In 1952 London, the tearoom trade blossoms. The Countess Dillymore reminds us that we may have “forgotten that these particular queer men existed,” and perhaps we have. Countess Dillymore’s Too Much Slap on the Ecaf is an intimate larp about homosexual men hooking up in 1950s rural England. We saw this game and were immediately hooked by its solid intensity. But what sold us on it for this particular award was the tender and highly subjective portrayal of closeted queer men. Written as a letter from Dillymore to an anonymous audience, the game itself takes the induction into the social life of queerness quite seriously. Each player sets up three scenes laden with all the negotiations and emotions of men having sex with each other in the only places they can. Then the players show intimacy through their characters along negotiated physical boundaries. We see so few games these days with such an earnest, no-nonsense portrayal of the world before Stonewall and Pride.

Formal dinners are one of those social occasions in which the rules are different everywhere you go, but are somehow all the same. Eduardo Caetano has hacked the dinner party game genre into something wondrous and fraught. Francis has invited to dinner several people close to him, only they didn’t know that he’d be running so late. The game consists of that awkward period before the real party happens, when people haven’t yet decided how the evening will go and when intimate secrets are revealed. “A kind of dinner larp freeform,” This Folks At the Dining Room uses the core elements of formal dining – making toasts, hearing a certain background song play, passing food – into functional game mechanics that enhance the mood. We are excited to prepare meals with our friends, and then have them deal with some potentially romantic and luxuriant fiction as part of the main course.

Have you ever wanted to be part of a murder? Of crows, that is! In A Crow Funeral, players take on the roles of a community of crows that have discovered the body of one of their own. As they crowd around in a mournful-yet-raucous circle, the crows must determine how their friend expired. In the opening explanation of the game, Timothy Hutchings states “there is no conflict resolution mechanic.” This statement is three things: true, untrue, and sneaky. This game’s deployment of touch is both simple and entertaining, and you’ll find that conflict most definitely gets sorted out. This game is fun, light, and great to play in public spaces.

Previous Golden Cobra winner Heather Silsbee returns with a sometimes searing, sometimes thoughtful, and always playable game about women with social anxiety. Many Golden Cobra games this year address empathy directly, but Just Lunch stands out as a game that combines visceral empathy with sharp, engaging gameplay. Just Lunch is for three people, and like the title says, it’s just lunch - but “lunch” is a minefield of energy-draining triggers for the anxious. And these women are anxious. This game captured the dynamics of social anxiety in casual interaction so well that some of us winced just reading it, and its effectiveness at evoking empathy played out by teaching us new things about how social anxiety works. We particularly liked Just Lunch’s careful framing, which provides both context for players unfamiliar with social anxiety and useful tools for exploring it in safety.

In Her Inner Dead Ends, Francesco Sedda and Francesco Zani present a simultaneously languid and thrilling rumination on fandom in all its troubling complexity. We all love the fictional universe created by fictive author J. S. Hunts, of course, but when two superfans meet in real life for the first time all bets are off - because their online community has literally been erased. Anyone who has ever taken a deep dive into online community (and that includes all the judges, and probably you) will easily identify with the themes of Her Inner Dead Ends - belonging, dissolution, grudges old and new and identities that may not be as secure as they appear. The online personas that the designers have crafted are absolutely spot on. Tightly written and full of simple, elegant mechanics, Her Inner Dead Ends promises a satisfying play experience for two jaded J.S. Hunts enthusiasts.