Happy New Year to you all! (It’s still January, just, so it still counts!)

2025 was a mixed bag of a year in the Our BG Life household. There were many board game highlights, but our personal life took a serious hit after some close family bereavements, including the unexpected loss of Matt’s dad. It’s a milestone in life you never want to reach and I can’t put into words how hard it’s been, but I am so proud of how Matt is walking through his grief with both strength and emotional intelligence.

While reflecting back on last year is difficult, we don’t want to lose sight of the good times either, so this post aims to do just that – as well as think about what we want from 2026. So, grab a cuppa (because this is a longer post than normal!), sit down and read on.

2025 in board games

Let’s start of course, with the board games themselves! Most of the new games we played last year were for reviews, and this was the year I started recording plays in BG stats… but fell off the wagon pretty quickly, so we have to rely on good ol’ memory for this section. I would say Fame & Fable was a strong start, showing that a game can have style AND substance. The same can be said of the wonderful Smallfolk, which we fell in love with at UKGE. We’re now patiently waiting for them both to fulfil after very successful Kickstarter campaigns.

I had my first foray into solo gaming, finding my fave Cavern Shuffle (which I still love and play often) and the ever popular Gentle Rain to keep me company on Friday lunchtimes while the toddler napped. As a couple, we discovered our love for lane battlers like Desperate Oasis, and limited communication games like Take Time and Sky Team. We’ve expanded beyond Exit and Unlock to try other types of escape style games or mystery case files, like the incredible Mystery Agency cases. And of course we continued to play lots of puzzly deduction games: I think it was Hooky that melted my brain the most!

We’ve also been slowly introducing the toddler to board games, from his Knock Knock First Words flashcards (from Small Fries Games) to playing with the cute cat dice from Meow Meow Dice, to taking him to UKGE 2025 at 18 months. Most excitingly, we bought him his first ‘proper’ game for Christmas, Little Cooperation, which he technically picked out at UKGE but they’d sold out. We’ve already played it lots and he can just about get through 1 game before losing interest…most of the time, anyway!

Fun times with friends

One of the biggest highlights for me had to be meeting other people within the online board game community for the first time. It started with RulesCon in Cardiff (ran by Rules of Play), where we met Craig (@themidlandmeeple) and Matt and had a whole day of gaming (thanks to Grandma volunteering for babysitting duty!).

Next was UKGE, where we managed to put many many faces to Instagram names, including some fellow members of the UK Board Game Review Circle. And a lot of us Instagamers actually managed to converge in one place for a big community photo!

Particular highlights that weekend were getting to play various games over the weekend with Alana (@boardgameduck), Gareth (@boardgamemeeple), and Dan (@boardgamist) over the weekend, oh and getting a big hug from Adam (Die Rollin’)! I also got to hang out with fellow content creators at special board game events, like Asmodee’s Christmas party. Or the prelaunch for a new board game bar, Brân, where I managed to squeeze in a game with my friends Alex (@pink_meeple) and Hannah (@han_playsgames). 

Best of all, I’ve managed to meet up with many new local(ish) friends to play board games! Craig and Matt have hosted many wonderful game nights at their home where me, Alex, Hannah, Amy (@itsyourturn.bg), Erin and Merlin  (@magicyarnandgames) have all converged at different points throughout the year. Lucky (or not so lucky) Alex has had the pleasure of my company the most, from pubs and cafe meet-ups to an 8 hour round coach trip to London together!

I remember being so anxious about meeting people before, but of course everyone we’ve met is bloody lovely – the board game community on Instagram is one of the best community spaces on social media and we’re so lucky to be part of it. 

On to the blog

2025 was our blog’s first full calendar year! During that time we shared around 70 posts, including more than 50 reviews & first impressions – mainly for board games, but with a couple of digital board game adaptations and puzzle books thrown in. We’ve been lucky enough to work with a range of people in the board game industry this last year, from big names to smaller, independent publishers and individual designers.

And more than 8.1k of you have visited to read them (with total 13.3k views). Our Instagram audience has also more than doubled with nearly 2.7k people following our antics. That is absolutely incredible! We can’t thank you all enough for all your support. We’ve dreamt of being able to share our love of board games with others, and while balancing board game reviewing with work and family life has been a challenge, we’re so incredibly proud of what we’ve achieved so far, and so incredibly lucky that you’ve joined us for the ride. We can’t wait to see what this next year has in store.

New year, new board game goals

While I’m not a big ‘resolution’ fan, I do enjoy taking the opportunity to reflect on what went well last year and set) for the next. Last year we set 4 main goals (which you can read on our Instagram here). The one we smashed was to meet Insta-friends in real life, but the plan to play and review our own games took a back seat. And we were content with this, because it was the first year we started getting exciting review opportunities and worked with more designers/publishers. But our long term goal is to strike a better balance between those new opportunities and playing (and sharing!) games we already love.

So with that in mind, here are our 2026 goals:

• Complete a 10 x 10 challenge using 10 games we already own (more details in an upcoming post)

• Complete a 1 x 100 challenge, that is to play one game 100 times! We’ve whittled it down to 2 choices – A Gentle Rain and Barbecubes – and we want you to decide! Head to our Instagram ASAP because when this blog post goes we’ll be sharing the poll on our stories.

• Continue to spend time with board game friends – I think this is an especially important goal for Matt this year because I took the lion’s share of seeing people last year, while he stayed home with the toddler. 

• Play more solo games (a Lauren-specific goal!). This includes new-to-me games, games I’ve already played but not solo, or games I’ve not played solo for a long time.

• Write more reviews (a Matt-specific goal!). Last year Matt picked up the pen for the first time in a long time, and wrote a few posts for the blog including a couple of our reviews (his favourite being Aspens). This year Matt wants to increase his contribution to the blog and review more games!

• Finally, we want to give the website a refresh! We’ve had this current set-up for almost 2 years now, and while I’m struggling to find a new website template that I love as much as this one, an update is overdue so watch this space!

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If you’ve read this far, thank you so much for sticking around! And if you have anything you’d like to see from this blog in 2026, come chat with me on Instagram or send an email to ourboardgamelife@gmail.com.