Holiday gaming tips from a board game researcher
Michael Heron is a senior lecturer in interaction design who has spent many years researching accessibility in board games. His work is grounded in the belief that everyone, regardless of their circumstances, should have the opportunity to participate fully in all areas of society, including entertainment and games.
Here are his top recommendations for games that work in various settings and for different types of people, but that all guarantee fun, laughter, and friendly competition.
For the beginners – Telestrations
"It is later in the evening. Everyone is tired from a day’s festivities. The parents are idly snoozing away. The kids have broken at least one of their new toys. Everyone is gently immersed in the warm glow of familial companionship.
And then someone says, ‘Let’s play a game’. This is your chance to skip the overplayed options like Monopoly and try something new – Telestrations.
In it you will find some reusable drawing pads, pens, and a bunch of cards. The game starts, the cards tell you what to draw and you draw that thing as best you can on your pad. You then pass your pad onto the next person and attempt to guess what they just drew. You pass your guess on, and then you draw the guess of the previous player.
It is like Pictionary, but it gets more fun the worse you are at drawing.
At the end, everyone gets their pad back and you explore the evolving misinterpretations of the table. It is quick, fun, genuinely funny, and the gap between opening the box and playing the game is about as small as you can imagine. My only proviso is that it really only works properly with at least six players, but if you can scare up those numbers this is a game you will not regret playing."
Read more about accessibility in games.
For the couple and best buds – Jaipur
"Making genuinely good games that are designed well for two-players is an art-form of its own – a lot of the most interesting game dynamics emerge as a result of player to player interaction, and the more players there are the easier it is – disputes, disagreements, alliances and betrayals - those emerge only through the implicit politics of people being people. The fewer people, the more the game needs to take the steering wheel.
If you had asked me if it was possible to design a good trading game that worked with two players, I probably would have said ‘no’ before I sat down with this one. A central market displays a wealth of treasures, and the two players are looking to build up sets of these goods so they can cash them in. The larger the set, the greater the reward. The problem is that both players have a viciously restrictive hand limit, and in order to get something from the marketplace you have to swap in cards to get them. You watch your opponent like a hawk, trying to determine what it is they are collecting and what they are just trying to keep out of your hands. It is very easy to explain, plays quickly, and the game creates abundant reasons as to why you should talk to the other player. High interaction, high fun, low cost. A perfect game for two players."
For the families – Camel Up
"For a family situation, where adults and younger kids want to play something that appeals to both, it is important to balance a range of requirements. The game should be fun, obviously. It should give everyone an approximately equal chance of winning. It should have moments of excitement that keeps the kids off their phones, and moments of planning that give the adults something to sink their teeth into. And it also has to be flexible in player counts.
For this, I recommend Camel Up – a game of betting on a camel race, where every step of the way the odds – and rewards for bets – change dramatically. Dice of different colours are rolled out of a pleasingly tactile pyramid. Camels move the number of spaces indicated by the roll. But camels can end up on top of each other, and camels always carry the ones on top of them forward. It is a ludicrous, but very energetic, spectacle.
In terms of accessibility – the extent to which a game is playable by people with different needs – family games have a difficult needle to thread. Children and adults differ dramatically when it comes to physical dexterity, cognitive development, emotional control and educational experience. Camel up is as much about gut-feeling and fortune as it is planning. While calculating the odds can help, the uncertainty of the game means that playing hunches can work just as effectively. Few things are as fun in a family game as watching dad’s unbeatable lead destroyed because your camel leapt atop the back of his, and then his carried you to the edge of victory before you hopped off and crossed the finish line."
For the introverts – Dixit
"I have occasionally described Dixit as the kind of game you could imagine human-like flowers playing in a Disney animated movie. Every player is dealt out a hand of cards containing some of the most genuinely beautiful artwork in board gaming. Every round, a player is the storyteller and they play one of their cards face-down while giving a clue as to what the card is. They may play down a card of a mouse with a sword choosing between two doors, and give the clue ‘Adventure’. Everyone else plays down a card that they think is a good match for the clue, and then guess which is the storyteller’s card.
In Dixit the storyteller does not get any points if everyone picks their card. As such, you are trying to find clues in the liminal space of plausibility. What you think your card represents is a great way of revealing some of the contours of your inner life without having to do anything as discomfiting as talking to people. As a hardcore introvert myself, I find Dixit an excellent way to build connections with people in a low-risk environment. And who knows, by the end maybe you will feel comfortable in the company of your players even without the whimsical, dreamlike cards."
As told by Michael Heron.
If you want to learn more about research on accessibility, Michael Heron recently released the book Tabletop Game Accessibility: Meeple Centred Design, where he shares guidelines for making board games more accessible. You can also read more about his accessibility research on Michael Heron's blog.
