Guest post: A consumer guide to board games, part two
The games you should have bought for Christmas
Part 1
You've heard about buyer's remorse. Well, how about gift-giver's remorse? Here are the things you should have got for everyone last year.
The person who insists Monopoly is a good game
They enjoyed playing board games when there were fewer good choices but have somehow been bypassed by the cardboard-and-plastic Cambrian explosion of recent years. To them, board game means family round the kitchen table. Pity them, for they do not know the same result can be achieved with an actually fun game at the centre.
China Town
Not so far removed from Monopoly that the cognitive leap would be too great for this notional person. It takes the best part of Monopoly (trading) and makes it actually viable. The game board is a map of a city block with tiles representing businesses pulled by each player from a grab bag. Bigger, connected businesses score more points. Of course, someone may have just the tile you need - can you pitch them a trade so finely balanced they accept? Will you trade over or under? Trade money or a promise not to put a piece somewhere else? Trade any future pieces of a particular colour you may get? You can get as inventive as you like within the constraints of the game, and that's what makes it so fun. Relish ever wilder, more flamboyant trades as the game clock counts down. Relish the tension as your mother rejects yet another very reasonable trade from your father.
The person who has everything
I'm not just talking in board game terms; in fact, I'm assuming most of these people are only kind of interested in board games. I'm talking about the person who's the most difficult to buy for; the one who gets themselves the thing they want all year round. They don’t send a list because it'd be blank. They say they’re just happy for the company. But that can’t possibly be true. They must want something.
The Mind
So give them the gift of time. The Mind requires patience, quiet, listening, and compels you to try again and again ad infinitum. It couldn’t be simpler: you and 1-3 others are dealt hands from a deck of cards numbered 1-104 and must play them one at a time in ascending numerical order. The catch: you cannot talk or even gesture. This simple task must be achieved in silence. Each level adds one more card to your hand; so level one equals one card hands, level two equals two card hands, etc. Marvel as you and your collaborators become first more uncomfortable than you could have possibly imagined, and then one mind through the power of monastic silence.
The goldilocks person
You know the one - looking for a two-player game, but not just a two-player game. They need a game with rules that take no time to learn, with instant engagement, that can withstand multiple run throughs. It can't take too long, but also can't be too short. They don't know what they want, but definitely know what they don’t want.
Kluster
A piece of red string denotes the playing area. Each player has a handful of magnets which they take turns placing within the playing area without attracting other magnets. If they do attract other magnets, they take that cluster. First one to get rid of their magnets wins. Thirty seconds to learn, impossible to master, works as well for two players as five. Anyone who’s ever giggled with delight when magnets push or pull each other (read: anyone who is or has ever been a child) will love a tactile, tense challenge which distils life to the age-old question: "where the hell do I put this magnet?"
The person who hates fun
And by fun, it’s not necessarily that they hate games; more that they are unimpressed by frivolity, unmoved by art, cannot abide things that might be described as “cute”. To them, games are an engine for decision making and testing oneself against others.
Ganz Schön Clever
A game stripped to pure functionality. Roll a bunch of variously coloured dice and choose one to keep. The remaining dice with a lower value than the one you chose can be used by the other players. Choose wisely. Five scoring tracks allow various bonuses as you complete rows, columns and diagonals, keeping the game tight and the decisions borderline. There are constant trade-offs and pinch points. About as efficient a game as it’s possible to get, with colourful dice the only nod to frivolity.
The person who'd rather be out on a walk
The type of person who gets everyone up early to do a "short" 5-mile walk before you even look at the presents.
Cascadia
Seems simple, is actually very complicated—much like the natural world itself. There must be more than this, you think. More than an easy-to-learn mechanic that gently squeezes a single decision point; than a combination point-scorer/jigsaw puzzle; the piecing together an emergent ecosystem; than trying to balance four separate scoring conditions for maximum points; than a soothing pick-and-place rhythm that echoes the finely-tuned balance of nature regenerating itself when stocks are drawn. This is game design that combines theme, art and mechanics with nothing left over. Lean and lithe like a wild deer. Nourishing as an early-morning walk through a forest.
The person you love
Your spouse, partner, significant other. The yin to your yang. The up to your down. The person whose hair you're forever pulling out of plugholes who you wouldn't change for the world.
Betrayal at House on the Hill
You're not the type of person to betray your partner (or indeed anyone). Of course not. You're reading a list about board games; you must be very well adjusted. But don't you wonder, sometimes, what it might be like to just... go nuts and summon the great wyrm Ouroboros to devour the friends you lured to a haunted house? Come on, admit it, this is a safe space. Betrayal at House on the Hill is a game played in two phases. In the first phase, you and your friends (represented by delightful miniatures) work together to explore a potentially haunted house by turning over tiles (effectively building the floor plan as you go) and overcoming challenges. The map you build becomes the game board for the second part of the game. Certain tiles trigger "Haunt" rolls, which are easy to pass at first until The Haunting is inevitably triggered. Depending on the various elements in play when The Haunting was triggered, one of over 50 scenarios will play out, but eventually one of the explorers will be revealed as a traitor, at which point the game rules change completely and it becomes us vs them in a race to meet certain conditions or die trying. You'd never betray your partner, of course… not unless The House told you to.