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Board games are back, thanks to lessons designers learned from computer games
- hkmurakami 9y agoI disagree with the article's suggestion for Settlers for boardgame newcomers, since the serial turn ordering causes long wait times, and lack of a comeback mechanic causes 1 or more players to be "out of the running" all too often for 30+ minutes of the game. A small gamespace setup with Dominion, or 7 wonders (parallel turns, multiple paths to victory) are better intros imo.
- ashark 9y ago7 Wonders probably wins for best average popularity among our mixed-interest gaming group, when there are over four people who want to play. It has an intimidating rules explanation compared to some, but plays way easier than it sounds. Would second the recommendation. Sushi Go! is another good "getting people into not-awful board games" game.
- mikepurvis 9y agoI'm probably coloured by just not really enjoying drafting games in general, but I have trouble imagining trying to get a bunch of newbies going in 7 Wonders— between the glyphs, the complicated upgrade/borrow/payment scheme, and point salad path to victory, it seems like a lot to talk about. I'd counter the recommendation with something like
- sureste 9y agoWe have found Sushi No is even a more fun experience for us. Basically Sushi Go! but whoever gets the lower points total wins. It's a bit tense but more fun.
- irrational 9y agoIsn't it fairly easy to get lower total points? Just mainly getting chopsticks and 1 pudding (assuming other get 1+ puddings) can give you negative points.
- batiudrami 9y agoBut everyone else is trying to do that too, and players are trying to trick others into taking points.
- hkmurakami 9y agoGreat suggestion with Sushi go, basically functions as a smaller game space version of Dominion/7 wonders/MtG draft. Also not surprised to hear that our group isn't the only ones playing a "Razz" (poker variant where you try for the weakest hand) variant of Sushi Go. I found reversing points to make the game chaotic and more casual.
- godelski 9y agoSushi Go is one of my favorite of the small and easy games. I'd also add Love Letter and Saboteur (no expansion) as great quick intro games.
- dep_b 9y ago7 Wonders is played to death here. Catan and Ticket didn't spark that much fanatism, people wanted to play but they wouldn't be planning and calling a week ahead. The thing about 7 Wonders is that you keep learning new stuff about the game, every game is different and new players still can win their first game with a bit of help, luck and wits. But if I lose (and I lose plenty of games) I'm always intrigued why I'm lost and what I could do next time, it never really feels bad. Also people that cannot deal with setbacks, somebody else doing something that thwarts their strategy or losing (I shall refrain from naming them ;) ) never get angry with this game. Looking into buying a dungeon crawler now (cool map and miniatures preferred) and another game like 7 Wonders, perhaps Puerto Rico.
- barrkel 9y agoI think the complexity in 7 Wonders is, how should I say, "cheaply" generated. That is, the complexity is right there in the details, and there are so many details. I far, far prefer emergent complexity than that kind of explicitly designed complexity. It's a kind of complexity that rewards nerding out and learning combos and chains.
- Abundnce10 9y ago> I far, far prefer emergent complexity than that kind of explicitly designed complexity. Can you recommend any games?
- b0rsuk 9y agoLords of Scotland is a fiendishly tricky game that appears simple at first. It's very quick to teach, but there is both strategic and tactical aspect to it and many non-obvious paths to victory. Beware of high player interaction (some people like it, some are hurt). It's rather chaotic in higher player kinds, you need to appear relatively harmless to win. Tigris and Euphrates is an old classic that has very few tile types to place, but they result in complex outcomes. I can't say very much about it because I only played it once on a game show, but it's on my to-buy list.
- b0rsuk 9y agoI play 7 Wonders pretty often, but counting scores at the end is a rather awful procedure. I jokingly say that if I ever design a board game, the rules will grant a score bonus to whoever explains the rules. (There is no "beginner's luck" in boardgames. There's "rule explainer's curse". The player doing the explaining is distracted, not just by explaining but also watching over anyone and often plays badly).
- 4restm 9y agofor a starter, forbidden island is cheap and relatively easy 4 player coop boardgame. I always use it to break in board game newbies.
- rockostrich 9y agoPandemic is another co-op game that's easy to pick up for new players. The one bad thing about co-op games is if there are mostly experienced players and one new person then the experience people will usually influence the new person a lot and cause them to not learn much.
- caf 9y agoThat's true with "total information" co-op games like Forbidden Island and Pandemic (or Flash Point, which is another great one). "Codenames Duet" though is an example of a co-operative game where the two teams are working together but have to make their own decisions - it's also very easy to pick up for new players, I highly recommend it.
- loceng 9y agoThis is what makes Settlers such a balanced game IMHO. You can have a new beginner or experienced players and everyone has a good chance at winning - so long as the newbies are given fair introduction into the different strategies to winning. The scenario you mentioned is one example that makes the game turn into a political one. I have no chance at winning and you weren't nice to me, well then I'm going to fuck with you the whole game and hope someone else wins. If there are 2 people against 1 then that makes it even more fun. On that note, the game is likely an average or median length of 40 minutes, so if you're playing with good people it's always been a tolerable length of time. Seeing and experiencing the dynamics of Settlers is the best way to learn, like anything generally..
- hkmurakami 9y agoIf you like kingsmaking as a core part of a game, then sure.
- tyrust 9y ago>everyone has a good chance at winning - so long as the newbies are given fair introduction into the different strategies to winning Telling someone how to play a game and then going through the motions of playing isn't really fun. Most of the fun is trying things for yourself and figuring stuff out. If a game (like Catan) doesn't allow players to do this, then where is the fun?
- loceng 9y agoDifferent strokes for different folks, I suppose. I think once you level the playing field knowledge wise as much as you can with a new beginner, then everyone has more fun - because everyone can pick a strategy based on the randomness that went along with their decision making process for their initial placements (for Catan in this example). Perhaps it's my preference as I don't like having an unfair advantage, it makes it boring for me then because I know that without a clear explanation then my chances of winning are far higher; sometimes not because of the randomness with how resources may end up getting distributed. If a new person is getting tons of resources then they'll have aa good time from the sheer excitement of being able to do actions, especially if other people aren't getting many to be able to progress.
- strictnein 9y agoKing of Tokyo is another good game that's pretty simple. Also it can be over in 15-30 min, so it's easy to play a couple sessions.
- logfromblammo 9y agoIn my opinion, stars earned by taking and holding Tokyo should scale with the number of players. Otherwise, the strategy is to stay the heck out of Tokyo, buy cards, and then roll for your stars once you acquire enough power-advantages. With 4 players, you have to weather 3 rounds of potential attacks to get the 2 stars for endurance, whereas in a 2 player game, you only need to survive one round of potential attacks to get the bonus. Furthermore, as you are yielding more often in order to not-die, other players are getting a star for it, so the advantage is less.
- godelski 9y agoThe expansion balances this a little better because of powerups. Though I think it more depends on who you play with.
- rockostrich 9y agoDominion is so great for newbies. Unless you're playing online or the game is a blowout, it's difficult to know who's winning. It's also easy to pick up since the cards are basically the instructions. I'd recommend pretty much any deck building game since they're usually very easy to learn as you go.
- godelski 9y agoDominion actually turned me off of deck builders for awhile. I found the DC and Marvel games to be great introductions. DC one is definitely easier, as there is less going on, but it is still really fun.
- tgb 9y agoI found the large number of cards available at once to be overwhelming when playing dominion the first (and only) time. In that regard, Star Realms is better since it only offers a rotating selection of cards to purchase. It also gives you obvious basic strategies where you just take cards of a chosen color or two.
- brianwawok 9y agoStar realms is good. Hero realms is a titch better. Had a lot of hero realms fun over Thanksgiving.
- taoistextremist 9y agoI think no matter what, you need a small group to really pique the interest of newcomers. Dominion was definitely what pulled me in, I played it back in 2010, when I believe it was still kind of new on the scene, and though I didn't touch it much afterwards, it really made me want to explore more games.
- scj 9y agoI like to teach Splendor to new people. Most people seem to understand game flow by the end of the first game they play (figuring out strategy comes later). The most promising sign is that most people want to play it again.
- busterarm 9y agoIt's the most "play it again" game I've seen in many years (maybe Till Dawn being another) and usually I can always get 3-4 games in with the same people. Nice depth of strategy as well. Probably my favorite game in years.
- barrkel 9y agoSplendor has a high initial spike, but the appeal wears off surprisingly rapidly. I've had a lot more longevity out of something like Carcassonne (measured in years) than Splendor (measured in months), when played every day. Splendor also requires a lot of concentration, which can be fatiguing.
- brianwawok 9y agoI got bored of Carcassonne within 6 plays. Build big cities sneak in farmers. Zzzz.
- arstin 9y ago
- TimPC 9y agoI used to somewhat enjoy Settlers but I now consider it a terrible game. Exponential Growth Cascade Failure games are generally bad, but they are even worse when the aren't over quickly Using die rolls as the mechanic for who gets to make the key play makes it especially terrible because you don't even get to figure out what you could have done better a lot of the time it's just losing a 55-45 situation on whom gets the resources first.
- firebones 9y agoYou refer to "Exponential Growth Cascade Failure" games. Is there a TVTropes for board game mechanics?
- mfoy_ 9y agoI don't know if there's a good resource such as TV tropes, but board games absolutely have tropes, usually in terms of mechanics. For example there is worker placement, card drafting, "coints" (coins are points), hidden victory point cards, etc. There's probably a more comprehensive list somewhere on BGG (Board Game Geek), but the website is so hard to use I can't find it...
- Retra 9y agoCatan has made me very wary of "open trade" games, because they always seem to devolve to "that one player surely knows how to manipulate his friends into handing him the win real good..." It'd be easier to enjoy if trades were regulated somehow. There are more accessible and more strategically meaningful ways to introduce player interaction into a game.
- kaushalmodi 9y agoUmm, dice rolling is in serial order in Settlers, but everyone has to pay attention in each turn. And any one can get a come back at any time. Hasn't this ever happened to you? You get a lot of sheep/wool, you build a 2:1 sheep port, and exchange all the sheep for stone, etc to upgrade to cities, and so on?
- skybrian 9y agoDespite having obsessed with it for a while, for casual players I wouldn't use Dominion. Its main downside is that serious play requires too much strategy, resulting in too much heads-down thinking about your hand and not enough interaction. I'd rather start people off with Carcassonne.
- b0rsuk 9y agoCasual players don't see that Dominion requires strategy. Probability calculations blow right past them and they dismiss it as a simple, boring game.
- klmr 9y agoDominion’s problem as a beginners’ game is that an even somewhat experienced player has a huge edge over a complete novice: even a passing familiarity with the cards will open up strategic combinations. In addition, they’ll have a hunch for when in the game they need to start accumulating victory points rather than expanding their monetary assets. That said, I love the game, and I think that it’s fairly easy to get into it.
- graphitezepp 9y agoHow is that ever avoided though? I can not imagine a game where any amount of experience is not an advantage, where the game also has sufficient depth to be interesting.
- klmr 9y agoGood point: unless it’s completely random it’s never entirely avoidable — there’s an element of skill. And I still think that Dominion can be very fun with beginners (that’s my experience at least). That said, there are games that level the playing field without yielding entirely to chance; such as Dixit, where advantages are rather gained from knowing the other players.
- b0rsuk 9y agoIn games with higher interaction newbies can effectively gang up on the experienced leader. It has its issues, but it works.
- SubiculumCode 9y agoSettlers with more than four is not the greatest. Ever play Dominion with a kid? Their slow shuffling kills.
- bloodorange 9y agoCarcassonne is an excellent 'gateway' game for introducing people to the boardgame phenomenon. Simple enough that you can explain the rules to an eight year old and start playing in five minutes. Also, it has just the right amount of luck and strategy to be fun for casual settings. I highly recommend it. You can keep making it more interesting by adding expansions later too. Co-operative games are a tonne of fun but they tend to have complex mechanics and a bit of a set-up time in the beginning. This may be a discouraging factor but they are a lot of fun because everyone comes out of it with a sense of accomplishment after having done something together (if you win of course).
- zentiggr 9y agoOur niece and nephew picked up Zombicide: Black Plague, and we love it. Just enough D&D style equipment and effects to feel good, fully cooperative mechanics so everyone is a team vs the spawns, and a chance of getting eliminated individually / team losing if things go awry or there's horrible card draws. All the good aspects in one.
- karlb 9y agoBoard Game Geek's gift guide is great for newcomers. The 2017 one is just out: https://www.boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/Board_Game_Gift_Guide_2017 https://www.boardgamegeek.com/wiki/page/Board_Game_Gift_Guid... I found it particularly useful to start with games that are good for two players. That way, you need to find only one other person who can be bothered to learn the rules.
- strictnein 9y agoThis article mentions Mansions of Madness Second Edition. It's a good game, but the companion app should be used on a tablet (the article mentions a phone), preferably one with a stand. If you're into H.P. Lovecraft, Eldritch Horror is an even better game, since it kind of captures the vibe of a number of the stories.
- golergka 9y ago> SORRY, YOU NEED TO ENABLE JAVASCRIPT TO VISIT THIS WEBSITE. What the hell? It's just an article
- scarmig 9y agoBetrayal at the House on the Hill is a pretty social and friendly game. It gives the illusion of making choices, but usually the right one is pretty obvious, and everything after that is pretty random, so anyone can win. It's rare (though possible) for someone to die and sit around waiting for half an hour. Much of that makes it frustrating for extreme gamerz, but for people who aren't invested in complicated rule sets and deep strategies, it's perfect.
- mjevans 9y agoWhat I like about that game is that you don't /know/ what's actually going to happen in the end. However there's a high degree of random chance. Sometimes outcomes are biased really strongly in favor for or against the "betrayer". I don't think that's a flaw, I believe it's more intended than not, but it is something to be aware of so that players have good expectations.
- godelski 9y agoThat's why it is one of my favorite games. Though we have certain scenarios that we won't play (eg: Hangman). We also let players reset if the haunt hasn't happened and they die. Though I have not found it to be a good intro game. Even though it is simple I think people get confused with the rules. Also, it really sucks if the newcomer is the betrayer.
- ajanuary 9y agoThe byline "thanks to the lessons their designers have learned from computer games" is pretty much bollocks, and also not reflected in the article.
- pessimizer 9y agoYup, complete garbage. Board games are back thanks to the lessons their designers have learned from Sid Sackson and Alex Randolph, and that the German market carefully guarded and nurtured for 40 years.
- b0rsuk 9y agoIf anything, computer games have much to learn from board games. Tight, elegant game mechanics. Widespread mechanic innovation. In computer game world, Heroes of Might and Magic III is called a sequel. In board game world, it would be called an expansion - no joke. The rules are almost the same, almost all additions are incremental.
- aaron-santos 9y agoWhile it's true that negative feedback either by the game's mechanics or the interaction with other players is a feature of newer boardgames, there are a few other points that are just as important. These games for the most part lack a player elimination mechanic. When games can last a couple of hours, players see early elimination as a failure in design. Board game designers then strive to keep everyone in the game and actively participating until the end of the game. This pairs nicely with hidden or partially hidden victory point systems. Direct confrontation is largely replaced with competition over action selection, resources, and softer forms of territory control. Players with bad experiences of being ganged-up on are open to the competition of being the first to gobble up pools of resources, or shut out other players from taking exclusive actions. I'm not that familiar with video games take on these ideas, but my little experience says they tend to do the opposite.
- TheGRS 9y agoYep, I can't think of a competitive video game that does any of these things well. Maybe this is an untapped market? Twitch controls and player elimination are still huge with video games. Battle royale modes and MOBAs are very in, but any multiplayer game I remember playing a lot of was usually centered around this. FPS games, RTS games, fighting games, they are all about your reaction speed. A lot of modes will at least let you play the whole match of a game, but still require a heavy amount of confrontation and twitch gameplay. Turn-based games are a slog to play multiplayer though, so I can understand why that's the case. There are a lot of people who enjoy twitch board games though, games like nerts or slamwich (both of which I'm not a huge fan of), so maybe the opposite is true of board games: that there's an untapped market out there for this style. I do really enjoy Spot-It for some reason however :)
- 0xcde4c3db 9y agoM.U.L.E. is the closest thing I can think of, and I don't know that it's had anything even resembling a worthy successor. There were a few attempts, but as far as I know none of them were very well-received.
- godelski 9y agoAnyone here use tabletop simulator?
- mjevans 9y agoIt can be a good way to try out a board game or play one with friends that you can only reasonably meet up with online. However there's a lot of state and visual density that are just easier to work with when in the real world.
- johannes1234321 9y agoYesterday this was in the front page, I have it on my "try out list": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15810268 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15810268
- remybach 9y agoYep... used it last night for the first time actually and had a great time! Got to play Dice Throne which is currently really hard to get hold of and have a few others on the list that I want to try before buying.
- mwfogleman 9y agoboardgamearena.com. That is all.
- failrate 9y agoBoard games have been experiencing steady growth since the 90s, largely due to games like Catan breaking through to the North American market. While board game designers surely must have learned from video game design, the success of board games cannot be attributed to this cross pollination. Video game designers, of course, have also learned from board games. One factor that the article mentioned that I do think is increasing purchases is YouTube videos, especially "Let's Play" videos. There, the correlation between video games is clearer, but it's nothing to do with design.
- jackweirdy 9y agoOut of interest, what are the most popular Let's Play videos for board games? The only one I'm aware of is Wil Wheaton's channel, which I've only watched snippets of.
- cableshaft 9y agoRahdo Runs Through and GameNight! are both popular Youtube series that are basically let's plays. Dice Tower is mostly reviews but they do stream videos of them playing games from time to time. There's probably a few others. There are a bunch of other popular Youtube series for reviews, but not as many for let's plays.
- byron_fast 9y agoSomeone needs to mention Carcassonne. Far better than Settlers in many ways, for new or experienced players.
- koonsolo 9y ago100% agree. For me it's also easier to play with the entire family, going from grandparents to grandkids.
- elsurudo 9y agoIMO it's a good "first game", but after playing for a while and with someone of similar skill and experience, the strategy is less varied than Catan. The benefit of Carcassonne is you can play with just two people.
- herge 9y agoPandemic Legacy is a real gem. Me and my friends are having a great time playing it. Even if you have played pandemic to death, the twists at every month make each game distinct and encourages you to try different strategies and characters.
- b0rsuk 9y agoTry Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on a Cursed Island. This cooperative game is an amazing story generator, is so difficult it forces you to think hard, and scenarios are highly randomized depending on what comes up. Theme is very strong in that game.
- Axsuul 9y agoI don't dabble with video games very much because I find it to be mostly a solitary experience and they tend to have addictive game mechanics. Board games on the other hand force you to become social and is often times responsible for bringing your groups of friends together more frequently as well as being a toehold into new social circles.
- CobrastanJorji 9y agoThere are quite a few video games out there that are fun for groups and don't focus on replay. A good example is "Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes," a fun exercise in team bomb disposal.
- Axsuul 9y agoYou're correct that there are exceptions but it's much more endemic to board gaming.
- b0rsuk 9y agoComputer games used to be social, they just found out more profitable ways to milk people. Dedicated servers in shooter games were social and more exciting. Every server was a mini community for players who frequented it, usually because they had "good ping" there. All skill levels mixed together, so on one hand it could be frustrating when a very good player mopped up, but at the same time you could learn from the best. You don't learn much from people just as good as you. Local multiplayer (same computer), even split screen games were a thing. Basically all multiplayer games made before the Internet took off were social. Playing DooM in 4 player deathmatch required bringing 4 computers together.
- lazyjones 9y ago> Dedicated servers in shooter games were social and more exciting. Every server was a mini community for players who frequented it, usually because they had "good ping" there WoW was even more social before they changed things for worse by allowing character transfer between servers and random groups over all realms. It went from getting to know other players by stumbling upon them frequently to being able to experience the whole content while avoiding social activities altogether.
- spectrum1234 9y agoAs someone somewhat new to this genre I must Puerto Rico is an amazing game. The online play is fantastic too (on board game area). Also pretty great is Hansa Teutonica and PowerGrid. Currently I am pretty addicted to Puerto Rico online. The turn based or real time options are perfect.
- b0rsuk 9y agoRace for the Galaxy is upgraded Puerto Rico. Turns are simultaneous so it's no longer deterministic who wins, development is randomized through cards (highly balanced at that), there are variable player powers. You can check it out with an open source app "Keldon AI", but brutally tough neural networks based computer opponent won't tell you why it plays the way it does. It doesn't know. Also check out Troyes. Alternating turns like in Puerto Rico, decisions are highly meaningful (more interaction than in PR and RftG) and it always feels like resources are scarce but many things you'd like to do. It's a bit more complex than PR. Each playthrough is randomized depending on what crafts and events come up.
- b0rsuk 9y agoAnother game with tight decisions and high strategy is Seasons. Don't get discouraged by cutesy graphics. There is a rock-solid foundation in there and you need to plan well ahead as well as make good tactical decisions.
- cthalupa 9y agoBoard games are back because the Euro game designers kept it alive during what was largely a board game dark age through most of the world. They broke back through into other markets, and re-invigorated creativity elsewhere. There's been a ton of exciting developments in boardgames over the past few years. Legacy games introduced a whole new element to board games, starting with Risk Legacy, and richly continued by others, including Pandemic Legacy, which has reigned supreme at #1 on BoardGameGeek, the largest boardgaming website, for quite some time. Dungeon crawlers that are more influenced by D&D and other pen and paper RPGs have been big, with things like Mage Knight, Descent, and more recently Gloomhaven being smash hits. Board games with "AI" players, like Mansions 2e mentioned in the article, or the automata in Scythe, are influenced by video games in that you can even play single player against a psuedo-player, but not in many other fashions. Even incredibly niche, boutique, and expensive games like Kingdom Death: Monster which is basically three games and a wallet draining miniature addiction in one very large box have become quite massive.
- StanislavPetrov 9y agoI know he isn't exactly known for his board games but US game designer Steve Jackson has really stood the test of time and has continued to make interesting games for decades.
- cthalupa 9y agoMunchkin reskins from now until the end of time ;) Steve Jackson is awesome, and there's definitely room on my shelves dedicated to Munchkin, Chez Geek, and Illuminati. Despite Munchkin, etc, being very accessible, my understanding is that during the period the article talks about, where board games were "gone", it was very much relegated to the same sort of groups that would play D&D, GURPS, etc.
- clw8 9y agoYou seem to be quite knowledgeable about board games, so I'm curious if Stranger Things has led to an uptick in popularity of D&D and the D&D influenced ones you mentioned. Luckily I live in a big city so I was able to find a nice business to try out the game with friendly people, after watching the show.
- bluetwo 9y agoI'm curious if people have any recommendations for good strategy iPad games based on board games. Catan is good. Carcassonne is good. Monopoly is painful. What others do people play regularly?
- thelibrarian 9y agoTicket to Ride is good.
- mercutio2 9y ago- Puerto Rico - Race for the Galaxy - Splendor - Lords of Waterdeep - Agricola - Le Havre I don’t exactly recommend them, because I think they’re hard to understand if you haven’t played in real life, but also: - Terra Mystica - Steam
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- EtienneK 9y agoI very much recommend ‘Through the Ages’. It’s the board game app I’ve played the most. It’s very well polished and has a very good tutorial.
- throw_away2 9y agoMy roommate and I play weeks long games of twilight struggle. I like the asynchronous play better than real life, as I have the time to really strategize my hand. The AI also makes it way easier to spin up new people as you need to play a lot of games to start memorizing the cards & it seems easier to do this against a robot.
- Erwin 9y agoI picked Patchwork the board game recently, and then tried PC game -- very good. You can play both against a good computer player and against online players (with ELO rating) -- as many games asynchronously as you want. Its a cute-looking, relaxing game.
- b0rsuk 9y agoLords of Scotland is a criminally underrated card game that's fun for beginners and masters as well. Actually I haven't seen anyone master it yet. Like many best games (yes, it means 7 Wonders isn't one) it has simple rules and few components which lead to complicated outcomes. I'm frequently asked to pull it out of my bag. It has both tactical and strategic aspects (you don't draw new cards at the start of new round). The only potential flaw is high player interaction and potential to hurt feelings, but then again it's what many players love about it. Technically it is a bidding game, but most cards you play affect other players, sometimes directly destroying theirs. Kingmaker syndrome is there, but I view it as an interesting puzzle how to win when all other players are out to get me. Except for last rounds, no one is beyond chance of winning. ---------- RoboRally is a very fun game about robots racing in a factory. Each player is dealt 9 program cards (move 2, move 1, turn left, turn right, U-turn, backpedal...) and has to put them in 5 registers. All players do this simultaneously, and a 30-second hourglass is turned over when second-last player finishes. Once done, all players reveal their 1st register and perform the action, then 2nd register, and so on. Robots bump and displace each other, fire lasers at the end of each register phase, move onto conveyor belts, avoid pits, rotating floor, pushers and even collect upgrades. It's a hectic game where making an error results in visually amusing consequences. It's very light on rules, instead it demands more from spatial imagination.
- on_and_off 9y agoOne thing that video games have learned is how to 'onboard' the player. Portal is a good example. It tells you the bare minimum before hand in the first minute : move mouse to aim, wasd to move and then every other rule of the game is learned along the way. I just can't stand board games that consist of 20 minutes of explanation followed by one hour of game.
- vanderZwan 9y agoMost of the better games are played more often than once... Explaining rules is a bit like installing software: you do it once, then you run the software as often as you like. If you have to do that every time, maybe the problem is that you're not using the same computer twice.
- blincoln 9y agoOne doesn't know if they're really going to like the game until they play it at least once, though. I'm with on_and_off - modern tabletop games have too much upfront rule-memorization required before one can even start playing. They're actually worse than videogames in that respect, because with a videogame, at least the UI typically implicitly provides some indication of the ways that the player can interact with the game world. i.e. if I click on a unit or building in _StarCraft_, I get a panel of options for what it's capable of doing. I'm happy that so many people seem to like them, but the amount of effort that needs to be expended before the actual fun starts (and potentially throughout the game) is generally too much for me. I'd probably like them a lot if they were played on some sort of shared table display, where each player would get an interactive list of allowed actions at each turn, instead of having to constantly refer back to the manual.
- vanderZwan 9y ago> One doesn't know if they're really going to like the game until they play it at least once, though. That is fair, for this I tend to rely on the same thing that I rely on for films and music: a group of friends with varying tastes in "game aesthetics", through which I can get a decent picture of a game by asking different people's opinions. It's easy to forget that this is a luxury not everyone has, though. RE: comparison to StarCraft: you're underestimating your pre-existing familiarity, forgetting that at one point you had to learn how RTSes work, and that the interface for them has not significantly changed in the last twenty years. Similarly, if you play a lot of board games, you'll notice a lot of mechanics are repeated between different games, and rules are a lot quicker to pick up than twenty minutes (it's kind of comparable to how learning programming languages becomes a lot easier after the first few). Yes, there obviously is more feedback in computer games, but on the other hand: the only reason you know how to use those units, is because they were introduced one at a time in a campaign. It is difficult to introduce a slow learning curve to boardgames, unless you start with simple rules and have an "advanced rules for experienced players" section that you can try out after a few games. That only works for a few types of games. Perhaps this is one of those things where mobile phone apps could help out?
- ck425 9y agoOne design aspect not mentioned here - I don't know if it has an official name or not - is the idea of sub-goals. By which I mean mini achievements, not always explicit, beyond the main goal that players can achieve. Dominion is a great example of this. I rarely win but I have great fun building a stupidly optimised deck. For me building the 'perfect' deck is as fun a goal as winning. I once bought two colonies (highest victory card) in once turn, and even though I lost by a few points I felt like I'd won. This feature is increasingly popular in new games.
- andy_ppp 9y agoDraughts is not in Islington it’s in Haggerston... apart from that, interesting article.
- replicatorblog 9y agoAlso important to highlight the role of Kickstarter. Of the 100 top grossing projects in Kickstarter history, 26 are Tabletop Games. Board game gameplay has certainly become more sophisticated, but we're nearly 10 years into a funding revolution brought about by Kickstarter. It's not too much of a stretch to say that Kickstarter has had a similar effect on board games that YC did on startups.
- b0rsuk 9y agoI appreciate KS made more games happen, but some of these games are just overhyped. Scythe is good but not as great as the hype would make you believe. Zombicide is... well, probably amusing if you enjoy swarms of mindless zombies as your opponents in video games ? Terraforming Mars is quite good though. A bit rough and swingy, but good.
- pavel_lishin 9y agoBut it shows that there has always been sufficient interest in board games to make it worth developing them, but there wasn't a particularly good way to signal that - at least in America - to the people who would develop them.
- cthalupa 9y agoA decent portion of those 26 are people that don't necessarily need the funding to make games, though. A lot of them are basically just using kickstarter as a pre-order system. 7th Continent, for example. (And this isn't a criticism - I back a lot of these projects!) was produced by an existing board game company that has the resources to make things in a more "traditional" way, or even handle pre-orders on their own, if they truly believe the format is not good for a traditional print run -> retailer strategy. Sandy Petersen has had some huge kickstarters for his board games, yet he's a big enough name he certainly doesn't need to do it that way. KS is great for boardgames because it makes it easier for some certain situations, but I am unsure if it's really accurate to say that it's as big of a deal for boardgames as YC/incubators are for startups. But you might be right and I might just be a cynical asshole.
- vanderZwan 9y agoWhat the article does not really go into is how designers iterate on game ideas introduced by previous games, taking the parts that were interesting, and changing the rules that are detrimental to the enjoyment of the game. Take Werewolves, for example[0]. This is a classic roleplaying game, considered one of the originators of the "social deduction" genre. It pits villagers against werewolves hiding among them, where either all villagers end up eaten by the remaining werewolves, or all werewolves are lynched by the remaining villagers. See link for a full description, but the important bit here is that: - the villagers can only win by determining who the werewolves are, but there are no in-game reasons to suspect anyone of being a werewolf; it is 100% based on roleplaying. - the game is played out through a process of elimination, removing two players per turn (one suspected werewolf, one werewolf snack). If the group is ten people, that means some people will be watching from the sidelines most of the time. Both of these issues can be big hurdles to enjoying the game. Resistance is a "second generation" social deduction game, which removed player elimination[1]. Players are resistance fighters trying to topple an oppressive regime, with a few double agents among them trying to sabotage their efforts. Each turn, players decide together which two or three members will go on missions. If the saboteurs bluff themselves into being sent, they must try to sabotage the mission while deflecting suspicions that it is because of their doing. Meanwhile, the resistance has to figure out who the saboteurs are, to avoid sending them on missions. Which side wins depends on how many missions succeed or fail. More recently, the lack of in-game discussion starters was solved in Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, where players are investigators trying to solve an ongoing murder case, and one or two of them are secretly the murderer(s)[2]. It adds a clue system that is a bit hard to explain here, but in practice immediately provokes discussion while still maintaining the social deduction aspect[3]. So over two "generations" of game design, two major flaws were eliminated from an otherwise very innovative game genre. And this kind of stuff happens everywhere: all kinds of new, innovative mechanics to solve specific problems are shared and remixed. [0] https://www.werewolves.com/werewolf-game/ https://www.werewolves.com/werewolf-game/ [1] https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/41114/resistance https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/41114/resistance [2] https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/156129/deception-murder-hong-kong https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/156129/deception-murder-... [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDWvHrt6kG0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDWvHrt6kG0
- hellbanner 9y agoMy friend just put a boardgame up on Kickstarter, was funded within a day by friends. [0] Board games offer easy prototyping and are enjoyable by a larger audience than computer games (which typically require certain hardware + specific twitch skills) [0] https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1019118800/sun-rush-strategy-board-game https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1019118800/sun-rush-str...
- b0rsuk 9y agoAn unique aspect of board games is how extremely moddable they are. People are making house rules all the time (sometimes because they're bad players who can't handle a certain strategy, sometimes because the game actually is unbalanced). People bring their homemade expansions. Modding a game can be as simple as "let's try a game where everyone starts with X or Y!". Board games also have very few quitters. A person who quits mid-game is usually labeled a jerk and avoided in future. Players might cheat or turn over the table, but griefers can face anything up to physical violence. Players have power to police themselves as they see fit. Also, while board games are relatively expensive, a whole group can play a single copy. This is almost unheard of in video game world. One example was Starcraft 1 "spawn" feature, another - Age of Wonders 3, where you can play expansions you purchased with people who don't own it. It avoids splintering the multiplayer community. It pays to do some research before buying a game or trying it out a few times.
- Havoc 9y agoMicrotransactions?