[On December 1, 1948, a Connecticut inventor named James Brunot copyrighted a new board game called Scrabble. Like many great games Scrabble has endured and grown ever since, so for the 75th anniversary of that pivotal moment I’ll AmericanStudy it and a handful of other board games. I’d love your thoughts on these, others, and board games over for a competitive yet collaborative crowd-sourced weekend post!]
On the
more common form of collaborative board game, and a unique alternative.
Back when
I was writing
regularly for the excellent Good Men Project, I published
a piece on why I found it important when my sons were young to lose to them
on purpose (if as subtly as possible) most of the times that we played board games
together (which was a lot of the time!). That was over nine years ago, and
certainly my perspective has entirely and appropriately changed over time; for
many years now, in the far less frequent times we get to board game together in
their increasingly busy lives, I’ve greatly enjoyed competing fully with them
(and still losing to them quite often and quite happily, natch). But I still
try to do so without the most toxic sides of what competition can draw out of any
of us, and for that reason among others I have a special place in my heart for
a particular genre of board game: collaborative
ones, where the players work together to achieve a common goal.
Most of
the collaborative games we’ve discovered and enjoyed fit a particular and
familiar mold: there’s an external threat that’s drawing ever nearer, and the
players have to work together to defeat it before it destroys them. Probably
the best-known game of that variety is Pandemic, which
we’ve gotten to play a couple times and found very challenging but fun; we’ve
also enjoyed the multiple games in the Forbidden
series (Desert, Island, Sky, etc.). Most games of this type can be pretty
serious and even bleak, though, so we’re particular fans of Munchkin Panic,
a collaborative game set in the delightfully silly world of Munchkin card games and featuring such
threatening adversaries as the Gelatinous Octohedron and the truly terrifying
Potted Plant. After all, if you’re playing a collaborative game of this type
there’s a genuine chance that you could all die (otherwise, it wouldn’t be much
of a game), and in that case I suppose we’d prefer to die feeling delightfully
silly rather than serious and sad.
Because of
our (well, definitely my, but I think the boys share it as well) fondness for
collaborative games, I’ve also sought out others in the genre, including those
that offer a different experience from that most familiar one. And by far the
most unique and compelling one that we’ve found is Mysterium, an
evocative and haunting game which asks the players to use images in complex
ways to communicate with each other and solve a shared puzzle before time runs
out. Mysterium’s collaborative gameplay and goals feel quite distinct from the
more familiar type, which makes for a fun change of pace for folks like us who
enjoy this genre overall. But it’s also just one of the most beautiful games I’ve
ever seen, and there’s something to be said for immersing yourself in an
aesthetically attractive and compelling world for those minutes or hours that
you’re gaming with friends and loved ones. Meet you all at the gaming table!
Crowd-sourced
post this weekend,
Ben
PS. So one
more time: what do you think? Other games you’d highlight for the weekend post?
No comments:
Post a Comment