The best games by Luke Laurie 🇺🇸👨 2026

Players control unique factions in an epic worker placement game set in a magical world filled with elemental monsters, dragons, wizards, and warriors vying for dominance over eight elemental realms. The game combines worker placement, area control, engine building, and unique worker units, allowing players to place workers, regroup, and activate adventure cards while exploring powerful action spaces. Ultimately, players with the greatest elemental dominance will rule Eldervale.

The Manhattan Project: Energy Empire is a standalone board game set in the same universe as The Manhattan Project. Players take on the role of nations in the post-war atomic age, striving for power through industrial, commercial, and governmental advancement. The game uniquely combines worker placement, tableau-building, and resource management mechanics, while emphasizing the environmental impact of industrialization.

Scott Caputo, the designer of Whistle Stop, has teamed up with Luke Laurie to create a new worker placement strategy title. In this standalone game, players leave behind the railways and take to the skies with airships, warships, and hot air balloons. Players invest their company’s profits in new technologies in the Rocky Mountains, while their workers build elaborate structures and gather resources amidst rising waters that create tension on the dynamic game board. Each game evolves differently, offering endless replay value as players decide between acquiring new abilities or building various contraptions to secure victory.

A failed mission leads to rising tensions aboard a colony ship that has crash-landed on a frozen, unexplored planet due to an act of sabotage. Leaders of rival factions fight for survival and control over underground caves, taking strategic actions to prevent further sabotage and rescue their crew in cryostasis. Players must gather resources, enhance their platforms, and use versatile cards to conquer caverns and secure victory in this harsh environment.