Starward Rogue Update 1.016: The Ricochet Sequel

[ptarth]

Live life!  Commit!  See cats!

(translation: all good)

I really don't think you want me to commit all of my changes to the SVN...
But if you insist...

I'm sorry everyone, but he made me do it.
On the plus side, the Flame Tank is invincible (literally). On the down side, so are some of the enemies. Or maybe it was the White Gloss who was invincible, but slowed down to 10% speed.

Notice: No actual commit were made. Your game is safe from me (but not from Craig).

[Draco18s]

2 + 2 is 5, for sufficiently large values of 2.

[Misery]

Live life!  Commit!  See cats!

(translation: all good)

I really don't think you want me to commit all of my changes to the SVN...
But if you insist...

I'm sorry everyone, but he made me do it.
On the plus side, the Flame Tank is invincible (literally). On the down side, so are some of the enemies. Or maybe it was the White Gloss who was invincible, but slowed down to 10% speed.

Notice: No actual commit were made. Your game is safe from me (but not from Craig).

If the game should ever become too safe, I could always fix that myself as well.

[Mánagarmr]

We all float down here.

Hilariously enough, this was the first thing that made sense to me in this thread in a long time.

[x4000]

I'm just enjoying how epicly long this one really random patch thread has become, for no particular reason.  Why this patch versus any other?  No reason!  That's the best reason. 

[ptarth]

We all float down here.

Hilariously enough, this was the first thing that made sense to me in this thread in a long time.

At least one person got it. That makes it all worth while.

I'm just enjoying how epicly long this one really random patch thread has become, for no particular reason.  Why this patch versus any other?  No reason!  That's the best reason. 

Right. So you were looking for boardgame recommendations? I don't recall you mentioning the desired game duration and how many players you were looking to support...?

2 + 2 is 5, for sufficiently large values of 2.

I come from the true faith of strongly declared typing with explicit conversions. We need a fire to cover the world, consuming the implicit converters and their weakly declared typing spawns. Spending last weak trying to bludgeon things into accepting UTF-8 as UTF-8 and keeping it that way, even when my back was turned, made me very tired. And I think the key to fatigue relief is the purging of the wicked.

[x4000]

I wasn't actually looking for boardgame recommendations that I recall.  I just brought them up for... some reason?  I don't know, maybe it was an analogy or something, or I was looking for a site to be able to check out boardgames on in a generalized sense.  Then people started giving boardgame recommendations and I guess everyone figured "okay so that's what we're doing."

Right now I'm set on boardgames mainly because I can't get anyone to play with me much.  I have to keep indoctrinating my son for a few years.

[crazyroosterman]

We all float down here.

Hilariously enough, this was the first thing that made sense to me in this thread in a long time.

At least one person got it. That makes it all worth while.

I'm just enjoying how epicly long this one really random patch thread has become, for no particular reason.  Why this patch versus any other?  No reason!  That's the best reason. 

Right. So you were looking for boardgame recommendations? I don't recall you mentioning the desired game duration and how many players you were looking to support...?

2 + 2 is 5, for sufficiently large values of 2.

I come from the true faith of strongly declared typing with explicit conversions. We need a fire to cover the world, consuming the implicit converters and their weakly declared typing spawns. Spending last weak trying to bludgeon things into accepting UTF-8 as UTF-8 and keeping it that way, even when my back was turned, made me very tired. And I think the key to fatigue relief is the purging of the wicked.

i just remembered were that line was from man that film was hilarious.

[Draco18s]

Right now I'm set on boardgames mainly because I can't get anyone to play with me much.  I have to keep indoctrinating my son for a few years.

Just stay away from the "classics" like Monopoly, Chutes and Ladders, and Candy Land.
He'll inevitably figure out that there's nothing he can do to win and that it's all dice-based and if you're not careful he'll assume that all board games are like this.
Conversely you need to avoid the pure strategy end of the spectrum as well, e.g. Chess, Go, and Scrabble for precisely the same reason: being less skilled than you are, he will always lose.

A little searching (as I need games with a target age much younger than my own) reveals the following:

• Dixit (6+ I've heard good things)
• Hoot Owl Hoot! (4+)
• Robot Turtles (4+ and "sneakily teaches programming fundamentals")
• Forbidden Island (10+)
• Galaxy Trucker (10+)
• Mus (7+)
• Coconuts (4+)
• Mice and Mystics (7+)
• Loopin’ Louie (4+ involves a battery powered model airplane)

And a few others.  This article used Board Game Geek statistics to find the highest rated games with the youngest starting ages (I listed five of those here).

[x4000]

Nice!  Those look  great.

[ptarth]

Tier auf Tier (also known as Animal Upon Animal) is my go-to game for kids (and traditional adults). Gulo Gulo also has some high ratings. In general, low complexity dexterity based games are a safe bet. Likewise, pattern matching like a simplified variant of Set would also qualify. However, I have no idea about the age of the children involved...

A note also has to be made about being cautious about beliefs about how well us adults understand what kids want/need/like. Don't believe me? Consider the following, why does small human X like the cardboard box better than the gift? Why are the games War & Tic-tac-toe so popular with children/preteens? Why do boy bands exist?

For younger children the simple act of counting is enough of a game (ie., roll & move games like to be stimulating, e.g., Snakes & Ladders, Sorry). For even younger children, identifying and matching colors (e.g., Candy Land). And for even younger children the game of staring at the shiny object.

In other words, children transition through game complexity levels just like they transition through (i.e., outgrow) clothes.

As to the 538 article: This is the product of using a script on a database without really thinking about your data or being familiar with the product. Some of the suggestions are fine. Others though are rather horrible. That's because the games were rated, not based on how well it plays for a particular age, but how well it plays for the rater (who may or may not have thought about how well it plays for all age groups). So we have rating data for games that claim to be for ages 6-adults, but were mainly rated by mid 20s college students. This is compounded by the problems of sample sizes, many of the games on the list have sample sizes around 100, which are not going to be primarily parent ratings, but instead typical users of the website (again 20's males). BGG is great for information, but 538 did a bit of a disservice here (even though their main point is still valid).  If you want more useful information something like: https://www.boardgamegeek.com/geeksearch.php?action=search&objecttype=geeklist&q=children&B1=Go will put you into the right direction.

Or you can just ask unrelated questions on the forum and someone will eventually produce useful information, but perhaps not in the same thread.

[Draco18s]

In other words, children transition through game complexity levels just like they transition through (i.e., outgrow) clothes.

Oh, of course.  The problem that is that when my generation grew up the only games that existed were the ones that were far too simple (any "roll and move") or far too complex (chess) or required a high knowledge threshold (scrabble).  The lack of any mid-ground games is what ruined board games for me until college.

[ptarth]

...poor childhood board-gaming experience...

ditto.

Which is why I am overcompensating in my pseudo-adult life.

[x4000]

For whatever reason, my family was into some eurogames back in the very late 80s before that was even really a thing.  We had some more obscure games that were really fun for a kid the age I was at the time, and which used some skill.  In cases where there was not enough skill, we made some crazy house rules that added some.  And then Hero Quest came along and we played a lot of that (and its expansions) for a few years.  For me, Descent: Journeys In The Dark was basically like Hero Quest 2.

[Draco18s]

Descent:JitD was pretty good, my college group got a copy, though we never played it that much.  Did all of the base missions and started a "campaign" presented in the expansion(?) but I think we did one session of that.  Aside from Arkham Horror it had the longest setup and teardown time of the games we owned.

Oh, coop games.  Lack of coop is what turned my dad off, I discovered recently.  Space Alert (12+) would be super high on my recommended list, followed by Shadows over Camalot (10+) and Sentinels of the Multiverse (13+).  Might be worth tossing a nod to Space Team (the card game and mobile game) as well.

Speaking of, Sentinels recently announced that they're stopping development on further expansions and have/had a Kickstarter for a Box to Hold Everything and ported everything to a Steam app, there's a mobile version as well.  Based on my run of it, as long as you've got someone who knows the rules (i.e. one adult), I suspect you could lower the age requirement a bit: it doesn't take a whole lot of strategy, just the ability to read cards and pick an action.

Space Alert devolves into frantic shouting after about a minute (the game takes 15 minutes a round, no really), though I would recommend that all players be of roughly equivalent mental capacity (which will be "insufficient" no matter what, but having one person able to keep track of literally everything that's going on isn't going to be as much fun: in this case, I recommend Space Team and dissuade against its first expansion (the "Not Safe For Space" expansion) for those with children for hopefully obviously apparent reasons).