Yesterday afternoon my friend A treated a bunch of kids to a Harry Potter treasure hunt. He loosely based it on some of my puzzle hunts of yore.

I contributed the following logic problem to the endeavor:

The puzzle can be solved with only the information above. However, since this was aimed at youngsters, I provided two additional clues. Feel free to use them if you get stumped, or want to verify that your answer is correct:

I was pleased with how it turned out. Having exactly one clue per Slytherin struck me as elegant, it has a bit of a twist, and the challenge was about perfect for the target audience of fourth graders. The challenge of solving the puzzle, I mean. The challenge of writing about “wands” and “length” without making the target audience of fourth graders snicker uncontrollably was one I didn’t even bother to tackle.

I tend to overuse certain adjectives when describing boardgames. Brilliant. Elegant. Engaging. Non-Edible.

So when I call Cosmic Encounter my “favorite game”, I expect skepticism. “Really?,” you say. “Your favorite game? Haven’t you described a dozen games as your favorite?”

Yes. Guilty as charged. But in all of those cases, I meant the game in question was my current favorite, or my favorite in a genre. Cosmic Encounter is my favorite game. Period.

I got my first set over twenty years ago, and have purchased three more since then. The first was lost in Bolivia, where I routinely played the game with other Peace Corps Volunteers. The second set was destroyed by a dog with a predilection for chewing. The third set is still on my shelf, but when I saw the production values of the new Fantasy Flight edition, released last year, I had no choice but to upgrade.

My first three Mayfair copies.

Fantasy Flight!

At its core, Cosmic Encounter has a fairly simple and abstract system. An encounter begins when a player uses a strike force of 1 to 4 spaceships to attack a planet belonging to an opponent, with the number of ships on the planet determining the initial strength of the defense. The encounter ends when both of the main players play cards from their hands and add the numbers on the cards to the ships they have on their side. The highest total is victorious, the ships belonging to the losers go to the graveyard, and a new encounter begins. Winning an encounter as the offense allows you to put some of your ships on the loser’s planet; establish five foreign colonies and you win the game.

Pretty simple, really. But two things greatly enliven (and complicate) things, the first of which is alliances. After the attacking player ponies up his ships, he may ask any or all of the other players to join his side. The defender may then do likewise. Each person who is not already involved in the encounter may then (if invited) add 1 to 4 of their own ships to one side or the other. These ships factor into the victory calculation. The more people who join your side, and the more generous they are when doing so, the more likely you are to win.

The second factor–and this is the element that has made Cosmic Encounter one of the most popular games of all-time–are the powers. Each player in the game represents a distinct alien race, and is allowed to do something that no other player can. Ships belonging to The Zombie, for instance, never die. When Anti-Matter is a main player in an encounter, the lower total wins instead of the highest (and ships on his side are subtracted from his total instead of added). Parasite can join any alliance, regardless of whether he was invited. And so forth.

Giving each player a special ability is par for the course in games today, but was ground-breaking when CE was first released. And where many games include, say, half a dozen special powers in a game that can be played by up to six people, the Fantasy Flight version of Cosmic Encounters comes with no less than 50 (with 20 more in the each of the two expansions: Cosmic Incursion, Cosmic Conflict). Each forces you to approach the game from a new angle, so as to best maximize your unique ability. And the interaction between the various powers can sometimes lead to surprising and unprecedented situations,

The variety might explain why I have been playing CE for a score of years, but doesn’t entirely account for my fondness. What I like best about the game is that it allows players to beat up on one another, but does so in a way that engenders no ill-will. For one thing, a player does not choose whom to attack, but instead draws a card from a special “Destiny” deck that designates the target of the encounter. This alone defuses a lot of the tension–it’s hard to fault someone for aggression when they had no choice in the matter. Also, the constantly changing alliances make grudges all but impossible. And Cosmic Encounter even allows multiple players to win as a team (though the question of whether “shared victories” are somehow less satisfying than “solo victories” makes for frequent and often inebriated post-game philosophical debates).

Those who prefer strategy games often accuse Cosmic Encounter of having too much randomness and politicking. I, on the other hand, find these very qualities a welcome relief from the analytical, themeless, and low-interaction games that I usual play. And there something to be said for history. There is no game on my shelf that I have played or enjoyed more over the years than Cosmic Encounter, and the new version from Fantasy Flight has kick-started my interest once again.

I spoke about Cosmic Encounter on the radio last December, during my annual games segment for KUOW Presents. And you can find much (much, MUCH) more about Cosmic Encounter on the web: Wikipedia, Boardgamegeek, Blogmic Encounter, and Comsic Encounter Online, to name a few.

Mail call!

Hi, a few questions about games I've come across on your website. I'm thinking of getting a new game for a couple that plays together a fair amount and tend to like two minute-type games (I've already given them several from your list-- Lost Cities, etc). Do you had any thoughts on games in a similar vein to Lost Cities, which I guess I would describe as lightweight, two-player-compatible, and perhaps don't require a ton of skill/strategy/attention?

Thanks in advance for your help. T

“What are some good games for a couple?” is a question I get asked this a lot. Which is nice, because it’s one of the few in this world for which I have a ready answer. And here it is! (Many of these are reviewed here or on the Good Gateway Games page.)

• The aforementioned Lost Cities or Jaipur (I am pairing up games that are similar enough to each other that I would recommend one or the other, but not both)
• Carcassonne (which is playable up to five) or Carcassonne: The Castle (two-player only).
• Blokus or Ingenious.
• Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation (assuming the couple is “fantasy-tolerant”).
• Jambo or Rivals for Catan.

That set of suggestions has remained pretty much constant over the half decade.

But then, a few years ago, Mr. Jack was released, and threatened to muscle its way onto the list. As I wrote in the 2007 Good Gift Game Guide:

There’s no shortage of games that replicate the formula of Monopoly (make money!) and Risk (wage war!). But few have gone the route of Clue, challenging players to unmask a killer via deductive reasoning. Thankfully, Mr. Jack is picking up the slack. Eight characters—ranging from Sherlock Holmes to Sir William Gull—wander the streets of Whitecastle; one of them is secretly Jack the Ripper. The Jack player knows the identity of the fiend, and works to keep it concealed; the detective strives to apprehend the criminal by game’s end. Simple, brief, and ingenious, it’s a perfect pastime for anyone who enjoys a good mystery.

The problem with Mr. Jack, though, is that it’s just a smidge too unusual to give as a gift to non-games. Well you could give it, but it would likely sit upon their shelf until the end of days.

Thankfully, the designers have released a new, smaller, and simpler version of the game that fits the bill perfectly. Mr. Jack Pocket feels like the original, but boasts fewer rules and a shorter playing time.

As before, one player assumes the role of Mr. Jack; his opponent becomes the Detective, with three Investigator at his disposal: Sherlock Homes, Watson, and their dog Toby (who is apparently canon). The game board is assembled from nine square tiles, placed in a 3×3 grid, with each tile depicting a t-intersection of roads. That means that three edges of each tile have streets leading off of them, and the fourth does not. Like so:

In the center of each tile is the headshot of one of the nine Suspects, any of which could be the killer. The Mr. Jack player knows the identity of the culprit, while the goal of the Detective is to deduce this information.

Before play begins, the three Investigator tokens are placed outside the grid. The hunt for the killer then unfolds over a series of rounds, during which the players move the Investigators around the perimeter of the grid, rotate tiles, swap the position of tiles, and take other actions. An Investigator can peer down the roads on the tiles, and see everyone until his vision is blocked by a wall. Thus, at any given moment, some of the suspects will be “seen”, and others (those that are in no Investigator’s line of sight) are unseen.

At the end of a round, Mr. Jack checks to see which of the Suspects are visible to the Investigators, and announces whether the guilty party is “seen” or “unseen”. With this knowledge, the Detective can the rule out Suspects in the opposite state. If Mr. Jack declares the killer to be “unseen” for instance, but William Gull and the Madame are visible to one or more Investigators, the Detective can exonerate these two.

The game continues until only one Suspect remains, at which point the Detective makes his collar. Mr. Jack may instead win by stalling the investigation long enough to escape. All this plays out like competitive puzzle-solving, as each player tries to figure out the best combination of actions to take to achieve his objective.

I ain’t gonna lie to you: I am dubious of this game’s long-term replayability. But that concern stems from the fact that I am playing it a lot right now. As the game can be completed in a quarter hour, it can be taught in a few minutes more, and it’s small enough to be brought to and played at a bar, my copy has already seen plenty of use since I picked it up a month ago. So it’s entirely possible that I will tire of it soon. For most folks, this is a perfect, light, two-player game, and one that I will be giving as a gift to couples for many years to come.

My Good Gift Games post has been updated with lots of additional information. See it here.

The 2010 Good Gift Games Guide is available at The Morning News today.

Unfortunately a few of the games appear to have gone on backorder between the time I started making the list and today. That said, most can still be found online:

Honorable Mentions

Here are some games that just barely missed the main list.

Long Shot: There is no shortage of horse racing games on the market, but few allow the players as much control over the proceedings as Long Shot. The horses that move, and the distance they travel, is determined by the roll of the dice, but players can nudge luck in their direction by purchasing animals mid-race, and by playing any of a huge number of cards affect the position of the ponies and the state of the bets. Horse racing is one of those themes that seems to go over well with nearly any crowd, and Long Shot even allows you to play with as many as eight. [Funagain | Amazon]

Mr. Jack Pocket: Mr. Jack was listed in my 2007 GGG Guide as an excellent two-player deduction game. Mr. Jack Pocket is not simply a smaller and more portable version of same, but a completely different game–albeit it one with the same theme, atmosphere, and many of the same mechanisms of the original. One player is Jack the Ripper, and strives to keep his identity secret; the other is the detective, working to unmask the killer. It’s a great little game, and perfect for travel–be it to the Bahamas, or the local pub. [Funagain | Amazon]

The Adventurers: It’s not Indiana Jones: The Board Game, if only to avoid copyright infringement. Players send their archeologists into a booby-trapped temple, hoping to collect riches and not get crushed by rolling boulders. This game looks great–set it up, and family members will gravitate to the table out of curiosity alone. [Funagain | Amazon]

Onirim: As I mentioned in the main 2010 GGG guide, quality two-player games are hard to find. Rarer still are good one-player games, but Onirim fits the bill. The player is a dreamwalker, trying to escape a labyrinthine nightmare before he is trapped forever in his own mind. As solitaire games tend to lose much of their appeal once “solved”, the box contains no less that three expansions, to keep you puzzling for a long time to come. And if the thought of sleeping alone sound depressing, rules are included for a cooperative, two-player game as well. [ Funagain | Amazon]

The Resistance: The Resistance began as a free, Internet-distributed version of Werewolf (a.k.a. Mafia), but is now available with professional-quality cards. Playable by up to 10 people, The Resistance puts most in the role of rebel fighters, but some in their midst are covert agents for the empire. Unlike Werewolf, The Resistance does not require a moderator, and there is no elimination (so everyone is involved until the final victory). And continuing a trend we’ve seen with other games this year (Fresco, Onirim), The Resistance comes complete with an expansion, which as new cards to the mix for extended replayability. [Funagain]

Zombie Dice: Last month I declared myself sick of all things zombies. And it’s true, it’s true. But that doesn’t prevent Zombie Dice from being a pretty good little package, and cheap at ten bucks. As a push-your-luck game it’s really not that different from Bunco or Ten Thousand (both playable with a fistful of regular dice), but a few clever twists and the neato dice make this perfect for killing time between episodes of The Walking Dead. [Funagain | Amazon]

Second Opinions

Don’t trust the yeti? Here are the highlights of some other “2010 best game of the year” lists.

German Game of the Year:

• Winner: Dixit – this was in my 2009 GGG Guide
• Runner-Up: Roll Through the Ages — also on the 2009 list, and one of my favorite light games of the year.
• Runner-Up: Fresco
• Runner-Up: Portrayal
• Runner-Up: à la carte

Deutscher Spiele Preis (A.K.A., “The Other German Game of the Year Award”):

• Winner: Fresco
• Second: Vasco da Gama
• Third: World Without End
• Fourth: Tobago — my top pick in 2009
• Fifth: Hansa Teutonica

International Gamer Award:

• Best General Strategy: Age of Industry
• Best Two-Player Strategy: Campaign Manager

GAMES Magazine Awards

• Game of the Year: Jump Gate (wha-? I’ve never even heard of this …)
• Best Family Game: Burger Joint
• Best Advanced Strategy Game: Uncle Chestnut’s Table Gype.
• Best Abstract Strategy Game: Arimaa
• Best Family Card Game: Jaipur
• Best Family Strategy Game: Valdora
• Best Party Game: Telestrations

Good Gift Game Archives

You can find my previous GGG lists, as well as my top 15, on the Good Gateway Games page.

The 2009 Good Gift Games Guide appears in The Morning News today.

Watch this space–by day’s end I will post the 10 honorable mentions, as well as provide additional information to help you make your choices. In the meantime, you can peruse the GGGG archive here, and see the all-time top 10 at defectiveyeti.com/ggg.

You know what’s an appealing theme for a family game? Pirates. Or trains. Maybe exploring ancient pyramids or traveling through space. Maybe making a ton of money via real estate or stocks.

You know what’s not an appealing theme? Epidemiologists conducting research to curb the spread of infectious diseases.

And yet that is precisely the premise of Pandemic, a new title from Z-Man Games and my #1 pick on the 2008 Good Gift Games Guide.

Pandemic is a cooperative game, which means that the players (2-4) work as a team to “beat the system”. The board shows a map of the world, with 48 cities (twelve in each of four colors) connected by a web of roads. Two decks of cards drive the action: the Infection deck and the Player deck. The Infection deck contains 48 cards: one for each city of the board; the Player deck also contains one card per city, plus a number of “Epidemics”. In all cases, a card is of the same color as the city to which it corresponds. The game also comes with a number of wooden cubes in these same four colors, representing the four contagions that the players will be struggling to contain.

Nine cities start the game infected, with 1-3 cubes placed in each; the more cubes a city has, the worse the virulence. No city can ever have more than three cubes of a single color; if, during the game, you are directed to add a cube to a city that already has three, you instead add one cube to every city adjacent to the target. This is called an “outbreak” and is very, very bad; eight outbreaks over the course of the game and you lose.

On a player’s turn, he first takes four actions. Possible actions include moving around the board, treating and curing the diseases, building research stations, and passing cards to (or receiving cards from) his fellow players. A disease is cured when someone plays five cards of the same color (discard five blue cards, for instance, and the blue disease now has a vaccine). Curing a disease doesn’t remove cubes from the board, but makes it easier to do so: when someone chooses the “Treat Disease” action for a cured disease, they remove all the cubes from the city they occupy (instead of just a single cube, as is the case for uncured diseases).

After completing his four actions, a player then draws new cards from the Player deck. Lastly, he flips over a number of cards from the Infection deck, and adds a new cube to each city revealed.

Beating Pandemic would be a cinch were it not for the Epidemic cards. When one is drawn from the Player deck, a new city is instantly given three cubes. Furthermore, Infection cards which have already been revealed are shuffled and placed on top of the Infection deck. Consequentially, the same cities which have recently been hit by the diseases are certain to be drawn again soon.

It’s this final rule that gives Epidemic its flavor. Like a bad cold that just won’t go away, the contagions in Pandemic just keep turning up, even in cities you thought you had thoroughly disinfected. On the up side, though, you also have a pretty good idea about where the diseases are going to strike next. If Chicago got hit before the last Epidemic and you haven’t seen it since, you know that it’s somewhere at the top of the Infection deck, lying in wait; if Chicago has three cubes, you also know you need to get over there, and fast. This is what makes the game more of a coordinated battle rather than just a series of frantic fire drills.

And coordination really is the key to winning. Players must constantly discuss their options and synchronize their actions, to best address the whims of fate. While strategic play is possible (and necessary), much of Pandemic is tactical in nature: you look at the state of the game, you study your hand of cards, you evaluate your position on the board, and you try to optimize your four actions. In this way the game is much like a puzzle, one that multiple people can work on simultaneously.

Adding to the excitement is the geometric rate at which things go pear-shaped as play progresses. At the start of the game, with only nine cities infected, beating the game looks like a cakewalk. And you’ll remain nonplussed even after an outbreak or two. But around the time the third Epidemic card appears, everything goes to hell in a hurry. If a city with three cubes is adjacent to a city that outbreaks, it too will outbreak; if there is a third fully infected city nearby, the chain of outbreaks continue. When three, four, five outbreaks can all come from the turn of a single card, the tension around the table becomes palpable.

What I like best about Pandemic is the narrative that evolves as you play; after the game is over, you can’t help but recount the “storyline”, revealing in the small victories and cursing your ill-fortune. It’s also hard–very hard. That’s a great thing, because one common pitfall of cooperative games is that the replay value tends to evaporate once players have “figured it out”; the difficulty level of Pandemic, combined with the random setup and progression of play, largely obviates this problem. And it’s fairly quick, requiring only half an hour or so (though you’ll be hard pressed not to play two or three bouts in a row).

It’s always fun to watch the faces of new players blanch when you introduce them to Pandemic, so certain are they that no disease could be as deadly as the boredom this game will sure induce. It’s even more fun to watch those same people when they discover that this game rocks, not despite it’s unusual theme but because of it.

Bonus: Here ‘s Matt Leacock, creator of Pandemic, speaking about its design. The video is 50 minutes long but he spends the first ten providing an in-depth introduction to the game mechanics, in case you are intrigued but not yet sold. And the whole speech is pretty fascinating if you are a game geek like myself.

The official Good Gift Games Guide 2008 is available at The Morning News today. The games profiled are:

Runners Up

Usually, when I compile my annual Good Gift Games (G3s) Guide, I come up with seven or eight shoe-ins and then have to cast around for a few more to round out the list; this year my “just off the top of my head” list came out to 18 items, even before I started doing the research.

In other words, there were G3s a’plenty in 2008. In any other year any of the below probably would have appeared on the main guide; there are only relegated to the “Runners Up” list

Lost Cities: The Board Game (Rio Grande Games, 2-4 players, 45 minutes, $40): Designed by the esteemed Reiner Knizia, Lost Cities: The Board Game won the 2008 German Game of the Year Award (under its previous title of Keltis) and is perfect for families. Play cards and advance your intrepid adventurers as they seek to discover five forgotten empires. A great family game, and one that certainly would have been on the main G3 list were it not simply a multiplayer version of the fantastic two-player card game Lost Cities. Unless you never play two-player games, the original Lost Cities is the one to get. [More info: Lost Cities: The Board Game | Lost Cities (original)]

Cold War: CIA vs. KGB (Fantasy Flight Games, 2 players, 30 minutes, $25): Well, here’s something I wouldn’t have predicted: someone managed to combine the simplicity of blackjack with the bluffing element of poker into a thematic game political strategy. In Cold War: CIA vs. KBG, players struggle to control high-value objectives, such as Cuba and the Nobel Peace Prize by recruiting military, political, economic and political groups. With each group offering a distinct power, and each player able to use different Agents to achieve their goals, there’s plenty to consider in this little gem, and lots of exciting reversals of fortune. [More info]

Uptown (FRED Distribution, 2-5 players, 30 minutes, $20): Tile placement games are curiously addicting, and Uptown is no exception.
On your turn you simply place one of your tiles onto an empty space on the board, or use it to capture a tile of an opponent. You goal is to have as few groups on contiguous tiles on the board as possible by games end. Though that description (and reading the two pages of instructions) will probably leave you wondering, “is that it?”, the game itself is remarkably engrossing given the paucity of rules. [More info]

Battlestar Galactica (Fantasy Flight Games, 3-6 players, 2 hours, $50): Based on the contemporary series, Battlestar Galactica is a cooperative game–mostly. Like Shadows Over Camelot before it, almost all the players in Galactica are working as a team to overcome the game system, while a few secret traitors seek to undermine their efforts; unlike Camelot, though, not all the “bad guys” in Galactica know they are such from the start, as some may discover they are cylons well into the game. The rules are a bit too complicated to qualify this as a true G3 (which is why it was left off the main list), but fans of the show–and anyone who likes a healthy dose of paranoia and mistrust–will like this a good deal. [More info]

Galaxy Trucker (Rio Grande Games, 2-4 players, 60 minutes, $75): Another one that gets kicked to the “runner up” pile for rules a smidge too complex (not to mention that price!), Galaxy Trucker is nevertheless one of the most fun games I played all year. Each round is played in two phases. In the first, players simultaneously grab lasers, shields, generators, cargo holds, and other tiles from a common supply in real time, as they strive to build the best ship they can in the shortest amount of time possible. Then, in phase two, all the players journey through space, and pray that the ships they hastily assembled can withstand the meteors, pirates, and other events they encounter. I have Grave Doubts about this game when it was described to me, but one play had me hooked. [More info]

Race For the Galaxy (Rio Grande Games, 2-4 players, 45 minutes, $35): Jeeze, what’s with all the great science-fiction games this year? Race For the Galaxy has been described as “San Juan for gamers”, and the analogy is apt: the two games are both based on the board game Puerto Rico, and have strikingly similar mechanics. Where they differ is the depth: Race offers a lot more options, and plenty of different routes to victory. It does this at the expensive of accessibility, unfortunately–it’s tough to learn without having an experienced player walk you through the rules–but if you can overcome the learning curve, it will pay you back with interest. [More info]

Metropolys (Rio Grande Games, 2-4 players, 60 minutes, $50): It wouldn’t be a G3 list without an easy to learn, 45 minute auction game. In Metropolys, players use bid for neighborhoods, with the winner constructing buildings in his newly acquired property. But while some places are valuable (the subway exit would be an ideal location for your restaurant, for instance), other places (such as archeological sites) will actually give you negative points if you are so unfortunate as to build over them. I left this off the main list because, frankly, I have seen so many easy to learn, 45 minute auction games that this just struck me as more of the same. But if you don’t have such a game in your collection you should, and Metropolys is a fine candidate. [More info]

Second Opinions

Don’t trust the yeti? Here are the highlights of some other “2008 best game of the year” lists.

German Game of the Year

• Winner: Lost Cities: The Board Game
• Runner-Up: Stone Age
• Runner-Up: Witch’s Brew
• Runner-Up: Marrakech
• Runner-Up: Blox

Deutscher Spiele Preis (A.K.A., “The Other German Game of the Year Award”):

• Winner: Agricola – Great game (played it last night, in fact), and one that I’ll review here soon, but too “meaty” for the G3 Guide.
• Second place: Stone Age
• Third place: Cuba

International Gamers Award

• Best Multiplayer player: Agricola
• Best Two-player player: 1960 – read my review here.

GAMES Magazine Awards

• Game of the Year: TZAAR
• Best Family Game: Pandemic
• Best Family Strategy Game: Stone Age
• Best Family Card Game: Palastgeflüster
• Best Advanced Strategy game: Key Harvest
• Best Abstract Strategy Game: Ponte del Diavolo
• Best Party Game: Go Nuts

Prior G3s

The canonical G3s have been given their own page: defectiveyeti.com/ggg. This year I am inducting Thebes and Zooloretto, both of which were featured in the 2007 G3 Guide, and which I have played much of in the last year.

You can find previous G3 Guides here:

And all my defective yeti game posts are available in the archives.

Arkahm Horror: Call of Cthulhu, the board game. A massive game in almost every respect (scope, game length, pages of rules, price tag…), this cooperative game has all the players working as a team to stop an Ancient One from destroying the world. Highly recommended for those who love H. P. Lovecraft or games that simulate the RPG experience without requiring a lot of prep work. One downside, though: despite taking 4+ hours to play, the game isn’t terribly difficult to defeat, which can lead to some anti-climatic endings. Fortunately, the many expansions address this by considerably upping the challenge (the Dunwich Horror expansion, in particular, has ben very well received).

A Touch of Evil: The newest offering from the guys who designed Last Night on Earth (see my top pick in Part I of this guide), Touch of Evil has the players working separately to defeat one of four different villains (the Scarecrow, the Horseman, the Werewolf, and the Vampire), and is very much a disciple of the Talisman school of game design: move around the board, bulk up your character, and then take on the Big Baddie. Of course there’s a reason why Talisman is so wildly popular–this type of game is crazy fun–and ToE even improves on the formula by keeping the playing time down around an hour.

Fearsome Floors: If you’re the sort to shy away from games that require spatial reasoning skills, this might be the most terrifying horror game on this list. First, players move their tokens on the board, racing innocent victims through a dungeon toward the exit. Then the Monster moves, following a specific and unvarying algorithm: he moves forward until he “sees” one or more player tokens, at which point he turns and moves toward whichever is closest. As the Monster may turn several times during his movement, much of the game depends on your ability to correctly extrapolate his course. Played among analytical types the game can get bogged down in number-crunching, but in a casual group it’s an exciting contest with lots of “oh crap, I did not see that coming” moments.

Gloom: I’m no fan of “take that!” games, in which the players are constantly playing cards on one another to hinder progress (think: Killer Bunnies or Muchkin, neither of which I can abide). That said, two aspects of Gloom serve as an antidote to my reflexive dislike. First is the great theme, which turns the usual screw-your-buddy mechanic on it’s head: the object is to be the most miserable, so you play horrible events on yourself and sic such things as “picnic in the park” on your opponents–ha! Second, the game features cool transparent cards, which allow you see the accumulation of various bonuses and penalties. Not a game I’d play often, but once a year before Halloween is just about perfect.

Werewolf: A number of commercial versions have cropped up (The Werewolves of Millers Hollow, Do You Worship Cthulhu?, etc.), but all you really need are the rules, a deck of cards, a bunch of friends, and a healthy dose of paranoia. You can read my ruminations on the game here.

Those are my recommendations for Halloween Gaming. If you’d like to second any of my nominations, or add your own to the mix, feel free to do so in the comments.

See also: Halloween Gaming, Part I: Zombies, Halloween Gaming, Part II: Vampires and Witches. You can also view the entire Halloween Gaming Guide on one page here. Or, if you are in market for good games regardless of theme, check out my Good Gateway Games Guide.

Fury of Dracula: Oh man, so fun. This is my go-to title for Halloween frivolity. See my full review here.

Dracula: A two-player game, with one person as the Count and the other as Dr. van Helsing. Each is searching London for their target cards (Dracula seeks victims, while van Helsing looks for coffins), and must do battle the underlings of the other. Dracula is unusual in that it has a strong memory-component: London is represented by a grid of face-down cards at which players may occasionally peek, but must simply remember what they are (and where they are) thereafter. I’ll admit to liking the game despite the memory aspect, rather than because of it.

Dawn Under: Dude, what is it with memory games and vampires? Like Dracula above, this one is also better if you’re not a senile old man like me, though the mnemonic component in Dawn Under is more akin to the classic “Memory” game you no doubt played as a kid. Open graves in search of vacant ones in which your vampires can rest. But if you open a tomb in which another play has already placed a vampire (or garlic), you suffer a penalty. One of those games that you’ll feel slightly guilty playing since it’s obviously “for kids”, but will find immensely enjoyable nonetheless. Nominated for the 2004 German Game of the Year award.

Witch’s Brew: Beautiful card game in which players strive to collect ingredients a cauldrons to create potions and cast spells. A relatively simple and short game (less than an hour), but with plenty of novel mechanisms you are unlikely to have seen before. Nominated for the 2008 German Game of the Year award.

Wicked Witches Way: Whenever I write posts recommending games, I inevitably get comments from people expressing enthusiasm for Set; folks, this is the game for you. Nine custom dice are thrown, and then everyone simultaneously searches the rolled symbols for specific patterns. Do so quickly and your witch will advance on her broom, possibly winning the race and the game. Requiring both memory and speed, this is another game you can play competitively against young children–and lose.

Techno Witches: Another witchly race, but these jet-setters ride state-of-the-art vacuum cleaners. Indeed nearly everything about this game is untraditional, from the fact that it’s a boardgame with no board (wha-?), to the programmatic nature of movement (your witch doesn’t budge until you’ve plotted out his next five moves–and then he does them all at once, possibly crashing into the other players as his does so). I’m not the first to observe that this is essentially a Harry Potter racing game without the license.

See also: Halloween Gaming, Part I: Zombies, Halloween Gaming, Part III: Miscellaneous Malevolence