Game of the Year is a thematic board game about making video games. It can be played solo, competitively or cooperatively. In each session, players takes on the role of a video game publisher and release up to three titles. Players win if they are awarded Game of the Year. If they fail to be awarded Game of the Year (or run out of money prematurely) they lose. A title is created in three phases. In the pitch phase, players combine a genre card with 1-2 themes and 2-3 features drafted from a shared pool. In the development phase, players choose from separate pools of dice employees to generate resources. These resources are used to complete the title's themes and features. In the release phase, the title is compared with a rival in order to determine its success. Players must skilfully use resources to create stars and avoid bugs in order to succeed in the competitive video game marketplace. The rewards for doing so include money (used to play dice employees), tech tokens (used to remove bugs), reward cards (which grant players unique abilities), and additional hype (which must be maintained otherwise the company is forced to close). —description from the publisher