This afternoon, the 2024 Spiel des Jahres (German Game of the Year) winner was announced as the cooperative two-player game, Sky Team.  In this game, the players are the pilot and co-pilot at the controls of an airliner working together as a team to land the airplane in different airports around the world.  Cooperative games can operate in different ways, but this is a limited communication game that runs over a fixed number of turns as the plane descends.  Before the descent, the pilot and copilot discuss the strategy.  Once the players have agreed their plan, they are on their own until the end of the turn, throwing their own dice and carrying out their own actions.

– Image by BGG contributor JuiceNeutron

There has been some precedent for cooperative games over the years, with Hanabi, Paleo and last year’s winner Dorfromantic, receiving prizes as well as Pandemic Legacy: Season 2 which was given a special award.  What makes Sky Team unusual as a Spiel des Jahres winner, however, is the fact is is a two player game.  Although there have been a number of games that play particularly well with two (Scotland Yard or Lord of the Rings for example) and there has been a special awards for Seti (which is a two player game), this is the first time the Spiel des Jahres (or indeed the Kennerspiel des jahres) Award, traditionally a family prize, has gone to a two player game.

– Image by BGG contributor The Innocent

The winner of the Kinderspiel and Kennerspiel des Jahres, the “Children’s” and “Expert” (or “Connoisseur’s”) games were announced at the same time.  The first of these went to Die Magischen Schlüssel (aka Magic Keys), which is a simple and beautiful push-your-luck game of collecting gems.  The winner of the Kennerspiel des Jahres Award was e-Mission (aka Daybreak), which, like Sky Team, is also a cooperative game, but with elements of the mechanisms inspired by card games like Wingspan and Terraforming Mars.

– Image by BGG contributor The Innocent

In Daybreak, one to four players work together to battle climate change with each player controlling a World Power.  If too many people from any World Power are in crisis, everyone loses, but if if by working together global emissions are reduced to net-zero, everyone wins.  This concept has been used previously in a game, in particular CO₂, but Daybreak is far more accessible.  Daybreak also focuses on the the human cost of climate change and the benefits to humans that the solutions might bring, as such, as well as a good game in its own right, it also delivers an important message.