Board games

[Raggit]

Remember those games that came on cardboard sheets that you installed on your kitchen table, and there was no sound and your hands WERE the input devices?  You know, you'd move those little pieces around and land on events and stuff, but events wouldn't happen automatically, you had to make it happen by reading cards and stuff?    Board games!

I love computer games as much as I ever did, but recently, I opened up the board game cabinet and dragged out some of my old favorite non-computer games.  "Life," "Monopoly," "Payday," "Risk," all a lot of fun even after so many years since I played them last.  And just like it was back in the day, nobody will play with me!  So I end up playing with myself a lot.  (Get your minds out of the gutter!  You knew what I meant.)

So what are some of your favorite board games?  What types do you like the best?  Money managing games?  Strategy?  Logic games?  Trivia? 

Man, it's weird to talk about these things outside the context of computers.

[CodeJunkie]

I always loved a good game of Risk or Monopoly, but alas, my brothers and parents were too old and busy to play it with me.  Still a laugh to play with your mates though.  I like a game of chess too, particularly with a nice wooden set, and a high quality chess set is something I'd like to get eventually.

I remember hating Trivial Pursuit when I was very young since the questions were so hard (I think it was some special hard edition too).  That took up most of one Christmas..ugh 

[Radiant]

Yes, I play a lot of those. I particularly like anything strategic that does not involve dice.

[He-Man]

I play a good game of Risk once in a while with a couple of friends.
The game Zombies!!! is also very good. It has a nice mood if you play with the right people.

[Alynn]

I play a lot of them still. Mostly with my daughter.

Although, while most wouldn't consider this a board game, D&D is still my drug of choice when it comes to table top play.

I'd pick a good D&D game with an awsome storyline than any MMO, FPS, or CRPG.

[space boy]

For all you boardgame geeks.

And some free stuff.

[Tuomas]

Back home, me and my dad would have occasional but frequent chess games with cups of tea. Usually he'd beat me, but it was always tight. I also play chess with my friend at times.

And I really njoy some classics like monopoly or alphabet. Trivial Pursuit is also fun, especially with people you don't know that well because it's a great way of getting to know peoples' personal interests. I've noticed that I like the history and geography questions, while most girls seem to seek onto the entertainment sections. Also, we once played who wants to be a millionaire, but it proved to be a bit too easy, having 3/4 from us eventually with fake 1 000 000 in our pockets.

My friend plays games like settlers of cataan and carcassone. They're fun, but I hate it how he really own everyone after playing them like half of his free time. Another one of my friends plays the same settlers game online, so he's rather good too.

I also remember loving to play the Hotel game where you buy rights and then later build hotels, and everyone who parks there must pay you. we made our own game once that had the same idea. The funniest part was to build the small models from matches and paper and colouring them. I've made a couple of games myself, or rather with my brother, one included a horribly big board, like 1,5x1 metres, and it was 3D after building models, with blocks size of a keyboard button. The point was I think something like building a town and going about it later for some reason, can't really remember how it went. And, my dd once made his own version of Monopoly, which I think might have been a commercial success even. It was monopoly, but more realistic, basically the quite opposite. See, the point was, that you get poorer and poorer as you go, and the point was, the last one to bankrupt would win. There were blocks like social security and lottery, also taxes, price of gasolene, you had to buy food and everything. I love how realistic it was

[Oliwerko]

Space boy - that site came to my mind immediately. I am planning to buy Axis and Allies. Kind of more complicated Risk. I love those.

For all wargamers - if nobody plays with you, you may try a PC "board game" called Steel Panthers - World at War. here: http://www.steelpanthersonline.com/main.asp   It is the best wargame I ever played. And it is FREE!!! You will have to read the manual tho 

[TerranRich]

I'm a huge Monopoly fan, and my parents got the Here & Now edition of it, where the properties cost millions instead of hundreds of dollars. Basically updated locations and every price has 4 zeros tacked on. :p But I love the game, except for the fact that dealing with money where the lowest bill is $10,000.

[Domino]

Everybody knows that Chutes and Ladders and Candy Land are the best board games ever made. 

One of my personal favorites was the game SORRY. That was alot of fun. Even though it's not a board game i want to include Jenga. Oh the fun times i had knocking down that damn tower were priceless.

[Baron]

The Game of Diplomacy is always brought out when my brothers and cousins all get together.  Sure I could back-stab people online, but it's just not the same as looking your erstwhile ally in the face and doing it.

[monkey0506]

Bored games indeed!



Actually these days I derive more enjoyment from coding with AGS than actually playing games...

[Doctor Oakroot]

I like chess and go. Scrabble is popular in my family, but I always lose - my brother was state Scrabble champion one year and my mother has been in the finals... I don't have time to get that good.

[lo_res_man]

mY mom and my step dad are scabble nuts I never quite got bit by its bug. I love monoply, I tend to win, and the few times I've played risk I have won, so either my opponints were bad or I am just got a bit of a talent for world domination, mew ha ha ha!!  We had a game of Sorry as a young lad and one of the yellow pieces was "gibbled" weirdly enough it seemed that if a player played yellow they would win more often, lucky gibble I guess I never played D+D but it sounds fun if rather complicated. Anyone besides me ever play the mad magazine game?

[Sparky]

Risk is fun. My friends and I used to pretend to be world dictators and stay up until three in the morning playing that game.

As children my brother and I sometimes made up board games. I have fond memories of that. Actually in hindsight, the pattern was more like this; I would obsess for hours over a board game, then I would spend the rest of the day trying to convince my brother to play it.

My favorite traditional game is Go. It's a lot of fun. It has an elegant, simple ruleset, but the strategy that emerges is so deep one could literally study it for a lifetime. I really like the esthetics of the game as well. I used to play every day, but there came a point where I decided I'd rather dedicate time to art and making computer games instead.

[Tuomas]

So, I was thinking of getting some fun game to my own home. When I have people over, I could make them play that one, so nothing too serious, otherwise I'd go for Monopoly. But can anyone recommend anything, perhaps just scrabble would be great, but the game should be something you can also play with 2 people because 3 isn't always available?

[LimpingFish]

Scrababble!

Scrabble is definately the group game. The Deluxe version, to lend the situation some gravitas.

[Stupot]

I've been playing a lot of Scrabble too...
only.. it's the Facebook application.. not the actual board...hehe

I was someway towards creating my own board game and it would've been great.. still might resurrect it, it could make me a small fortune.

[radiowaves]

I liked board games, but I've never been much of a monopoly fan. I have never played Risk though...

I remember board game called "Circus", it was just rolling the dice and moving the button forward according to the numbers that came... Winner was whoever got the end first. Yeah, sounds pretty boring, but there were some usual fall three steps back, etc turnbacks also Oh, and there were lots of versions of it with different themes, like "Picking mushrooms" etc.

Another simple board game was "A trip around the world" where you had to get six (I may be mistaken, don't remember exactly) buttons to home while making a full circle on board.

But my favourite was the one that someone made AGS version of recently. Chinese checkers, well, I just called it "Jumping".

And there was one different game too, where you had to toss (actually push the disks to the ground with another disc so they would fly off with force) little plastic disks into small circles. I called it "Fleas".

Oh the nostalgy. Now I am just stuck with chess only, and not very good at it either... I've been a loser all my life, my brother always beat me in that when I was little.


You know, a wonderful idea struck me while reading this thread. Why not make an adventure game as a board game? Next MAGS: make an adventure game using cardboard and felt-pens/pencils/whatever. The coolest one gets tested in Mittens or something.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

As He-Man mentioned, Zombies! is really fun, especially if you get the expanded set that essentially makes it into a pseudo ad&d game, with character sheets, stats, and items you can get and use in pre-made or custom campaigns.  It's pretty fun, but unfortunately you need quite a few people to make it worth playing.