And if you want to know the criteria that I’m using, or the conversation starting point, you can read that article here.

What Roll and Write Games Do I Own?

Two lists like every time. We’re talking of course, played and unplayed. It’s less likely that an unplayed game is going to be leaving the collection without having been tried first.

Played

• Welcome To…
• Cartographers
• Ganz Schon Clever
• Yahtzee
• Long Shot: The Dice Game
• Twilight Inscription
• Welcome to the Moon
• Railroad Ink
• Fleet: The Dice Game
• Doppelt So Clever
• Three Sisters
• On Tour
• Paper Dungeons
• Super-Skill Pinball: 4-Cade
• Bargain Basement Bathysphere
• Clever Hoch Drei
• Metro X
• Trek 12: Himalaya
• Sonora
• Super Mega Luck Box
• My City: Roll & Build
• Clever 4Ever
• The Isle of Cats Explore and Draw
• Patchwork Doodle
• Criss Cross
• Knister
• Delicious
• First Class Letters
• Mind Space
• Doodle Dungeon

Unplayed

• Hadrian’s Wall
• Dinosaur Island: Rawr ‘n Write
• Silver & Gold
• Get on Board
• Sagrada Artisans
• Welcome to Dino World
• Riverside
• Kokoro: Avenue of the Kodama
• Motor City
• Cascadia Rolling Rivers & Rolling Hills
• Pioneer Rails
• Fliptown
• Arabella
• Merchants of Magick: A Set A Watch Tale
• French Quarter
• Zombicide: Gear Up
• Boomerang
• Number Drop
• Vengeance: Roll & Fight
• Lantern Dice
• Astra

Unplayed Games

This list is massive for both played and unplayed. I’m not 100% sure that I own all the ones still that I have yet to play. In particular I think Arabella might have left the collection as might have Number Drop and Kokoro. But looking at that list, is there anything where I think it should just leave? The only one that jumps out at me is that I don’t think I need both Rolling Rivers and Rolling Hills. From what I know they are basically the same game.

There are a few others that I’d want to get played on the list to see if they stay. Those are the ones that I mentioned that I might not have still. Also Boomerang is another one that I need to see about. It looks like a simple little game so that begs the question of if I need to keep it. Getting all these little roll and writes is easy, but often times they need a more limited player count, which means that for game nights even though they are easier to learn games they are hard to get played.

Played Games

So what on that massive list is at the danger of going away. And I think there are a number of them that fall into that category of maybe are similar to other games.

Easy Leaving

In particular I think of games like Metro X, while it’s not too similar, it’s not a game that feels that different any time that you play it. And while I’ve enjoyed it, it’s been in my Top 100 Games in the past, it’s also something that is a less appealing on future plays. Bargain Basement Bathysphere is another one that is going to be going because it’s fine but I have played it.

Another one that might be a surprise is Welcome to the Moon. I thought it is a fun game when I played it and streamed it. But as a campaign game, I now feel like there is only so much interest in going back to it. I haven’t even gone back to it recently on Board Game Arena. And Welcome To… is more fun with the same main mechanism.

I also think that Twilight Inscription is leaving the collection as well. This is one where it could stick around because it is really different. But honestly I don’t want to teach it to someone. And I don’t want to learn it again. I really had a lot of fun with it at Gen Con and if someone is up for teaching me again I gladly will play. But at the same time, it’s that category of I don’t want to do that.

Easy Staying

There are a handful that are staying for sure, games like Railroad Ink, Cartographers, Sonora, Fleet, Three sisters, and Paper Dungeon are all games that I love. And with them also all of the “Clever” games. Yes, they are similar in some ways but they are different in other ways. So that is going to keep them around, plus I like them for that combotastic nature.

Isle of Cats: Explore & Draw is another one where it make it easy to keep. In fact it might be so easy to keep that it spells the end for Isle of Cats. But I want to play that one again at a higher player count. Because I like a lot of elements of the game. I think at two it is possible for it to just get out of balance score wise pretty quickly.

Questioning

So that leaves a handful that are in that questioning range. Some of them like Trek 12, Knister, and Criss Cross I know I like and are going to be kept as well. It is just less of an emphatic keep. Same can be said for at least some of Super-Skill Pinball: 4-Cade, though I might have sold expansions already and Super Mega Lucky Box.

The ones that I’m really thinking about right now are Delicious, Mind Space, On Tour and My City: Roll & Build. With all of them I enjoy the games. I think that Delicious is leaving because it is just simpler. Mind Space and On Tour are good, but in particular with On Tour it is not the best the score and I can always play it on my phone. So I think both of them are going to leave as well. And that leave My City: Roll & Build. I was through a campaign and half way through another. I think it goes because it is fun but I’ve played it.

What Roll and Write Games Do You Love?

Let me know your thoughts. Do you think that there are any of them that I should give another chance from what I’m talking about getting rid of. Just to recap that list:

• On Tour
• Mind Space
• My City: Roll & Build
• Delicious
• Metro X
• Welcome to the Moon
• Twilight Inscription
• Bargain Basement Bathysphere
• Cascadia Rolling Rivers or Rolling Hills

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How to Play Delicious

In Delicious you are trying to make your best garden. However there are rules on how you can place things in your garden. Each round you flip new cards and give tokens to them. The flipped cards either need to go on top or on the bottom section of your garden. However, each turn you decide if you want to change the position of those cards for you, or use both cards or just one card. And for each of them you can do it a limited number of times.

So once you’ve decided you fill in spots in your garden. Your garden plots are split into three areas, top and bottom for veggies and then a side area for fruit. Each spot has special rules with how you want to place your veggies for fruit. For veggies gardens are either matching, pairs, or different. And for fruit you get points for the same or different fruit in a row.

The game goes over 12 rounds where you’ll pick if you’re using both, one or switching where cards are each round. And each action has a limited number of times you can do it. Plus there are bonus areas where you can place a veggie or a fruit to add a bonus to your score. However, that takes away from placing a vegetable. At the end of the game you tally up your score from placing fruits and veggies and see who has the most.

What Doesn’t Work

This is a simple roll and write style game. Delicious doesn’t always offer the most choices, but there are some good choices in the game. Mainly around when you use both cards or not. Or when you flip cards from top to bottom for you or not. That is how you are able to focus on different areas. When you place your fruit or veggies that is pretty limited in terms of your decision making. So a fair amount of the game is luck.

Therefore, I suspect that the games replayability is going to be limited. While the tools and fruits, which I’ll talk about more in what I like, come out randomly as do the veggies, generally you understand what the options are. So as you play you likely will find a target path to go each game. With the biggest choices being around if you focus on the top plot of veggies or the bottom.

What Works?

How Many Cards

I like the choice the game does give you. While, yes, it is limited a lot of the time to what you can do, there are also interesting choices. In particular the choice of top or bottom can be interesting. But it’s really the choice of do I use one or two cards in a given around. You choose two early because you aren’t locked in, but it might mean you miss out on two good ones later. But you wait too long and now you lose the ability to use everything.

Fruits or Veggies

And I think the focus on either veggies or fruit can be interesting. And this stems from tools or fruits as tokens from the cards. You pick a card and that is always a veggie. But each card either contains a fruit or a tool. And some rounds you may play with two fruits in a round or two tools. But tools either help with veggies or with fruits. So where do you want to play with your flexibility?

When you play a tool it gives you a symbol. You fill in something you want in a row or column of that symbol. And you choose if you want to match the garden plot (top or bottom) of the card or if you use it for a fruit. And each way, either veggies or fruit is a good way to get points. So what and where you focus is another choice in the game.

Game Speed

The game is also fast once you understand it. I find that it is maybe a bit tougher to teach than the simplicity of the game might suggest. But it is not by any means a hard game to teach. Once you start playing Delicious turns and rounds go very fast. I like that every decision is being made at the same time in the game. When the cards flip you and I both are able to take our turns without waiting for one player to take a complete turn and then another.

Who Is Delicious For?

I think Delicious works well as a casual or family friendly roll and write game. It’s going to feel like just that little bit more than some of the more classic ones like Qwixx or Yahtzee, but not so much it is overwhelming. so I think it’s going to be a nice stepping stone roll and write style game. If you already know them really well and have played a lot, this is not going to be one to excite you. Unless, of course, you want to introduce people slightly more complex roll and writes.

Final Thoughts on Delicious

Delicious is a fun little game. I appreciate that Pencil First makes easy to pick-up games. I know when I pick-up a Pencil First Game it is going to be one that I can probably understand and teach really quickly. And Delicious very much is that sort of game.

The downfall for me, and why it might only stick in my collection for a bit, is the simplicity of the game. I find that the scoring between fruits and veggies is very balanced. And the top and bottom is as well. So it is possible to play a different game each time. But that is three combinations and how you balance them. I expect that I’ll find a rhythm of how I like to play. When I find that, I expect the game is going to start to feel a bit more samey. So if it stays is going to be determined by how well other people like the game.

My Grade: B
Casual Grade: B+
Gamer Grade: C-

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Four Incoming Crowdfunding Games

Let’s go from little to biggest. The little ones, no issue fitting on the shelf, the biggest one, well, I’ll find a spot for it.

Fork

FORK is a little trick taking game, I believe, if I remember correctly, it stands for Fox, Owl, Rabbit, Kale. And that determines who wins the trick. Plus there is a terrain type, so if I have a creature, let’s say Owl, or the matching terrain type I beat one that isn’t.

It looks like a pretty simple trick taking game, but there was a twist that intrigued me, and more of a twist than just being the declared terrain type that sets up the trump suit. If I remember correctly, you might be able to block someone taking something if you played a Fox when they played a Fox. The foxes chased each other away or something like that I feel was the twist. I’ll have to see when it comes in.

Fliptown

Fliptown is going to be a roll and write (or flip and write) game where you are in an old west setting. The aesthetics of this one drew me in, especially because you determine what you do with playing cards. And each round three playing cards are flipped out. One of the cards, you choose, determine which of the boards you are on. Another the action you take, and the third the poker hand you’re building.

I like this idea of needing to think about these three areas. It adds in a bit of complexity to the game. And while it offers you more choices than Welcome To… does, at least with how you divide card actions, it offers a lot of choice like Welcome To… And I like the look of that in the game. Some roll and write games provide good choice, others, a bit less so.

Roll Player Adventures – Gulpax’s Secret

Now the one crowdfunding game on the list that is here already. A Roll Player Adventures expansion. If we hadn’t just started Vampire the Masquerade Chapters, I might be going back to this right away. But this is a whole new campaign for Roll Player Adventures with an updated rulebook. Though, compared to some games, I haven’t heard that this is a massive change to the rulebook, probably clarifying some.

This campaign takes place prior to the events of the main Roll Player Adventures. So that is always a bit of a question mark to me. How will it make you feel like you have choice and agency. It isn’t possible to do anything that’d affect the main game, unless they built that into it and you’d want to then replay the main game. So I hope that they do a good job of making it feel meaningful, but not like it’s undone what we’ve already done.

Marvel Zombies

Finally the monster among the group, zombies being the main monster in this game. Though from the zombies perspective the humans are monsters. This is a game that I got to play twice at CMON Expo and it was a great game both times. And I also got to win one time and then lose another time, so it wasn’t just an easy game.

I really like playing as the zombies and needing to take out bystanders and hordes of SHIELD agents who are trying to mess you up. And each superhero zombie has their own unique powers as well which I thought was fun. The progression of the game is great as well. It makes me wish that I’d backed it at the level with the giant Galactus.

But I also am glad that I didn’t. I got basically everything else except Galactus. I think there is a special character pack that I didn’t get. It was some specific artist and I thought, that looks fine but I don’t need it at that price. Even with not getting those things, it’s still coming in two boxes, and I mean shipping boxes. And those boxes will not be small, in fact they will be quite huge, so I need to find a good chunk of space.

Too Many Games, No Enough Space

Each of these games, I am excited to have come in. Some of them are going to be easier to get to the table than others. Marvel Zombies is going to be one of them that is harder. Or at least it is going to be harder to get all the content of that to the table just because there is so much content for it. And Gulpax’s Secret is going to be harder as well as a campaign game.

But FORK and Fliptown I hope to get to the table soon. And I realized that another game is getting close. It isn’t shipping yet, but Twenty Strong from Chip Theory Games just asked me to confirm my address. Since that happened, that is getting close as well. Maybe should have been a list of five games.

Which is the one that you’d want to play first?

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The Game

Floor Plan, like I said, is a roll and write game. This one is actually a roll and write versus a flip and write, which are part of the roll and write family. So you can get a lot of interesting combos of dice. The dice are used to do one of a few different things. You can use the dice combo to create rooms. So if you roll and 2 and a 6, you can create either a 6×2 living room or washroom. The 2 is for the washroom and the 6 is for the living room. Or in the rooms and as landscaping, you can place things like doors, trees, furniture, windows decking and more.

Placing all of these things is how you complete your ideal building objectives. So, someone might want a pool in their place. So you get a set number of points of you create a pool with a deck around it of the right size outside of the house. And there are five of those objectives that you can score multiple times. You also score points at the end of the game for a certain criteria, such as doors with a stone outside of them or doors with decking outside of them. And the scoring changes each game.

At the end, the player with the most points wins. Or in my case, since I play solo on Malts and Meeples, I was going for a high score. Overall a fun game, it is a bit silly you don’t need doors in your room, but everyone wants some house projects, right?

The Beer

So, of course on Malts and Meeples we are going to drink a beer as well. Last nights beer was a tart ale from Surly Brewing Company based out of Minneapolis, MN. Grapefruit Supreme is definitely what it sounds like. A beer with a lot of grapefruit flavor that has been added. Now added fruit flavor in a beer is generally not my favorite, but I do like it in Surly’s tart ale collection. Mainly because a lot of tart beers can end up being too tart so this balances it out. On the flip side, a lot of beers with fruit can be too fruity, so this also balances out because of the tartness.

Upcoming Videos

Thanks to everyone who is checking out the videos. I hope that you are enjoying them. I am thinking about adding in another stream that is maybe done once or twice a month on the weekend. The idea would be to create more of a chat type of scenario versus game play. I love doing the game play and getting in 3 games for my trek to 365 plays this year is nice. But I don’t always engage with the chat as much.

So I was thinking, maybe a series of videos talking about some Kickstarters, or maybe some board game news and then dropping into a topic, talking about a game or a genre of games and just chatting about that. Of course, if people join live I’ll be interacting with the chat, answering questions and seeing responses. I will probably try this out soon, but let me know if this is something that sounds interesting.

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The Game(s)

Only one game this week, but it is a game that I have had a fair number of plays of now solo. And I wanted to highlight it as an interesting roll and write (flip and write technically) game.

Metro X

This game I originally got interested in when I saw Tom Vasel play it on the Dice Tower. It seems like a good puzzle and one that is nice and easy to teach. Now, I haven’t had the opportunity to teach it yet, I’ve only played it solo, but I will say, it is a very enjoyable puzzle of a game.

In this game you have a collection of routes that you are trying to complete on your metro transit system, one side is tubes and the other bus routes. You flip a card from the top of the deck and then fill in that number of spots along one of the routes. That sounds simple, but there are a few small rules that make it interesting for me. Firstly, the routes intersect, so you fill in a spot and it can count for two routes. But because the routes interconnect if you hit an already filled in spot on a route, you stop filling in bubbles.

And then there are also the transit locations. These give you points if you get the card flipped, but they also limit how much you can fill up. Each route can only use a certain number of cards. So while you have to use the transit stops when they are flipped, pretty often you don’t want to because it’ll mean empty spots at the end of the game, and the more empty spots, the more negative points you get.

Overall a fun game and you can see my review here. I will say that while I am enjoying this solo quite a lot, I think it’ll be better with multiple players. There is a lot of randomness from the cards, but when everyone one is getting the same randomness it will be interesting to see how much score vary. In my three games my scores vary a lot, but that is because of the card flips. So it is hard to compare.

The Beer

So last nights beer was a pretty boringly named one Schells IPA. Schells is a Minnesota brewery based out of New Ulm, MN. And I was not a huge fan of their IPA. I talk about the different ways to use hops and how different hops have different profiles. I tend to like the money piney hops and the more citrus hops. This was more in line with tropical fruits. And while that can be okay, it isn’t my preferred. Mainly, the tropical fruit flavor in this was a bit muddied between a number of flavors and the bitterness didn’t match with the flavor set. I tend to want my IPA’s to be more focused on the bitter.

Have you tried Metro X, what do you think of that roll and write?

And if you are a beer drinker, what hop profile do you look for in your IPA’s? Or do you even like IPA’s?

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Adventure Land

This is one that has been on my radar for a long time. Tom Vasel of the Dice Tower is a fan of this game, but it’s gone under the radar otherwise. The concept of Adventure Land is just intriguing to me because it sounds simple, but the decisions seem meaningful. On your turn you move one of your adventurers down and to the right, to the right, or down, and you are picking up treasure. But the trick is you can never move one back up or to the left. So how do you balance out the movement of a number of adventurers to maximize your points? I think it’ll be a fun game, and I really do think there is a lot of interesting space to strategy in the game.

Marvel Champions – Quicksilver

The latest release in the Marvel Champions line, and of course I was going to run out and pick it up right away. I’m more waiting for the Scarlet Witch to come out which was supposed to be this month but looks like it’ll be in March now. Still, I’m going to be curious to see how they mimic super speed for Quicksilver. They’ve done a good job of surprising me and making other powers work really well. I’m hoping that he’ll be fun to play as well.

Space Base

Space Base has been on my radar for a while. It’s been described as kind of a Machi Koro killer for a lot of gamers. From what I know about it, the game is more complex, though not by a ton than Machi Koro which was really very introductory. I actually got rid of Machi Koro over a year ago, because for an engine building game, it was going to be the first one I pulled off the shelf. To teach engine building I’d use Splendor or Century Golem Edition. If Space Base does have more going on in it, then I’m hoping it’ll be a nice game that feels similar to Machi Koro but that I can pull out after I’ve taught engine building. I’m not sure which theme is more attractive to players, though, building a town or building a space base.

Deadly Doodles 2

Technically this is an expansion. You need the base game to play it. And I got the base game not too long ago, in fact I believe that was when I picked up The Wasp at my FLGS that I grabbed Deadly Doodles as well. So apparently I grab roll and writes when I get Marvel Champions content as well. This is the one that I sat down and played the day that I got it. This expansion just adds more to the game. So in the base game you are just going in, grabbing treasures and weapons and fighting monsters. It’s very simple, the expansion adds in 6 new map boards. The first map doesn’t really add much to what’s going on, but the other maps add more and more to the game so what was a very simple flip and write (or draw and draw as they called it), not becomes more of a complex game. I like how you can tailor the level of the game to the players of the game just with that. I’ve barely started on the content, but I can see there’ll be a lot more, now the only question is do I fit everything in one box, I’m thinking the answer to that will be yes.

Which of these games seem the most interesting to you? I have you played any of them before?

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The Game

Deadly Doodles is a “Draw and draw” game, aka, a flip and write. In it you are going on seven expeditions into a dungeon, you are trying to find weapons, treasure, and maybe even a dragon. Along the way you’ll find monsters as well who will want to beat you up, but if you have the the right weapon you’ll be able to beat them. Each turn four cards (at least) our flipped over, and they generally form a pathways or parts of a pathway. Each player must add all four of those cards into a single continuous path, how far you delve in that day. Then four more cards are flipped and the process is repeated seven times. Players can either add to a path that they’ve already drawn or come in another entrance, but all the exploration for the day must be one continuous group. At the end of seven rounds you tally up the score, for any treasure you got, it’s worth 2 points each, plus an additional 2 per treasure if you got the dragon. For each weapon you got, you get one point and same for each entrance you didn’t use (or block off). You get four points if you went through the monster corresponding to a weapon but minus two if you went through a monster without it’s weapon. Plus you lose points for traps and cards you couldn’t use.

The Components

This is kind of a mixed bag, I like the dry erase boards a lot, and the markers, I think that both are good quality and I’ll talk more about those, but a negative first. The rules are very small, which is a solid thing, but it leaves some questions. Mainly, how you build the dungeon out, I inferred that you build in a single line each time, but it doesn’t explicitly say that. If that weren’t the case it’d be tough to get into a situation where you couldn’t use all of the cards. And just some of the layout of the rules feels a bit backwards where they explain stuff like traps before they really teach you how to play the game.

But the actual board you use is great, it has everything you’d want on there. It gives you a spot to keep track of how many treasures you’ve gone through or how many cards you haven’t used. But even better than that, it keeps track of your weapons and monsters. It pairs them up, so as you cross off a monster or a weapon you mark it in the scoring section and you can easily see if you have a pair or not. This makes in game adjustments really easy as you see what weapons you might need to get or what monsters you should go for.

Game Play

The game play is really simple and really fast, and I don’t mind that. I knocked out five games, including teaching it in an evening and that wasn’t even that much of the evening. For that reason I’ll be pulling it out fairly often, and it works well with solo.

The game play itself, though, has just barely enough going on it. You flip four cards and you fill stuff in, it’s easy for there to be variety in what is done, so in the two games played multiplayer we never had similar looking boards. And the game is fairly easy to optimize what you are doing. However, it is really just barely enough to do in the game. And the game feels like it should last a round or two longer. Playing two player, scores were between 10 and 15, which just doesn’t feel like that much. I don’t think scores need to be that high, but a little bit higher wouldn’t be bad.

I also wish that there was maybe one more thing to do, or even if fighting the monsters felt a little bit different than it does. The monsters and weapons all look the same, they just have a different letter on them, that would have been a simple art change that would have made the game feel a bit more thematic instead of here is a sword I slash the generic monsters. On the other hand, because it doesn’t have more going on, it makes it easy to teach and more accessible.

Final Thoughts

This is a simple game and for a lot of players who maybe like the bigger roll and write or flip and write games like Welcome To and Ganz Schon Clever, this might seem like a little bit too little. But I didn’t mind it because it was so easy to knock out a few games in the evening, and sometimes, after working a lot or just generally being tired, it’s nice to sit down and knock out a lighter game a few times to relax. That’s what Deadly Doodles really is, and besides a little issue with the rule sheet, I think people will like how this game works on the dry erase board.

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

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Wasp – Marvel Champions

After no new hero or villain in December, Wasp finally came out. The second half to go with Ant-Man as they team-up against villains. I’m basically collecting Marvel Champions at this point, and it makes sense, I love all Marvel stuff, generally. But I really do love Marvel Champions a lot. The game play is a ton of fun, and the heroes feel like the hero that you are playing. In particular the flipping between the hero side and the alter-ego side works really well and thematically.

Deadly Doodles

It’s a draw and draw game, and by that, I mean it’s a flip and write game. This game has you going through a dungeon, picking up weapons, fighting monsters, getting treasure and maybe even befriending a dragon. I like this game a lot because it’s very simple. You flip over four cards and that’s your run into the dungeon for the day. You can continue off of one that you’d already started, or you can pick a new spot to go in. If you find weapon A, that means you get a point, you go across monster A (and have Weapon A) you kill the monster and get 4 points. If you don’t have the weapon and you go across the monster, you lose two points. The game is really easy to follow and all the scoring is done at the end and made so that you can track it really easily. But I’ll do a review of it very soon.

Call to Adventure: Stormlight Archive

Call to Adventure was a game that I’d pick up and look at on the shelf all the time. I like the theme of going through and creating your heroes quest and exploits over a few different time periods of their life. Basically you are creating an epic heroes journey. However, the generic fantasy one, while having great artwork didn’t interesting as much as knowing there was a Stormlight Archive version coming out. Stormlight Archive is a four book (currently) series by Brandon Sanderson who is my favorite author. These are massive and epic books with a really cool world in them and so much depth. I’m hoping that I, as a fan of the series, will get to feel a lot of that heroic feeling in the game that you get in the book and the grand epicness.

Those were the three purchases. I will be doing a follow-up to this as I traded in two games as well that I’ll be getting store credit for at some point in time coming up here which will mean another purchase. A shout out to All Systems Go who will buy used games, sells used games, I was temped by Merchants and Marauders as well as Clank! A Deck Building Adventure Game while I was in there, and less so but slightly by the $560 almost all in bundle of Joan of Arc. I hope that all of you have great FLGS that you can go to, trade in games, get used games, or that just have a great game collection.

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Anime

Now, I could do probably a whole list that is just anime, there’s a whole genre of anime, slice of life, that tends to be less heavy and more light hearted. Granted, some of them deal with heavier things, but a lot will be happier. But let’s focus on two of them.

Dagashi Kashi

Now, maybe we shouldn’t be sitting on our couches just eating candy the whole time, but Dagashi Kashi is all about that Dagashi. Dagashi are basically cheap candies and snack foods in Japan. The main character works with his dad in a little Dagashi shop that a big company wants to buy and take over. His dad makes an agreement, but only if the company can convince his son to take over the shop instead of becoming a manga artist. The show takes you into the history of a lot of Dagashi and will make you want to get some, but it’s generally a really good and light hearted romp that is worth checking out.

Monthly Girls’ Nozaki-kun

A new one that we just started recently, this one is about two high schoolers. Chiyo who has a crush on Nozaki, who is in her high school. However, she can’t ever get the words out right to him. She finds out that he’s a manga creator and accidentally gets roped into helping him with his manga. It’s a very cute story and has lots of weird characters and light hearted moments in it. Definitely a bit all over the place, but that’s what so many slice of life anime are.

Movies

I could pick a lot of kids movies in this category because a lot of them do have good wholesome and up lifting messages, and I could pick a lot of animated movies in general because again, they tend to be made more for kids, but I wanted to give a couple of different options, so only one kids movie.

My Neighbor Totoro!

It’s an animated movie from Japan and it definitely has a slice of life feel to it. Two girls move with their father to a place in the country. Life is fine there, but they are really waiting for their mother to get better and join them. However, there are some unique spirits living around them, most notably Totoro. Totoro is a goofy seeming creature, but is often there to help them and to help them through the times ahead. It has some moments that do have some emotion, but mainly this movie floats through on it’s iconic moments and pacing of a story that really doesn’t go anywhere. It’s nice and short as well, which makes it easier to sit down to in an evening.

Stardust

Now this movie is a bit different, based off of a book by Neil Gaiman of the same name. It’s about a fanciful world and the real world where they meet up, and what seems like true love and real true love. The story has some epic fantasy moments, some final face offs of characters, but overall, it’s done very well and tells what is generally a very light hearted story. In the end it’ll definitely leave you feeling like you’ve sat through an enjoyable romp in a crazy fantasy world.

Television Shows

Now, I could just go back to more slice of life anime for feel good watching, but I don’t want to do that, and I split anime out for that reason. So many TV shows focus around some sort of drama, we have a ton of procedural cop shows out there, but what are some shows that leave you feeling like you had a good time after watching them.

Dirk Gentley’s Holistic Detective Agency

Of course, I’m starting out with Douglas Adams, or at least something vaguely adapted off of a couple of books of his. This falls into that camp of completely absurd humor, but it does it in a great way. Add in Elijah Wood whom we know was Frodo from Lord of the Rings, and that’s a fun little addition as well. This show, both seasons, won’t make a ton of sense always, but it does all come together and it is all light hearted fun after a fashion, it just might be a little bit absurd as well. It has a mystery element to it, but that even keeps you wanting more.

The Great British Baking Show

Now, I didn’t mean to do two British shows, but if you are a fan of reality TV, but the drama is getting to you during the winter months, this, and the SyFy channel show Face Off will give you a couple of options to watch, The Great British Baking Show is just on Netflix so easier for me to tell you were to find it. This is a baking competition where they make all sorts of glorious things to eat, but that’s not all that is great. We have shows in the US like that, but generally there is some drama around it, in this show you can genuinely tell that they care about each other and they want to win, but they want everyone to do well as well.

Board Games

You know me, I love my board games, though, this is harder part of the board game section is that not all games are going to work well with a limited player count. While we’ve never been told during the pandemic to see no one in Minnesota, naturally in Minnesota during the winter, less people go visit people because it’s cold, dark early, and often the roads aren’t great. So what are some fun games that can be played with not a ton of players.

Marrying Mr Darcy

Now, being a Jane Austen fan might help for liking this game, but it works well as a light hearted and light little game that can play from two all the way up to six or possibly more. This game is all about playing one of the characters in Pride and Prejudice and getting paired up and marrying your perfect match. The game has very simple mechanics, draw a card and do what it says, and some set collection card play. That’s about it, but the cards keep Jane Austen’s dry and sarcastic humor on them. I think this works better with more players so everyone is laughing about it, but it can play at a lower count and be a lot of fun.

Second Chance

What, I put a roll (flip) and write on the list, who’d have guessed. This game is very peaceful to play. You flip two cards and fill in one of the shapes on your board, you repeat, repeat again, and so on until no one can fill in anything. What adds to the peaceful nature can be how you fill in the shapes. You don’t just box them in because eventually you’d lose track, so I doodle mine in, my wife makes patterns by filling them in in various directions. You can really do whatever you want, and even with the doodling the game plays so quickly, so there’s no need to feel like you’re rushed.

What is Your Nerdy Mood Lifter?

I could have gone into books and comics as well, but these are four things that I know pretty well, so I wanted to focus on them. What are some of your favorite light and fun things to watch, play, or read?

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In terms of ranking, I picked games that I felt like having a bigger punch for the size they were higher on the list, even passing some games that I liked better. This list is about the depth of game that you can get and really the depth of decisions that you have in the game. These are also going to be all games that I have in my collection, because remembering the size of every game that I don’t have can be tricky.

10 – Ganz Schon Clever

One of two roll and write or flip and write games on the list. A lot of them offer interesting decisions, and I probably could have put more on the list, but I also just did my Top 10 Roll and Writes. I think Ganz Schon Clever really provides and interesting puzzle to try and figure out. The reason it’s lower on the list is simply because you can figure out the puzzle. From that point on with the games in the series, it’s about how well you can optimize the puzzle. That, however, is still fun, and still offers a challenge. I am glad that I’m keeping track of my scores, just to see what numbers I can try and beat in the game.

9 – Skull

Some might find this game as an odd one for the list. It’s a push your luck bluffing game. That might seem too simple, but there is depth there as well. In Skull you are putting down either roses or a skull into your own pile, and eventually someone will open up a bid. Such as, I can flip four tiles without busting, then everyone bids, but the trick is, you have to flip all of your tiles first. You need to be able to read the people who are bidding to see if they are bluffing and they have a skull in there, or not, because you know you don’t have a skull, you can get through their stack and a high number of cards. Or, you might be bluffing by bidding to make someone else thing you don’t have a skull in your stack, when, in fact, you do.

8 – Silver

I’m going to say every version of this game, and all the combinations there of give this game a lot of staying power and a lot of bang for a small box size. There is also strategy to how you play as you try and figure out what cards you have in your village and how many points you have and also figure out what your opponent might have so you can call for scoring at the right time. There’s strategy to how you put in cards into your village, what cards you give your opponent, and how you manipulate the size of your village. Like Ganz Schon Clever, there is a puzzle you can figure out, but there are four versions of the game, each with different sets of cards numbered 0 to 13, and you can mix and match, so that’s a ton of different options you have and a ton of different puzzles.

7 – Say Bye to the Villains

Say Bye to the Villains is an extremely hard cooperative game. You are Samurai who are going to fight against some Villains in ten days. You are building up your health, speed, and attack, but also trying to figure out what the Villains are up to, so that the correct Samurai are assigned and can beat the correct villains. What makes this game feel so big is that you can’t quite do everything you want in the game. You are always pushing your luck with that last villain that you aren’t quite sure you can beat. I also like the strategy that goes behind either having enough health to survive an attack or enough speed to attack before a villain. The game is one that I have yet to beat, but I still really like the challenge.

6 – Hats

Welcome to the Madd Hatters tea party, you are trying to collect your best hat collection. This game twists off of normal card playing games. Normally you play cards in your hand to score or manipulate placement of things, but in this, you are placing them down on the table at the tea party. You then take the hat that was there. The rules for placing a hat are simple, it either needs to be the same color or the higher number. At the end of the game, the hats score based off of where they are on the table. The challenge comes in setting it up so that you can score at the end of the game in the hat colors you want, so leaving one of that color out that someone else can’t take so that you can score, but also collecting enough to score well. The balance is great because you mess it up, another player might remove the last pink hat from the board, and now all those pink hats won’t score. Or maybe, instead, the make it so the lowest scoring pink is now one point instead of six. It’s a fun and chaotic hand management game.

5 – Onirim

The only true solo game on the list, Onirim is my go to for a fast solo game. The basics are simple, play down three cards of the same color in a row and don’t have any matching symbols next to each other, you get to put out a door card, get six out you win the game. The big part of the game comes with the key cards. These cards are extremely powerful and can be used for a lot of things. You can play them down as another symbol to get out a key, you can hold onto them and use them if a nightmare comes up, or a door of that color comes up, or you can dig through the draw pile with them. The strategy for how to use them can go all over the place, and depending on the game state, you might need to do one over the others. Plus the game, in the Second Edition, comes with a lot of modules as well to add in more and different challenges, but those are all just a few cards.

4 – The Lost Expedition

Another cooperative game on the list, The Lost Expedition’s game play is interesting and challenging. The big part comes from the adventure that you are on, and how you go on your hikes, or explorations for the day to reach the lost City of Z. A lot of cooperative games an alpha player can take over the game. In The Lost Expedition, it gets around that issue by players not being allowed to discuss what card they are playing. And the order cards are played changes depending on morning or evening. In the morning, you can pick and choose your path, which means the cards go in numerical order, at night it’s whatever order the cards are played in. After that the group discusses and spends resources to go down the paths they have created, always trying to push closer to the city. There can be a lot of good discussion in this game and lots of hard decisions.

3 – Hanamikoji

Hanamikoji is a very simple game. You have four choices of actions per round, and you do each of them once. You play down a card face down that you’ll use to win favor, two face down to not use to score, three face up and your opponent picks one, or two sets of two face up and your opponent picks one. Each player wants to win the favor of four Geisha so that they will grace your restaurant or eleven points worth of Geisha. Which cards you present to your opponent are always a pains taking decision. You want them to be equally as good for you no matter what your opponent picks. But, you don’t know all the cards your opponent has, what cards your opponent has played face down, or what card isn’t in the round. I feel the struggle hoping that I won’t give my opponent the game every time I play Hanamikoji.

2 – Hanabi

Hanabi is an odd game, but one that makes you think a lot. The challenge of this game comes from the fact you can’t see your own cards. And you, as a collective, are trying to put down fireworks in ascending order for three different colors. That seems impossible, but you give each other clues. The downside is that the clues aren’t as specific as you’d want. If my hand is a red three and four, a green two, and a blue one and two. A clue could be, “That card is a one” or “Those two cards are blue” or “Those two cards are twos”. We only complete one one through five of each color, so we need to give good clues, but you point out all the cards of a color or a number. As the player who receives the clue, that means you are keeping track of all that information in your head and by moving cards around in your hand. Clues are also a limited resource, so eventually you discard cards to get clues back, and that is a risk as well. Extremely challenging, Hanabi plays fast and has a lot of game to it.

1 – Cartographers

My number one big game in a small package is Cartographers, my other roll and write, or flip and write, game on the list. Cartographers shines because of it’s scoring. I talk about it a lot for that reason. In Cartographers you score four different scoring cards, A through D, but in any season you only ever score two of them. So Spring has you scoring A and B, then Summer, B and C, Fall, C and D, and Winter, D and then A again. You really need to plan out and balance your scoring. If you focus too much on one of them, you might not score well in other rounds. For example, if you focus too much on A, you might score poorly in Summer because you aren’t scoring B, but then come Winter you’ll score A again, so there’s an interesting balance of how you place everything on your map to score. I always feel like my time scoring for card Bis wasted, but without it, I’d have two early bad rounds. The game has a whole lot more thought to it than it’d seem.

There are other games I considered as well. Letter Jam, a Hanabi like word game is amazing, but I considered it just a bit too big. Draftosaurus and Fruit Picking are family-weight games that pack a little bit less punch but are great as well. And on my shelf are so many more games I need to try, like Claim, The Crew, Arboretum, which I’ve heard packs a big punch, and more. What are some of your favorite small games that pack a big punch?

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