Today's witches have day jobs, just like everyone else. A particular coven has formed at the mega corporation Seneca Holdings. In this game all witches are women, and they're intent on supporting each other in smashing through the glass ceiling. The witches in this game are more like modern pagans than they are like storybook characters who can fire off thunderbolts. Together players will create and play through a magical ritual meant to aid all the sisters in the coven. The workshop is brilliant, the message on point. Our only tiny quibble is the misnomer that Wiccans = witches. There are many kinds of practicing witches who don't identify with that particular belief system.

Hope is right there in the title. Like a non passive-aggressive The Quiet Year, One Year focuses on building, growing, and managing change without an immediate descent into bloody conflict. It does this elegantly, while still scratching that itch of player creativity while constraining the directions it might go in. The judges’ comments all remarked on this game’s genuinely hopeful gentleness.