this list.

Devir have been impressing lately with their small colourful building games, and The White Castle brings fantastic opportunities for combo-building which turn a relatively tight 9-round game into something special if you plan accordingly.

I love a small box game with some decent strategy included, and being able to include so many brings a vital amount of variety to the table.

Rocky Road a la Mode is a quirky set collection game with multi-use cards galore. The action time track allows for clever manoeuvres as your cards transform from resource, to contract, to upgrade, to victory points.

Sail to India is the master of multi use cubes, so use your limited supply wisely! Exploring, building trading and upgrading all require cubes in different formats, making for unique decisions with how you use them.

Oh My Goods is perfect for this list as it packs a tight economic engine builder into a single deck of cards, which can be market goods, buildings or goods depending on their placement.

Micro Midgard is possibly the smallest worker placement game around, based on the Norse mythology players race to fulfil prophecies before Ragnarok.

Tiny Epic Galaxies uses the comforting die rolling of yahtzee with action following and a huge array of unique planets to utilise for both points and special abilities.

Trails inherits its worker movement mechanism from older sibling Parks and streamlines the gameplay into an equally beautiful box.

Cartographers is a great workhorse in any collection, with an almost unlimited player count, and a unique combination of objectives each round, you’re only limited by how many sheets you can laminate before the pad runs out.

Railroad Ink Challenge presents layer upon layer of route building  and spatial puzzles that all intertwine. Combined with the expansion dice this one keeps on giving.

This Oink edition of Modern Art is worth tracking down, though you may have to translate the rulebook. This super approachable Knizia auction game never fails to create tension and excitement.

I’ve put puzzles, deduction and adventure games together here as the majority of them are cooperative experiences, and my favourite way to approach these is working together.

One Deck Dungeon has a great sense of progression, as you level up your dice pool and special abilities during the ever increasing danger of the dungeon deck.

The Exit the Game series may be a slight stretch of the challenge, but I figure if I can fit one box in, I can swap them out once played. These escape room style games always surprise, with a seemingly endless supply of new innovative puzzles.

Revolver Noir is the non-cooperative exception to this segment, but certainly fits the adventure and deduction elements. A cat and mouse chase around an old building, your position and the choices of where to run, shoot or hide are entirely held in hand.

Burgle Bros delivers an action packed heist movie into a tiny high-rise shaped box. With a wide array of characters, building layouts and calamitous loot to extract you’ll always be kept on your toes.

The Crew Deep Sea is perhaps the pinnacle of what you can achieve with limited communication. Sometimes it all clicks and you win the round with ease, and other times you wish you could manifest telepathic powers while shouting “don’t play a yellow!” over and over in your head.

Black Sonata is a box but also a measurable amount of bottled genius. A solo game but your opponent (the game) is moving secretly around the board?! The resulting dual layered deduction puzzle is a delight, and complex enough to allow two or three players to chew over the puzzle together.

Sprawlopolis and its many expansions combine card layering and modular scoring into a mind-blowing 18 cards. The amount of puzzle in this tiny package makes it a must in this challenge, and great to have in your bag “just in case.”

Gloomhaven Buttons and Bugs is a super impressive offering, which makes me feel like the adventure game aspect of the collection is well catered for, despite many of those boxes being many multiples the size. With a great twist on the original’s deck deconstruction, and the dynamic enemy actions the scenarios here feel plenty to get your teeth into.

ROVE is an 18-card spatial puzzle game, as you spend energy moving uniquely moving modules to make specific shapes. Planning ahead to get extra energy out of your cards is the key to success.

It’s always useful to have some lighter games to hand, and I’ve included some family favourites here.

Rafter Five is a super cute dexterity game where you build out a raft of ever more treacherous planks, hoping your opponents will knock something overboard.

In Long Shot the Dice Game you bet on a horse race, using each roll to gain an advantage and buying horses to gain their winnings (if you’re lucky) and their special powers.

How Dare You? is a push-your-luck trivia game where you dare to increase the numerical answer to a trivia question. Bonus points if you double the previous answer!

A Fake Artist Goes to New York is always a hoot. One player has to add to a drawing without knowing what they’re drawing, unless the previous drawings were too obvious! That grey space between making clear you’re not the fake artist, but not giving it away is a delight to play in.

Insider brings a little spice to 20 questions, where one player already knows the answer. Pushing people gently towards the right answer without being too obvious is a difficult tasked tempered by people’s natural desire to work out the answer.

Hive Pocket is a super tight abstract game where each insect moves differently, and the play space is created by the mass of bugs which must remain intact, causing all sorts of tension as your pieces become the vital bridge between tiles.

Skull King is a delightfully chaotic trick taking game. Best played with a larger group, it become inevitable that when your bids are simultaneously revealed there will be at least a few people guaranteed to be disappointed.

Tinderblox a teeny tiny dexterity game, uniquely set apart from many by providing tweezers with which you stack an emerging campfire of cubes.

In Gingerbread Towers you stack gingerbread cards with your preferred sweets on to win. As you play, this simple dexterity game rises high above the table, an impressive feat for a game that comes in a tiny tuckbox.

Card games can provide a wide variety of gameplay experiences in tiny packages, which is ideal for this limited space challenge.

Tussie Mussie takes the “I split, you choose” mechanism and pares it down to it’s simplest and most effective. Offer one card face up, and one face down. The mind games and strategy packed into these 18 cards is amazing.

Scout has the familiarity of classic shedding games with a couple of delightful twists. The double sided cards, fixed card order and natural reduction of the hand to beat create a tricky but satisfying puzzle.

Hanabi is one of my absolute favourite games, a super simple game of playing cards in numerical order, with the twist that you can’t see your own cards. The evolution and nuance of how to give clues and when makes this a game to play again and again

Bohnanza is an incredible game that incentivises positive player interaction to make trading mutually beneficial to both parties. The best moments are when you trade unwanted cards away when your hand is fixed, and you must play the first card to your fields.

In 6 Nimmt you are trying to avoid getting the horns (printed on the cards from 1-104) by making sure you never play the 6th card to a row. That’s almost the entire ruleset and yet the game shines, with moments of nervous tension and laughter when someone plays just the wrong thing.

No Thanks is a kind of reverse bidding game. Points are bad in this game, but at least only the lowest card in your run counts. Except there are 9 cards missing, so you might never connect your 31 to your 33, and worse luck if the 32 comes but someone else is out of chips and must take it before you!

Hero Realms is a diminutive deck-builder, perfect for people who love head-to-head battles, and grabbing the right cards from the flowing market to make extra powerful combos.

Moving Wild is a delightful drafting game, matching animals to habitats. Some of the animals don’t play nicely, so they’ll need to be separated or placated with a bonus card. The trick here is to make sure you have homes for all your animals, and no wasted space in your habitats, else suffer the negative points consequences!

In Startups you’re staking your claim in a variety of businesses, hoping that you’ll be majority shareholder in a popular stock. Knowing when to push cards into the middle can swing things in your favour, if you can pick that card back up with it full of coins. The best moments are when you play down your hand and grab majority in the last turn.

Love Letter is perhaps the microgame that captured the imagination of the hobby. With 16 cards and some tokens you have a snappy, silly deduction game of jostling for position in the princess’s favour, and hoping you’ll be in with a chance at the end of the round.

Wee Whimsical Creatures is a hilarious game of making monstrous noises to clue the other players to which creature you are. Fun for all ages!

There are some items which I would consider absolutely essential in any limited collection, and if I was limited to three items I think these might allow for the most rounded collection of any. These are all staple game systems that support a wide variety of play experiences.

A Deck of Cards can be turned into dozens of games, many traditional, some more modern. A true chameleon of gameplay.

A Roleplaying Game can unlock the power of imagination and shared storytelling. Endless amount of play only limited by the group’s creativity (and scheduling.)

An Ell Deck originally released as Wibbell++, is the traditional deck’s wilder and more verbose cousin. With more suits and letters included it has dozens of games designed for it (including a few by myself) and is perhaps sits at the pinnacle of how much game you can fit into a single small box.

And that’s all of them! Congratulations if you made it this far. The last thing I did when putting together the list is seeing how many popular game genres were represented. If you have a favourite type of game let me know if my picks could have been bettered, or if there’s a type of game I should have included:

• 6-player – Skull King, 6 Nimmt!
• Abstract – Hive Pocket, ROVE
• Auction – Modern Art, No Thanks!
• Bluffing – A Fake Artist, Cheat
• Co-op – Burgle Bros, EXIT
• Deck building – Hero Realms, Concordia
• Deduction – The Crew, Hanabi
• Dexterity – Rafter Five, Tinderblox, Gingerbroad Towers
• Drafting – Moving Wild, Sprawlopolis, Castles of Burgundy
• Engine building – Sail to India, Oh My Goods!
• Eurogame – Brass Birmingham, Castles of Burgundy
• Hidden Movement – Black Sonata, Revolver Noir
• Memory – Hanabi, Love Letter
• Negotiation – Bohnanza, Mafia
• Party – Skull King, Wee Whimsical Creatures
• Pick up and Deliver – Burgle Bros, Sail to India
• Push Your Luck – No Thanks, How Dare You? 6 Nimmt
• Roleplaying – Tale, Gloomhaven Buttons and Bugs
• Roll and Write – Cartographers, Railroad Ink, Long Shot
• Set Collection – Rocky Road a la Mode, Startups
• Solo – Black Sonata, One Deck Dungeon
• Tableau Building – Tussie Mussie, Tiny Epic Galaxies,
• Tile Laying – Sprawlopolis, Castles of Burgundy, Hive Pocket
• Trading – Bohnanza, Tieng Len
• Traitor / Hidden Identity – A Fake Artist, Insider
• Trick-taking / Shedding – Scout, The Crew, Bridge
• Trivia – How Dare You?
• Two Player – Revolver Noir, One Deck Dungeon
• Worker Placement – The White Castle, Micro Midgard, Trails
• Word game – Wibbell, Questabell