Cute W loves games. His favorite games are the extremely complicated strategy games with several pages of instructions and a little cheat sheet for each player to keep track of the complicated instructions on each turn. If you are a Parks and Rec fan, thinks Cones of Dunshire, the game Ben Wyatt invented that becomes a cult classic and is described as “punishingly intricate.” Cute W’s deep love of games is actually a little bit sad for him, because the rest of his immediate family is not great with game-playing. J and I both get stressed out over games. We fret overlong with each decision, and we spend a lot of time feeling stupid, which makes us unhappy. There’s absolutely no need for it, and yet we can’t seem to help ourselves. It is not a festive game atmosphere. M, meanwhile, has more of Cute W’s devil-may-care attitude, but she loses patience. Sometimes she’ll lose patience before Cute W’s even done reading all of the directions; sometimes she’ll get surly waiting as J and I fretfully ponder each turn. It’s difficult to find games that we can joyfully play as a family.
In our empty nest, Cute W and I have been playing games a bit more. With just the two of us, we don’t have to worry about potential family dynamic pitfalls. And if I am slow to make decisions, Cute W is exceptionally patient because he’s just so glad to be playing games. Here are a few games that we’ve played lately.
Clip Cut Parks: This is a very simple game, and it’s different. Basically, you have cards with a variety of different park designs, and the object is to “create” five parks by matching the designs from a piece of paper that you cut according to the rolls of a die. On a given turn, you may be instructed to do three different cuts, one that’s a single block, one that’s two blocks, and one that’s three blocks. You try to use those cuts to get papers that you can put on your card, and if any spare pieces of paper fall, you crumple them up and they count against you in the final tally. I like how this feels vaguely crafty, and I also like that Cute W is not twelve times as good at it as I am, which is typically the case.
Sky Team: This is a cooperative game in which two players, a pilot and a copilot, have to land a plane. Each player is responsible for different things, like the angle of descent and the speed. Just like with a real airplane, sometimes it is relatively basic to land, and sometimes various conditions can make landing more challenging. You can choose how difficult the challenge is, and then, together, you try not to crash. So far we’ve only played this a couple of times, so I still have to think a little too hard about this, but it does feel good to “win” together.
It Takes Two: this is a cooperative video game with a little animated husband and wife who are teensy tiny animated clay figures who are working their way through the obstacle course of their household while hopefully falling back into beautiful love. Here’s one where Cute W’s patience really has to come into play, because I have such incredibly limited experience with video games that I am barely functional with the controller. Sometimes I’ll have to try a move 20 or 30 times just to advance through one little challenge. Like, he will just bop through something, and then I will try, and try, and try, and then he goes back to do it again to re-analyze every move and decision that he makes in order to teach me. But in the process I laugh so hard that I fear that I will wet my pants.
Azul: In this game, players take turns choosing obtaining different colored tiles from “suppliers” to build a wall, then get different combinations of points based on where the tiles are placed while trying to avoid losing points for wasting tiles. It’s pretty easy to get started playing, and there’s both luck and strategy involved. Which I like. Because it gives me a fighting chance. I also just appreciate the aesthetics of this game, which I’ve said before makes me a happier player.
Splendor Duel: This is a two-player version of the game Splendor, in which you acquire raw jewels to create jewelry and attempt to become the most prestigious jewelry in the realm. So you’re basically acquiring jewels from the board, using them to purchase cards, and trying to score the most points. The last time we played I did a particularly horrible job, so it’s not my current favorite.
Wandering Towers: The box says that this game is for 1 to 6 players, and we’ve played with just the two of us as well as with a daughter or two, I think. Each player has a team of wizards, and you want each of your wizards to make it to the “home base” of Ravenskeep (the black tower) while collecting potion along the way. The towers can move and stack as you go, so the funny part of this game is that it can be really difficult to remember where all of your wizards are on the game board, because they can get trapped in towers. So sometimes you’ll move a tower to find your wizard, but your wizard isn’t there, and you’ve accidentally freed someone else.
Also recommended with every game: music and wine.
