America’s answer to the Spiel des Jahres, the American Tabletop Awards, unveils 2025 winners

The American Tabletop Awards, an awards scheme launched six years ago with the aim of being the US equivalent of Germany’s Spiel des Jahres, has revealed its 2025 winners.

Captain Flip, which was nominated for last year’s Spiel des Jahres award, triumphed in ATTA’s Early Gamers award category this year.

The game, designed by Paolo Mori and Remo Conzadori, was also a nominee in this year’s French game of the year award, the As d’Or, won the family category of the 2024 Swiss Gamers Award and narrowly lost out in this year BoardGameArena awards to Castle Combo in the Casual Game category.

Highly regarded board game designer Kory Heath, who died in November last year, was celebrated in this year’s ATTA’s through his game The Gang, a co-design with John Cooper, which won the Casual Games award.

Prior to the Gang, Heath was best known for his inductive logic game Zendo, a Mensa Select Award winner from 2005. BoardGameGeek’s Eric Martin published an extended tribute to Heath and his design work here.

Let’s Go! To Japan, designed by Josh Wood and published by Alderac Entertainment Group, won this year’s Strategy Games award at the ATTAs, while Matthew O’Malley and Ben Rosset’s design Fromage was victorious in the Complex Games category.

The ATTAs are voted on by members of the US board game media, who each submit up to five games which are then ordered according to ranked-choice vote.

ATTA’s committee includes GAMA president and SAHMReviews.com founder and owner Nicole Brady, Jessica Fisher, the co-founder of Gameosity and the Tabletop Game Jobs Facebook group, and Good Time Society and Rahdo Runs Through producer Ruel Gaviola, according to its website.

Last year’s ATTA winners were Blob Party, Sea Salt & Paper, Thunder Road: Vendetta and The White Castle.

Previous American Tabletop Awards Winners in full:

Early Gamers

Year	Winner	Designer(s)	Publisher
2024	Blob Party	Pam Walls	WizKids
2023	boop.	Scott Brady	Smirk & Laughter Games
2022	Happy City	Toshiki Sato, Airu Sato	Gamewright
2021	Abandon All Artichokes	Emma Larkins	Gamewright
2020	Draftosaurus	Antoine Bauza, Corentin Lebrat, Ludovic Maublanc, Théo Rivière	Ankama
2019	Catch the Moon	Fabien Riffaud & Juan Rodriguez	Studio Bombyx

Casual Games

Year	Winner	Designer(s)	Publisher
2024	Sea Salt & Paper	Bruno Cathala, Théo Rivière	Bombyx, Pandasaurus Games
2023	Turing Machine	Fabien Gridel, Yoann Levet	Le Scorpion Masqué
2022	Cubitos	John D Clair	Alderac Entertainment Group
2021	The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine	Thomas Sing	KOSMOS
2020	ShipShape	Rob Daviau	Calliope Games
2019	The Quacks of Quedlinburg	Wolfgang Warsch	North Star Games

Strategy Games

Year	Winner	Designer(s)	Publisher
2024	Thunder Road: Vendetta	Dave Chalker, Brett Myers, Noah Cohen, Rob Daviau, Justin Jacobson, Jim Keifer, Brian Neff	Restoration Games
2023	Planet Unknown	Ryan Lambert, Adam Rehberg	Adam’s Apple Games, LLC
2022	Cascadia	Randy Flynn	Flatout Games, Alderac Entertainment Group
2021	Calico	Kevin Russ	Flatout Games
2020	Wingspan	Elizabeth Hargrave	Stonemaier Games
2019	Chronicles of Crime	David Cicurel	Lucky Duck Games

Complex Games

Year	Winner	Designer(s)	Publisher
2024	The White Castle	Isra C, Shei S	Devir
2023	Carnegie	Xavier Georges	Pegasus Spiele
2022	Lost Ruins of Arnak	Mín & Elwen	Czech Games Edition
2021	Dominations: Road to Civilization	Éric Dubus, Olivier Melison	Holy Grail Games
2020	The Taverns of Tiefenthal	Wolfgang Warsch	North Star Games
2019	Root	Cole Wehrle	Leder Games