Have you ever played Wordle? Of course you have, everyone has! But imagine how that puzzle changes if, somewhere in the feedback step, the game was allowed to lie to you. Not constantly, not chaotically, but just enough misinformation to make you doubt everything you think you know. That’s the core idea sitting at the centre of Fiction by Peter C. Hayward, published by AllPlay in 2023, and it’s a clever hook that immediately reframes the very familiar experience of Wordle into something a little more mischievous.
The version I’ve been playing is Fiction: Banned Books, which draws its words from excerpts of historically challenged or banned literature. It’s a nice bit of flavour, at least on paper, and gives the game a slightly literary framing, even if that theme doesn’t always carry through in a meaningful way during play. At its heart, though, Fiction is a deduction word game where one player takes on the role of the “Lie-brarian,” while everyone else works together to uncover the hidden five-letter word.
If you’ve played Wordle, the structure will feel immediately familiar. The Lie-brarian secretly writes down a five-letter word and provides the group with a starting letter. From there, the other players begin making guesses, submitting five-letter words in an attempt to narrow down the possibilities. After each guess, the Lie-brarian provides feedback on every letter, whether it’s not in the word, in the word but in the wrong position, or correctly placed. Just like you’d expect. The twist in Fiction is that for every single guess, the Lie-brarian must lie exactly once.
That single rule does a surprising amount of heavy lifting. It takes what would otherwise be a straightforward deduction puzzle that already works perfectly as an app, and injects just enough uncertainty to keep everyone second-guessing themselves. As the guessers, you might feel like you’re closing in on the solution, only to realize that one piece of information doesn’t quite fit. Maybe you’ve been banking on an C being somewhere in the word, but then suddenly you realize that it’s impossible. Maybe a pattern you were building toward starts to unravel.
The guessers aren’t completely at the mercy of the Lie-brarian, though. Each team has access to a small pool of “Fact or Fiction” tokens, which they can use at any time to challenge a specific piece of feedback from the most recent guess. Point to a letter, spend a token, and the Lie-brarian must reveal whether that particular clue was truthful or the required lie. It’s a powerful tool, but a limited one, and deciding when to use it becomes a key part of the puzzle. Sometimes you’re looking to confirm a strong suspicion; other times you’re just trying to find any solid ground to build from.
Both sides of the table have their own challenges to overcome. As the Lie-brarian, you’re trying to be consistent in your deception. You need to mislead the group just enough to slow them down, but not so much that your lies contradict each other and you give the whole plot away. There’s a subtle art to choosing which letter to falsify. Do you obscure something important, or do you plant a small, believable seed that sends the group in the wrong direction? At the same time, you have to keep track of every lie you’ve told, making sure that your future responses contradict don’t accidentally expose the truth.
And then there’s the simple challenge of remembering to lie exactly once per guess. It sounds straightforward, but in practice it’s surprisingly easy to slip up, either by forgetting to lie at all or by accidentally lying twice in a single guess. Either mistake can throw off the structure of the game, though I can’t blame the game for my own mental inadequacies. It’s a small mental load, but it’s always there, and it’s caused a couple resets when the Lie-brarian realizes their folly.
On the other side of the table, the guessers can quickly find themselves tied in knots. Without any constraints, it’s easy for a group to fall into long discussions, analyzing every possibility, debating every letter, and trying to untangle which piece of information might be the lie. That’s where the inclusion of a timer really helps. By putting a limit on how long players can deliberate, the game forces decisions to be made before everything is perfectly understood. Those slightly rushed guesses often generate more useful information than perfectly optimized ones would, and they keep the pace moving in a way that the game really benefits from.
The one area where Fiction feels a little underproofed is its theme, at least in this Banned Books version. While I appreciate the inclusion of classic works like 1984 and Animal Farm, and there’s a certain charm in reading the excerpts as the Lie-brarian, the actual gameplay doesn’t meaningfully connect to that theme. In practice, the words could just as easily come from a generic list, and the experience wouldn’t change at all. It’s not a problem, exactly, but it does make the theme feel more like a light wrapper than something integral to the design.
As a group Wordle-style experience, though, Fiction works really well. The idea of introducing a single lie into each round is simple, elegant, and surprisingly effective at transforming the very familiar puzzle into something more interactive. It creates moments of doubt, sparks discussion, and gives both sides of the table meaningful decisions to make. And once you’ve gotten a hang of the core game, there are asymmetric player powers for both the Lie-brarian and the guessers that adds a bit more texture and chaos to the experience.
That said, I’m not entirely convinced it’s the word game I’d reach for most often. Even within Peter C. Hayward’s own catalogue, I find myself more drawn to Things in Rings, which scratches a similar itch in a way that resonates more with me. But if you’re looking for a one-versus-many deduction game with a clever twist on a familiar formula, Fiction is easy to recommend. It takes something you already understand and adds just enough uncertainty to make it feel new again.
Quo Vadis was a 1992 game about ‘politics and intrigue in ancient Rome’, and boy. Does it look like a game from 1992. A flat marble texture on the front, faded stock image of people in white robes, and a graphic design that looks like it was created directly in Microsoft Excel.
Thankfully, in 2023 Bitewing Games crowdfunded a reimplementation, Zoo Vadis, ‘politics and intrigue in the animal kingdom’. And I’ll be honest, I never really gave this game a second look. Even knowing the designer was Reiner Knizia, I just am not interested in heavy negotiation games. Any game that features wheeling and dealing, or swindling, or even just loose trading rules don’t interest me. I hate the idea that my game can be hamstrung by someone else’s pure refusal to barter with me. I so much prefer games where the actions and consequences are clear and well-defined.
And yet, I’m smitten. In Zoo Vadis, players control an animal faction as they slowly move from the bottom of their zoo cages to the very top. The only way to move along these paths, however, is with the blessing of the pen that you’re currently in. Each pen has a number of spaces, and in order to move ahead, you need votes equal to the majority of your pen. So if your pen has 5 available spaces, you’d need 3 votes to move your animal out of that pen. If you control 3 of the animals in that pen, then it’s easy. You give yourself the thumbs up and move along peacefully.
But that’s very unlikely to happen. Instead, you’ll need to broker deals with those in your cage. The rules for this exchange are wonderfully loose, but also, non-binding. You promise favours, create mutually beneficial situations, and set the price for every single vote, but anything that cannot be transacted on this specific turn, becomes non-binding. If you agree on 2 votes for movement right now, there’s no taking that back. But if you promise to give someone votes later, there’s nothing holding you to that promise (other than the shame of being untrustworthy, of course).
Between each pen are victory point tokens, and the animal who moves along the path gets to scoop up that token. The animals who did give you a vote also get one point from the bank, presumably it’s the karmic benefit of being an aggregable party.
Each player also has their own special faction ability, but there’s quite a twist. In Zoo Vadis, you may never use your own player power. Instead, it’s a bargaining chip for you to dole out to your opponents. A rule-breaking, potentially game swinging feather in your cap. It’s a wonderful twist on the system, giving players somewhat intangible benefits to trade with instead of only the victory points and positioning.
All this is wrapped together in a beautiful package, with amazing art by the talented Kwanchai Moriya and thick, sturdy ani-meeples. It’s an attractive game, with rules that are simple enough to be taught quickly in the midst of a crowded convention hall. Which is perfect because Zoo Vadis shines at the higher player counts.
The goal of the game is to amass the most victory points. But if you yourself don’t manage to get one of your meeples into the pen at the top of the board, you are ineligible for victory. It may be tempting to fill up the bottom of the board with all of your meeples so you can influence every movement, but neglecting to move yourself will spell disaster. Conversely, greedily rushing up the board may get you into the prize pen, but you’ll have a lot less influence among the bottom of the board.
Now, because you can’t always rely on your fellow players to play nicely, there’s a neutral party in play. The peacocks. They sit on spots, and you either pay them 2 points for a vote, or, chose to move them up the tracks, taking up precious spots further up the chain.
Zoo Vadis ends when the prize pen is full. And there’s a delicious ramp up to the end of the game. After the first two or three meeples make their way into the pen, new players won’t feel the jaws of defeat closing in on them. Little do they know that it’s not uncommon for three or more players to rush those neutral peacocks into position, and then use special powers to suddenly fill up the final slots, bringing Zoo Vadis to a sudden conclusion.
I can only speculate, but I have to assume that Zoo Vadis will play differently with different groups. If someone is being a jerk, then players will leave the game with bad feelings. If someone just refuses to participate, again, the experience will suffer. I don’t think the onus is on the game to facilitate a good experience, but it’s something to be aware of. If you have a group of friendly, but loudmouthed people who like to haggle, then Zoo Vadis is a pretty special experience.
Unlike most modern euro games, Zoo Vadis is pure player interaction. Nothing really happens unless other players allow it, and if someone is doing something the whole group wants to prevent, then there are plenty of ways to stymie their progress. You can negotiate with multiple parties at the same time, make promises for future favours, and trade those favours away. The player powers don’t necessarily feel balanced, but because everything is up for negotiation, Zoo Vadis is almost self-balancing. Some powers are obviously attractive and sought after, while others will require that players sell the possibilities to the others.
It’s almost a crime, how good Zoo Vadis is, compared to how simple the rules are. There’s not much more than a board and victory point chits, and yet, Zoo Vadis has left a strong impression on me. Zoo Vadis hasn’t converted me into a negotiation gamer, but it has convinced me that, in the right hands, negotiation can be brilliant. I feel like Zoo Vadis is the exception, not the rule when it comes to negotiation games, but I will say that I am happy to have finally found a negotiation game that elicits joy in my heart.
A copy of Mountain Goats and The Big Mountain expansion was provided by AllPlay for review purposes.
The last time I talked about Mountain Goats, I framed it in comparison to Can’t Stop. On the surface that comparison makes sense, both games involve rolling four dice and moving pieces up numbered tracks. But the more I’ve played Mountain Goats, the more I’ve come to realize how much of a disservice that framing actually does to it. The similarities are superficial. Underneath, they’re trying to create very different experiences.
Can’t Stop is one of the purest push-your-luck games ever designed. The entire experience revolves around that moment where you ask yourself if you should roll the dice one more time, knowing full well you might bust and lose all the progress you’ve made. The tension comes from risk and greed. Mountain Goats, on the other hand, isn’t really about that kind of gamble at all. If I had to place it in a category, it feels much closer to a light area control game. Yes, you still roll four dice every turn, but the way you use those dice is far more flexible. If you roll a four and a five, you can combine them to climb the ten track twice, or push the five track four times, or split them up and advance on both. There’s none of the rigid pairing that defines Can’t Stop, and because of that freedom you’re rarely stuck without options.
That flexibility means you’re almost never losing entire turns. Sure, sometimes the dice won’t cooperate. Like, you might be desperate for a nine and just can’t seem to roll the right combination, but there’s almost always something productive you can do with what you’ve rolled. The game itself is made up of six numbered tracks, and each player is trying to climb those tracks with their goats. For most of the climb nothing particularly dramatic happens. As long as you’re somewhere along the track and not sitting at the summit, you aren’t earning points, but you’re also completely safe. No one can block your movement, knock you down, or interfere with your progress in any way.
That is, until you reach the top.
Once your goat hits the summit of a track, that position starts generating points for you every time you commit dice to that number, and will keep doing so for as long Mas you remain there. The catch, of course, is that the summit of each track only has room for one goat. The next player who manages to climb to the top immediately knocks your goat all the way back down to the bottom. That’s where the real tension in Mountain Goats lives: sitting comfortably at the top of the mountain, collecting points while watching the other players inch closer to you from below with daggers held between their teeth.
Those moments can get surprisingly dramatic. It can feel quite tense, sitting at the summit when only one or two points remain in the stack, while two opponents are parked on the space just below you. Every roll of the dice, both yours and your opponents, has small prayer whispered that they don’t hit the number they need. When they miss the roll, and you manage to drain the last points from the pile before they can take your place, it feels fantastic. It’s not a huge, bombastic victory, you won’t be jumping out of your chair and shout your victory, but you surely will exhale out your nose, smugly satisfied that your gambit paid off.
There are also bonus points available for players who manage to reach the summit of every single track at least once. Completing that full set awards a nice chunk of points, though in practice I’ve often found it more efficient to focus on one track and squeeze as much value out of it as possible. Spreading yourself across the board means investing multiple actions just to climb into position, and sometimes that effort feels like it could have been better spent reinforcing a single scoring engine.
The Big Mountain expansion introduces another wrinkle to the decision-making. It adds a separate mountain track off to the side with spaces numbered from eleven to twenty-four. Whenever you want, you can commit one of your goats to that mountain by climbing onto one of those spaces, but doing so requires combining dice in larger values to reach those numbers. At the end of the game, the player who sits the highest on that mountain earns a sizeable point bonus.
There’s an important catch, though: you don’t get extra goats for this track. If you want to send one to the Big Mountain, you have to remove it from the main game. This is supposed to create an interesting little risk-reward moment. Maybe you’d rather sacrifice the chance to keep scoring on a regular track in order to secure those endgame points. In theory, it sets up a tug-of-war between short-term scoring options and long-term positioning.
In practice, what often happens is the big mountain lays empty until one or two of the point piles on the main board run out entirely, those goats naturally migrate over to the Big Mountain because they no longer have anywhere else to score. Part of me wishes there were a rule preventing goats from leaving the summit for the big mountain once they’ve reached it, just to create a stronger push-and-pull between staying put for points and abandoning that position for the endgame race. Still, even without that tension dialled up, the expansion fits so nicely into the base game.
The Big Mountain is the kind of expansion I immediately folded into the base game and haven’t looked back since. It adds very little rules overhead but solves a niggling little pain points that I had with the base game. Like, What are you supposed to do when one of the tracks runs out of points, what happens when your dice rolls don’t line up with the available tracks, especially if you roll four 6’s. The Big Mountain gives those scenarios a natural outlet, and because of that it feels a lot less like an add-on, and more like something that has been there all along.
One small surprise about Mountain Goats is the physical footprint it creates on the table. The box itself is tiny, a small square only slightly thicker than most card game boxes, but much smaller in length and width. You might reasonably assume that means the game itself would be similarly compact, but you’d be mistaken! Once you lay out the twenty cards that form the mountain tracks, the game demands more table space than its box would suggest. It’s not quite the portable pub or airplane game that the packaging might imply. This isn’t really a complaint so much as an observation. It’s a small box that stores everything neatly, and respects my limited shelf space, and then sprawls into a surprisingly large play area once the game begins. My expectations were simply shaped by other small-box games that tend to stay small once they hit the table.
Even with that slightly larger than expected footprint, it’s hard to not fall in love with Mountain Goats. The whole game takes between 20 and 30 minutes, serves some emotional highs and lows, the art direction is bright and playful, and the rules are easy enough to teach in just a few minutes. It’s light without feeling trivial. For such a small package, it manages to create a lot of memorable little moments, like the time you managed to drain the 6 pile before anyone could kick you off the track, locking them all out of the set bonuses for the entire game. I suspect my partner wanted to literally push me off the mountain after that game!
Let me start by saying that I adore the theme of Rebel Princess.
Classic fairy-tale princesses have generally always been trapped in a fairly grim narrative box. No matter how brave, clever, or capable they are, their ultimate “win condition” tends to be the same: get married. Roll credits. Rebel Princess turns that expectation on its head. In this game, the princesses have decided they’re done with proposals, done with princes, and absolutely not interested in settling down just because the story says they should.
What makes this theming so interesting is that it’s not just a coat of paint. The theme of Rebel Princess is built around rejecting marriage, and that idea feeds directly into the trick-taking gameplay in a way that feels intuitive. I absolutely love it when a theme informs gameplay.
Rebel Princess is a trick-taking game inspired by Hearts. If you’ve played Hearts, you’ll already understand most of the game, which is to avoid taking certain cards, because those cards will give you points. And points are bad. In Rebel Princess, those points take the form of proposals. Each prince card represents a proposal, and the goal of the game is very simple: avoid proposals at all costs.
The deck is divided into four suits, numbered one through ten. One of those suits is the Prince suit, and that’s where the trouble lies. Each prince offers exactly one proposal to the player who takes the trick containing that card. Take a prince, take a proposal. The player with the least proposals wins the game. Also, just for a bit of an added twist, the green 8 is the Frog Prince, who is worth 5 proposals when he’s won.
So far, so familiar. But Rebel Princess is so much more than a straight retheme of Hearts. It layers on a couple of systems that dramatically reshape how the game feels.
The first and most important addition is player powers. Each player takes a princess tile at the start of the game. Each of these princesses are classic literature (or if you’re a millennial like me, from the Disney movies of our childhoods). Cinderella, Pocahontas, Mulan, and many more. Each princess comes with a unique ability that modifies how you can play the game. Some let you break suit rules, some let you manipulate tricks after they’re played, and others invert the hierarchy of numbers for a specific hand.
These powers do a fantastic job of pushing Rebel Princess beyond a purely reactive trick-taking experience. You’re no longer just counting cards and tracking suits, you’re actively planning around when to use your power, who it might hurt, and how it will interact with the rest of the table. I had one game where I successfully baited out the prince of frogs, only to swap the card I played for a much lower one, sticking that player with a nasty 5 proposals. Bam, gottem.
That being said, this is also where one of my small hesitations lives. The princess powers don’t all feel equally impactful. In my plays, some princesses use their abilities maybe once or twice per game, saving them for some dramatic moments. Potentially, other princesses can forget what your power is, because you’ve gone 3 rounds without using it. Others seem to fire almost every single round. That imbalance doesn’t break the game, but it’s noticeable, especially once players become familiar with the full roster. I suspect experienced groups will gravitate toward certain princesses more than others.
The second major addition to Rebel Princess are the round cards.
At the start of each round, a round card introduces a new rule that changes how the entire hand will play out. Often this begins with a card-passing phase: pass one to three cards to your left or right. Already, that small change can dramatically reshape your hand and your plans.
Then comes the twist. Maybe this round if you manage to take no tricks at all, you immediately take five proposals. Now you HAVE to win at least one, right? Another round card could be something like, every three card you capture this round is worth negative three proposals, suddenly turning low cards into high-value targets. These rules force you to re-evaluate what “good” play even looks like from round to round.
Together, the princess powers and round cards make Rebel Princess far more dynamic than a standard trick-taking game. You probably won’t fall into a single dominant strategy. What worked last round might be actively dangerous in the next. That constant change is what makes the game feel fresh even after repeated plays.
If you’ve played a lot of classic trick-taking games, Rebel Princess turns so many of the genre’s stables on it’s head. High cards are dangerous. Winning tricks is often bad. Suddenly, you’ll find yourself desperately trying slough off your highest cards and clinging to low numbers so you can dodge those pesky suitors entirely.
There are few feelings in trick-taking more satisfying than surprising your opponents. Those moments when someone thinks they’re going to get away scott-free, only for you to stick them with 3 princes, or even better, when you suddenly play off-suit and drop that 5 proposal frog prince right into someone’s lap.
The most dramatic moment of all though, is shooting the moon.
If you manage to take every single prince and the Frog Prince, you flip the script entirely and score negative ten proposals. Pulling this off feels incredible. And the tension, as you take prince after prince, the table growing the realization that you just might pull it off, and they’re powerless to stop you…
It’s one of those moments that players will remember long after the game ends.
I’ve never played the original Hearts, but I have played a lot of trick-taking games over the years, and Rebel Princess comfortably sits among the better modern entries in the genre.
The production helps, too. The card art is charming and expressive. While every card doesn’t have unique art, each suit has its own full-card illustration, which is lovely enough. The princesses tiles themselves are full of that rogueish personality that gives the game it’s name.
With a large roster of 12 princesses and 26 round cards, Rebel Princess has a lot of variability baked in. Mixing that with the natural replayability of trick taking games, you’ll be exploring new combinations of powers and rules often.
In the end, Rebel Princess is a smart, satisfying twist on a classic formula. It’s approachable for players familiar with Hearts, but deep enough to reward repeated plays. It manages to be playful, mean, thematic, and tactical all at once. That’s not an easy balance to strike.
I give Rebel Princess a full recommendation. If you enjoy trick-taking games and are looking for one that both respects tradition and gleefully rebels against it, Rebel Princess is well worth your time.
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.
