Top Tier- Game Review

Title: Top Tier

Designed By: Amar Dzomba, Dom Korzecke and Tyler O'Tsuji

Art By:

Published By: Indie Boards & Cards

Released: 2025

Player Count: 4-10

Time to Play: 30 Minutes

Ages: 10+

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Overview:

Top Tier is a party game that puts a fun spin on the classic judging format. Instead of picking one best answer and calling it a day, players get to interact with all the choices. One player becomes the Tier Wizard and secretly picks a totally ridiculous category, like “who would sell the most vacuums door to door” or “best team player in a school group project.” Without knowing the category, the rest of the players create a lineup of 8 contestants — which can be literally anyone: real people, fictional characters, celebrities, or even themselves. The Tier Wizard ranks them in a classic S-tier to D-tier list, and then the category is revealed. Everyone else works together to figure out how the Tier Wizard sorted them. It’s collaborative, chaotic, and full of surprises.

What's purr-ty cool:

The collaboration is honestly the star of the show.

I really liked how everyone (except the Tier Wizard) works together to sort out the list. It creates a lot of discussion and back-and-forth as you all try to justify why Molly Weasley is definitely S-tier and why Godzilla probably doesn’t belong in “Best Babysitter.” Since you’re working as a group, it’s not about knowing the most or being the funniest — it’s about making your case and laughing through it all. Plus, because you’re all guessing together, it evens the playing field. You don’t need to be besties with the Tier Wizard to enjoy the game, which makes it great for mixed groups.

Accidental team-building win.

This part wasn’t even intentional, but Top Tier ended up being one of the best bonding games I’ve used with my team. For those that don't know, I work at a University and supervise a team of college students. We played it as our end-of-year activity, and they specifically asked to put themselves in as the contenders. Watching them debate who among them would survive The Hunger Games or make the best henchman was hilarious. We wound up needing more than 8 spots since we are a team of 12, so we just used some blank paper to add our extra contenders. It turned into a full-blown tradition request — like, they want to do this every year now. I don’t think the game was made for workplace bonding, but wow, it works.

Open-ended fun that keeps things fresh.

One thing that really stood out to me is how flexible this game is. The category cards are super varied, but what really gives the game legs is that you can make the contenders whoever you want. You’re not stuck with a fixed deck of answers like in most party games. That means every game feels different — even if you only have a limited set of category cards, you can mix things up by changing the lineup. And honestly, if you’re feeling creative, you could totally have the Tier Wizard come up with their own category and keep playing as usual. It’s the kind of game that invites you to make it your own.

The cat's meow:

"I don’t want to brag, but I’d be S-tier for ‘best napper,’ ‘cutest loaf,’ and ‘most likely to ignore humans on command.’ Just saying." - Solo the Spokescat

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Disclosure: Pudgy Cat Games was provided a copy of this game in exchange for a review, however, this review reflects the honest thoughts of the author.