I played Quest for Open Tavern, Snake Pit, and Unbound: Endless War.
The stand out quality of Snake Pit was the charming simplicity, which was a major change of pace from Tavern and Unbound, which were almost obnoxiously complex.
Snake Pit had easy but interesting goals, where you simply had to build snakes by color coding, you are scored by how many pieces goes into one snake. it is like a combination of scrabble and dominos, but even more simple than those examples. It also has a twist, players hide a color token, so when their opponent completes a snake, it may give points to the opposing player instead.
Tavern used a comical scenario, but relied on collecting points, characters, rewards, and locations to win. Unbound relied on overtaking an enemy base to win. You combat other hexagonal cards by placement and drawing from a deck.
Both of these suffered by giving the players too much information to keep track of for play periods under 20 hours. Tavern had charming art, but a dull "combat" or "encounters", Unbound the same, but with no art.
Printing and cutting all three was easy, Unbound was the poorest, but not by much. Only because all the pieces are close to black and aren't contrast controlled to work in b&w. Tavern is the only that requires additional materials, but only any 25+ pieces of small items, so loose change could work.
Snake Pit is the most successful, it is the only one of these I can see being marketed and enjoyed by everyone of any age. It's rules are simple yet endearing. Unbound and Tavern are weighed down by an abundance of rules, and learning them is a chore. This is a strong message to take into creating my own game. Stick with something simple, people lose interest when understanding rules takes longer than an actual play through of the game.
Games:
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/156885/quest-open-tavern
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/143844/unbound-endless-war
https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/11531/snake-pit
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