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adamatomic · 8 years ago

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Kiddo Board Game Time!

Ok I’ve been wanting to write this post for a while now but I dunno like the collapse of the democratic republic and shipping NITW and some other things happened but ok here we are!

First let’s set up some context: my kids are turning 4 and 6 in February, and we’ve been playing a whole heck of a lot of Chutes & Ladders and Candyland and those games suck. That’s not even a controversial opinion to hold really. The most fun we ever got out of Chutes & Ladders was to draw our own like 4′ x 4′ board on a big piece of packing paper, so we could have toy animals stomping around the spots. And Ok that was pretty fun.

The other “games” we’ve been able to play are a bit better but still fundamentally random activities that don’t have a lot of... stakes or interest for adult players: Hisss, and Snail’s Pace Race, and I can easily recommend both for players 4 and younger. They’re random activities really, not games, but there are worse ways to play with your kids. Both kids have been enjoying Katamino quite a bit as well.

BUT OK the thing is they’re almost 4 and 6 finally and we’ve been sort of dipping our toes into more complex games for a few reasons. One, it’s just fun to see what they make of these games. Two, they seem to sense that these are somehow “better” games and they are really enjoying the heck out of em. Three, Bek and I enjoy them much, much more ourselves, and are able to really play and be engaged. The same way co-watching was such a huge part of Sesame Street, I think that co-playing is a really wonderful thing. And, like Sesame Street, co-play is a lot more enjoyable when there’s something there for the grownups too.

Anyways, I wanted to just talk a little bit about some of the games that we’ve been playing, and talk about how the kids are interacting with them. This isn’t so much a shopping guide as a playing guide - hopefully you’ll be able to get a sense of what sort of play activities your kids might find in these, and maybe that will help or something.

Ok!

Suspend

distributed by Melissa & Doug

Suspend is sort of like reverse Jenga. Players start with a pile of dangly sort of coat hanger things, and take turns hanging them off of a little hook. If you knock pieces off, they go into your pile. First one out of pieces wins. Within a few games, players as young as 3 and as old as 63 were playing on about the same level.

There’s not a lot of long-term strategy in Suspend, which helps a lot (and is going to be a kind of running theme there). The 3 and 4 year old players, in our experience, can play tactically but CAN NOT play strategically. What I mean by this is ... the difference between following the rules and taking your turn correctly or whatever, versus like planning out a series of turns to accomplish a goal. We’re finding the almost-4yo can engage in a surprisingly complex single turn, but just doesn’t plan over multiple turns. Which is totally fine! But it means that games where opportunistic local play can keep up with long term strategic play have a broader age range where we can all really play together.

Anyways, it’s a very physical game, it involves imagination and motor skills, and there’s a great sense of anticipation on each turn. Good plays are easy to appreciate, and catastrophes are enjoyable for everyone. This is a fantasic game. The kids can also play 1v1 without our assistance, which is great sometimes!

Jenga

distributed by Hasbro

Maybe I should have put Jenga first haha. Anyways, it’s got a lot in common with Suspend - low strategy, high tactics. Great sense of anticipation. Our youngest is able to play competitively with us and with his grand parents. Genuine co-play and a surprisingly even playing field. A classic for a reason.

Maybe the only downside to Jenga is its kind of a hassle to set up the tower in the first place, which is one reason I prefer Suspend slightly more.

Blokus

distributed by Mattel

Blokus is a little bit like Tetris meets Go, only much simpler. Players take turn placing tetromino-like pieces onto the game board. There’s only one rule - each player’s piece must be diagonally adjacent but not normally adjacent to one of their other pieces. Player’s colored territory grows out across the board a little like Conways’s Game of Life or a slime mold or something. The turn rules are so simple that even our youngest can play his pieces correctly without help. However, because turn-by-turn strategy does matter some, he always gets last place. He doesn’t seem to mind though because he’s still actually playing the game. There’s a lot here to keep adults interested as well, the simple game rules produce some nice strategic texture over repeat plays. The almost-6yo is able to engage in some turn-by-turn strategy as well. The kids can also play 1v1 against each other by taking two colors each, which they do often. Easily their favorite game for the last month, with a dozen plays or more.

Latice

distributed by Adacio

Brent Vincent’s Latice is a bit like Marsha Falco’s brilliant SET crossed with perennial favorite Scrabble. It actually reminds me a LOT of an old Super Famicom puzzle game called Keeper but since I’m the only person on Earth that remembers that game it’s probably not as useful of a comparison.

Anyways, in Latice players take turns placing tiles on the board. Tiles have to be placed adjacent to an existing tile, and must match every adjacent neighbor by color and / or shape. This little wrinkle provides a lot of opportunities for surprising and pleasantly unexpected matches. The strategy emerges from two nice mechanics. Sunstones, which players earn with especially clever placements, let you spend an extra tile on the same turn. Wind tiles let you scoot existing plays to create big matches that might not emerge organically. First player to use up all their tiles wins.

With 4 players, the games go extremely fast (players only have about 4 racks of tiles each), and there’s a really nice amount of depth for grownup players if you’re trying to min-max your sunstones and come out on top. However, like Blokus, the basic rules of the turn are simple enough that our almost-6yo can play with us with maybe an extra hint here or there, and the almost-4yo can place most of his own tiles as well.

It’s not quite as simple as Blokus, but like Blokus it has easy rules for playing with 2 or 3 players, is comprehensible even for young players, and is nice to look at and touch. It feels like it might be a few more months until the 6yo can play without hints, and it could be as much as a year for the younger player to really get up to speed. They still enjoy it very much as an activity though, and request to play often. Unfortunately, the added complexity means it’s not super appropriate for them to play 1v1 between each other (although 1v1 between a parent and one of them works great).

River Dragons

distributed by Asmodee

River Dragons is probably technically clustered under the umbrella of “well-intentioned STEM edu-games” but two key things set it apart. First, it is absolutely gorgeous to look at. Second, the basic theme and activity are completely enjoyable even if you don’t know the rules. This is huge for kids this age. Our oldest spent a lot of his preschool time making little wood bridges over creeks, so a board game where that’s the central activity is really automatically appealing to him. Bridge building is a super common activity in most Reggio preschools and kindergartens too.

Anyways, the play in River Dragons is more complex than Latice, but the strong concrete theming makes it easier to remember. Players each have a deck of 13 “action” cards, from which they select 5 to play each turn. Actions might include placing stones, placing planks, moving, or other actions. The goal is to place several stones and planks and move your meeple across the river. It’s pretty loose and physical and again just enjoying to manipulate.

The trick is everyone plays each of their 5 cards at the same time, and then the cards are evaluated in clockwise order. This helps break up the large course of the game into digestible chunks, and it helps break up the strategy into manageable decisions that are closer to tactics. The 6yo quite quickly started deliberately selecting his 5 cards to try to increase his chances of building a good bridge. The 4yo has no effing idea what he’s doing but loves it regardless.

As an adult, there’s an extra layer of guessing game and bluffing involved, where you are trying to guess what your opponent might be doing in what order, based on the context of the board, not unlike Clairvoyance or some old Richard Garfield stuff.

This is probably the kids favorite game next to Blokus, but they can’t really play it 1v1 in a way that makes sense as a game. It helps to have an adult involved sort of DMing the process. They can use the blanks and stones to make bridges for fun though, which is quite cool. Smart, appealing, easy to set up, and a great fantasy.

Machi Koro

distributed by IDW Games

Masao Suganuma’s Machi Koro is a lightweight and very fun investment game. Consisting of only two dice, a deck of cards, and some coin tokens, it’s extremely portable. The real world theme makes it very easy to understand. The fantasy of city building is very appealing as well. I should add that we’re playing with the vanilla set without expansions.

We’ve only played a few rounds, and the kids get a huge kick out of it. There’s a lot of DMing involved, since each turn is two phases, and the kids sometimes get coin costs and activation costs confused. They love seeing their cities build out, though, and the anticipation of the dice roll to see if anything activates is very fun. While the complexity is a bit of a con as far as the kids being able to play out their own turns, Machi Koro’s basic design is such that if you play it in the most direct, fun way (buy something basically every turn), you’ll produce a pretty strategically viable city quite quickly. Rather, a pretty strategically blind but tactically fun approach will put the player in quite good shape and keep things exciting for adult players trying to min-max.

That was unexpected and quite cool - King of Tokyo has some of the same affordances and I think it’s a really marvelous quality in a co-play game. When the less strategic players are still really in it and putting pressure on the more strategic players, that’s always a good sign.

As a game designer, Machi Koro is just extremely pleasant. Absolutely the minimum of moving parts to create a really funny, complex economy. Recommended, but with the caveat that probably an adult will need to DM a bit, and due to that play times can approach one hour. The kids loved playing though and have been requesting additional plays.

Tokaido

distributed by Fun Forge

Maybe the prettiest board game of all time. Playing with kids is quite similar to Machi Koro - expect a lot of DMing due to turn complexity, and slightly longer play times. The activities and fantasies within the game delighted both kids though, and again they enjoyed seeing their collections grow, and moving down the path. Just the thing itself was kind of inherently enjoyable.

As an adult there’s a bunch of interesting things going on, little gambles and guesses and things. We have been playing WITHOUT the special character abilities, just to keep the possibility space a little more manageable. So far it hasn’t really detracted from the experience. And again, probably the most visually attractive board game I’ve ever seen. A complete delight.

Disclaimer: the very first play and setup and rule-reading is non-trivial. Maybe try playing it with adults first before breaking it out with the kiddos. While Tokaido is actually surprisingly and pleasantly simple to play once you know what you’re doing, some of the core mechanics are a little counter-intuitive at first, and your first play session will be smoother if you’re more familiar with the game.

Ok That’s It (So Far!)

I hope this was enjoyable or helpful somehow. These games have brought us a lot of joy in some uncertain times these last few months. Best of luck on your own family gaming adventures!

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