I’ve been slowly amassing a collection of board games, and through playing them I have a rough idea of where they all stand in my own subjective ranking. But I’ve realised that actually ranking them against each other is a fruitless task, as two different games often fill two completely different purposes in my collection. How can you possibly directly compare Dune Imperium and Wandering Towers for example?
Enjoyability & Accessibility
These are the two cores that I will use to review a board game. To clarify, I’m not judging on their levels of raw enjoyability or accessibility, I’m determining what kind of enjoyment and accessibility they provide, and explaining how they provide it and how well they provide it.
One thing to note is that accessibility is a smaller factor for people who play a lot of board games. But unless you only plan on playing board games with similarly minded people, accessibility turns out to be a huge factor in how often that board game comes off that shelf.
Kinds of Enjoyability
A game can have multiple kinds of enjoyability, but they usually have one main one. I’ve separated the games into different pages according to their main kind of enjoyability.
Brain Burner
These games let you enjoy solving puzzles, big or small.
- These puzzles can be quite literal puzzles, or just the puzzle of figuring out the best move in a situation given the information.
- Randomness is applied tactfully to ensure solving the puzzle doesn’t feel pointless.
- Solving the puzzle makes you feel smart.
Schadenfreude
These games let you enjoy your friends’ misfortune.
- The misfortune is spread somewhat equally amongst players, to ensure one person doesn’t bear the brunt of it.
- The misfortune is immediate but doesn’t have a lasting impact on the ability to play the game.
Gambling
These games let you enjoy gambling and pushing your luck and occasionally winning big when if pays off.
- The choice between pushing your luck and not is interesting and relies or gut far more than calculation.
- There is potential for big wins and big losses.
Comedy
These games let you enjoy being funny, or are themselves funny.
- These games are consistenly actually funny.
Social Deduction
These games let you enjoy figuring out which of your friends is lying, or perhaps be the one lying to all your friends and getting away with it.
- These games rely on at least some social aspect for deduction – they can’t be solved purely logically.
- Lots of room is given for differing opinions and suggestions to help the liars.
Assholery
These games let you enjoy being a dick to your friends.
- Being a dick in the game is funny to everyone, including the person on the receiving end.
- Spite can dictate moves, but can’t completely lock someone out of a game – or if it can, the game is short enough for it not to matter.
Builder
These games let you enjoy building something you can call your own.
- What you’ve built is personal to you.
- What you’ve built can’t be easily destroyed by others or the game.
Dexterity
These games let you enjoy putting your dexterity skills to work.
- The dexterity aspect is challenging but fair.
- The dexterity acts are fun to do and succeed with, and funny to fail.
Stress
These games let you enjoy the adrenaline rush and craziness that comes with stressful situations.
- These games get the adrenaline pumping in a good way.
Interactive
These games let you enjoy figuring what your friends are planning, and adapting your play based on that.
- Information is open enough to have give you ideas on what your friends are planning.
- You are able to act on your thoughts on other people’s plans.
Thematic
These games let you enjoy the theme the game provides.
- The theme is spread throughout the whole game, immersing you in it as you play.
Story
These games let you enjoy the story the game provides.
- The story is well written and interesting to the players playing the game.
Kinds of Accessibility
Accessibilty categories come it pairs - while sometimes one category in the pair is clearly the “negative” one, this is not always the case. Falling in the middle would give no accessibility category.
Cooperative / Competitive
Self explanatory from the title. Note that cooperative games often have low downtime.
Short / Long
A short game I’d define as one that can play in under 30 minutes; a long game in over 1.5 hours.
Short Teach / Long Teach
A short teach I’d define as one that lasts under 2 minutes, a long teach lasts over 10 minutes.
Low Downtime / High Downtime
Low downtime means you’re always doing something in the game. This may be because turns come round very often, or because in between turns there’s always something to think about. This results in a very engaging game that does not leave much room for boredom or other discussion.
High downtime means you’re often not doing anything in the game. Turns come round infrequently and in between turns there’s not too much to think about. This results in an “in the background” game that can get boring but also can leave room for discussion on other things.
I personally hate high downtime games, but I understand that some people want to just sit around Wingspan for 4 hours discussing life.
Forgiving / Punishing
A forgiving game does not punish you too hard for not playing the best move. It allows for turns where you just make a simple move because your brain is rebooting and you’ll think next turn, and it lets less experienced players not immediately lose.
A punishing game rewards skill and concentration in the game by punishing those without.
RNG Light / RNG Heavy
An RNG Light game is one that relies more on the skill of the players and the decisions of the players to determine the game. Note that these games can still feel “random” when your fellow players do not do what you expect them to.
An RNG Heavy game is one that includes a large amount of luck in the game. Luck is usually the deciding factor in who wins (not at all always a bad thing).