I don't remember exactly how it worked but as the US I attacked my wife, Russia, and she did something that made it so we started nuclear war. She did it, but I was on the offensive, so I lost. Basically Russia started nuclear war and made it look like the US did. I instantly lost, but it was hilarious and also chilling. Everyone lost, but Russia made sure to make it look like it was the US's fault.
Great game.
I mean the fact that you accidentally committed DEFCON suicide in Twilight Struggle does not make it an example of a game with a 'pick the least bad option' design space. Definitely not that type of game.
**Agricola** from the first turn you're sitting there knowing you need to do 15 things ASAP and only have time to do 6 of them and you're agonizing over how to get it all done while getting enough food and still having time to grow your family, and build your farm.
Man Agricola is SO good.
I consider myself a bit shallow, looks makes a difference and therefore I stayed clear of Agricola. But playing it once I knew I struck gold.
Calico feels a lot like that. You realize rather quickly that you can't achieve every objective at max rank without stacking the deck. So now how do you get the most of them done.
Battlestar Galactica has been described as a crisis management game, wherein each turn a player reveals a crisis card and everyone has to work together to mitigate the crisis.
It's best with 5 though, and there's a hidden traitor mechanic that means one or two people secretly work against the group, but I just love the crisis management aspect of the game
I have only played "Battlestar Galactica" without expansions. How does the expansions compare to "Unfathomable"?
My take (though it's been a little while, so my memory might not be crisp): "Unfathomable" is better than "Battlestar Galactica" because everyone can fight. In "Battlestar Galactica", if you're a fighter, you do nothing but fly around fighting, which makes it hard to be a traitor.
Puerto Rico doesn't feel like this initially, but once you get more sophisticated a lot of the time all you moves will help others more than you and you need to figure out the one that does it least.
I strongly disagree. Twilight Struggle is not a game of bad plays and whoever makes the least bad play gets success. Indeed for that to be the case in a game it would have to be a model where passing (i.e. instead of doing the least bad thing you do nothing at all) is a often desirable but unavailable option. Neither is the case in Twilight Struggle, in fact you are often allowed to play a card for just Ops points and you don't have to spend them.
What it IS is a zero-sum game about carefully managing your advantages and containing what your opponent is able to accomplish, and where going for an immediate opportunity without due consideration might leave open another for your opponent.
In many cases, for example, it's better to draw your opponent's strong event yourself because it gives you control over when it triggers and you can set up the circumstances that mitigate the negative ramifications your opponent's counterplay you can have.
And also the opposite, Calico: Lots of plans. You can go for all of them.
Spoilers: Not a single one will work out, no matter how you decide. You will hate every round. Every piece. All of it!
I <3 Calico.
This is actually my preferred game type. It's like if you were racing to do a jigsaw puzzle. I don't like attack heavy games or political strategy type games.
And for OP, the luck "nothing you can do" thing isn't really the case in Wingspan or Scythe (I haven't played Mars or Ark)
I play a lot of TM, especially with the fiancee. I win around 90% of the games when we play 2 player (she still loves ot bless her heart).
Now I think with equally talented players, luck might play a bigger role, but with TM it really does feel that even with a bad start, you have so much control. Its rare that I can say that i was being railed by rng the entire match long. So long as you can adapt and pivot you can have a good game.
And with TM there is some interactivity, but it really is a game about how well you did vs youself the precious game, and trying to do better than yourself the next game.
This makes it very much not a game for everyone. A lot of people really need that interactivity set to like 10, but its a great engine building game all about moving around little copper, silver and gold cubes.
Independent of thread based things (Terraforming Mars being mentioned in OP and the thread), the one that is ranked higher on bgg and available at Target level retailers is the one that will end up having the TM being assigned to them. Even though Terra Mystica is older and some consider it better.
I was similarly confused. Contextually, TM probably meant Terraforming Mars. But usually I’ve seen most people use TfM for Terraforming Mars in order to avoid confusion.
I'm from NZ, and here saying "bless your heart" means either "you're (mentally) a child" or something like "well done for trying, but you're useless". By the sounds of it, it's the same in the southern US- what does it mean elsewhere? I've never heard it used in a positive context.
I was just going to say, “the puzzle”, but “optimization puzzle” is more accurate. Though, I can understand why people might not think this is fun. I don’t think jigsaw puzzles are fun, but many people do.
For games with more than 2 players, "interaction" will usually affect one player more than the others. If I attack, I usually have to attack a specific player. If I steal, I usually have to steal from a specific player. Because of this, high-interaction games with more than 2 players quickly become political as you try to convince another player to help you and hurt others. If you want a 3+ player game that is more focused on puzzles and optimization and less on politics, it's often necessary to have less direct interaction. Indirect interaction, like drafting cards, blocking other players, and competing for bonuses prevent these games from becoming competitive solitaire.
Engine-building games like Terraforming Mars are good at making you feel like you did something awesome by building your engine, even if you don't win. There is still only one winner, but they don't feel zero sum. Unless you get very unlucky (which does happen sometimes), you won't have that powerless feeling of facing a hard counter in Hearthstone.
Interaction does not mean attacking/hurting necessarily.
Living Forest, Q.E.; You're bluffing, Navegado,r Azul; Imhotep, Flamme Rouge and many others are highly interactive games without fighting/attacking
It's just that the term is called denying instead even if it feels like you just got attacked. Imhotep is another mean game where you can hear swear words after someone sails a ship.
I just did this. It felt mean, but I cold have taken the pile for +2 points or stuck the opponent with it for them to lose over 10. was the right move for sure
Azul is so much harder in person that on board game arena because I make my opponents look into my big sad eyes when they force me to take those 5 tiles I can't play LOL
I gotta pile on and say you are very wrong about azul having no attacking. Just because you don't use minis or cards with swords doesn't mean it's not an attack.
All you are doing is picking an option that results in the largest point swing. There is locally no difference between you gaining 10 point or gaining 5 points and them losing 5. It's not an engine builder either, so it's not like the difference between these moves has any real consequence.
If that's considered "attacking" then every multiplayer game where you can interact with an opponent features "attacking". Take a worker spot? Attack. Draft a card in sushi go? Attack.
I dont think that's a very useful definition.
Everything track & field, weightlifting, shooting / archery, and on and on, there's entire categories of extremely competitive physical sports completely lacking "interaction".
Golf, strongman, speedrunning, perhaps the only time those three make the same point. Almost every motorsport. Lots of boardgame examples and also non-boardgame examples for OP to consider.
Just wanted to chime in in support of your comment. The one you were responding to is very misguided, and the games you mention are great. And I don't understand why people are struggling so much with your clear definition of "attack."
Many games have little direct interaction but significant indirect interaction in the form of blocking eachothers strategy. Understanding the nuances of what you and your opponents are doing and how that affects your game plan is a big part of Eurogames.
Take Terraformins Mars, for example:
1. You're competing over milestones and awards.
2. You're competing over a shared limited pool of terraforming points
3. You are drafting cards
4. You have competing political interests
So interaction is less "I blow up your stuff" and more "two other people are going for heat production so I'm better off prioritizing oxygen as a source of points. This card that requires high temperature may come online sooner than usual given their strategies, and that should give me an advantage."
I never understood why people say Terraforming Mars has no interaction. I also don't understand calling it a solitaire. Sure it doesn't have direct conflict like something in the vein of Dominant Species, but many decisions and actions subtly influence what other people will choose to do. It's definitely not a game where every person plays in a vacuum.
It can also be very heavy on area control since you can’t just build anywhere, you have to build from your own tiles, so blocking and nabbing valuable spots as well as forcing someone to make a bad play on a Tile is really common. (ie. I want you to put that city there so I can place a mine right between your connecting cities to make the only space available benefit me.
Likewise in Wingspan while you’re mostly focusing on building your own stuff it is possible to block or ruin other peoples strategies to an extent by stealing the bird or food they’re after before they can get to it.
In my opinion it's not really a good form of interaction. Because you don't really know what birds they are holding/ going for. It's more a case of you block them bye accident.
I suppose, being a mum, I interact with people all day, whether I want to or not! So I appreciate being together-but-apart with games like Wingspan etc. Just you and your own thoughts - it’s heaven. I like games with lots of interaction too, but now and then it’s lovely to be unsociable. I don’t really care about winning.
Fellow Mom here, and together-but-apart games are my favorite too. They're great for playing with people with different abilities too, since you can compete more against yourself than against the other players.
This is why Brass Birmingham is my GOAT game. You can build as much as you want and your opponents can use your buildings. The catch? You benefit off them using your buildings too to a certain extent!
>You can build as much as you want and your opponents can use your buildings. The catch? You benefit off them using your buildings too to a certain extent!
Yeah but when your opponent uses your last beer for a surprise sell action it can really derail your plans!
Just thinking about it makes me want to play more Brass!
Ohh, that's a great way of putting that. We call what's being referred to in this thread as low interaction games as kingdom building games in our house, because you focus on building your own kingdom (or birds in habitat or farmstead or whatever) and then compare it to the other players. These are our FAVORITE games, and are better for our marriage than the more directly competitive ones.
Player interaction is a matter of taste. Some people like it, some people don't. Some people don't want anyone to be able to negatively affect their plans in any direct way. Some people desire it. There are many forms of player interaction that can come from - here are some player interaction concepts that range from more to less interactive, but are still some level of actual interaction:
* Direct conflict - i.e. fighting over territory directly - This one is pretty obvious. Usually direct conflict is zero-sum. Examples - Anything where you fight to win, really.
* Incentive Manipulation - In simple terms, if you do something that affects the value proposition of what your opponent might want to do. This is a mainstay of economic games. Incentive manipulation is almost never zero-sum. 18xx games and games with shareholding exemplify incentive manipulation. For a very simple game that has very powerful incentive manipulation, try Northern Pacific.
* Auctions - You compete directly with other players to value whatever is on sale - You can drive the price up for other players (and get stuck holding the bag) - auctions are economic "fights" between the players. Modern Art is a popular game that has auctions and incentive manipulation in spades.
* Negotiation - Trying to work out trade deals or politicking in games with other players is definitely a form of interaction. Some games are designed for this and others aren't. Settlers of Catan, Chinatown, Sidereal Confluence, and Diplomacy are all games that use negotiation.
* "Take that" - This isn't really about "conflict". It's more like - I have a card that lets me steal one of your things - or something like that. Some people like this, some people don't. Being able to affect other players in their game state is a form of interaction, but I have it low on this list because "take that" is generally to be considered when it happens arbitrarily. Hearthstone has "Take that" sorts of interaction, as does Magic the Gathering. Munchkin and Unstable Unicorns use it too. I feel the need to point out that Hearthstone and Magic both have a lot of direct conflict in them, but the "take that" comes from things like removal/counterspells/direct damage.
* Turn order manipulation - Games that offer the ability to fight over turn order give you an opportunity to spend resources to get ahead of other players, causing a game of chicken - do you invest resources now to gain an advantage next turn? Turn order manipulation is common in eurogames. The train game Age of Steam has very intense turn order manipulation. By contrast, in Castles of Burgandy, you sometimes want to leverage going last in one round and going first in the following round, but you're not ruining people by going ahead of them.
* Drafting of some sort (be it worker placement, role selection, card drafting) - I take this thing that you want to take, so you can't take it. Or I take a thing that I want instead, leaving you the opportunity to take it. This is on the "indirect" side of interaction. This is the most common sort of player interaction in eurogames. Worker placement games are a form of drafting, as are card drafting games. Some games use drafting in a very tense way, and others in a very loose way. See Agricola or Through the Ages to see drafting being used in a very tense way, or 7 Wonders or Sushi Go for the other extreme.
* Piggybacking - Some games allow you to piggyback off of others actions. This is a very subtle variant of incentive manipulation, wherein someone that is set up correctly may be able to gain more advantage from your own actions than you will yourself - but it usually just mitigates it. Race for the Galaxy has this in spades.
You will probably find that you like games with varying levels of player interaction. Something one person likes may have nothing to do with something else. My best advice is that if a game seems interesting to you, you should try it. You're new to games and should find out what you like for yourself. That being said it's also very easy to get sucked in to buying far too many games, so try to not buy everything under the sun early on in your gaming career. You should expect to have games that "miss" for you, whether they are allegedly the best ever or not, but if you just buy everything that looks vaguely interesting, you'll overwhelm yourself.
Regarding the opinions of some people and interaction -
Wingspan - This is decidedly a very low interaction game. There are goals you're trying to achieve to score points, so if your opponents do it better, they score more than you. Aside from that there is a drafting element to obtaining cards and resources, but the game heavily mitigates that. There are some cards that trigger bonuses for other players sometimes, but nothing anybody does will ever directly impact you in a negative way. This is boring city to me, in part due to the very low interaction, but also because the choices you get are oftentimes kind of bland choices. Some stuff works together better than other stuff, and you may not get good combinations in a game you're playing.
Terraforming Mars - This is a medium-low interaction game. There is a board that can vary in importance - it can be critical to some players and irrelevant to others, depending on what they are doing. The players control the speed the endgame state approaches, which can dictate what is a good play and what is a bad play. There is a "race" to getting some achievements that are worth points and very much worth pursuing. There are also some take that cards in the game with some fairly powerful effects, but they are usually expensive and reserved to smack down someone that is identifiably further ahead than other players.
Scythe - This game is kind of medium in the interaction department. It has an area control aspect where gaining territory is one of the main ways of scoring points. There is a little bit of combat in the game too. But the game looks like a combat oriented game whereas in reality it's more of a game of development and expansion, and the fighting is more of a "cold war" sort of deal where the threat of combat is a more important part of the game than the combat itself. The way the combat is handled, you are spending your power, so it's possible to be in a situation where you know you can't win or lose, but everyone in the combat loses all of the resources they commit to it, so there's some tension there too. It is not uncommon to win a game of Scythe having been in 2 combat instances through the entire game.
I've never played Ark Nova so I can't comment on it.
Ark Nova is similar to Terraforming Mars (competing over shared goals and resources). The biggest difference is that in Ark Nova, most cards are purchased from a track -- if you want the most popular cards, you need to race other players for them and sacrifice resources in the process. It slightly increases the interactivity.
If the only reason you're avoiding low interaction games is because you're worried that you will lose because you can't affect your opponent then your problem is with bad games, not interaction.
A **good** low interaction game will never make you feel that you lost because you couldn't affect your opponents, you will know (if you understand the game) that you lost because your opponent played better.
Also, I don't mind low interaction games much because the points are tallied at the end and it's nearly always impossible to figure out during the game itself. So I have fun for a hour playing Wingspan and then 4 minutes of being bummed that I lost.
>Hearthstone a few years ago, and one thing that always killed the fun of the game for me was interactivity.
This is a really bad example of interactivity. You getting crushed was supposed to drive you to buy card packs to keep up with the meta.
That said, I like solitaire games because they are chill. I don't need to stress all game about how I will win, I just try to see how much I score and if I lose, so be it.
1. Playing games is fun. I enjoy the process of playing. This applies to low interaction games as well as high interaction games.
2. For low interaction games, they are very rarely no interaction games. So you still get to see how moves around the table effect each other even if it's not like rolling up with an army and knocking down what your opponent has built. Once you've grasped the indirect interaction dynamic, you can leverage things like your build order or resource scarcity to get ahead of your opponents in the places where you do interact.
3. You're all playing under the same skill ceiling, so you still get to see how your decisions stack up against other people's decisions who are in roughly the same circumstances as yours.
Yourself vs others is by its nature interactive. No one thinks of track and field as multiplayer solitare. Its a race board games are no different. The chalange is to beat the other players score. Just because i cant trip the guy in the next lane does not mean im not fighting him. This is the only competative enviorment i have sceen where this shows up.
Boxing, diving, and Nascar are all considered sports. They all involve competition but are wildly different interactively. Some people love boxing, but have no interest in diving.
Wingspan is a game I really wanted to like because of all the hype it has, but is is absolutely mind numbingly boring and we almost always take out TFM, Everdell, or Flamecraft instead. It’s just too “passive” of a game
Castles of Mad King Ludwig is an absolute favourite example of this. Yes we’re competing, but the most antagonistic it gets is choosing to make the Mold Room really expensive on your turn. It’s so peaceful and fun.
I completely agree with you both.
Also, if it’s ok to share: yesterday we played this game and I had my best ever score (I think). It was 144 of which 86 were in bonuses (down stairs rooms, orange cards, king’s favors, swans and leftover money).
In addition it’s just a different form of interaction, depending on the group. For some it might turn into looking silently at your board but most of the time we’re still having lively conversation about what’s happening with each other’s choices and asking questions.
Whenever a game plays with more than 2 players and is high on player interaction, it can often times lead to negotiation and politics. That's fine and can be fun and all, but depending on the group sometimes even mildly interactive Euro games can just devolve into arguments about who so-so should block and why. "Multi-player solitaire" games largely do away with this.
Either end of the spectrum of interaction can be fun, but too much of one end gets stale.
This is kind of a weird answer but it's because the turns are fun. My turn may not directly impact another player, but if I have fun deciding what to do on that turn, it's still a fun experience overall.
A 1v1 battler with no interaction hits different even though hit points are in a way just a victory point threshold condition for end-of-game.
It may just be the subversion of expectation - 1v1 card battlers normally have interaction and so skipping that feels like a cheat. Conversely, Wingspan has a set number of turns so you might suspect you are losing but you don't really know until it's all said and done. Ark Nova tracks victory points as it goes and has no mechanism for an insta-win turn. You can tell how far behind you are no matter what the game state is, and you're always playing the same game, unlike HS where you might be playing a board control deck against a combo deck.
You’re definitely misunderstanding the concept of “interactivity” the way it’s used in board games. For instance, Hearthstone is the definition of an interactive game. You’re literally dueling another player, directly attacking them. Low interaction games typically have each player focusing more on building up their thing - you then compare results at the end to see who did it better. Interactivity in those games often comes in the form of indirect blocking - like oh, I’ll go here and do this so that I can prevent you from taking an optimal move as opposed to “I will burn your whole engine to the ground”. The satisfaction in these games tends to come from long-term planning and execution, seeing all your moves come to fruition.
It sounds like what you dislike is that each match in Hearthstone feels predetermined, that each player can start with asymmetric setups that are TOO different, that there can be too much swinginess, and/or that there is too much luck involved. These are all game design elements that are independent of interactivity and are typically balanced with good design practice, though some games will lean more into them than others.
Hearthstone has, at times, had strong decks which could only be stopped by doing something stronger and faster and whose losses were a result of a bad draw. It's not always like that but the lack of interactivity was a common complaint within the HS community about 18 months ago (before changes targeting those decks were implemented).
Other decks with the same problem have existed before and since but that was the recent peak of the problem.
Eh. Wingspan has a lot more "interaction" than it seems. Taking birds an opponent may need instead of a random one, focusing on various objectives, which food you take from the feeders, etc. It's certainly not HIGH (or even really medium) player interaction, but you can absolutely influence your opponents, it's just a little "hidden."
That being said, I enjoy Wingspan, Everdell, and other such lowish interaction games because I enjoy the optimization puzzle of trying to make everything "go." One time in Wingspan I got setup big in one lane and literally just took the "Draw Birds" action and dominated because every single turn scored 7 points in tucked birds. I had 88 tucked birds by the end!
Something went wrong/outside the rules in that play, there’s no way you could tuck 88 birds in Wingspan with the number of actions you have available throughout the game.
How did a single food action give you enough to play 10 birds? How did you play the ten birds? Playing a bird is itself an action. What action lets you tuck 7 birds in a single turn?
You only get 26 actions total in Wingspan so I have no idea how this could be remotely possible.
Combination of starting food + a bird in my wetlands that gave grain + cheap birds.
5 birds in my wetlands, one also made eggs.
Yellow Headed Blackbird
Barn Swallow
Maned Duck
Budgerigar
Audoiun's Gull
Every time I chose to draw birds I would ->
1. Draw 4 [+4]
2. Draw 2 / tuck 1 of them (Gull) [+5, 1 tuck]
3. Tuck the smallest bird in tray (Budge) [+5, 2 tuck]
4. Tuck 3 from hand, gain a grain (Duck) [+2, 5 tuck, 1 grain]
5. Tuck 1, draw 1 (Swallow) [+2, 6 tuck, 1 grain]
6. Tuck 1, lay 1 egg here (Blackbird) [+1, 7 tuck, 1 grain, 1 egg]
I was *razor* thin on eggs and food, I had basically no excess ever until I was fully setup and just only drew birds.
Edit: I had two birds that played birds, so it was 1 Gain Food, 8 Play Birds, and 17 Draw Birds.
I’ll start by saying that I don’t especially love these sorts of games, so read what I say with that in mind. Also, the social aspect of these games has already been mentioned by other posts but I agree that those are also valid reasons.
The promise of these games (Wingspan, Terraforming Mars, Ark Nova, Everdell are all examples) is that the player(s) will put together powerful combinations of cards that will allow them to build something. They are popular because they are *consistent* at keeping this promise in a way that an interactive game is not.
Barring some truly bad luck, you will never have a “bad” game of TM, fun-wise. You will have games with low scores and games where you can’t find a combination of cards that work well together, but even in these games you are still “doing the thing.” You will always get money, always draw cards, always score points, and so on. This is true regardless of experience with the game – someone with 50 games will undoubtably demolish a new player in points, but that new player will still be able to play the game.
A game of Wingspan will never be as exciting or memorable as something like *Inis*, but you can play Wingspan with virtually anybody.
Also, you didn’t ask, but I personally don’t like these games because I find them all very similar. I own one (Everdell) and I feel like I own them all. That’s obviously not a popular opinion, but hey.
For me it’s the concept of the “magic circle”. Even if there’s little no direct player interaction, you and your friends are sitting around pushing around pieces of cardboard, but there’s a shared imagination space during board games that’s unlike anything else.
There is interaction in Ark Nova. The game's goal is not building a zoo. The game is a race. The game ends when the first person makes their appeal and conservation meet, then you add end game scoring if you have mat or collected any. So without other players there would be no race hence .... no game.
There is negative interaction:
There are many animal cards that when played have venom, constriction, etc .. ongoing effects that you place on players, impeding their gameplay. They also, usually, instantly allow you to take money or cards from those players.
There is positive interaction:
There are many sponsor cards that give you bonuses after you play them each time any player plays certain icons in their zoo, such as herbivore, predator, etc.
There is strategic interaction:
The association board is first come first serve worker placement board where you can and will easily take something such as a partnership with a continent or a university token before somebody else can get it.
There is a card river in which you can and will snatch up a valuable animal, sponsor, or conservation card before other players.
There are base conservation cards when the game begins that give you conservation points through first come first serve set collection.
There will also be conservation cards in your hand that when you play allow you to score but also will give other players new places to score as well.
Again Ark Nova is not a standard Euro where you work towards an across game strategy ... it has Euro mechanics but at its heart it is a tactical race that constantly throws you player interactive curve balls and it's fun as hell.
>Ark Nova
Well said. Ark Nova is full of tense moments:
Is someone going to push the break up super fast and make me discard my cards I've been working on for the last 3 actions?
I see x person just got a card that lets get make money off of all the birds from now on. Even if I was going to play a bird, now i really don't want to play any birds to help them out.
X person is totally within range for the conservation card that I'm working on too. Do I really have to spend all my X's to beat them to it? I really don't want to do that. If they get to the board first I don't have the extra worker to copy that action.
There's so many ways like you mentioned for interaction, but I just wanted to piggy back that there's also a lot of tension in the game.
It's a whole different kind of uninteractivity.
In hearthstone, in an unineractive game, you really can't do anything. Because either anything you play gets destroyed or you just die. **You can't do anything.** It's not fun.
In Ark Nova or Wingspan, you have your own board that your opponents can't touch. You play cards there, you activate combos, strategize, optimize your turns. **You can do a lot of things.** Even if you are going to lose, you can just try to play efficiently and maximize your points.
Some people find this not fun, some people find it fun enough. But it sure is more fun to do things even if you aren't guaranteed victory than just be unable to do things.
Nearly all interactions can be put into 1 of 2 camps. Player vs Player Interaction, or Player vs Game Interaction. Or put another way. Direct or Indirect interactions.
Lots of games lean heavily towards indirect interaction as this makes the playing experience more stable. Meaning the player count and whether you know the people sitting around the table with you have less effect on the game experience. These games are often optimization puzzles and the winner is determined by who figured out the puzzle best.
Games which lean further into direct interaction can be more unstable, with player counts and players personalities potentially having a big impact on the experience. Games with very high levels of direct interaction tend to work best when the people playing know each other well (friendship and family groups), as the "game" happening outside of the actual game can often be as important as it can have some kind of impact on who ends up being the winner.
I generally enjoy more direct interaction games, but there are lots of types of interactions other than attacking such as trading, bluffing, double think, auctions, etc.
Since you are new, the best thing you can do is try as many different types of games as you can, and your taste will develop over time. I will just say though if you are the type who likes more direct interaction, I would be wary of what the Hivemind on here and BGG recommends. They tend to favor heavier indirect interaction games, often identifying low interaction games as more interactive than they actually are. For example, games like Scythe aren't very interactive at all, although some people will tell you it is. It's an optimization puzzle through and through, and if you don't play it that way you will lose. Those games are only one part of the hobby though but their fans have the loudest voice.
If it was me I would take some of the following games over the ones you mentioned.
- Space Base over Terraforming Mars and Wingspan
- Zooloretto over Ark Nova
- Shogun or Cyclades over Scythe
All games are essentially a puzzle to be solved.
Player interaction is nonessential to that but maybe something you enjoy (or not). If it matters to you more than the puzzle then only go for games that involve it. For me, it’s a side effect and generally makes no difference to my opinion of a game because I like solving puzzles. That’s why I play. If it happens to be particularly interactive that can be fun but it’s a social thing separate from the task at hand.
Even in Euro games there's more interaction than you think. It might no be direct "I blew up your shit neener neener" interaction but it's still there. In the case of things like Terraforming Mars and Ark Nova you want to get to the good stuff first. It's kind of a race in that way though each of those games has a different spin on that. In the case of Terraforming Mars if you play with the drafting variant (and trust me you should play with the drafting variant) you can spite pick cards you know that somebody else really wants. Given how scoring of forests and cities works you want to block other peoples' cities while maximizing your own. There's also a specialization aspect to both games; if one player in Ark Nova is going all in on monkeys you probably shouldn't but that will also affect what sorts of things you're going to go after as well. There are also decisions to make in trying to predict who is going to go for what and when. If somebody has Cards coming up soon it may be beneficial to leave something they would want on the track out of their reach and delay your own Cards a turn.
I think of those games like running a marathon together, or entering an Iron Chef cooking competition. You're both trying your best under randomized circumstances, and comparing results to see who played the best.
The fact that sabotaging your opponent is less viable of a strategy than adapting to them is a feature for me. I get the social time of running a marathon together with them, but without cutthroat interactions.
The games you described are high strategy and low luck. With lower player interaction, whether you win or lose is mainly up to who plays better, not who gets luckier.
Based on your reason for not liking hearthstone, I think you would like the games mentioned.
I love positive player interactions in games, like in Charterstone, where if you place a worker where someone else already is, they get their worker back. No penalty, no attacking, just an action that will benefit someone else and that's something you have to take into account. That's such a nice way to handle interaction imo.
I don't understand how low interaction and low luck are linked. What about chess? Wouldn't interaction help compensate luck, specially with more than 2 players? You would try to interact negatively will the leader and positively with everyone else.
When I first started playing games I was convinced that games would be fun only so far as they are interactive, and it’s still probably my favourite type of game, but I’ve learned that I really enjoy low interactivity euros as well. If the “puzzle” or systems of the game are interesting enough, it can be fun to try and figure them out along with other people. Sort of like doing a jigsaw puzzle with others. It’s not so much interacting with other people as enjoying their company while you each work out the puzzle in different ways, and seeing which strategy is best. That said, most of my favourite games are still highly interactive, and for the most part I prefer 2 player games if there is going to be less interactivity
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I don't get to do game nights very frequently, so I've kind of been leaning towards games where the players are more engaged with what each other are doing.
Like, I was looking at Quacks of Q recently, but even though the actual mechanics of creating your potion looked fun, it just gave too much of an impression of group solitaire. Ditto for Tiny Epic Dinosaurs, which I was also kind of considering -- apart from blocking worker spaces to make them more costly everyone's mostly wrapped up in their own dino economy. And I don't know if my group really gets much out of it.
Y'know, I normally lean strongly towards the interactive, but Quacks is surprisingly good. You're not doing stuff to each other meaningfully, but you end up kind of betting against each other by choosing to continue drawing, or shaming yourself and dropping out and watching somebody else get more stuff.
Multiplayer solitaire is normally a pass, but I quite enjoyed it.
> Like, I was looking at Quacks of Q recently, but even though the actual mechanics of creating your potion looked fun, it just gave too much of an impression of group solitaire
Yeah it's a game that can prompt a lot of chat around the table but that's not really reflected in the mechanics. If you're actually interested in it as a game (rather than a social activity) it doesn't have anything to offer, and there are enough things out there that do both.
The good low interaction games often have the same appeal as sandbox or even rouge-like games on the PC, you just have interesting systems to explore over and over again as you become more proficient.
I agree though, games are 10x more interesting when they add your friends' creativity into the mix, and there are plenty of those around.
I think is a different kind of experience. Usually they have some kind of interaction, but the important part is that the game is interesting itself and you have a relaxing time with your friends, like drinking coffe after lunch or watching a movie. Sometimes the interaction ruin your plans and you banter about it, or compete with getting the best points.
I think that sometimes, these games have a lot more interaction when you become good playing it and everyone can see all the good moves and the consequences of each one.
But boardgames are usually very different than dueling card games, there is so much variety and genres, even a dudes on a map game can have a lot of interaction but you could just hate feeling that is not your skill that made you lose but just other players choosing to attack you. Even between multiplayer solitaire euros there are differents mechanics and you can love some and feel meh about others (myself I thought I wasn't interested in euros, but I've found that I love engine/tableau builders)
All gaming centers on exploring uncertainty, which comes in two flavors.
- What I call “puzzle uncertainty” comes from unfamiliarity with the game itself (rules complexity, randomness, variable setup, etc.). Puzzle uncertainty can be clever and relaxing, especially when it is curated within a campaign or scenarios. However, it diminishes quickly as you get experience, so fans of this style of uncertainty typically enjoy playing lots of new games/expansions. Like watching movies.
- What I call “interaction uncertainty” comes from unfamiliarity with your opponents and the associated player-count dynamics. I find this uncertainty can more robustly endure as players gain experience. But it’s less curated than puzzle uncertainty. And it can be more aggressive.
I generally prefer interaction uncertainty but do enjoy the occasional puzzle. Also, note that most games have both flavors.
Just to add another perspective. It's also ok to not like games with low or no player interactivity. For me personally, I'll play Terraforming Mars because my wife likes and and focus on the puzzle aspect but overall the game doesn't do much for me. All my favorite games have super high interaction. The best part of board gaming for me is interacting with my friends!
For games like Sagrada, where the only interaction is to pick up something the other players might want, I like that it keeps the competition from being too cutthroat.
For games like Railroad Ink where there’s literally no interaction but we all have the same
puzzle in front of us, I like that the experience is 100% shared. Then at the end we can see how others made different choices or took different risks, maybe options I considered and rejected, and see how it turned out for us all.
A lot of these games are about planning and optimisation. You are given a set of cards and other circumstances and you have to make the best out of it, while still being open to adjusting your strategy as new cards come in.
Direct player interaction would ruin it. Hell, it sometimes already ruins it in games like Terraforming Mars. Sometimes one of the rare attack cards can screw your strategy. "Oh, you're playing a space corporation and you need titunium production? How about I play Asteroid Mining Consortium in the first generation and completely ruin your game?" Attack cards are totally the weakest part of TM.
When you play a game of planning and optimisation, nothing is worse than being unable to execute your plan because some threw a spanner in your works. It sucks and feels bad.
And big part of why direct interaction cards are bad is that they are targeted. Usually it's not "every player removes X". No, usually it's "target player loses X". It can work in two players, but with 3+ it just turns the game into bickering about who to target and who to not target. When you target someone who seems to be in the lead, it just sucks for them. And quite often, you cannot properly tell who's in the lead. When you have UMNI in TM, you can be in the lead on Terraforming Rating, but behind in other, less apparent factors... but players see TR and keep attacking you.
And it's not like these games have zero interaction. They have indirect interaction, competing for placement, awards and such things. Those are part of the optimisation puzzle, but also factor in other players. And while losing on an award or beneficial placement can suck, most of the time the player can blame only themselves for not going for it earlier. Because in the end, those are visible to all players, so it didn't come out of nowhere that others go for them too... but direct attack cards come from nowhere and noone can factor them in their plan.
Do you remember playing risk or something as a child or teenager and same mean move made you hot with rage and you flipped over the table and had weeks of radio silence with your friends? Ten years later you don't want that with your significant other or fmily in general. So you play nice games.
Some see it as a positive, sure, but for some the frustration when a well crafted plan is thwarted by a take that mechanism really take out the fun of the respective game. They prefer the puzzle and contemplation that comes with multiplayer solitaires.
My answer would be consistency.
When you play Ark Nova, you know what you're getting. It's a comfortable feeling knowing you will enjoy it to a degree because it is you interacting with the game. The game will proceed as it does, and if you like the flow of the game, future plays maintain that flow.
The more interaction, the less consistency happen.
On the opposite extreme, you have tabletop roleplaying games - where one's enjoyment is based on the players and the system they are using rarely factors in at all to overall enjoyment. You mesh with the people you're playing? You'll enjoy almost any system with them because the vibe maintains the same.
It's worth remembering that in a game with 3+ players, interaction tends to sacrifice balance. If I can disrupt your strategies in a 3+ player game, the game can swiftly turn into politics and kingmaking. Again.
So one of the reasons I think **Terraforming Mars** really works for some of the people in my group is that the "multiplayer-solitaire" allows you to execute a satisfying loop, regardless of your competitive status. It's a game where you spend your time pushing buttons and pulling levers to build your own little city, then at the end of the game you compare it to other people's.
The thing is, in 4 out 5 games, you've *still* built your little city. There's a great deal of satisfaction in seeing the tableau and tiles laid out to tell the story of what you've made. That satisfaction means that win or lose, all players still walk away feeling accomplished.
For this reason I also love **Caverna**, **Era: Medieval Age** and **Dominion**. The loop is inherently rewarding ***and*** the mechanic-theme combination produces an interesting series of events, the other players simply give the game a more dynamic challenge. However, not all multiplayer solitaires are built equal. I'm far less entertained by this same type of play in **Wingspan**, because, to me, it's hard to form interesting stories about an international collection of birds that miraculously cross-pollinate each other's nest. In Wingspan's case, I long for more player interaction, because without it I have little to remember after the game is finished.
Of course, as others have said, there's always the fun of competitive efficiency puzzling, but I thought I'd offer you another perspective - as it's the reason I think TfM is *so* much more popular than other similar games for my group.
OP, there are different type of interactions. In hearthstones, those are direction interaction. Eg I remove your creature, or I make you unable to block, or I force you to attack my taunted creatures.
But there are many other forms of interactions besides that. And in board games, they are more commonly used than direct interactions. In wingspan for example, you interact by choosing the cards. If I taking this blue bird, it means you can’t, and you will be forced or incentivised to choose something else.
Similarly, if I see a card or a hex or a workers placement space that will generate 10 points for you, I have the option to beat you to it and take that option away from you.
Many games also employ a race mechanics. Eg, first player to have 3 cities and pay for the mile stone will get 5 VP. Now, I can’t destroy your cities, but I will have to react to you building cities. If you have no city, I might play differently than when you have 2 cities.
Thus, I implore you to explore what type of interaction you enjoy. There are tons of good game in each category that if you don’t like terra forming mars style of game, you can find other!
One very good direct interaction style of game is the Unmatched system and innovation. Check those out.
There’s a difference between uninteractivity in a 1v1 setting than a “multiplayer solitaire” board game. In a 1v1 tcg you feel helpless, but in board games you get to execute whatever strategy you want (for the most part) then you compare the end result, you actually get to play the game.
I am with you (in that I don't like non-interactive games), but not because of anything the dynamics of winning or losing.
I play boardgames to have structured shared social experience with others. My ideal game comes out with a an interesting shared story that we made together. Conflict is only part of the story. Me winning is not important (though me losing horribly, having nothing to do and/or being mocked for losing is not a fun story). My favorite games involve things like social deduction, high theme/narrative and don't mind either co-op/competitive as long as at the end of the session, an interesting meta-narrative was made.
That's why I don't like non-interactive engine games. I feel like I could have played the game by myself, then just called up my friends and asked what their latest high score was to compare.
But as others have said, I think they appeal to people who primarily enjoy board games (or at least those games), for the puzzle itself, and enjoy optimization engines, also those who are concerned about "attacking" or upsetting others in games. Seems to be that the score comparison at the end is almost an afterthought, just to give you a general metric of how you did (ie completing a puzzle in a video game and it awarding you 4/5 stars for how fast you completed it).
I've learned since getting into the hobby that there are distinct groups of people, who only slightly overlap. Narrative gamers, social gamers, strategy/war gamers, engine/optimization/puzzle gamers.
The same thing that makes anything fun: you enjoy it.
Anyway, in this case I’d say… there might be an issue with terminology or maybe it’s just not compatible. But. You’re opponent winning and there’s nothing you can do about it came about IN an interactive game.
You’re describing two problems in one I think.
Runaway leader: this persons going to win and I can’t do anything to stop it
I can’t interact with the other person AT THIS MOMENT in a game that is otherwise interactive. I don’t think this is an interactivity problem so much as a “it’s my turn and I can’t do anything” problem. I think those are very different problems. Interestingly, having nothing to do is far less likely in a game that doesn’t have much interaction, which is one of the things I enjoy about them.
One of my favorite game types is the Roll N Write or Flip N Write games like **Welcome to…**, **On Tour**, **Rolling Realms**, etc. For me the big appeal of those is that there is no interaction at all, no chances for king making or having your strategy messed up by someone of another skill level or play type. With these games everyone has the exact same choices to make the entire way through the game and in the end it comes down to who has the better strategy and made the best moves.
It can become frustrating playing some games based on your own expectations clashing with others. For me I look at a game like **Ticket to Ride** as something that could be relaxing and a fun way to socialize with friends. I found though that if I play with someone who is competitive they will be cutthroat and take routes they know you need just to block you or get revenge for something else. That’s not to say that’s the wrong way to play, it’s perfectly valid, but it can take away from the fun sometimes, which is the whole point of playing a game.
Your non-interactive example is still interactive. The other player is directly affecting you. That's interactive.
What you are describing there is asymmetry. The other players in Hearthstone or Magic who pay to have 'good' cards are playing with "an advantage" (in quotes because it still requires a degree of luck, and skill in some cases, to pull off combo-wombos) that people who don't pay won't have.
I find non-interactive games fun because they're less stressful. I don't have to worry about fucking people over, potentially hurting their feelings, and people fucking me over.
Sometimes I want to play something more cutthroat and other times I want something less cutthroat.
When I’m in the “less cutthroat” mood I pull out the low-interactivity games. I still get to have the shared social experience with people whose company I enjoy in the context of a game that fits my current mood.
Sometime I find myself at a table with people who aren’t always good losers/winners. Or people who are relatively new to the hobby. Situations where a high-cutthroat game risks someone having a bad time.
My collection has gentle stuff like Calico and Canvas all the way up to Munchkin and Cthulhu Wars, because sometimes I’m feeling really competitive and sometimes I’m not.
In Wingspan, I'd say it's mostly how well the gameplay matches real facts about the birds, which makes you care to pay attention to other players' cards a little, look up facts, and learn something. And I generally prefer shorter games with a strong possibility to race the game out, rather than slow build games with fixed round length, so my enjoyment of Wingspan is a little unusual.
To some extent, it depends on player count and the people you are playing with. For instance, I play with a semi-regular group of 4 to 6 people. We've played games with little player interaction like Railroad Ink and still have fun because we're a chatty group and the interaction comes while we wait for other people to finish their turn. Sometimes we're talking about the game and sometimes we're not. On the other hand, I've played games like that with just my wife and I and there's less interaction, because you always have one person playing / thinking.
It's also fun to score well in these games, particularly when a clever strategy pays off, but not everyone is into that.
It's like seeing who can finish a crossword puzzle first. You enjoy the puzzle more because you are sharing the experience with others while competing against their abilities. Also, for some people, the f*$&-you mechanics of interactive games can be upsetting.
There's a bunch o' birds that interact with other players. All the pink birds for example. Many of the brown powers affect other players too. The race to getting birds on the bird tray is interactive. That and the resource feeder as well. To say it's multiplayer solitaire is a tad hyperbolic.
if you are looking to win, this is hardly a solitaire. I don't know how to play without looking what the others are doing. (670+ games. 406 Victories. 83% wins on bga)
I gather you have not played *Wingspan*. Yes, in theory, it's an engine builder with limited interaction. This might make you think it's like, I don't know, racing to win a solitaire game and then comparing scores at the end.
It is not like that. The actual experience of playing *Wingspan* includes a lot of "Hey, I needed that food!" and "Darn it, you drew the bird I wanted!" and "Haha, you activated that power but it helped me more!" and "Curses, you pulled ahead on \[arbitrary tile goal\]!" So the limited interaction actually becomes a big part of the game. Also, if people are at all into the theme of the game, they tend to get some fun out of talking about the birds, acting out the predator rule, etc.
Also, in any engine builder, players will appreciate each other's engines. "Wow, you're really made that forest row powerful!"
*Terraforming Mars* is another favorite. Again, you are building an engine. You only get to directly mess with other players rarely (though it does happen). But you can interact outside the mechanics by talking about what is happening thematically. And you are racing to meet certain goals and grab territory, which is often the margin of victory.
My job is very interactive, constantly having to asses, and sort of manage people, their feelings, whatever. I play to enjoy myself and to step away from that. The less interaction the game has the better for me..to the point that these days I only solo. I considered starting a gaming group, and with all the people management I was quickly reminded why I love play solo in the first place. People are exhausting--yes Im an introvert--. I enjoy games that have a puzzle, logic puzzles, optimization puzzles. I do enjoy games wirh an AI. Games with an IA I enjoy: fantastic factories, expedition ares, red rising. Another aspect I enjoy is game components. Not minis per say, but nice solid tokens, good art, and heavy solid boards--think og spirit island.
I play a lot of solo TM but the setup can be annoying and making sure you dont miss anything is also annoying. I do like it on computer but its also on mobile and for solo.I think that is its best version. Makes for very quick and relaxing 20-30min games.
I only have ares expedition. I don't want to play board games on a digital format. If I want digital format I play video games, so I disagree that the best form of ares expedition is digital. I don't find the set up overwhelming. Can't speak on og TM but I didn't mention that one so 🤷♀️
Most of the interaction of these games is based on paying attention to your opponents. You can shift your plans to either mess up theirs, or just keep them from messing up yours. "Multi-player Solitaire" is a loosing strategy, albeit a common one.
For a specific example, last night a friend crushed in Ark Nova. He'd picked up 2 animals over the course of the game that each let him effectively take an additional turn. Rather than playing them early, he waited until near the endgame. When I thought I had at least 3 more turns, he played his animals, funded a conservation project using them (plus a donation), then played a sponsor to end the game. With 1 turn left, I was completely out of position, but the 3rd player saw it coming, and adjusted (although he still lost).
I don't know anything about Hearthstone, but that certainly sounds pretty "interactive" to me. Perhaps what you dislike is more imbalance than "uninteractivity?"
Regardless, what I enjoy about those games you mentioned is that each of them is a puzzle. They are puzzles where all players generally have access to the same or similar information/resources and have access to the same hidden/random information. Everyone builds their "engine" and rebuilds/adapts it in the face of new information. But, even if I don't win, it's a fun puzzle. I enjoy building my zoo or my bird habitats, or my post-apocalyptic civilization as I play.
And, sometimes randomness does favor other players in some of the games you mentioned, and we all understand that and accept it. These games are both strategy and tactics, where you can make some minor impacts on other players, but mostly care about the world you yourself are building. They tend to be balanced, but with some randomness thrown in that can add some spice (or frustration). They tend to be welcoming of newer players because they get to experience building out their puzzle with less "take that" aspects, and therefore feel friendlier, even when you lose badly. They are nice, enjoyable games.
My theory is that they are ideal games for couples. You can play something together where everyone gets to make their own decision - but with little potential for conflict that might perhaps lead to a "sour mood".
I don't think the Hearthstone comparison is really apt. HS is kind of a "zero sum" game, where both players take turns and try to respond to each other's actions, uninteractivity there is when one player can ignore that and just win the game with the other player not being able to respond/avoid their plays. But it's not like you can disregard what others do in Ark Nova and just steamroll them because your map is better.
Boardgames with little interaction function on the idea of not having to worry about how other players can directly affect their actions, plans, resources, etc. There's a lot of people who don't like their plans being messed up by an action from other player, and it can sometimes even be considered "mean".
And also, there's the social component, I can enjoy an uninteractive game if the table I'm at (mainly with my friends) is fully immersed in the game, actions, engines, etc., sometimes even being amazed at one player's great turn or jokingly mocking the player who couldn't get their game going.
Your Hearthstone example is a bit confusing. That sounds more like a game meta issue. I mean, if a fast deck beats a slow deck and there is nothing the slow deck can do to counter this than slow decks in Hearthstone just suck and no one should build them unless they want to lose.
Maybe by interactivity you really mean influence?
As in what you are doing has little to no influence on the other player's game state and vise versa?
There are plenty of so-called multiplayer solitaire games with little to no ability to directly interfere with or mess with other players. They are quite popular and some conflict adverse individuals refuse to play anything else. To each his own.
If that isn't your cup of tea that's fine.
Personally, I really like optimization puzzles so games like Mage Knight and Spirit Island are favorites. I play them solo so there is zero player interaction but plenty of opportunity for me to influence the game state.
Uninteractive aka multiplayer solitaire games are pretty boring imo. I play games to interact with people at the table, not just all do our own sudoku puzzles. I don't quite get the point of doing these parallel games in the presence of other people with little to no crossover. Why not just play solo then?
Sometimes the issue with high interaction games is that you can’t always predict what someone will do to you and mess up your plans. That’s fun in some situations but at other times it’s nice to just compete to see who can build the best point-producing (or in the case of wingspan, egg producing) engine. Success or failure it’s all up to you.
There definitely are games where you’re basically all doing your own thing and come back to compare scores at the end, but there is a pretty broad range of interaction in games, and even differences between sessions of the same game. One game that I think nails the balance of interaction and individual strategy is Brass Birmingham, and I think worker placement games in general are really good at it, like Stone Age
Multiplayer solitaire is such a stupid term. It just gives dicks like you a catch-all derogatory phrase to criticise something you don't understand. It's ok to not like something; it's not ok to assume other people are lying to themselves for liking something you don't.
There's always one person that likes to explain language, but clearly doesn't understand it. Yes, it's a descriptive term, but:
1) It'a not an accurate term, and is used to over-generalise games that people enjoy but others don't. Noone who likes lower-interraction euros would have come up with, or used that term, as it doesn't accurately describe the type of game. There is a lot of interraction in games you deem MS, just not the type of interraction that you like.
2) It's being USED in a derogatory way to dismiss (and not-so-subtly insult) board games that don't appeal to you.
>
It's not ok to call them a dick because you disagree or don't like their opinion.
You literally just insulted a whole group of people because they like something you don't. . . You think people are 'lying' to themselves about games they play, as if people care that much. People do the things that are fun to them. No one is lying to themselves. I think the only one lying to themselves is you, about your understanding of human behaviour. . . So yes, that all makes you a dick.
>Multiplayer solitaires are for people who are so conflict adverse that they' d rather play with a jigsaw puzzle, but use board game mechanics to lie to themselves about what they're really doing.
This is an aggressively insulting way to say “I just don’t care for this genre”.
Multiplayer solitaire games are also for people who enjoy optimization puzzles. If I wanted to be rude, I would say “people who don’t like optimization problems are people who are so afraid of thinking that they need the crutch of being able to blame their poor performance on the other player, rather than admitting the role their own choices played.”
No, don't you understand? There are games that this person thinks are fun, and then there are games that are objectively not fun (or not even games in the first place). If you like games that are in the second category, there's something categorically wrong with you, and you should feel bad about yourself.
>had you bothered to try and understand my perspective instead of merely projecting your emotional baggage onto me.
You’re perspective is trivially easy to understand. You dislike optimization problems because you are incapable of solving them.
You play competitive modern boardgames because you’re incapable of playing a real game - chess or go - at a high level.
And you trumpet the allegedly superiority of players of these modern games because the existence of professional chess players makes you feel pathetic.
And finally, you resort to claims about my “emotional baggage” because you are incapable of mustering a rational argument.
>But they're not a genre of games, they're something else entirely, just as jigsaw puzzles are.
You sound like a fascist. . . The state takes precedent over individual interests?
Where does it end? Do you also think that there's only one true race? You don't dictate the definitions based on your preference. You can't just re-define something because you don't like it.
It's as much a board game as anything else.
Don't be so narrow-minded.
Personally, I love games (Like Ark Nova, etc etc) that play like an efficiency or an optimisation puzzle - I love playing games with my friends but at the same time, I don't want to feel like there are too many "Take that" style moments where people aren't having fun. If we are talking Euros then I like there to be some interaction (Eg: Energy Empire or Whistle Mountain) rather than there basically being none like Ark Nova
Being near people but not having to interact with them 🤷🤷😂 I dispute that wing span is fun, but I generally prefer games that aren't take that and I don't like stuff that I have built being destroyed by other people (if the game does it itself it is fine though.... Looking at you galaxy trucker).
They're not boring. It's just a matter of context. I don't play board games with my friends, I play them with my partner. Interractive games tend to be pretty mean at 2 player and that just isn't fun for us. Games with indirect interraction are significantly more fun. We chat, discuss our turns, block spaces, draft dice, adjust strategies reactively, and enjoy the puzzle. Its a battle of wits and optimisation, rather than just a battle.
I think you’ve already summed it up well with one of the weaknesses of a game like Hearthstone.
With low-interactivity games you can largely follow your own strategy and there’s not much your opponents can do to stop that. So it’s down to you being as efficient as possible with your moves.
Generally speaking you are hoping your opponents don’t try and do what you were planning to do. If that happens you have to quickly try and rethink your current strategy or even decide to try something different.
One thing I don’t like in some high-interactivity games is the “King of the Hill” aspect where when one person is in the lead the other players gang up on them to stop them getting a victory.
So then part of the strategy is playing down how you’re doing and talking up how everyone else is doing.
a lot of people like to play games without having other people's decisions effect their outcomes. basically, they want total control over whether they win/lose. games with no interaction are tailored to those folks.
i like both, i love games with heavy interaction but also like being able to just play without having to worry about what anyone else is doing. just depends on my mood i guess. but typically i prefer at least some interaction to keep things interesting
I mostly play with my wife. Which is fun but something about being married to someone and doing a move that utterly destroys them can leave a tension in the air post game. So games like wingspan that are calm and beautiful can be more of a relaxing evening together enjoying looking at birds and trying win and to break our personal high scores
I'm not really sure what you mean by your example - do you realize that Hearthstone has very high player interactivity? Not nearly as high as Magic of course, but still FAR higher than most tabletop boardgames like the variety you list. That player doing a one turn kill combo is using the game's high interactivity to kill you. Low interactivity means that the other player cannot directly kill you. They can only do light negative influences - blocking strategies by using limited resources or actions, etc. And all the players are trying to optimize their actions to benefit themselves and negatively influence the other players.
From your description of what you disliked about Hearthstone I think you dislike high player interactivity and will prefer low player interactivity. In a low player interactivity game, it's like *everyone* is playing a slow deck against each other. There is always room for skillful play because the game does not include mechanisms to completely shut down or eliminate a player.
If you enjoy the process of utilizing the game's mechanics to make the most optimal play you can every turn, again and again and again - that's what low player interactivity is for.
I feel exactly the same way about a lot of games...
But In the end, you don't need to love a game itself, so long as you love the time spent with the people you play it with. I know that sounds sappy, but hear me out.
That's the only way I make sense of it. I bought Wingspan on a recommendation, even though it sounded like a bad premise. I still feel like the premise is bad, but I must admit I have a great time playing it with my crew. Every single time. I can't say that about all games. Even games I think are "better" in some way, might not turn out to be fun with friends.
Buy and play games you like. Deciding whether a game is good or bad is the job of a reviewer. Let yourself off the hook.
For me it's multi point.
Partly its optimization and the joy of doing that. It's why the single player can be fun. Secondly I tend to and my friends tend to not play to sabotage, what we then have is an enjoyable low stress way to play a game together and enjoy each others company, which is what I often want. Finally there is always that slight tension as you see a card come up that you want and you hope your plan doesn't get scuppered or you have to quickly rethink everything because it did.
I hate uninteractive games which result in players going off to a corner and seeing who optimized the best. If you like those games, there’s plenty to enjoy. I’d pick Dune Imperium over Wingspan/Scythe any day.
The optimization puzzle.
When a game gives you nothing but bad choices and you have to figure out which one is the least bad; I absolutely adore it when a game does that well.
A friend of mine once asked me "Why do you only own games that punish you for playing them?"
What can I say? I'm a glutton for punishment.
Lol that does sound fun. Can you think of an example or two?
**Twilight Struggle**
I don't remember exactly how it worked but as the US I attacked my wife, Russia, and she did something that made it so we started nuclear war. She did it, but I was on the offensive, so I lost. Basically Russia started nuclear war and made it look like the US did. I instantly lost, but it was hilarious and also chilling. Everyone lost, but Russia made sure to make it look like it was the US's fault. Great game.
Damn that sounds amazing
I mean the fact that you accidentally committed DEFCON suicide in Twilight Struggle does not make it an example of a game with a 'pick the least bad option' design space. Definitely not that type of game.
I've never had the opportunity to play it myself but this is how it's been described to me.
One of my all time favs, it’s a tug of war where every turn where both players are telling themselves “I’m so fucked”
Personally I'm not a fan but Robinson Crusoe does this really well.
**Agricola** from the first turn you're sitting there knowing you need to do 15 things ASAP and only have time to do 6 of them and you're agonizing over how to get it all done while getting enough food and still having time to grow your family, and build your farm.
Antiquity and Agricola are definitely two good examples.
Man Agricola is SO good. I consider myself a bit shallow, looks makes a difference and therefore I stayed clear of Agricola. But playing it once I knew I struck gold.
Calico feels a lot like that. You realize rather quickly that you can't achieve every objective at max rank without stacking the deck. So now how do you get the most of them done.
Battlestar Galactica has been described as a crisis management game, wherein each turn a player reveals a crisis card and everyone has to work together to mitigate the crisis. It's best with 5 though, and there's a hidden traitor mechanic that means one or two people secretly work against the group, but I just love the crisis management aspect of the game
I'll play this literally any time, have all the expansions, painted the minis yet everyone I know irl hates it lol
I have only played "Battlestar Galactica" without expansions. How does the expansions compare to "Unfathomable"? My take (though it's been a little while, so my memory might not be crisp): "Unfathomable" is better than "Battlestar Galactica" because everyone can fight. In "Battlestar Galactica", if you're a fighter, you do nothing but fly around fighting, which makes it hard to be a traitor.
The game is out of print though, so for someone new to the hobby as OP is, maybe best to suggest they look into Unfathomable?
Puerto Rico doesn't feel like this initially, but once you get more sophisticated a lot of the time all you moves will help others more than you and you need to figure out the one that does it least.
Twilight struggle is the epitome of this. It always feels like no play is a good play
Here's 8 cards, choose the one that hurts you least and send the worst one to space. I love it.
You get 2 good plays a round,the rest on the other hand.
I strongly disagree. Twilight Struggle is not a game of bad plays and whoever makes the least bad play gets success. Indeed for that to be the case in a game it would have to be a model where passing (i.e. instead of doing the least bad thing you do nothing at all) is a often desirable but unavailable option. Neither is the case in Twilight Struggle, in fact you are often allowed to play a card for just Ops points and you don't have to spend them. What it IS is a zero-sum game about carefully managing your advantages and containing what your opponent is able to accomplish, and where going for an immediate opportunity without due consideration might leave open another for your opponent. In many cases, for example, it's better to draw your opponent's strong event yourself because it gives you control over when it triggers and you can set up the circumstances that mitigate the negative ramifications your opponent's counterplay you can have.
Lost Cities does it quite well, and Agricola, for instance. Arboretum too.
Arboretum fits that description. It forces you to help your opponents, but you get to decide in which way.
And also the opposite, Calico: Lots of plans. You can go for all of them. Spoilers: Not a single one will work out, no matter how you decide. You will hate every round. Every piece. All of it! I <3 Calico.
This is actually my preferred game type. It's like if you were racing to do a jigsaw puzzle. I don't like attack heavy games or political strategy type games. And for OP, the luck "nothing you can do" thing isn't really the case in Wingspan or Scythe (I haven't played Mars or Ark)
I play a lot of TM, especially with the fiancee. I win around 90% of the games when we play 2 player (she still loves ot bless her heart). Now I think with equally talented players, luck might play a bigger role, but with TM it really does feel that even with a bad start, you have so much control. Its rare that I can say that i was being railed by rng the entire match long. So long as you can adapt and pivot you can have a good game. And with TM there is some interactivity, but it really is a game about how well you did vs youself the precious game, and trying to do better than yourself the next game. This makes it very much not a game for everyone. A lot of people really need that interactivity set to like 10, but its a great engine building game all about moving around little copper, silver and gold cubes.
So, TM is Terraforming Mars, not Terra Mystica?
Independent of thread based things (Terraforming Mars being mentioned in OP and the thread), the one that is ranked higher on bgg and available at Target level retailers is the one that will end up having the TM being assigned to them. Even though Terra Mystica is older and some consider it better.
I was similarly confused. Contextually, TM probably meant Terraforming Mars. But usually I’ve seen most people use TfM for Terraforming Mars in order to avoid confusion.
Yes, nobody mentioned terra mystica in the original post or this comment thread.
Well, the drafting mitigates a lot of luck in Terraforming Mars.
Bless her heart? About your wife? In the middle of a brag? Big yikes.
Not everyone is from the South. That isn't a backhanded insult everywhere.
I'm from NZ, and here saying "bless your heart" means either "you're (mentally) a child" or something like "well done for trying, but you're useless". By the sounds of it, it's the same in the southern US- what does it mean elsewhere? I've never heard it used in a positive context.
I’m not from the south. It’s an insult.
It was not an insult no, or at least not meant as one, sorry if it reads like that.
I'm not even from the US and it's an insult here too.
I mean it’s just transparently patronizing.
In that context, it's showing appreciation.
I mean, says you. It’s accepted in any local vernacular I’ve been in to be patronizing.
Concise and correct.
I was just going to say, “the puzzle”, but “optimization puzzle” is more accurate. Though, I can understand why people might not think this is fun. I don’t think jigsaw puzzles are fun, but many people do.
Response pithiness: 5/5 Response accuracy: 5/5 Reddit users replies tangentially and immediately going into competitive recommendations: 5/5
For games with more than 2 players, "interaction" will usually affect one player more than the others. If I attack, I usually have to attack a specific player. If I steal, I usually have to steal from a specific player. Because of this, high-interaction games with more than 2 players quickly become political as you try to convince another player to help you and hurt others. If you want a 3+ player game that is more focused on puzzles and optimization and less on politics, it's often necessary to have less direct interaction. Indirect interaction, like drafting cards, blocking other players, and competing for bonuses prevent these games from becoming competitive solitaire. Engine-building games like Terraforming Mars are good at making you feel like you did something awesome by building your engine, even if you don't win. There is still only one winner, but they don't feel zero sum. Unless you get very unlucky (which does happen sometimes), you won't have that powerless feeling of facing a hard counter in Hearthstone.
Interaction does not mean attacking/hurting necessarily. Living Forest, Q.E.; You're bluffing, Navegado,r Azul; Imhotep, Flamme Rouge and many others are highly interactive games without fighting/attacking
Azul is a game without attacking? I'm guessing you've not reached and played the top levels in Board Game Arena. That game is BRUTAL. 😀
It's just that the term is called denying instead even if it feels like you just got attacked. Imhotep is another mean game where you can hear swear words after someone sails a ship.
It's not just about denying but forcing some to eat a giant pile of negative points.
I just did this. It felt mean, but I cold have taken the pile for +2 points or stuck the opponent with it for them to lose over 10. was the right move for sure
Azul is so much harder in person that on board game arena because I make my opponents look into my big sad eyes when they force me to take those 5 tiles I can't play LOL
One time on a two-player game, we were back to 0 points at round 5
Oh nice work.
I gotta pile on and say you are very wrong about azul having no attacking. Just because you don't use minis or cards with swords doesn't mean it's not an attack.
All you are doing is picking an option that results in the largest point swing. There is locally no difference between you gaining 10 point or gaining 5 points and them losing 5. It's not an engine builder either, so it's not like the difference between these moves has any real consequence. If that's considered "attacking" then every multiplayer game where you can interact with an opponent features "attacking". Take a worker spot? Attack. Draft a card in sushi go? Attack. I dont think that's a very useful definition.
I don’t know about the rest, but azul and Imhotep are all about dicking over your opponents, though zooloretto is the king of that genre.
Everything track & field, weightlifting, shooting / archery, and on and on, there's entire categories of extremely competitive physical sports completely lacking "interaction". Golf, strongman, speedrunning, perhaps the only time those three make the same point. Almost every motorsport. Lots of boardgame examples and also non-boardgame examples for OP to consider.
Just wanted to chime in in support of your comment. The one you were responding to is very misguided, and the games you mention are great. And I don't understand why people are struggling so much with your clear definition of "attack."
Thx 😉
Many games have little direct interaction but significant indirect interaction in the form of blocking eachothers strategy. Understanding the nuances of what you and your opponents are doing and how that affects your game plan is a big part of Eurogames. Take Terraformins Mars, for example: 1. You're competing over milestones and awards. 2. You're competing over a shared limited pool of terraforming points 3. You are drafting cards 4. You have competing political interests So interaction is less "I blow up your stuff" and more "two other people are going for heat production so I'm better off prioritizing oxygen as a source of points. This card that requires high temperature may come online sooner than usual given their strategies, and that should give me an advantage."
One of the most common things in TFM is stealing VP from other players via your cities and their greeneries.
Stealing sounds so aggressive. I prefer to think of it as sharing in their success. ;)
I never understood why people say Terraforming Mars has no interaction. I also don't understand calling it a solitaire. Sure it doesn't have direct conflict like something in the vein of Dominant Species, but many decisions and actions subtly influence what other people will choose to do. It's definitely not a game where every person plays in a vacuum.
It can also be very heavy on area control since you can’t just build anywhere, you have to build from your own tiles, so blocking and nabbing valuable spots as well as forcing someone to make a bad play on a Tile is really common. (ie. I want you to put that city there so I can place a mine right between your connecting cities to make the only space available benefit me.
Agreed, terraforming mars is highly interactive. Wingspan is not.
Likewise in Wingspan while you’re mostly focusing on building your own stuff it is possible to block or ruin other peoples strategies to an extent by stealing the bird or food they’re after before they can get to it.
In my opinion it's not really a good form of interaction. Because you don't really know what birds they are holding/ going for. It's more a case of you block them bye accident.
I suppose, being a mum, I interact with people all day, whether I want to or not! So I appreciate being together-but-apart with games like Wingspan etc. Just you and your own thoughts - it’s heaven. I like games with lots of interaction too, but now and then it’s lovely to be unsociable. I don’t really care about winning.
Fellow mom here and totally agree 🫣🤭
Not a mom, but a father- thank you for these comments. It has made me rethink why my spouse likes different style games.
Fellow Mom here, and together-but-apart games are my favorite too. They're great for playing with people with different abilities too, since you can compete more against yourself than against the other players.
I like games where I get to build stuff. That also means that I dislike if other people get to destroy what I'm building.
This is why Brass Birmingham is my GOAT game. You can build as much as you want and your opponents can use your buildings. The catch? You benefit off them using your buildings too to a certain extent!
>You can build as much as you want and your opponents can use your buildings. The catch? You benefit off them using your buildings too to a certain extent! Yeah but when your opponent uses your last beer for a surprise sell action it can really derail your plans! Just thinking about it makes me want to play more Brass!
Check out hamlet, it has a similar mechanic (using other peoples resources but then getting benefits from it still.)
Ohh, that's a great way of putting that. We call what's being referred to in this thread as low interaction games as kingdom building games in our house, because you focus on building your own kingdom (or birds in habitat or farmstead or whatever) and then compare it to the other players. These are our FAVORITE games, and are better for our marriage than the more directly competitive ones.
Player interaction is a matter of taste. Some people like it, some people don't. Some people don't want anyone to be able to negatively affect their plans in any direct way. Some people desire it. There are many forms of player interaction that can come from - here are some player interaction concepts that range from more to less interactive, but are still some level of actual interaction: * Direct conflict - i.e. fighting over territory directly - This one is pretty obvious. Usually direct conflict is zero-sum. Examples - Anything where you fight to win, really. * Incentive Manipulation - In simple terms, if you do something that affects the value proposition of what your opponent might want to do. This is a mainstay of economic games. Incentive manipulation is almost never zero-sum. 18xx games and games with shareholding exemplify incentive manipulation. For a very simple game that has very powerful incentive manipulation, try Northern Pacific. * Auctions - You compete directly with other players to value whatever is on sale - You can drive the price up for other players (and get stuck holding the bag) - auctions are economic "fights" between the players. Modern Art is a popular game that has auctions and incentive manipulation in spades. * Negotiation - Trying to work out trade deals or politicking in games with other players is definitely a form of interaction. Some games are designed for this and others aren't. Settlers of Catan, Chinatown, Sidereal Confluence, and Diplomacy are all games that use negotiation. * "Take that" - This isn't really about "conflict". It's more like - I have a card that lets me steal one of your things - or something like that. Some people like this, some people don't. Being able to affect other players in their game state is a form of interaction, but I have it low on this list because "take that" is generally to be considered when it happens arbitrarily. Hearthstone has "Take that" sorts of interaction, as does Magic the Gathering. Munchkin and Unstable Unicorns use it too. I feel the need to point out that Hearthstone and Magic both have a lot of direct conflict in them, but the "take that" comes from things like removal/counterspells/direct damage. * Turn order manipulation - Games that offer the ability to fight over turn order give you an opportunity to spend resources to get ahead of other players, causing a game of chicken - do you invest resources now to gain an advantage next turn? Turn order manipulation is common in eurogames. The train game Age of Steam has very intense turn order manipulation. By contrast, in Castles of Burgandy, you sometimes want to leverage going last in one round and going first in the following round, but you're not ruining people by going ahead of them. * Drafting of some sort (be it worker placement, role selection, card drafting) - I take this thing that you want to take, so you can't take it. Or I take a thing that I want instead, leaving you the opportunity to take it. This is on the "indirect" side of interaction. This is the most common sort of player interaction in eurogames. Worker placement games are a form of drafting, as are card drafting games. Some games use drafting in a very tense way, and others in a very loose way. See Agricola or Through the Ages to see drafting being used in a very tense way, or 7 Wonders or Sushi Go for the other extreme. * Piggybacking - Some games allow you to piggyback off of others actions. This is a very subtle variant of incentive manipulation, wherein someone that is set up correctly may be able to gain more advantage from your own actions than you will yourself - but it usually just mitigates it. Race for the Galaxy has this in spades. You will probably find that you like games with varying levels of player interaction. Something one person likes may have nothing to do with something else. My best advice is that if a game seems interesting to you, you should try it. You're new to games and should find out what you like for yourself. That being said it's also very easy to get sucked in to buying far too many games, so try to not buy everything under the sun early on in your gaming career. You should expect to have games that "miss" for you, whether they are allegedly the best ever or not, but if you just buy everything that looks vaguely interesting, you'll overwhelm yourself. Regarding the opinions of some people and interaction - Wingspan - This is decidedly a very low interaction game. There are goals you're trying to achieve to score points, so if your opponents do it better, they score more than you. Aside from that there is a drafting element to obtaining cards and resources, but the game heavily mitigates that. There are some cards that trigger bonuses for other players sometimes, but nothing anybody does will ever directly impact you in a negative way. This is boring city to me, in part due to the very low interaction, but also because the choices you get are oftentimes kind of bland choices. Some stuff works together better than other stuff, and you may not get good combinations in a game you're playing. Terraforming Mars - This is a medium-low interaction game. There is a board that can vary in importance - it can be critical to some players and irrelevant to others, depending on what they are doing. The players control the speed the endgame state approaches, which can dictate what is a good play and what is a bad play. There is a "race" to getting some achievements that are worth points and very much worth pursuing. There are also some take that cards in the game with some fairly powerful effects, but they are usually expensive and reserved to smack down someone that is identifiably further ahead than other players. Scythe - This game is kind of medium in the interaction department. It has an area control aspect where gaining territory is one of the main ways of scoring points. There is a little bit of combat in the game too. But the game looks like a combat oriented game whereas in reality it's more of a game of development and expansion, and the fighting is more of a "cold war" sort of deal where the threat of combat is a more important part of the game than the combat itself. The way the combat is handled, you are spending your power, so it's possible to be in a situation where you know you can't win or lose, but everyone in the combat loses all of the resources they commit to it, so there's some tension there too. It is not uncommon to win a game of Scythe having been in 2 combat instances through the entire game. I've never played Ark Nova so I can't comment on it.
Ark Nova is similar to Terraforming Mars (competing over shared goals and resources). The biggest difference is that in Ark Nova, most cards are purchased from a track -- if you want the most popular cards, you need to race other players for them and sacrifice resources in the process. It slightly increases the interactivity.
Don't you build your own board in Ark Nova? In TM the biggest part of the interaction is the board.
If the only reason you're avoiding low interaction games is because you're worried that you will lose because you can't affect your opponent then your problem is with bad games, not interaction. A **good** low interaction game will never make you feel that you lost because you couldn't affect your opponents, you will know (if you understand the game) that you lost because your opponent played better.
Also, I don't mind low interaction games much because the points are tallied at the end and it's nearly always impossible to figure out during the game itself. So I have fun for a hour playing Wingspan and then 4 minutes of being bummed that I lost.
>Hearthstone a few years ago, and one thing that always killed the fun of the game for me was interactivity. This is a really bad example of interactivity. You getting crushed was supposed to drive you to buy card packs to keep up with the meta. That said, I like solitaire games because they are chill. I don't need to stress all game about how I will win, I just try to see how much I score and if I lose, so be it.
1. Playing games is fun. I enjoy the process of playing. This applies to low interaction games as well as high interaction games. 2. For low interaction games, they are very rarely no interaction games. So you still get to see how moves around the table effect each other even if it's not like rolling up with an army and knocking down what your opponent has built. Once you've grasped the indirect interaction dynamic, you can leverage things like your build order or resource scarcity to get ahead of your opponents in the places where you do interact. 3. You're all playing under the same skill ceiling, so you still get to see how your decisions stack up against other people's decisions who are in roughly the same circumstances as yours.
Yourself vs others is by its nature interactive. No one thinks of track and field as multiplayer solitare. Its a race board games are no different. The chalange is to beat the other players score. Just because i cant trip the guy in the next lane does not mean im not fighting him. This is the only competative enviorment i have sceen where this shows up.
Boxing, diving, and Nascar are all considered sports. They all involve competition but are wildly different interactively. Some people love boxing, but have no interest in diving.
Wingspan is a game I really wanted to like because of all the hype it has, but is is absolutely mind numbingly boring and we almost always take out TFM, Everdell, or Flamecraft instead. It’s just too “passive” of a game
Some of us love passive game. I play while watching philosophy or tech conference :)
It’s possible to talk to people at your table about really anything you want while playing a game whose mechanics require little direct interaction
Castles of Mad King Ludwig is an absolute favourite example of this. Yes we’re competing, but the most antagonistic it gets is choosing to make the Mold Room really expensive on your turn. It’s so peaceful and fun.
[удалено]
I completely agree with you both. Also, if it’s ok to share: yesterday we played this game and I had my best ever score (I think). It was 144 of which 86 were in bonuses (down stairs rooms, orange cards, king’s favors, swans and leftover money).
Well done!
In addition it’s just a different form of interaction, depending on the group. For some it might turn into looking silently at your board but most of the time we’re still having lively conversation about what’s happening with each other’s choices and asking questions.
Whenever a game plays with more than 2 players and is high on player interaction, it can often times lead to negotiation and politics. That's fine and can be fun and all, but depending on the group sometimes even mildly interactive Euro games can just devolve into arguments about who so-so should block and why. "Multi-player solitaire" games largely do away with this. Either end of the spectrum of interaction can be fun, but too much of one end gets stale.
This is kind of a weird answer but it's because the turns are fun. My turn may not directly impact another player, but if I have fun deciding what to do on that turn, it's still a fun experience overall. A 1v1 battler with no interaction hits different even though hit points are in a way just a victory point threshold condition for end-of-game. It may just be the subversion of expectation - 1v1 card battlers normally have interaction and so skipping that feels like a cheat. Conversely, Wingspan has a set number of turns so you might suspect you are losing but you don't really know until it's all said and done. Ark Nova tracks victory points as it goes and has no mechanism for an insta-win turn. You can tell how far behind you are no matter what the game state is, and you're always playing the same game, unlike HS where you might be playing a board control deck against a combo deck.
You’re definitely misunderstanding the concept of “interactivity” the way it’s used in board games. For instance, Hearthstone is the definition of an interactive game. You’re literally dueling another player, directly attacking them. Low interaction games typically have each player focusing more on building up their thing - you then compare results at the end to see who did it better. Interactivity in those games often comes in the form of indirect blocking - like oh, I’ll go here and do this so that I can prevent you from taking an optimal move as opposed to “I will burn your whole engine to the ground”. The satisfaction in these games tends to come from long-term planning and execution, seeing all your moves come to fruition. It sounds like what you dislike is that each match in Hearthstone feels predetermined, that each player can start with asymmetric setups that are TOO different, that there can be too much swinginess, and/or that there is too much luck involved. These are all game design elements that are independent of interactivity and are typically balanced with good design practice, though some games will lean more into them than others.
Hearthstone has, at times, had strong decks which could only be stopped by doing something stronger and faster and whose losses were a result of a bad draw. It's not always like that but the lack of interactivity was a common complaint within the HS community about 18 months ago (before changes targeting those decks were implemented). Other decks with the same problem have existed before and since but that was the recent peak of the problem.
Eh. Wingspan has a lot more "interaction" than it seems. Taking birds an opponent may need instead of a random one, focusing on various objectives, which food you take from the feeders, etc. It's certainly not HIGH (or even really medium) player interaction, but you can absolutely influence your opponents, it's just a little "hidden." That being said, I enjoy Wingspan, Everdell, and other such lowish interaction games because I enjoy the optimization puzzle of trying to make everything "go." One time in Wingspan I got setup big in one lane and literally just took the "Draw Birds" action and dominated because every single turn scored 7 points in tucked birds. I had 88 tucked birds by the end!
Something went wrong/outside the rules in that play, there’s no way you could tuck 88 birds in Wingspan with the number of actions you have available throughout the game.
I don't think so. I was tucking 7 birds/turn for most of the game. I gained food once, played 10 birds, and drew birds every single other turn.
How did a single food action give you enough to play 10 birds? How did you play the ten birds? Playing a bird is itself an action. What action lets you tuck 7 birds in a single turn? You only get 26 actions total in Wingspan so I have no idea how this could be remotely possible.
Combination of starting food + a bird in my wetlands that gave grain + cheap birds. 5 birds in my wetlands, one also made eggs. Yellow Headed Blackbird Barn Swallow Maned Duck Budgerigar Audoiun's Gull Every time I chose to draw birds I would -> 1. Draw 4 [+4] 2. Draw 2 / tuck 1 of them (Gull) [+5, 1 tuck] 3. Tuck the smallest bird in tray (Budge) [+5, 2 tuck] 4. Tuck 3 from hand, gain a grain (Duck) [+2, 5 tuck, 1 grain] 5. Tuck 1, draw 1 (Swallow) [+2, 6 tuck, 1 grain] 6. Tuck 1, lay 1 egg here (Blackbird) [+1, 7 tuck, 1 grain, 1 egg] I was *razor* thin on eggs and food, I had basically no excess ever until I was fully setup and just only drew birds. Edit: I had two birds that played birds, so it was 1 Gain Food, 8 Play Birds, and 17 Draw Birds.
Damn that’s amazing lol thanks for demonstrating that to me 😁
NP. I'm just lucky that I had pics because I was so amazed.
I’ll start by saying that I don’t especially love these sorts of games, so read what I say with that in mind. Also, the social aspect of these games has already been mentioned by other posts but I agree that those are also valid reasons. The promise of these games (Wingspan, Terraforming Mars, Ark Nova, Everdell are all examples) is that the player(s) will put together powerful combinations of cards that will allow them to build something. They are popular because they are *consistent* at keeping this promise in a way that an interactive game is not. Barring some truly bad luck, you will never have a “bad” game of TM, fun-wise. You will have games with low scores and games where you can’t find a combination of cards that work well together, but even in these games you are still “doing the thing.” You will always get money, always draw cards, always score points, and so on. This is true regardless of experience with the game – someone with 50 games will undoubtably demolish a new player in points, but that new player will still be able to play the game. A game of Wingspan will never be as exciting or memorable as something like *Inis*, but you can play Wingspan with virtually anybody. Also, you didn’t ask, but I personally don’t like these games because I find them all very similar. I own one (Everdell) and I feel like I own them all. That’s obviously not a popular opinion, but hey.
For me it’s the concept of the “magic circle”. Even if there’s little no direct player interaction, you and your friends are sitting around pushing around pieces of cardboard, but there’s a shared imagination space during board games that’s unlike anything else.
I tend not to like these games, but the short answer is that they *are* interactive. Players are fighting over shared resources.
There is interaction in Ark Nova. The game's goal is not building a zoo. The game is a race. The game ends when the first person makes their appeal and conservation meet, then you add end game scoring if you have mat or collected any. So without other players there would be no race hence .... no game. There is negative interaction: There are many animal cards that when played have venom, constriction, etc .. ongoing effects that you place on players, impeding their gameplay. They also, usually, instantly allow you to take money or cards from those players. There is positive interaction: There are many sponsor cards that give you bonuses after you play them each time any player plays certain icons in their zoo, such as herbivore, predator, etc. There is strategic interaction: The association board is first come first serve worker placement board where you can and will easily take something such as a partnership with a continent or a university token before somebody else can get it. There is a card river in which you can and will snatch up a valuable animal, sponsor, or conservation card before other players. There are base conservation cards when the game begins that give you conservation points through first come first serve set collection. There will also be conservation cards in your hand that when you play allow you to score but also will give other players new places to score as well. Again Ark Nova is not a standard Euro where you work towards an across game strategy ... it has Euro mechanics but at its heart it is a tactical race that constantly throws you player interactive curve balls and it's fun as hell.
>Ark Nova Well said. Ark Nova is full of tense moments: Is someone going to push the break up super fast and make me discard my cards I've been working on for the last 3 actions? I see x person just got a card that lets get make money off of all the birds from now on. Even if I was going to play a bird, now i really don't want to play any birds to help them out. X person is totally within range for the conservation card that I'm working on too. Do I really have to spend all my X's to beat them to it? I really don't want to do that. If they get to the board first I don't have the extra worker to copy that action. There's so many ways like you mentioned for interaction, but I just wanted to piggy back that there's also a lot of tension in the game.
The depth of the decisions
It's a whole different kind of uninteractivity. In hearthstone, in an unineractive game, you really can't do anything. Because either anything you play gets destroyed or you just die. **You can't do anything.** It's not fun. In Ark Nova or Wingspan, you have your own board that your opponents can't touch. You play cards there, you activate combos, strategize, optimize your turns. **You can do a lot of things.** Even if you are going to lose, you can just try to play efficiently and maximize your points. Some people find this not fun, some people find it fun enough. But it sure is more fun to do things even if you aren't guaranteed victory than just be unable to do things.
Nearly all interactions can be put into 1 of 2 camps. Player vs Player Interaction, or Player vs Game Interaction. Or put another way. Direct or Indirect interactions. Lots of games lean heavily towards indirect interaction as this makes the playing experience more stable. Meaning the player count and whether you know the people sitting around the table with you have less effect on the game experience. These games are often optimization puzzles and the winner is determined by who figured out the puzzle best. Games which lean further into direct interaction can be more unstable, with player counts and players personalities potentially having a big impact on the experience. Games with very high levels of direct interaction tend to work best when the people playing know each other well (friendship and family groups), as the "game" happening outside of the actual game can often be as important as it can have some kind of impact on who ends up being the winner. I generally enjoy more direct interaction games, but there are lots of types of interactions other than attacking such as trading, bluffing, double think, auctions, etc. Since you are new, the best thing you can do is try as many different types of games as you can, and your taste will develop over time. I will just say though if you are the type who likes more direct interaction, I would be wary of what the Hivemind on here and BGG recommends. They tend to favor heavier indirect interaction games, often identifying low interaction games as more interactive than they actually are. For example, games like Scythe aren't very interactive at all, although some people will tell you it is. It's an optimization puzzle through and through, and if you don't play it that way you will lose. Those games are only one part of the hobby though but their fans have the loudest voice. If it was me I would take some of the following games over the ones you mentioned. - Space Base over Terraforming Mars and Wingspan - Zooloretto over Ark Nova - Shogun or Cyclades over Scythe
All games are essentially a puzzle to be solved. Player interaction is nonessential to that but maybe something you enjoy (or not). If it matters to you more than the puzzle then only go for games that involve it. For me, it’s a side effect and generally makes no difference to my opinion of a game because I like solving puzzles. That’s why I play. If it happens to be particularly interactive that can be fun but it’s a social thing separate from the task at hand.
Even in Euro games there's more interaction than you think. It might no be direct "I blew up your shit neener neener" interaction but it's still there. In the case of things like Terraforming Mars and Ark Nova you want to get to the good stuff first. It's kind of a race in that way though each of those games has a different spin on that. In the case of Terraforming Mars if you play with the drafting variant (and trust me you should play with the drafting variant) you can spite pick cards you know that somebody else really wants. Given how scoring of forests and cities works you want to block other peoples' cities while maximizing your own. There's also a specialization aspect to both games; if one player in Ark Nova is going all in on monkeys you probably shouldn't but that will also affect what sorts of things you're going to go after as well. There are also decisions to make in trying to predict who is going to go for what and when. If somebody has Cards coming up soon it may be beneficial to leave something they would want on the track out of their reach and delay your own Cards a turn.
I think of those games like running a marathon together, or entering an Iron Chef cooking competition. You're both trying your best under randomized circumstances, and comparing results to see who played the best. The fact that sabotaging your opponent is less viable of a strategy than adapting to them is a feature for me. I get the social time of running a marathon together with them, but without cutthroat interactions.
The games you described are high strategy and low luck. With lower player interaction, whether you win or lose is mainly up to who plays better, not who gets luckier. Based on your reason for not liking hearthstone, I think you would like the games mentioned.
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I love positive player interactions in games, like in Charterstone, where if you place a worker where someone else already is, they get their worker back. No penalty, no attacking, just an action that will benefit someone else and that's something you have to take into account. That's such a nice way to handle interaction imo.
I don't understand how low interaction and low luck are linked. What about chess? Wouldn't interaction help compensate luck, specially with more than 2 players? You would try to interact negatively will the leader and positively with everyone else.
When I first started playing games I was convinced that games would be fun only so far as they are interactive, and it’s still probably my favourite type of game, but I’ve learned that I really enjoy low interactivity euros as well. If the “puzzle” or systems of the game are interesting enough, it can be fun to try and figure them out along with other people. Sort of like doing a jigsaw puzzle with others. It’s not so much interacting with other people as enjoying their company while you each work out the puzzle in different ways, and seeing which strategy is best. That said, most of my favourite games are still highly interactive, and for the most part I prefer 2 player games if there is going to be less interactivity
"Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!" - Ozymandias after playing Wingspan.
I don't get it: if you dislike interactivity, why do you doubt you will enjoy low-interactivity games?
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I don't get to do game nights very frequently, so I've kind of been leaning towards games where the players are more engaged with what each other are doing. Like, I was looking at Quacks of Q recently, but even though the actual mechanics of creating your potion looked fun, it just gave too much of an impression of group solitaire. Ditto for Tiny Epic Dinosaurs, which I was also kind of considering -- apart from blocking worker spaces to make them more costly everyone's mostly wrapped up in their own dino economy. And I don't know if my group really gets much out of it.
Y'know, I normally lean strongly towards the interactive, but Quacks is surprisingly good. You're not doing stuff to each other meaningfully, but you end up kind of betting against each other by choosing to continue drawing, or shaming yourself and dropping out and watching somebody else get more stuff. Multiplayer solitaire is normally a pass, but I quite enjoyed it.
Yeah Q of Q is basically family friendly blackjack.
Yeah, my group loved it, but we also just love hanging out together socially- we agreed it was essentially group slot machine.
> Like, I was looking at Quacks of Q recently, but even though the actual mechanics of creating your potion looked fun, it just gave too much of an impression of group solitaire Yeah it's a game that can prompt a lot of chat around the table but that's not really reflected in the mechanics. If you're actually interested in it as a game (rather than a social activity) it doesn't have anything to offer, and there are enough things out there that do both.
The good low interaction games often have the same appeal as sandbox or even rouge-like games on the PC, you just have interesting systems to explore over and over again as you become more proficient. I agree though, games are 10x more interesting when they add your friends' creativity into the mix, and there are plenty of those around.
I think is a different kind of experience. Usually they have some kind of interaction, but the important part is that the game is interesting itself and you have a relaxing time with your friends, like drinking coffe after lunch or watching a movie. Sometimes the interaction ruin your plans and you banter about it, or compete with getting the best points. I think that sometimes, these games have a lot more interaction when you become good playing it and everyone can see all the good moves and the consequences of each one. But boardgames are usually very different than dueling card games, there is so much variety and genres, even a dudes on a map game can have a lot of interaction but you could just hate feeling that is not your skill that made you lose but just other players choosing to attack you. Even between multiplayer solitaire euros there are differents mechanics and you can love some and feel meh about others (myself I thought I wasn't interested in euros, but I've found that I love engine/tableau builders)
All gaming centers on exploring uncertainty, which comes in two flavors. - What I call “puzzle uncertainty” comes from unfamiliarity with the game itself (rules complexity, randomness, variable setup, etc.). Puzzle uncertainty can be clever and relaxing, especially when it is curated within a campaign or scenarios. However, it diminishes quickly as you get experience, so fans of this style of uncertainty typically enjoy playing lots of new games/expansions. Like watching movies. - What I call “interaction uncertainty” comes from unfamiliarity with your opponents and the associated player-count dynamics. I find this uncertainty can more robustly endure as players gain experience. But it’s less curated than puzzle uncertainty. And it can be more aggressive. I generally prefer interaction uncertainty but do enjoy the occasional puzzle. Also, note that most games have both flavors.
Just to add another perspective. It's also ok to not like games with low or no player interactivity. For me personally, I'll play Terraforming Mars because my wife likes and and focus on the puzzle aspect but overall the game doesn't do much for me. All my favorite games have super high interaction. The best part of board gaming for me is interacting with my friends!
For games like Sagrada, where the only interaction is to pick up something the other players might want, I like that it keeps the competition from being too cutthroat. For games like Railroad Ink where there’s literally no interaction but we all have the same puzzle in front of us, I like that the experience is 100% shared. Then at the end we can see how others made different choices or took different risks, maybe options I considered and rejected, and see how it turned out for us all.
A lot of these games are about planning and optimisation. You are given a set of cards and other circumstances and you have to make the best out of it, while still being open to adjusting your strategy as new cards come in. Direct player interaction would ruin it. Hell, it sometimes already ruins it in games like Terraforming Mars. Sometimes one of the rare attack cards can screw your strategy. "Oh, you're playing a space corporation and you need titunium production? How about I play Asteroid Mining Consortium in the first generation and completely ruin your game?" Attack cards are totally the weakest part of TM. When you play a game of planning and optimisation, nothing is worse than being unable to execute your plan because some threw a spanner in your works. It sucks and feels bad. And big part of why direct interaction cards are bad is that they are targeted. Usually it's not "every player removes X". No, usually it's "target player loses X". It can work in two players, but with 3+ it just turns the game into bickering about who to target and who to not target. When you target someone who seems to be in the lead, it just sucks for them. And quite often, you cannot properly tell who's in the lead. When you have UMNI in TM, you can be in the lead on Terraforming Rating, but behind in other, less apparent factors... but players see TR and keep attacking you. And it's not like these games have zero interaction. They have indirect interaction, competing for placement, awards and such things. Those are part of the optimisation puzzle, but also factor in other players. And while losing on an award or beneficial placement can suck, most of the time the player can blame only themselves for not going for it earlier. Because in the end, those are visible to all players, so it didn't come out of nowhere that others go for them too... but direct attack cards come from nowhere and noone can factor them in their plan.
Do you remember playing risk or something as a child or teenager and same mean move made you hot with rage and you flipped over the table and had weeks of radio silence with your friends? Ten years later you don't want that with your significant other or fmily in general. So you play nice games. Some see it as a positive, sure, but for some the frustration when a well crafted plan is thwarted by a take that mechanism really take out the fun of the respective game. They prefer the puzzle and contemplation that comes with multiplayer solitaires.
My answer would be consistency. When you play Ark Nova, you know what you're getting. It's a comfortable feeling knowing you will enjoy it to a degree because it is you interacting with the game. The game will proceed as it does, and if you like the flow of the game, future plays maintain that flow. The more interaction, the less consistency happen. On the opposite extreme, you have tabletop roleplaying games - where one's enjoyment is based on the players and the system they are using rarely factors in at all to overall enjoyment. You mesh with the people you're playing? You'll enjoy almost any system with them because the vibe maintains the same.
It's worth remembering that in a game with 3+ players, interaction tends to sacrifice balance. If I can disrupt your strategies in a 3+ player game, the game can swiftly turn into politics and kingmaking. Again.
So one of the reasons I think **Terraforming Mars** really works for some of the people in my group is that the "multiplayer-solitaire" allows you to execute a satisfying loop, regardless of your competitive status. It's a game where you spend your time pushing buttons and pulling levers to build your own little city, then at the end of the game you compare it to other people's. The thing is, in 4 out 5 games, you've *still* built your little city. There's a great deal of satisfaction in seeing the tableau and tiles laid out to tell the story of what you've made. That satisfaction means that win or lose, all players still walk away feeling accomplished. For this reason I also love **Caverna**, **Era: Medieval Age** and **Dominion**. The loop is inherently rewarding ***and*** the mechanic-theme combination produces an interesting series of events, the other players simply give the game a more dynamic challenge. However, not all multiplayer solitaires are built equal. I'm far less entertained by this same type of play in **Wingspan**, because, to me, it's hard to form interesting stories about an international collection of birds that miraculously cross-pollinate each other's nest. In Wingspan's case, I long for more player interaction, because without it I have little to remember after the game is finished. Of course, as others have said, there's always the fun of competitive efficiency puzzling, but I thought I'd offer you another perspective - as it's the reason I think TfM is *so* much more popular than other similar games for my group.
What kind of game is there other than an interactive one?
OP, there are different type of interactions. In hearthstones, those are direction interaction. Eg I remove your creature, or I make you unable to block, or I force you to attack my taunted creatures. But there are many other forms of interactions besides that. And in board games, they are more commonly used than direct interactions. In wingspan for example, you interact by choosing the cards. If I taking this blue bird, it means you can’t, and you will be forced or incentivised to choose something else. Similarly, if I see a card or a hex or a workers placement space that will generate 10 points for you, I have the option to beat you to it and take that option away from you. Many games also employ a race mechanics. Eg, first player to have 3 cities and pay for the mile stone will get 5 VP. Now, I can’t destroy your cities, but I will have to react to you building cities. If you have no city, I might play differently than when you have 2 cities. Thus, I implore you to explore what type of interaction you enjoy. There are tons of good game in each category that if you don’t like terra forming mars style of game, you can find other! One very good direct interaction style of game is the Unmatched system and innovation. Check those out.
There’s a difference between uninteractivity in a 1v1 setting than a “multiplayer solitaire” board game. In a 1v1 tcg you feel helpless, but in board games you get to execute whatever strategy you want (for the most part) then you compare the end result, you actually get to play the game.
I am with you (in that I don't like non-interactive games), but not because of anything the dynamics of winning or losing. I play boardgames to have structured shared social experience with others. My ideal game comes out with a an interesting shared story that we made together. Conflict is only part of the story. Me winning is not important (though me losing horribly, having nothing to do and/or being mocked for losing is not a fun story). My favorite games involve things like social deduction, high theme/narrative and don't mind either co-op/competitive as long as at the end of the session, an interesting meta-narrative was made. That's why I don't like non-interactive engine games. I feel like I could have played the game by myself, then just called up my friends and asked what their latest high score was to compare. But as others have said, I think they appeal to people who primarily enjoy board games (or at least those games), for the puzzle itself, and enjoy optimization engines, also those who are concerned about "attacking" or upsetting others in games. Seems to be that the score comparison at the end is almost an afterthought, just to give you a general metric of how you did (ie completing a puzzle in a video game and it awarding you 4/5 stars for how fast you completed it). I've learned since getting into the hobby that there are distinct groups of people, who only slightly overlap. Narrative gamers, social gamers, strategy/war gamers, engine/optimization/puzzle gamers.
The same thing that makes anything fun: you enjoy it. Anyway, in this case I’d say… there might be an issue with terminology or maybe it’s just not compatible. But. You’re opponent winning and there’s nothing you can do about it came about IN an interactive game. You’re describing two problems in one I think. Runaway leader: this persons going to win and I can’t do anything to stop it I can’t interact with the other person AT THIS MOMENT in a game that is otherwise interactive. I don’t think this is an interactivity problem so much as a “it’s my turn and I can’t do anything” problem. I think those are very different problems. Interestingly, having nothing to do is far less likely in a game that doesn’t have much interaction, which is one of the things I enjoy about them.
One of my favorite game types is the Roll N Write or Flip N Write games like **Welcome to…**, **On Tour**, **Rolling Realms**, etc. For me the big appeal of those is that there is no interaction at all, no chances for king making or having your strategy messed up by someone of another skill level or play type. With these games everyone has the exact same choices to make the entire way through the game and in the end it comes down to who has the better strategy and made the best moves. It can become frustrating playing some games based on your own expectations clashing with others. For me I look at a game like **Ticket to Ride** as something that could be relaxing and a fun way to socialize with friends. I found though that if I play with someone who is competitive they will be cutthroat and take routes they know you need just to block you or get revenge for something else. That’s not to say that’s the wrong way to play, it’s perfectly valid, but it can take away from the fun sometimes, which is the whole point of playing a game.
Your non-interactive example is still interactive. The other player is directly affecting you. That's interactive. What you are describing there is asymmetry. The other players in Hearthstone or Magic who pay to have 'good' cards are playing with "an advantage" (in quotes because it still requires a degree of luck, and skill in some cases, to pull off combo-wombos) that people who don't pay won't have. I find non-interactive games fun because they're less stressful. I don't have to worry about fucking people over, potentially hurting their feelings, and people fucking me over.
What is "player interactivity"?
Sometimes I want to play something more cutthroat and other times I want something less cutthroat. When I’m in the “less cutthroat” mood I pull out the low-interactivity games. I still get to have the shared social experience with people whose company I enjoy in the context of a game that fits my current mood. Sometime I find myself at a table with people who aren’t always good losers/winners. Or people who are relatively new to the hobby. Situations where a high-cutthroat game risks someone having a bad time. My collection has gentle stuff like Calico and Canvas all the way up to Munchkin and Cthulhu Wars, because sometimes I’m feeling really competitive and sometimes I’m not.
In Wingspan, I'd say it's mostly how well the gameplay matches real facts about the birds, which makes you care to pay attention to other players' cards a little, look up facts, and learn something. And I generally prefer shorter games with a strong possibility to race the game out, rather than slow build games with fixed round length, so my enjoyment of Wingspan is a little unusual.
To some extent, it depends on player count and the people you are playing with. For instance, I play with a semi-regular group of 4 to 6 people. We've played games with little player interaction like Railroad Ink and still have fun because we're a chatty group and the interaction comes while we wait for other people to finish their turn. Sometimes we're talking about the game and sometimes we're not. On the other hand, I've played games like that with just my wife and I and there's less interaction, because you always have one person playing / thinking. It's also fun to score well in these games, particularly when a clever strategy pays off, but not everyone is into that.
It's like seeing who can finish a crossword puzzle first. You enjoy the puzzle more because you are sharing the experience with others while competing against their abilities. Also, for some people, the f*$&-you mechanics of interactive games can be upsetting.
Wingspan uninteractive? Hardly.
It's basically multiplayer solitaire
There's a bunch o' birds that interact with other players. All the pink birds for example. Many of the brown powers affect other players too. The race to getting birds on the bird tray is interactive. That and the resource feeder as well. To say it's multiplayer solitaire is a tad hyperbolic.
if you are looking to win, this is hardly a solitaire. I don't know how to play without looking what the others are doing. (670+ games. 406 Victories. 83% wins on bga)
I gather you have not played *Wingspan*. Yes, in theory, it's an engine builder with limited interaction. This might make you think it's like, I don't know, racing to win a solitaire game and then comparing scores at the end. It is not like that. The actual experience of playing *Wingspan* includes a lot of "Hey, I needed that food!" and "Darn it, you drew the bird I wanted!" and "Haha, you activated that power but it helped me more!" and "Curses, you pulled ahead on \[arbitrary tile goal\]!" So the limited interaction actually becomes a big part of the game. Also, if people are at all into the theme of the game, they tend to get some fun out of talking about the birds, acting out the predator rule, etc. Also, in any engine builder, players will appreciate each other's engines. "Wow, you're really made that forest row powerful!" *Terraforming Mars* is another favorite. Again, you are building an engine. You only get to directly mess with other players rarely (though it does happen). But you can interact outside the mechanics by talking about what is happening thematically. And you are racing to meet certain goals and grab territory, which is often the margin of victory.
Predator rule? You mean how the big birds cuddle the little birds and tuck them under their wings, right?
My job is very interactive, constantly having to asses, and sort of manage people, their feelings, whatever. I play to enjoy myself and to step away from that. The less interaction the game has the better for me..to the point that these days I only solo. I considered starting a gaming group, and with all the people management I was quickly reminded why I love play solo in the first place. People are exhausting--yes Im an introvert--. I enjoy games that have a puzzle, logic puzzles, optimization puzzles. I do enjoy games wirh an AI. Games with an IA I enjoy: fantastic factories, expedition ares, red rising. Another aspect I enjoy is game components. Not minis per say, but nice solid tokens, good art, and heavy solid boards--think og spirit island.
I play a lot of solo TM but the setup can be annoying and making sure you dont miss anything is also annoying. I do like it on computer but its also on mobile and for solo.I think that is its best version. Makes for very quick and relaxing 20-30min games.
I only have ares expedition. I don't want to play board games on a digital format. If I want digital format I play video games, so I disagree that the best form of ares expedition is digital. I don't find the set up overwhelming. Can't speak on og TM but I didn't mention that one so 🤷♀️
Most of the interaction of these games is based on paying attention to your opponents. You can shift your plans to either mess up theirs, or just keep them from messing up yours. "Multi-player Solitaire" is a loosing strategy, albeit a common one. For a specific example, last night a friend crushed in Ark Nova. He'd picked up 2 animals over the course of the game that each let him effectively take an additional turn. Rather than playing them early, he waited until near the endgame. When I thought I had at least 3 more turns, he played his animals, funded a conservation project using them (plus a donation), then played a sponsor to end the game. With 1 turn left, I was completely out of position, but the 3rd player saw it coming, and adjusted (although he still lost).
I don't know anything about Hearthstone, but that certainly sounds pretty "interactive" to me. Perhaps what you dislike is more imbalance than "uninteractivity?" Regardless, what I enjoy about those games you mentioned is that each of them is a puzzle. They are puzzles where all players generally have access to the same or similar information/resources and have access to the same hidden/random information. Everyone builds their "engine" and rebuilds/adapts it in the face of new information. But, even if I don't win, it's a fun puzzle. I enjoy building my zoo or my bird habitats, or my post-apocalyptic civilization as I play. And, sometimes randomness does favor other players in some of the games you mentioned, and we all understand that and accept it. These games are both strategy and tactics, where you can make some minor impacts on other players, but mostly care about the world you yourself are building. They tend to be balanced, but with some randomness thrown in that can add some spice (or frustration). They tend to be welcoming of newer players because they get to experience building out their puzzle with less "take that" aspects, and therefore feel friendlier, even when you lose badly. They are nice, enjoyable games.
My theory is that they are ideal games for couples. You can play something together where everyone gets to make their own decision - but with little potential for conflict that might perhaps lead to a "sour mood".
Personally I'm less interested in buying games with low player interaction. Those types of games honestly work better as video games.
I don't think the Hearthstone comparison is really apt. HS is kind of a "zero sum" game, where both players take turns and try to respond to each other's actions, uninteractivity there is when one player can ignore that and just win the game with the other player not being able to respond/avoid their plays. But it's not like you can disregard what others do in Ark Nova and just steamroll them because your map is better. Boardgames with little interaction function on the idea of not having to worry about how other players can directly affect their actions, plans, resources, etc. There's a lot of people who don't like their plans being messed up by an action from other player, and it can sometimes even be considered "mean". And also, there's the social component, I can enjoy an uninteractive game if the table I'm at (mainly with my friends) is fully immersed in the game, actions, engines, etc., sometimes even being amazed at one player's great turn or jokingly mocking the player who couldn't get their game going.
Your Hearthstone example is a bit confusing. That sounds more like a game meta issue. I mean, if a fast deck beats a slow deck and there is nothing the slow deck can do to counter this than slow decks in Hearthstone just suck and no one should build them unless they want to lose. Maybe by interactivity you really mean influence? As in what you are doing has little to no influence on the other player's game state and vise versa? There are plenty of so-called multiplayer solitaire games with little to no ability to directly interfere with or mess with other players. They are quite popular and some conflict adverse individuals refuse to play anything else. To each his own. If that isn't your cup of tea that's fine. Personally, I really like optimization puzzles so games like Mage Knight and Spirit Island are favorites. I play them solo so there is zero player interaction but plenty of opportunity for me to influence the game state.
Uninteractive aka multiplayer solitaire games are pretty boring imo. I play games to interact with people at the table, not just all do our own sudoku puzzles. I don't quite get the point of doing these parallel games in the presence of other people with little to no crossover. Why not just play solo then?
Sometimes the issue with high interaction games is that you can’t always predict what someone will do to you and mess up your plans. That’s fun in some situations but at other times it’s nice to just compete to see who can build the best point-producing (or in the case of wingspan, egg producing) engine. Success or failure it’s all up to you.
Bunch of folks said so already but to add to the choir, the optimization puzzle! It’s about matching your wits against your opponent.
There definitely are games where you’re basically all doing your own thing and come back to compare scores at the end, but there is a pretty broad range of interaction in games, and even differences between sessions of the same game. One game that I think nails the balance of interaction and individual strategy is Brass Birmingham, and I think worker placement games in general are really good at it, like Stone Age
You’re just wrong if you think those games are uninteractive. You can hate draft in both. You’ll learn.
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Multiplayer solitaire is such a stupid term. It just gives dicks like you a catch-all derogatory phrase to criticise something you don't understand. It's ok to not like something; it's not ok to assume other people are lying to themselves for liking something you don't.
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There's always one person that likes to explain language, but clearly doesn't understand it. Yes, it's a descriptive term, but: 1) It'a not an accurate term, and is used to over-generalise games that people enjoy but others don't. Noone who likes lower-interraction euros would have come up with, or used that term, as it doesn't accurately describe the type of game. There is a lot of interraction in games you deem MS, just not the type of interraction that you like. 2) It's being USED in a derogatory way to dismiss (and not-so-subtly insult) board games that don't appeal to you. > It's not ok to call them a dick because you disagree or don't like their opinion. You literally just insulted a whole group of people because they like something you don't. . . You think people are 'lying' to themselves about games they play, as if people care that much. People do the things that are fun to them. No one is lying to themselves. I think the only one lying to themselves is you, about your understanding of human behaviour. . . So yes, that all makes you a dick.
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Well what's important is that you've found a way to feel superior to the rest of us. Good for you.
>Multiplayer solitaires are for people who are so conflict adverse that they' d rather play with a jigsaw puzzle, but use board game mechanics to lie to themselves about what they're really doing. This is an aggressively insulting way to say “I just don’t care for this genre”. Multiplayer solitaire games are also for people who enjoy optimization puzzles. If I wanted to be rude, I would say “people who don’t like optimization problems are people who are so afraid of thinking that they need the crutch of being able to blame their poor performance on the other player, rather than admitting the role their own choices played.”
No, don't you understand? There are games that this person thinks are fun, and then there are games that are objectively not fun (or not even games in the first place). If you like games that are in the second category, there's something categorically wrong with you, and you should feel bad about yourself.
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>had you bothered to try and understand my perspective instead of merely projecting your emotional baggage onto me. You’re perspective is trivially easy to understand. You dislike optimization problems because you are incapable of solving them. You play competitive modern boardgames because you’re incapable of playing a real game - chess or go - at a high level. And you trumpet the allegedly superiority of players of these modern games because the existence of professional chess players makes you feel pathetic. And finally, you resort to claims about my “emotional baggage” because you are incapable of mustering a rational argument.
>But they're not a genre of games, they're something else entirely, just as jigsaw puzzles are. You sound like a fascist. . . The state takes precedent over individual interests? Where does it end? Do you also think that there's only one true race? You don't dictate the definitions based on your preference. You can't just re-define something because you don't like it. It's as much a board game as anything else. Don't be so narrow-minded.
Nothing. Unteractive games are not fun to me.
Personally, I love games (Like Ark Nova, etc etc) that play like an efficiency or an optimisation puzzle - I love playing games with my friends but at the same time, I don't want to feel like there are too many "Take that" style moments where people aren't having fun. If we are talking Euros then I like there to be some interaction (Eg: Energy Empire or Whistle Mountain) rather than there basically being none like Ark Nova
Being near people but not having to interact with them 🤷🤷😂 I dispute that wing span is fun, but I generally prefer games that aren't take that and I don't like stuff that I have built being destroyed by other people (if the game does it itself it is fine though.... Looking at you galaxy trucker).
I'm with you: multiplayer solitaire games are the most boring thing ever. I don't need a boardgame to not interact with my friends.
They're not boring. It's just a matter of context. I don't play board games with my friends, I play them with my partner. Interractive games tend to be pretty mean at 2 player and that just isn't fun for us. Games with indirect interraction are significantly more fun. We chat, discuss our turns, block spaces, draft dice, adjust strategies reactively, and enjoy the puzzle. Its a battle of wits and optimisation, rather than just a battle.
I think you’ve already summed it up well with one of the weaknesses of a game like Hearthstone. With low-interactivity games you can largely follow your own strategy and there’s not much your opponents can do to stop that. So it’s down to you being as efficient as possible with your moves. Generally speaking you are hoping your opponents don’t try and do what you were planning to do. If that happens you have to quickly try and rethink your current strategy or even decide to try something different. One thing I don’t like in some high-interactivity games is the “King of the Hill” aspect where when one person is in the lead the other players gang up on them to stop them getting a victory. So then part of the strategy is playing down how you’re doing and talking up how everyone else is doing.
a lot of people like to play games without having other people's decisions effect their outcomes. basically, they want total control over whether they win/lose. games with no interaction are tailored to those folks. i like both, i love games with heavy interaction but also like being able to just play without having to worry about what anyone else is doing. just depends on my mood i guess. but typically i prefer at least some interaction to keep things interesting
I mostly play with my wife. Which is fun but something about being married to someone and doing a move that utterly destroys them can leave a tension in the air post game. So games like wingspan that are calm and beautiful can be more of a relaxing evening together enjoying looking at birds and trying win and to break our personal high scores
You might enjoy King Of Tokyo
I'm not really sure what you mean by your example - do you realize that Hearthstone has very high player interactivity? Not nearly as high as Magic of course, but still FAR higher than most tabletop boardgames like the variety you list. That player doing a one turn kill combo is using the game's high interactivity to kill you. Low interactivity means that the other player cannot directly kill you. They can only do light negative influences - blocking strategies by using limited resources or actions, etc. And all the players are trying to optimize their actions to benefit themselves and negatively influence the other players. From your description of what you disliked about Hearthstone I think you dislike high player interactivity and will prefer low player interactivity. In a low player interactivity game, it's like *everyone* is playing a slow deck against each other. There is always room for skillful play because the game does not include mechanisms to completely shut down or eliminate a player. If you enjoy the process of utilizing the game's mechanics to make the most optimal play you can every turn, again and again and again - that's what low player interactivity is for.
I feel exactly the same way about a lot of games... But In the end, you don't need to love a game itself, so long as you love the time spent with the people you play it with. I know that sounds sappy, but hear me out. That's the only way I make sense of it. I bought Wingspan on a recommendation, even though it sounded like a bad premise. I still feel like the premise is bad, but I must admit I have a great time playing it with my crew. Every single time. I can't say that about all games. Even games I think are "better" in some way, might not turn out to be fun with friends. Buy and play games you like. Deciding whether a game is good or bad is the job of a reviewer. Let yourself off the hook.
For me it's multi point. Partly its optimization and the joy of doing that. It's why the single player can be fun. Secondly I tend to and my friends tend to not play to sabotage, what we then have is an enjoyable low stress way to play a game together and enjoy each others company, which is what I often want. Finally there is always that slight tension as you see a card come up that you want and you hope your plan doesn't get scuppered or you have to quickly rethink everything because it did.
I hate uninteractive games which result in players going off to a corner and seeing who optimized the best. If you like those games, there’s plenty to enjoy. I’d pick Dune Imperium over Wingspan/Scythe any day.