Games which do not end friendships, but strengthen them. Games where working together works and loners fall behind.
Can be something simple like The Game or reach any complexity level. Coming to think of it, bring on the complexity. 🙂
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I’ve been playing frosthaven with some friends over the last year or so. We’re loving it. There’s a video game version I’m told, maybe on board game simulator? Idk.
Not sure about Frosthaven, but Gloomhaven is on Tabletop Simulator, and there is an actual digital version on Steam.
Games which do not end friendships, but strengthen them.
I can answer this part of your post with:
- Slay the Spire The Boardgame (4p vs env)
- Sky Team (2p vs env)
- Bullet❤️ (1-4p vs 1 npc)
- Aeon’s End (1-4p vs 1 npc)
- Between Two Cities (Co-op between players to your left and right but still competing with each other and the other players)
Games where working together works and loners fall behind.
This qualifier is a bit harder to answer, I’ll have to think and look through the TT games I’ve played
In my experience many co-op board games are prone to quarterbacking, especially if there is a difference between levels of experience between players.
In my experience it can be alleviated with the help of the game’s mechanics.
For example Pandemic is a terrible game for that (it’s a good game, but completely has the default you mentioned) because all the information is public, you know what cards the other players have, and in terms of mechanics, each character has its own power, but it’s really easy to have everything in mind at the same time. So an experienced player will have a good vision of the strategy and will possibly railroad everyone.
On the other hand, games like hanabi hide some parts of the information, so a player cannot really know enough to do the strategy by themselves.
If you make the player characters very different from one another, you go in that direction as well. I know how to play my Gloomhaven character, and I mostly know what the other characters do, but I don’t know the exact actions they have, it’s too much. Same with Aeon’s End, the more the game goes on, the more different the decks end up.
So yeah, in a nutshell, there are mechanics a game can use to prevent a single player to have too much of an influence on the game
to what?
Quarterbacking is the behaviour common in cooperative boardgames where 1 player ends up in command of the entire team, telling everybody else what to do. It goes from cooperative to single player with extra hands. Pandemic is an example of a game that’s particularly prone to this.
Thank you
Daybreak and the Slay the Spire-boardgame edition are both cooperative and plenty of fun.
I’ve been eyeing the sts boardgame but kinda hesitant, especially since I love the original game. How does it compare to the original, if you don’t mind me asking? A lot of sts’ fun was building an OP broken deck on the fly, not sure if this feeling was successfully transferred over.
I love the video game, got over 300 hours in it. Was hesitant but bought the game because I wanted to share it with my SO, who couldn’t play the video game. We have played about 10 games so far and loving it. The OP broken deck feel is, if anything, even stronger. Because the numbers are smaller in the board game to make calculations easier, buffs and debufs are more impactful (e.g. strike does 1 damage so 1 strength brings it to double damage), so at the end of the game you are often playing cards that do something like 50 times the damage of starting strikes. I know it’s possible in the video game too, but I’ve rarely achieved that.
Disclaimer: I’ve been playing (and failing) A20 in the video game, but playing A0/1 in the board game, so there is a difficulty disparity there, not sure how much that contributed to the OP feeling
Ooh that’s fantastic to hear. My favourite part of STS is having 999 block and body slamming the boss.
Also here’s some unsolicited advice for you from a routine A20 enjoyer, watch Baalorlord on YouTube if you have the time! Watching someone else go through their rationale for picking/not picking a card, choosing between events, etc drastically improved my sts runs.
P. S. play clad I find him a lot less punishing to deal with.
I’ve only played it once, but I would say it’s quite a different experience with some similar elements. I felt some amount of OP deck building when I managed to get a Heavy Blade/strength deck rolling with ironclad, but the focus was a lot more on the cooperative elements and planning out ideal moves. It felt like there was far less margin for error and it being a lot easier to die, fwiw.
Interesting that it appears harder, perhaps the slightly different format kinda forces you to relearn certain strategies? My partner and I both love sts so it definitely looks like a good buy
Daybreak is lovely! Great suggestion.
Hanabi - a pretty simple card game in which you work together to put on a fireworks show. You can’t see your own hand, but instead can see everyone else’s. Others give you hints about what’s in your hand so you can make plays.
10-minute dungeon - a kickstarter table top game where you tear through as many dungeons/monsters as possible in 10-minute increments (I think). It’s been awhile since I’ve played it, but I have very fond memories of it.
Hanabi is hard but really fun. It’s always a hit.
It’s my go-to game for introducing people to modern card games.
The dungeon is event faster: 5 minutes !
But also, are you me !? That would have been my exact picks.
My favorite board game ever is Eldritch Horror. It plays similar to Pandemic with a really cool Lovecraft theme, really challenging and atmospheric. You have to work together as you travel around the globe to stop demon outbreaks and the end of the world!
I’m gonna say Spirit Island is a solid game that is also co-op. There is a solo play as well, and the app gives you a small taste of the game without any purchase. (It’s limited to like 3-4 rounds of play, a taste)
The Crew -games would be pretty similar to The Game.
Multi-session cooperatives:
- Arkham Horror the Card Game
Single-session cooperatives:
- Pandemic
- Paleo
- So Clover!
- Mysterium
You can also use search like this to figure out something that really fits to your table (Might take long to load!): https://bggbester.netlify.app/?b64=AhMCAgUABgAPAxAlA-gCAwsDCxUFGwMMAw0ldTAHFQUcABMDEgMRJQfqFAMVAwQCFgAZABcAGAABAhgKB-cYCgsE
I enjoy the Forbidden series, in particular Forbidden Desert
Desert is my favorite of these as well. Island is great for introducing the concept but is fairly basic. Sky is okay but didn’t grab me as much.
I like cooperative dungeon crawls. Shadows of Brimstone. Warhammer Quest. To a lesser extent Gloomhaven et al.
Sleeping Gods is a story heavy game that has mechanics for x players to each take control of a portion of the crew of a ship.
Dorfromantik is a great one which was a big hit in Germany. Dunno if its widely known elsewhere but it should be, since it is a simple chilled coop Puzzler based on a cozy videogame.
The next two are not coop all the way but Mysterium and Treasure Island are pretty fun and invoke the same teamwork feeling around the table, if someone is content on beeing the GM.
In mysterium you have one person as a ghost, that sends visions to the other in form of abstract art cards, to find out how he died.
In the latter, one person plays Long John Silver and the other have to find his treasure on an Island (duh:), before he escapes prison and gets it himself.
It is meant to be played against each other, but if you tweak the rules a bit is very nice as a coop experience. Especially for kids, since you can draw on the whole map to mark down places that you rule out. Very nice family game for all ages.
Dorfromantik: this is co-op tile placement game, with some interesting strategy. With each new game, you’ll unlock additional tiles that will let you score more points for the next time. This won Spiel des Jahres in 2023.
Camel Up: while not exactly a co-op, players place bets on a camel race. It’s a fun party-ish game that feels more like the board against the players.
Any of the Zombicide games (including Massive Darkness): these games are lighter dungeon crawler type of a board game. While there’s some strategy, it’s mostly about killing enemies, rolling dice, and getting loot.
Gloomhaven: a deck building, dungeon crawler, this game is much more complex than Zombicide. It’s rated #4 on BBG. Be ready for a long set up, though!
Kingdom Death: Monster: I have never gotten this game to the table, but it’s a boss battle, dice rolling, campaign kind of game, where you can loot the bosses and craft gear.
Sidereal Confluence. The only trading game where everybody always walks away from a trade happy
Interesting suggestion.
Which age recommendations would you give? How long is one game in average?
I’m not sure about exact ranges, but it should be pretty kid friendly. The main gameplay is in trading, which is only as complicated as the players make it. You can do simple trades, or complicated multi turn multi party trades. An average game probably takes 2 hours if the players are familiar with the game.
Great. That’s concise info. Thank you.
Elder Sign
Pandemic
Letters from Whitechapel
Forbidden Island
