We tried our first escape room in a box today. That whole concept left us wondering what to expect from the box’s contents. With an escape room, there’s basically a mess of clues all over the place, leaving players with many different threads to pull. So, this Sinister Mansion in a box? Would it be that same?
No! It was very much “on rails.” Most clues provided at any given time were related. That kept us on a pretty direct trajectory. That’s not a bad thing. It’s just difficult puzzle after difficult puzzle to find a combination to enter on the decoder disc to see what card to flip next. And it took us over 2 hours and a few flips of the hint cards to get through.
It was fun. I got to watch my wife be clever and quickly come to some creative solutions, and I got to help change perspectives to try new things out. (My mom was there, too. She wasn’t helpful. She refused to believe that all hints and solutions could be found within the game itself.) We’ve decided that we might go through the series of games on future date nights. Hopefully we’ll get better at them as we go.
Yeah, but I don’t think these should be considered “board games”; they are really just puzzle books wearing a good disguise. That’s not to say they are bad, although I am rarely surprised by them, probably because there’s only so much that can be done in the format - heck, even ‘real’ Escape Rooms often struggle with this limitation, although their constraints are different.
(As both a puzzle writer and a board game designer, you might be able to sense that I have strong feelings about this! On the other hand, the more types of puzzles in particular become mainstream, the happier I am, and these box games definitely help with that.)
This topic is purposely broad enough to not limit it to just board games. The concept of a “game” is vague enough to be inclusive of many things, and this box of puzzles fit on my parents’ tabletop.
These escape room boxes were something I had been wanting to try for a long time, and I thought it would be fun to share the experience with the people who engage with this topic. Sharing another idea for another engaging activity was really the goal here. And it was really a lot more clever than I thought it would be.
Oh, I’m not against these products! As I said, anything that gets people doing puzzles is fine by me. It’s more my personal feeling that if I e.g. started talking about crosswords in this thread, people might say “that’s stretching the boundaries a bit far” where I wouldn’t see the difference.
But in the end, this is just a semantic argument really. Games are games, wherever you find them.
Me, I had a good Christmas playing lots of things with the family, although Forest Shuffle was probably the hit of the holiday. So many different engines to build but so simple to explain. Even my 80-yr old dad who is starting to struggle with new things managed to get a handle on it.
I just want to say that I can tell you appreciate these comments. You’re not dismissive like I’ve seen people post in other places (like BGG). It’s all good!
Ravensburger has snared me with this one. The actual mechanics of the game have not been shared, but an all-woman design team has produced a role-playing(esque?) experience featuring a variety of female characters who are not just princesses. I just want to know more about it.
Funko is killing off its games division, and I’m only now realizing they created more than just the collectible Marvel game. Villainous is a clever but weird design, and I’ve heard good things about Hogwarts Battle. Shame to see them go to same way every board game division of a larger non-gaming company seems to go.
This sounds like a very fun idea for a game. It combines the tactical combat of Wings of War/Glory or X-Wing Miniatures with the fun of Lego (or kitbashing model kits). I love seeing neat ideas like this.
Reminds me a little of Mobile Frame Zero, except as an official product.
We picked up Gnomes at Night from the library for our 6 year-old. That suggested age for players is pretty spot on for this simple and clever game. There are two sides of a game board that features different objects and maps. The shared player movers are gnomes that stick to the board by magnets. You have to follow the map as it appears on your side, and your partner has to follow the map on theirs. But if you have a wall in one direction and your partner doesn’t, well, they can legally move through your wall. The goal is to collect as many objects as possible within the time limit. You flip a card, figure out who has the object on their board, and then communicate to navigate through both of your maps to get to said object.
It’s a good family game. Not necessarily the best game for adults, although I imagine it makes a good beer and pretzels game.
Still running my Basic/Expert D&D campaign as the players deal with Chaos mutants (including their horses)
They have just returned to their home base and will get an account of local happenings before they traipse off in another random direction.
Also starting up one-shots again. Will probably focus on trying out other rules-lite games on my shelf. Last week was Deathbringer .
European versions of Scrabble will now offer two modes of play: the classic scored version and a new objective-based mode with hints and teams. This New York Post article focuses on useless criticism, ignoring the fact that the original game is literally still there.
The goal-based gameplay conjures a couple different thoughts to mind. On the one hand, I grew up playing Scrabble Junior, which had easier scoring and a smaller board. Kids versions of bigger games these days reduce the math and speed up gameplay by doing things like offering objectives. A new kids version of Ticket to Ride eschews the original game’s scoring completely and focuses solely on number of tickets completed. I see this being a game that could easily reduce the age range to function as a game to suit an entire family of players, graduating kids up from objectives to score.
The other thought is that the idea of needing to keep multiple objectives in mind reminds me of eurogames in a way. It makes sense that this was made for a European market. It makes it less of a crossword puzzle and more of an actual game. It’s supposed to be fun, not homework.
This is a novel concept for a Settlers of Catan game. Catan has been criticized in the past for essentially being a pro-colonization game (it’s not the only one), and unfortunately this doesn’t change that much. What it does instead is plant the idea in the minds of players that growth and expansion without consideration for the harms they cause is bad for everyone. It only focuses on the environment, though. It’s important, but so are people.
The article also mentions Daybreak, the new game by the creator of Pandemic. I was lucky enough to play it last week. Playing a 4-player game is harder than a 2-player game, which may be unintentionally thematically accurate. It’s a weird game, though. There’s too much about it that feels mechanically loose. The theme and message are great, though, as well as all of the information QR coded on all of the cards. It may take me a couple of more plays to figure out if I think it’s actually a good game or just a fun novelty item with a message.
