Designers: Matthew O’Malley, Ben Rosset
Publisher: Road To Infamy Games
Options, options, options; with Complex Games, there’s always a lot to do and a decent amount of time to do it in. Fromage, this year’s winner, is no exception to that idea: here, cheesemakers vie to become the best and most prestigious, known the world over. Plus, it gives you a lot of opportunities to make cheese jokes, as some of the Committee elected to below. Each turn, you’re faced with a different quadrant of the rotating board to deal with, and those choices cascade throughout as they influence what cheese ages and where you sell it.
The Committee found Fromage extremely engaging, as both members below praised its take on worker placement and how that changes up your strategy. Naturally, the designers are no strangers to the American Tabletop Awards, either, but their consistent high-quality designs resonate well with gamers from a wide variety of backgrounds and provide a relatively novel theme for players to engage with. Choices and challenges define our Complex Games winner each year, and we’re excited to name Fromage our 2025 pick.
What Our Committee Is Saying
The rotating board for Fromage may seem like just a cheesy gimmick at first, but it’s actually a brilliant way to track how long it takes your workers to age the cheese and return to you.
Jonathan Liu
Fromage is a great example of a game that leverages an appealing theme with a touch of levity to enrich the creative mechanics and clever gameplay. Designers Ben Rosset and Matthew O’Malley (of Search For Planet X fame) demonstrate they’ve mastered the blend of engaging play that challenges you but never bog you down. It’s the kind of game that can attract players for any number of reasons – but whether you’re drawn in by the cheesy theme or the unique worker placement rules, you’ll walk away as satisfied as if you just snagged the last bite of triple creme brie from the cheese board.
Suz Sheldon
Photos courtesy of Jonathan H. Liu. All rights reserved.
The American Tabletop Awards 