Then it introduces the idea of hidden goals and end game scoring, common parts of many modern board games. Other commonly mentioned gateway games include Lords of Waterdeep, Dominion, and Catan. These games introduce mechanisms like worker placement, deck building, and resource management.

Simplicity of mechanisms is a good feature for gateway games, but I’d argue that themes are at least as important. Fantasy and (usually European) historical themes are very common, and while sometimes they are very well implemented and highly appealing, many times they can just seem kind of generic and underwhelming. Often these themes are so taken for granted that the design of the game mostly ignores them, leaving us to either fill in the blanks ourselves with our general knowledge of elves and orcs and medieval times, or to ignore the theme altogether and just think about cubes. And let’s be honest: “So you put your meeple on this spot and get two orange cubes” isn’t immediately very interesting.