You Can’t Do All the Hobbies

Let’s not bury the lead and pretend either way for a little bit. But no you can’t do everything all at once. I want to find more time to dedicate to some hobbies. Mainly, I want to start painting minis. I wrote about Lego last week, I want to start my build for that. Then there are comics which I do read, but I want to read them faster than I do. And I’m sure that I have other hobbies that I’d like to do.

So, if you are like me and want to try a lot of things, the answer is, you can’t do all the hobbies at once, at the same time. But there is some good news out there. Because I think you don’t need to, as much as you want to.

Taking Turns

And this idea of taking turns is why I don’t think that you need to do them all at once. And it is the reason that hobbies can be balanced out. I own painting supplies, I will paint sometime. But when is that time going to be. Probably when something else goes on the back burner.

What is that going to be, I’m not sure. When is that going to be, I’m not sure. But when I look at my painting stuff, I still want to paint. I see it right now and I want to take the day and paint instead of going into work. But it is okay to rotate hobbies. I might wrap up my D&D campaign and not start another for a year. That is a year in which I could paint. It all depends on what works best for me.

Combining

Another great thing is that a lot of hobbies can be combined. And while it might not always be something that you think about naturally, let’s talk about some of them. And let’s start with Lego who has made it easy to start combing with Dungeons and Dragons.

Lego made a Dungeons and Dragons castle and scene. It is officially licensed Dungeons and Dragons. So much so that Dungeons and Dragons made a scenario for the castle. That means that you can sit down and start playing a game around what has been built. I hope this means that Lego is going to come out with more Dungeons and Dragons set. Maybe you want to build with Lego and make your own scenes, why not do that as your Dungeons and Dragons settings?

Or for me, once I finish up playing Baldur’s Gate 3, so this one is a bit of both combing and taking turns, I want to catch up on some anime. Well, that might be the time to combine some hobbies for me. I want to pay attention while I watch anime, but there are a number where I don’t need to pay complete attention. So I want to wrap up Quintessential Quintuplets, throw it on and start painting. If a key moment is happening, I pause painting, but I can do two things at once.

So combine your hobbies.

Finally, Enjoy Your Hobbies

Let’s wrap this up nicely. I started out with some bad news, you can’t do anything. But it is okay. Not everyone needs to do all the hobbies at once. In fact, if you work, it isn’t possible to all the hobbies at once. And if you don’t, you probably can’t afford all the hobbies at once.

That again is negative. But on the positive side of things, doing the hobbies that you can is great. I get to enjoy playing Dungeons and Dragons. I get to enjoy watching anime, playing Baldur’s Gate 3, and more as hobbies. Not doing a secondary hobby to it doesn’t make it worse. It just means that eventually I’ll have more to explore.

I think at times it is possible to get into the mindset of we must own it all. We must play it all. But instead, I want to think and spend my time enjoying what I am doing. I know I need to remind myself of that sometimes, but all the hobbies are great. And some day, I plan to explore more.

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In Tokyo Highway, you are building roads up by stacking disks and connecting them with what basically is a grey Popsicle stick. If you go over an opponents road or under it, and you are the first person to do so, you can place a car on the section of the road you just placed. Just be careful that you don’t accidentally knock everything over. The first person to get all of their cars placed is the winner of the game. However, you can’t touch your opponents cars or roads when placing things, but you have yellow disks that allow you to increase or decrease the height by more than one or split the road. If you end up knocking something over, you have to give some of your pillars to the opponent whose things you knocked over.

Tokyo Highway is not a difficult game to learn, but it is a bit tricky to play. Not only you are balancing what is basically Popsicle sticks on what ends up being disks about the size of penny around, but there are buildings to work around as well. And eventually, the whole game area is a mess of roads and it’s hard to place things, and you don’t want to use your yellow disks, but sometimes you need to to clear that road you before an opponent would. So, for a pretty simple stacking game, there is definitely a bit of strategy.

There are a couple of things that I really do enjoy about the game. The first is the look of the game. When you’re done, you end up with a very pretty looking game set-up. It’s one of those games that you want to take pictures of, because it looks almost like an art piece on the table when you end. The pictures in the article are ones that I just snapped on my phone quickly while we were playing, and you can see how everything cross over each other. And a lot of that comes from the quality of the components. Everything in the game is made from wood, so it feels well made because it is. I did notice that one of the Popsicle sticks had a slight warp to it, but that didn’t affect the game, and I think just setting it under something heavy would flatten it.

The other thing is that when you are placing something, if you knock stuff over, you aren’t out of the game, or that doesn’t end the game. In other stacking games, like Jenga, if the tower goes over the game is done, and you end up with a loser, not necessarily a winner. In Tokyo Highway, sure, things might get too knocked over to place correctly again, but more often than not, you’ll end up with a winner, versus just having one person be the loser. That’s fun for a stacking game, because so many of them work on the Jenga mindset, where knocking things over is the end of the game.

Now, is this a game for everyone? I don’t think so, first, stacking games and games where you stack in a small area aren’t great for everyone. Some people just naturally have shaky hands. Other people just have larger hands and it’s trickier to place things in small areas. However, this game will also be a hit for a lot of people because it is beautiful on the table, and it isn’t difficult to teach. The first time I played it, I got a rule or two slightly wrong, and it still worked really well and was a hit at the table. And we’d stop between things being placed to take pictures as the city was built up.

Overall, this is a game that I really like. It’s a good light game that is fun to start off a game night with or to end a game night when people don’t want to play anything too heavy. And it’s accessible to gamers and non-gamers alike, which is fun. I do think it might be a bit light for some gamers, but if you enjoy dexterity games at all, this is a fun game.

Overall Grade: B+
Gamer Grade: C
Casual Grade: A

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Most people know Jenga because it’s been around for a long time and there are have been different versions or looks to it that have shown up in stores like Target and Wal Mart, but dexterity games don’t stop there, and are actually a pretty big and cool genre, because it offers, most of the time, and easier gaming experience, but a completely different type of challenge than most board games.

In dexterity games, you might be trying to stack things or place things around other objects or flicking things across the table or across a board. There are a number of different things that you can and there are certain rules you need to follow, even within the different types of dexterity games.

My favorite dexterity game is Ice Cool/Ice Cool 2 where you are flicking penguins around a board. What makes this game work is because, like many a dexterity game, you have stand-up moments. You almost literally have to be standing up at the table in order to be able to flick things around and get the angle that you need on the table. But when someone makes a great shot and hits a couple of penguins, jumps a wall, or spins it through a couple of doors, people cheer those shots. That’s what makes dexterity games, generally, quite unique as most all of them have those moments.

Now, Tokyo Highway, you are placing things on the table, the different pillars, roads, and cars that you have. So you don’t get that same thing of watching an amazing shot happen, but instead you are holding you breath wondering if the person is able to get everything back where it should be. It’s very challenging and planning on how you want to place everything and if you can get the angle so that you can over a road, or if you can slip a road under another road is always a challenge.

In my opinion, a good dexterity game is generally pretty simple to play. The more complex a game is, such as limiting how you can put something down or forcing you to figure out if you can do something, that’s not as interesting. A dexterity game should focus on what you can do with the dexterity piece and give you a few simple options. With too many rules, it slows the game down too much and you lose those breath holding or stand-up moments that really make dexterity games. In my opinion, dexterity games should also focus mainly on the physical element of the game versus the mental element. Yes, you might have to think about the angle and spin of the shot in Ice Cool, but unless you’ve practiced a ton, it probably won’t work perfectly, so it’s better to just go for the shot and not overthink it.

Now, there is a downside to this as well, some people are just not going to be that great at it. But that is again when those cheer moments happen. With a flicking game especially. With a balancing game, some people won’t be as good as it, so it might not be the right one for your table. But in a flicking game, if someone is doing poorly, when they have a great shot because of luck, people will cheer and it’ll be that stand-up moment in the game.

But there is one last good upside, and that is that most of these games are going to be good for a younger crowd. Now, there might be some with too small pieces that you don’t want to play with kids, but if you are playing as a group, it’ll work well. And games like Ice Cool and Rhino Hero Super Battle are intentionally built for kids, but they are still a lot of fun for adults. So if you have a more diverse table in terms of age range and skill level, especially around the holidays, dexterity games can be fun for the whole group.

So just to recap a little bit, dexterity games can be a lot of fun, though stacking ones won’t be for everyone. Flicking style dexterity games really work well for all age groups, especially the simpler ones, and in my opinion, those are the best. But if you’re looking for a game for the holidays, I’d really recommend a game like Ice Cool, and it would be something fun and different for the whole table.

What is your favorite dexterity game? Is there one that you’re really good at, or one that’s tough for you?

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