Encouraging Strategic Thinking Through Physical Gameplay
Everyone plays games. Whether they are word games or role-playing adventures, whether they are as mental as Scrabble and Chess or as straightforward as Candy Land and Chutes & Ladders, people rely on games to provide mental stimulation, social integration, and educational value. Increasingly, however, many are choosing to play games online and on consoles, moving further away from real human interaction. While some of this is indeed due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, this trend started long before 2020. By sharing my physical game collection with others, I am helping highlight the educational, mental and social importance of real games played in-person with others.
I seek out unique and unusual games with fascinating stories, gorgeous art, and intuitive gameplay that require strategic thinking, role-playing, and cooperation. I have found that the games I most enjoy the most fall into one of the following four categories:
Pure Board Games
Hybrid Board Games
Hybrid Card Games
Pure Card Games
I will now provide an excellent example of each of these different types of games.
Pure Board Games
To begin with, let's start with my favorite pure board game, Catan. Formerly known as Settlers of Catan, this incredible board game is popular world-wide, and I have even dedicated an entire blog post to my ongoing project to help others learn how to play it.
Hybrid Board Games
Next up is my favorite hybrid board game, Unfair.
This theme park-inspired card game for 2-5 players is straightforward to learn and provides endless amounts of replayability.
Although the core gameplay involves decks of cards, it can still be classified as a board game, since there is a physical board that the players use. In addition, there are cardboard tokens, markers, dice, and other hallmarks of classic board games. If you would like to learn more about Unfair, you can follow this link to my YouTube playlist ,where I am uploading gameplay tutorial videos. Another excellent example is Extra! Extra!, which is equal parts board game and card game.
Hybrid Card Games
My favorite hybrid card game is without a doubt Chrononauts, from Looney Labs.
Even though the only game components in Chrononauts are cards, the cards are laid out like a board to start the game, which creates the hybrid component. Another potentially hybrid card game is Guillotine, which also requires laying cards out on a table and involves a cardboard guillotine to keep track of the front of the line.
Pure Card Games
My personal favorite pure card game is Letter Tycoon, although Just Desserts from Looney Labs is a close second.
Cooperative Games
If you feel that you and your gaming partners need something a little less competitive, consider checking out this blog post which recommends some of the best cooperative games currently available.
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