Games which do not end friendships, but strengthen them. Games where working together works and loners fall behind.
Can be something simple like The Game or reach any complexity level. Coming to think of it, bring on the complexity. 🙂
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I’m gonna say Spirit Island is a solid game that is also co-op. There is a solo play as well, and the app gives you a small taste of the game without any purchase. (It’s limited to like 3-4 rounds of play, a taste)
The Crew -games would be pretty similar to The Game.
Multi-session cooperatives:
- Arkham Horror the Card Game
Single-session cooperatives:
- Pandemic
- Paleo
- So Clover!
- Mysterium
You can also use search like this to figure out something that really fits to your table (Might take long to load!): https://bggbester.netlify.app/?b64=AhMCAgUABgAPAxAlA-gCAwsDCxUFGwMMAw0ldTAHFQUcABMDEgMRJQfqFAMVAwQCFgAZABcAGAABAhgKB-cYCgsE
+1 for paleo. Really cool game
In my experience many co-op board games are prone to quarterbacking, especially if there is a difference between levels of experience between players.
In my experience it can be alleviated with the help of the game’s mechanics.
For example Pandemic is a terrible game for that (it’s a good game, but completely has the default you mentioned) because all the information is public, you know what cards the other players have, and in terms of mechanics, each character has its own power, but it’s really easy to have everything in mind at the same time. So an experienced player will have a good vision of the strategy and will possibly railroad everyone.
On the other hand, games like hanabi hide some parts of the information, so a player cannot really know enough to do the strategy by themselves.
If you make the player characters very different from one another, you go in that direction as well. I know how to play my Gloomhaven character, and I mostly know what the other characters do, but I don’t know the exact actions they have, it’s too much. Same with Aeon’s End, the more the game goes on, the more different the decks end up.
So yeah, in a nutshell, there are mechanics a game can use to prevent a single player to have too much of an influence on the game
to what?
Quarterbacking is the behaviour common in cooperative boardgames where 1 player ends up in command of the entire team, telling everybody else what to do. It goes from cooperative to single player with extra hands. Pandemic is an example of a game that’s particularly prone to this.
Thank you
Games which do not end friendships, but strengthen them.
I can answer this part of your post with:
- Slay the Spire The Boardgame (4p vs env)
- Sky Team (2p vs env)
- Bullet❤️ (1-4p vs 1 npc)
- Aeon’s End (1-4p vs 1 npc)
- Between Two Cities (Co-op between players to your left and right but still competing with each other and the other players)
Games where working together works and loners fall behind.
This qualifier is a bit harder to answer, I’ll have to think and look through the TT games I’ve played
Sidereal Confluence. The only trading game where everybody always walks away from a trade happy
Hanabi - a pretty simple card game in which you work together to put on a fireworks show. You can’t see your own hand, but instead can see everyone else’s. Others give you hints about what’s in your hand so you can make plays.
10-minute dungeon - a kickstarter table top game where you tear through as many dungeons/monsters as possible in 10-minute increments (I think). It’s been awhile since I’ve played it, but I have very fond memories of it.
Hanabi is hard but really fun. It’s always a hit.
It’s my go-to game for introducing people to modern card games.
The dungeon is event faster: 5 minutes !
But also, are you me !? That would have been my exact picks.
Daybreak and the Slay the Spire-boardgame edition are both cooperative and plenty of fun.
I think that any cooperative (co-op or coop) game would fit the bill.
My favorites are Pandemic & all Pandemic system games if you like the themes or any of the Gloomhaven games (my favorite is the Jaws of the Lion).
Jaws of the Lion is awesome. It’s pretty complicated to run, and you’ll probably want to download a third party app for managing monster and player health and effects in combat, and a spreadsheet for tracking inventory and XP.
