Imagine this scenario. You’re at your friendly local game store. You’ve just picked up a hot new game off the shelf. You flip it over to check out the back, as if you don’t already know everything about the game from the media blitz on BGG/social media, let alone your own research. You feel an overwhelming urge to buy the game, add it to your collection. Just think how excited your game group will be when they hear you’ve picked up a brand new game! But in the back of your mind, something’s itching. Do you really need a new game? Don’t you have 7 other games on your shelf of shame/opportunity? Never mind the dozens of games you bought, punched, learned, and played only once.
You love board games. You’ve played hundreds. You’ve backed dozens of Kickstarters, you read rules just for fun, you’ve joined online board game communities to talk about your favourite games… And yet… there they are. The games you genuinely liked, experiences you enjoy, just, sitting on your shelf. Unfinished legacy campaigns, half-explored systems. Expansions you’ve folded into the base box that you never got around to actually playing.
My question is: Why do board gamers keep abandoning games they actually like?
Or perhaps more bluntly: Why are we always chasing the cult of the new?
Allow me to pontificate.
Completion Bias
Humans hate unfinished things. This isn’t a gamer problem, it’s a brain problem. Psychologists have known for nearly a century that we remember unfinished tasks more vividly than completed ones. It’s why a half finished campaign nags at you more than the game you’ve already “got your money’s worth” from.
Board games are especially good at triggering this completion bias:
Campaigns with branching paths
Expansions that promise to “fix” or “deepen” the base game
Modular content you haven’t tried yet
Fan expansions or community made variants
Expert strategies that only become clear after 10+ plays
The completion bias gets cranked up to 11 when companies like Queen Games put numbers on the sides of their boxes. It’s brutally unsatisfying to look at a shelf of games and see the spines labelled “1…2…4…”. Where’s 3? You have to get number 3!!
Some gamers aspire to acquire the entire catalogue of their favourite designer. I fell into this trap for a while, seeking out every Vladimir Suchy game possible. But in the end, I had 8 different games and only really enjoyed playing 2 of them.
Loss aversion is absolutely at play here. You’ve put in the initial investment to acquire a game or a series, so adding the latest game or an expansion is comparatively cheap. In the worst scenario, a game or expansion doesn’t get reprinted so you need to add it to your collection now before it disappears, as if it’s a rare Pokemon in the Safari Zone.
The Infinite Release Problem
There are more board games coming out now than at any other point in the hobby’s history. Crowdfunding, print-on-demand, small and indie publishers, solo designers, anyone and everyone can put a game out into the world. Which is great! But it’s also overwhelming. It feels like every single week there’s a “must-play” new game, two hot new Kickstarter games, and a massively popular designer releasing a new game that has the whole board game media sphere in a tizzy.
And board gaming is a social hobby, even when you mostly play solo. We want to be part of the conversation or cultural zeitgeist. We want to know what everyone else is talking about. We might want to avoid spoilers, hot takes, and the creeping sense that we’re falling behind. So you shelve your old favourites, or any unplayed games you already own temporarily so you can “just try” the new thing. You buy the hot game, post a picture of it on social media or to your board game groups chat, and say to yourself “I’ll definitely learn how to play this before next game day”
Unfortunately, the act of buying a game and posting on social media gave your brain a sweet, sweet dopamine hit, and if we’re being honest, learning rules is pretty boring. What’s even more boring is going back to that old game that you promised yourself to play last week.
Novelty Is a Hell of a Drug
On the subject of sweet dopamine hits, new games are front-loaded with dopamine. The first play is full of discovery, learning the systems, discovering the strategies, talking about what you can do better next time! This feeling is powerful, but it doesn’t last forever. And when you compare a game that you like, with a whole new game, it’s so easy to pick the new game. After all, the new game might be your new favourite game of all time! The new game can be anything and everything, while the old game… you already know what the old game has to offer.
Another frustration point is if one player at your table is particularly good at a game. Do you want to spend your one game night a week struggling against someone who’s probably going to win anyway? A new game offers a level playing field, with everyone at the table discovering strategies at the same time.
Too Much Content Can Kill Love
Here’s where this really hits modern board gaming. Big games now feel designed to be endless. This is more of a problem with crowdfunded games where the all-in tier is $800 and is shipped in 3 waves. I’m talking Final Girl, or Bloodborne, or Marvel United, or any of those big crowdfunding projects. With modules, expansions, campaigns, and just piles and piles of content. So much that you could play this game for every game night and still have fresh stuff to play when the expansion hits Kickstarter the following year!
Sometimes having too much content can push players away. When you have so many different permutations of how a game can be played, with interlocking modules or optional expansions, you can become paralyzed. Which module should you start with, which combination is the optimal way to play? Does character X play well against mission Y? This turns a game night into homework. And my high school grades should tell you, I hate homework.
The Fantasy of the Perfect Play
Another quiet trap: holding games off for the “right moment.” Maybe you don’t want to play Zoo Vadis until you have at least 5 players, or Tainted Grail is best at one or two players, so you need to wait for a game night that suits that. Maybe you don’t want to play a deduction game while you’re tired, or start a complex game when you only have 2 hours before one of your players HAS to leave. You don’t want to play a certain game until the conditions are ideal.
Postponing games you’re excited about cools your enthusiasm. And while your enthusiasm is cooling-off on one game, there’s a shiny new game right around the corner, begging you for your time and money.
Why Do We Chase the New?
At the end of the day, I think it’s important to state that abandoning games doesn’t make you an irresponsible person. Board games are not obligations, they’re not self-improvement tools. You don’t owe a game anything just because you bought it. I do think it’s worth noticing how often we confuse starting something new with doing something meaningful.
The cult of the new always keeps us moving, keeps us active and engaged in our favourite hobby, but it’s not always engaging in a deeper or more meaningful way. If you’re like me, once the dopamine of buying a new game, watching the shipping tracker inch closer to your door every day, then pulling off the shrink wrap and punching the pieces out while imagining what it’s going to be like to play this game wears off, you just feel vaguely unsatisfied. Some of the arguments above might be why.
If you’ve been feeling disconnected with your hobby, or missing the joy you once held with cardboard, I think the trick to reinvigorating your hobby time isn’t by buying a new game, but it’s getting back to the classics. Playing the games that made you fall in love with board games in the first place. When was the last time you played Carcassonne, Pandemic, or Agricola? Those are still amazing games! You can plop them onto the table and have a great night with them, right now!
I think cult of the new isn’t really about games, but about feeling connected. When the media we consume is always showing us a new thing, it’s pretty natural to want to be a part of that conversation. But in the end, if you aren’t playing games, then you’re just engaging in wanton consumerism, and that’s not very fun at all.
Disclaimer: A copy of Perch was provided by Inside Up Games for review
Hey, do you want to play that bird game? No, not Wingspan, the other one! The area control game! No, not Root, the one with just birds!
Right off the bat, the cover art of Perch sets a tone. At first glance, it looks like it will be a peaceful game. A twilight scene featuring a menagerie of birds milling about on branches amongst the green shrubs. But looking closer, you’ll notice that all these birds have angry eyebrows. There are more birds than branches, and control of those branches is the only thing that really matters to them. They’re willing to claw and peck their way to control here.
Perch is an area control game for 2 to 5 players, designed by Douglas Hettrick, with art by Ari Oliver, and published by Inside Up games in 2025. Perch casts players as a colour of bird and tasks them with earning the most points possible over 5 rounds. Each round players will take two birds of their colour, and pull two more birds out from a bag as their options for the round. Then, turn by turn, players will place one of the birds they control onto the various tiles on the table. Once everyone is done placing their birds, each tile is evaluated for majority. Whoever has the most birds on a tile will earn the top billing of points, but there’s a small catch. Players who have tied amounts of birds will cancel each other out, denying each other from scoring any points at all.
In addition to placing your birds, if you happen to have control of an animal, you can activate an animal you control once per round. The timing of animal activation can be critical, as a late activation gives players precious little time to react to your moves. But you can only do one free action per turn, meaning if you control multiple animals you’ll need to figure out which one you want to use and when. The animal element adds layers to the territory control aspect, as most of them will allow you to move, remove, or even swap anyone’s birds between tiles, something that is impossible to do without the aid of an animal companion. That being said, the animals themselves aren’t worth very many points, so you need to ensure you use their powers effectively if you want to claim dominance.
That’s the core of Perch, slowly spreading out your flock to capture points and manipulate the table state to deny your opponents points. Beyond points, most of the tiles in the game also offer some benefit or twist. Some will give you control of an animal, which you can use as a free action in the next round to cause just a little bit of chaos by moving some birds, while other tiles will allow you to put extra birds into the migration bag, or will modify the first player position. Things of that nature.
There’s a lot of variability in the tiles themselves, with 24 tiles included in the game and only 8 to 13 being used per game (depending on player count), each game of Perch will feel different. Whether it’s because of the specific mix of animals available, or even just the fact that having specific tiles next to each other may influence some of the decisions you make on a game to game basis (like how the animals move). Further influencing your decisions is a secret end of game objective card that may tip the scales one way or another when you’re placing your birds.
On the subject of player count, I was initially dismayed when I saw the two player mode of the game included a neutral third player, which the rulebook deems a “Bird-brained player”. What this actually amounts to is a third colour going into the bag, which may work its way into both players hands, to be used by both to deny each other the sweet, sweet majorites.
Perch is not a strategic game, not really. So much of Perch is reacting to what the other players have done, because the other players presence in each of the tiles is so wildly important. Each round you’re only guaranteed two of your own birds to place, but just because draw other players birds out of the bag, doesn’t mean you have less control. Absolutely not, as I said before, the real dynamism of Perch’s system is the fact that ties are so punishingly cruel. If two players are just one bird off from each other on a juicy 6 point tile, you could be holding the difference between their victory and defeat. Sometimes, you plopping an extra bird onto your opponents stack gives them a majority on a tile where being 2nd is the most points, or perhaps you bump them up into a tied position, denying two opponents points.
Perhaps it should go without saying, that they could be holding your fate in their hands, also. While I do think it’s generally more advantageous to have more birds out on the field, a clever player will be able to gerrymander their way to victory. While I enjoyed the freedom of having control over other players birds and using their own tokens against them, or having the ability to use my birdhouse on my opponents to lock down one of their sacks, I couldn’t help but feel frustrated when I pulled two of my opponents birds, and my opponent pulled two of their own birds too. 6 of their birds to 2 of mine in one rounds felt like a violent swing. That’s only really present in the 2 player game though, at higher player counts there’s usually the same number of birds going into the bag than are coming out.
The system of tied players cancelling each other out reminds me a lot of Las Vegas by Rüdiger Dorn. But what Perch lacks in comparison to Las Vegas is the levity introduced by the push-your-luck randomness of rolling a fistful of dice. Perch instead revels in its deterministic cruelty. There is no randomness in Perch, everything you can do right in the open. This means there won’t be any surprise backstab moments. You’ll watch as your opponents push their knife into your plans, and you’re powerless to stop it.
The first two rounds in Perch feel inconsequential. You’ll plop out the 4 birds that have been allocated to you, not really being able to control or effect the game state too drastically. But by the time the 3rd round hits, suddenly everything is contested. Strongholds have been established, and dramatic upsets are starting to take place. The animals have been deployed, shaking up the stability of the flock. Every tile at the end of the game balances on a knifes edge, as you have many options to affect everything, but so do your opponents. It’s deterministic, making it hard to really surprise people. Instead, it’s more of a game of forking your opponents. Putting everyone into a disadvantageous position, no matter what they choose. It’s gratifying watching someone give up one battlefield to concentrate their energies somewhere else.
I think my favourite rule in Perch is that the player with the least amount of points each round is the last player in the next round. In curling terms, this is called ‘having the hammer’. The last player to make a move means no one will be able to undercut or thwart their plans. This is a pleasant bit of power that allows the player in last place catch up, even if just a little bit. But if someone had a commanding lead over the highest scoring tile, it can be nearly impossible to catch them, considering you’re only guaranteed 2 of your own birds each round. But when you do manage to orchestrate an upset, oh boy is it ever satisfying.
If you’re already a fan of area majority games like El Grande, there’s a lot to love in Perch. It offers new twists and some exciting variability to the gameplay. I appreciate that it only takes 10 minutes to teach, and plays about an hour. Also, the production is pretty great too. The insert has a removable well for the birds to live in, the birds themselves stack so you can easily see who is winning on each tile, and the non-bird animals are acrylic standees, each one featuring their own lovely artwork.
Perch is a game of sharp elbows hidden by soft feathers. It’s artwork and presentation creates a deceptively calm table presence, but its gameplay reveals constant, low-grade tension as every placement threatens every other player at the table. It thrives not on long-term planning, but on reading the table, seizing small opportunities, and knowing exactly when to ruin someone else’s perfect setup. It won’t scratch the itch for players looking for deep strategic arcs or satisfy players who delight in executing carefully laid plans, but for those who enjoy reactive, tactical games, Perch is a compelling game. By the end, the branches are crowded, the margins are razor-thin, and every point feels contested and well-earned.
That’s probably how the seagulls feel when they steal my french fries, now that I think about it.
The expansion to Perch, Perch: Birds of Play is on Kickstarter now
Once upon a time, I was learning about the difference between lived experiences and observed experiences. The teacher split the class in half. One group sat back and recorded what they saw, while the other group had to run up a staircase, breathing only through a straw. Then the class switched roles.
Unsurprisingly, the observers didn’t quite grasp how difficult the task really was until they experienced it themselves. And that lesson came back to me when I sat down to play Tearable Quest, designed by Shintaro Ono, with art by Sai Beppu, and published by Allplay in 2025.
Because on the surface, Tearable Quest looks like nothing. You get a sheet of paper absolutely littered with icons like swords, spells, slimes, goblins, bows, and so on. Your job is to rip out only the icons you need to score points. Each round introduces a different monster with specific scoring requirements, alongside a boss card that’s always available to be tackled, tied to its own icons. Over three two minute rounds, you’re trying to earn the most points by carefully tearing out exactly what you need to match those recipes.
And I do mean exactly.
You can’t have extra icons present in your piece. You can’t have half an icon. It has to be a clean, precise tear of only what’s required. Which sounds easy until you actually try it. The timer starts, you identify what the recipe is, then look down at the sheet. The paper is cluttered, the icons you want are never conveniently grouped together, so you end up carving these awkward zig-zag paths through the paper, trying to isolate just the right pieces without ruining everything around them. To make matters worse, if you flip the sheet over you’ll find treasures that boost your score and curses that bring it back down, adding another layer of consideration to every rip.
Now, Tearable Quest is not just about precision, it’s about speed. You’ll be halfway through a tear, trying to grab one more icon for maximum points, and suddenly you realize there are only a few seconds left. Do you commit to your rip and risk everything, or do you play it safe and just lock in what you have? That tension, that split-second decision-making, is where my heart started to flutter and a smile crossed my face.
And all of this ripping and tearing is happening on a single sheet of paper that has to last you all three rounds. If you go too hard too early, you’ll massacre your page, and you might not have anything usable left in the later rounds. But if you’re too cautious, you fall behind. It creates this surprisingly compelling push and pull between greed and restraint that I wasn’t expecting at all.
That’s where the lived experience hits. From the outside, Tearable Quest looks like a throwaway gimmick. Ripping paper as a game mechanic sounds more like a novelty than something you’d actually want to play. But once you’re in it and the clock is ticking and your hands fumble as you try to make clean, efficient tears, you start to notice how awkwardly fun the game is. You’ll curse how big your thumbs feel. How unpredictable ripping paper can be. How badly you want just one more icon before that timer runs out. You’ll feel jubilant that you managed to complete your rip before the timer runs out, but you’ll flip the paper over and find 2 curses, rendering your score nil. Oh, the hubris…
The art plays a big role in selling the experience. Sai Beppu’s illustrations are bright, cartoonish, and disarming in a way that makes the whole thing feel playful rather than ridiculous. You’re still an adult sitting there gleefully ripping up paper, but the game leans into that energy instead of fighting it, and it works wonderfully.
There isn’t a huge amount of variety here. There are two different sheets to play with, four different monsters (you’ll use 3 during each game), and half a dozen bosses. There are some bonus cards to mix things up, but the core experience doesn’t really change. You’re always doing the same thing, ripping, optimizing, and hoping you’ve left yourself enough icons to work with for the next round. It’s always a bit frantic, certainly a bit messy, and very consistent in the experience that it offers.
That consistency is part of its charm. It’s light, it’s quick, and it never feels like too much. You’re not going to build a whole game night around Tearable Quest, but it’s really easy to fit into the beginning or end of one. Because it’s so light and fast, It’s the kind of game you’re almost never going to refuse, even if you’ve already played it a few times.
Tearable quest is charming and genuinely unique. I can’t think of anything else that turns ripping up a piece of paper into the main event and actually makes it fun. And honestly, it doesn’t really need to be anything more than that.
Disclaimer – A copy of 3 Witches was provided by the designer
One of the things I love about trick-taking games is how effortlessly they get to the table. You generally get a deck of cards and deal most if not all the cards out. The teach is usually something along the lines of “It’s a trick-taking game, but here’s the twist…” and you’re off. The bones of trick-taking games are familiar: follow suit, win tricks, claim victory. Sure, each game brings its own little wrinkles that make each one unique and interesting, but the foundations of the games are usually comforting and intuitive.
3 Witches is not that game.
Or rather, it eventually is. But before you can enjoy the clever little mind games, you need to wrap your head around a teach that feels less like “here’s the twist” and more like “Let me read to you this complex spell from a potion making textbook”
To begin a round of 3 Witches, shuffle the 18-card deck and deal all the cards evenly to three players. Everyone checks their hand and whomever is holding the Elixir card declares that fact. That player doesn’t automatically control the round, though. In fact, they’re now the last player to bid.
Starting with the player to the left of the Elixir holder, they have the option to bid or pass. When it comes to bidding, a player can bid to win either 3 or 4 tricks. If they bid 3 tricks, the subsequent players have an opportunity to bid 4 and take control of the lead position, or pass. Any player who bids 4 tricks automatically ends the bidding round.
Whoever wins the bid becomes the Lead Witch for the round. The other two players form a temporary alliance as the Lesser Witches. The Lead Witch places the bid card in front of them to signify their role. And then the wyrdness begins.
Each trick in 3 Witches is played in a very particular order:
The Lead Witch plays two cards:
One face up (this establishes the lead suit)
One face down (kept secret for now)
The first Lesser Witch must follow suit if able.
If they cannot follow suit, they pass for the moment.
The second Lesser Witch plays a card (following suit if possible).
If the first Lesser Witch had to pass earlier, they now play a card.
The Lead Witch reveals their face-down card.
Now the trick is resolved, but not quite in the usual way. Winning the trick isn’t simply about playing the highest card of the lead suit. 3 Witches uses a small value formula involving the combination of cards played. For example, if two cards of the same suit are involved, they combine their values. The same happens if the two cards played are the same value. If the two cards played are different suits and different numbers, then only the highest value of those cards counts toward determining the winner. Compare the final values, and whoever is higher wins the trick. Also the Lead Witch always wins ties.
It’s clever. It’s quite unintuitive. And the first time you play, everyone will be absolutely glued to their player aids.
After a trick is resolved, the winner gets a bit of control over the tempo of the round.
If the Lesser Witches win the trick, they return one of the Lead Witch’s cards to the Lead Witch’s hand.
If the Lead Witch wins, they secretly choose one of the two cards they played and return it to their hand face down.
That’s right, the Lead Witches cards cycle back. This mechanism gives 3 Witches its delicious tension. Every trick is not only about winning or losing; it’s about which card you want to reclaim and how that will influence the remaining tricks.
Each round lasts for exactly five tricks, then scoring happens. If the Lead Witch makes their bid exactly (the three or four tricks they called, absolutely no more and no less), then they score 2 points. If the Lead Witch misses their bid, each of the lesser witches score 1 point each.
Then, shuffle, redeal, and start the bidding phase again. The game continues until one player hits 5 points, at which point the coven crowns its leader.
3 Witches is a game of temporary alliances and working together to control the narrative. Because each round is only 5 tricks, and the Lead Witch needs to win 3 or 4 of those tricks, the lesser witches need to work together to force the Lead Witch into losing, or, winning too hard.
I know some people find the phrase “knife fight in a phone booth” to be a cliché and overused way to describe close quarters conflict. So instead, I’ll say that 3 Witches is a fistfight in an elevator. At 18 cards, it’s much easier to count cards and deduce information based on what the other two players have already played. More than once during my plays I was able to path out exactly how I could win a round as a Lead Witch, if, and only if, two specific cards were in the same hand.
There’s a ton of smart design in 3 Witches. From the minute 18 card deck that really encourages players to count cards, to having 5 suits with 3 to 4 cards each, to the player with the elixir being the last one to bid, so much of the game design and rules shows that there has been a lot of thought put into every aspect of this small card game. Everything is so finite, so considered, it’s really an impressive showcase of design work by Corey Young.
Contributing to that “wrestling match in a broom closet” feeling is the fact that each round is only five tricks long. The moment the first trick hits the table and cards start revealing themselves, you can feel the decision space tighten. Your options constrict. Unsettling certainty creeps in. As the Lead Witch, you might struggle to lose even a single trick. At the start of a round you might feel chuffed holding two 5s, but the moment you accidentally scoop a trick you were trying to duck, the panic sets in. Suddenly you’re not trying to win, you’re trying to win precisely.
And that’s where 3 Witches feels most exciting.
The 18-card deck means information moves fast. With so few cards in circulation, you can count, deduce, and sometimes even map out the exact path to victory. More than once I’ve sat there as the Lead Witch thinking, This works… but only if those two specific cards are in the same hand. It becomes much less about hoping and more about calculating.
There’s a ton of smart design packed into this tiny box. Five suits with only three or four cards each. The Elixir holder bidding last. The cycling card mechanism that prevents clean attrition. Everything feels deliberate. Considered. Tight. It’s an impressive showcase of design work by Corey Young. The production by AllPlay is svelte too. A tiny box of cards and 12 cardboard chits makes 3 Witches a game that feels far bigger than its footprint.
I also love how dynamic the table politics feel. The Lead Witch changes every round, which keeps the semi-cooperative tension fresh. Winning as a Lesser Witch feels easier, but in doing so you’re handing a point to a rival. Taking the Lead Witch role is thrilling because you can leap ahead with two points. But if you fail, both of your opponents inch closer to their victory. Every bid feels loaded. Every trick feels consequential.
I really appreciate 3 Witches. I love how sharp it feels, how finite and intentional every decision is. It’s not an effortless teach, and I suspect that the strict three-player count will keep it from ever becoming a universal classic. But in the right setting, with those who enjoy kickboxing in a cardboard box, that is to say, counting cards, weaving in and out of tight margins, and that delicious feeling of trying to thread a needle under pressure, 3 Witches absolutely sings.
Perhaps this is a byproduct of playing entirely too many games on Board Game Arena, or maybe I’ve just become more sensitive to it since having kids and watching my sleep health deteriorate entirely, but I hate hidden trackable information in board games.
First, a definition.
Hidden Trackable Information (HTI) refers to information that everyone at the table could be tracking and therefore knows with 100% certainty, but which is deliberately hidden. I’m not talking about drawing cards into your hand in Ticket to Ride, even if you use the public market every turn, because you could still be drawing blindly from the deck, and that information is hidden.
What I mean is something more like Puerto Rico, where scores are completely trackable, but for some reason the scores are told to be hidden. Or For Sale, where you can, and probably should, be tracking how much money each player is paying at each auction, and therefore how much money they have left for future bids, but the rules insist on keeping your bank accounts private.
Here’s my real problem with hidden trackable information: I’m dumb. And I play games with really smart people.
I don’t mind losing because I made tactical errors, or because randomness bit me in the ass. I can handle that just fine. But when I lose because I wasn’t able to keep every piece of data in my head while my opponents were successfully counting cards or tracking points, it feels incredibly discouraging.
A good example is El Grande. Players drop cubes into the castle, and when it’s time to score, the cubes are revealed and whoever has the majority scores the points. I find it deeply frustrating to sit there trying to remember who put cubes in and how many. Should I commit three cubes because I think that puts me into the majority? Should I commit four just to be safe? If I had been writing this down as players added cubes, I’d be able to make an informed decision instead of guessing based on vibes and vibes alone.
As most parents do, I’m going to blame my children.
Over the past five years, my sleep has been constantly interrupted by rugrats. Unfortunately for me, no one else in my game group has kids. They usually show up to game night well rested and emotionally stable, ready for a long game of cold calculations. Meanwhile, I’m crawling in on four hours of sleep because my five-year-old was awake for three hours from 1am to 4am, terrified she was going to swallow her first loose tooth (true story).
Some people have very strong opinions about hidden trackable information. I’m always surprised by the ferocity with which people will defend games that use HTI, and rail against the mere idea of someone using a memory aid or taking notes.
“It makes games so much less enjoyable!” “memory is a skill! That’s part of playing the game!”
In furtherance of me being dumb, playing a lot of board games online has absolutely made my brain lazy. The Yucata version of El Grande shows you exactly what’s in the castle at all times, because, ostensibly, you could be tracking that information yourself. BGA has a notes feature built right into the interface, allowing you to jot things down at any time. Somewhat ironically, I almost never use it, but I’m glad it’s there, especially for those async games that stretch over weeks.
The most common defences of HTI seem to be that it reduces analysis paralysis and prevents king making. If everyone knows exactly who’s winning, the table will pile on the leader. If all information is open, players might spend far more time puzzling out the optimal move instead of trusting their gut and just playing the game. To me, this sounds like the defence of well rested players relying on their more simple compatriots making mistakes to cement their victory.
So where is the line? When is hidden trackable information okay?
Would you allow someone to look through a discard pile to check whether a card had already been played, and they just missed it? Would you allow a player to look into their bag in Orléans or Automobiles to confirm what cubes they even have available to them?
If you let someone shift through their discard pile, would you let them look through the previously played tricks to see if that jack of hearts had already been played? Some games like Cat in the Box are very friendly to players like me, because they include a whole board for everyone to track what cards have already been played.
Now, I will concede that playing El Grande with perfect information makes the reveal much less exciting. Sometimes imperfect information really does create a different, and occasionally better, experience. I’ll also concede that taking this argument to its logical extreme is annoying. I absolutely don’t want to play with someone who’s maintaining a full spreadsheet of which cards have appeared and which ones I’ve drafted while playing Star Realms. As with most things, nuance matters.
Some games only work with HTI. Trio, for instance, should be a simple game of memory, but for some reason it makes me feel like my brain is melting out of my ears. But the game only really shines when players are making mistakes and struggling to remember if they already know what someone’s lowest card is. The ever shifting information of players hands helps facilitate that feeling as well. Similarly, Wandering Towers would be really boring if those towers were clear.
As with all things, context matters. I’m generally pretty against HTI in economic euro games, because the purpose or goal of those games are to be the most efficient, and obscuring some information goes against the spirit of the game. In other, less mathematical games, where the purpose of the game is to evoke specific feelings, then HTI makes sense.
But in my opinion, someone who insists on preserving HTI and then wins because of my poor memory is no better than someone winning a game because their opponent forgot a rule and had a critical turn derailed. I’d much rather win or lose with everyone playing at their best, rather than because someone couldn’t remember how many cubes were dropped into a tower.
All of this said, I’m speaking from a place of privilege. No one at my table suffers from serious analysis paralysis. No one quarterbacks co-op games. No one is deliberately exploiting information asymmetry to bully less confident players. I’m not arguing that HTI is always bad, or that it should be purged from game design entirely.
But I am saying this: if the deciding factor in a strategy game is who remembered better, or who was able to silently run a second game in their head while also playing the first one, then that’s not a test of strategy I find especially compelling anymore.
I want to win or lose because I made better decisions with the information in front of me. I want my mistakes to be tactical, not neurological. When a game rewards someone for tracking numbers in their head while pretending they aren’t there, it doesn’t feel clever to me, it feels exclusionary.
Maybe that’s the sleep deprivation talking. Maybe it’s too many games on BGA. Or maybe it’s just that, at this stage of my life, I’m less interested in proving I can remember how many cubes went into a tower three rounds ago, and more interested in making interesting choices right now. If that means occasionally letting players look into their bag and confirm the information that was available to them all along? I’m fine with that. I’d rather play a game where everyone can see the whole picture, than one where the real contest is who forgot the least.
