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The other day, we had a stressed out guy drop by the store. He said he is very used to playing all kinds of strategy games, but he was looking for a game suited for his parents who are both over 70 and his daughter who is 12. They were going to stay two days on a mountain.
He said the elderly don't play games at all so it must be something they can get behind, and his daughter doesn't know any games apart from party games like Just One. But no questionnaire games.
The first thing I think of is Tiger & Dragon, which imo is probably one of the best games that you can play repeatedly over and over again without getting tired of it. A partnership game, too, making it more fun for the four of them. He did not at all like my explanation for it. Then I recommended Akropolis, and he said the box is too big he needs something small that fit in the bag. Followed by telling me that he heard 6 Nimmit! would be a good game to bring.
I told him 6 Nimmit! is a fine game that is still around because it's good, but I think it's starting to show its age and I personally feel there are smoother modern games to choose from.
I went through a bunch more games (all which I think would serve them great, none of which were interesting to him) and in the end he bought Love Letter and A Fake Artist Goes to New York.
Don't get me wrong though, those two games are great for what they are, But…
This got me thinking.
A lot of people new to the hobby come asking for recommendations, and I basically use a recommendation formula I came up with that let me sell sooooo many Splendor lol, but it's all about gateway games. Therein the problem.
There is a ton of people who have only really played Monopoly and Risk, hated it, and now only play card or dice games.
Nothing wrong with that, but after you've sold like 3000 copies of Sequence, Mexican Train, Yahtzee and Dot Card, you start to wonder, maybe there is a real game out there you could sell them…
Granted, that game is usually Skyjo (and to some extent, Flip 7). But I wanted to put together a list of mechanically distinct games that could all fit these buyers,
Here is the current list (WIP):
Tier 1: Super simple mechanically but still a decent chunk of fun.
- Skyjo (tableu management)
- Kluster (Dexterity)
- Ohanami (Drafting)
- Just One (Party/Social)
- No Thanks! (Bidding)
- Coloretto (set collection)
- Qwixx (Roll & Write)
- 6 Nimmt! (card prediction)
- Once Upon A Time (story making)
- Flip 7 (push your luck)
- Skull (bluffing)
Tier 2: still easy, but with extra salt
- Love Letter (Card Battle)
- Scout (Shedding)
- Startups (Markets)
- Cabo / Rat-a-Tat Cat (Memory)
- Hanabi (cooperative info puzzle)
- Bohnanza! (negotiation)
- For Sale! (Auction)
- Sea of Strife (Trick Taking)
- That's Pretty Clever (dice combos)
As I was writing this list, I realized, there are some distinctive mechanics missing. Particularly mechanics that I enjoy in heavier games, which would be deck building, hand building, flick dexterity, tile placement, line battler, engine building, and worker placement. At least, designed to fit inside a pocket sized box, and be simple enough to have no more than a minute of rules overhead.
I think, if someone could figure out a Skyjo equivalent for these mechanics, distilled down to barebones yet with the meat needed to be fun, then that's potentially a million-copies-sold A-lister.
I do have a hand building project that's been in-the-making since February, but I haven't really managed to not make it tenuous to play yet. I still have some more ideas, but other projects have been more fun to work on so it's taken the back seat for a while.
As for tile placement, I think “Take It Easy!” is essentially the “it”, except the box is huge and messy, and the scoring is awful. I would basically like this game to be remade into a small box variant with a lot less headache for score counting and the style less of a graphical mess; the only problem is (and why it probably hasn't been done) is the messy bit is part of why it actually works.
Deck building is probably also possible to do in a more lightweight way. I mean, Dominion is very light mechanically already and it's such a good game, but it's so frustrating to setup and tear down, something that feels “unmodern” and which is why it's not as popular nowadays as it used to be, even if the game is brilliant. Star Realms set out to fix just that, but i wasn't all too impressed with how the game plays, and it definitely has some mechanical overhead that makes it not a functional candidate for this genre, plus it's primarily designed for one-on-one - and i don't include those kind of games (i mean, if i did, the list would be way longer due to the sheer number of great 1on1 abstracts out there).
Anyway, buttom line is. I think I will have to focus on these kind of games in a multiplayer setting. To see if I can come up with something that will be “just enough game” to work. My shedding dice game, and my shedding mahjong tiles game are two candidate I am currently looking to finalize as well so there is a lot up in the air for now.