@harperrob @Georgios ooh — ordered!

(This is not a text, really, but I think the argument might be that any text makes arguments by virtue of its existence. I dunno, I didn't take any critical theory classes.)

Sometimes I end up writing about a lot of newly released games, which I personally enjoy — but I'm always a bit worried about getting caught in that old 'cult of the new' mindset. It's an easy one to fall into, but at the same time, I also just adore new designs and new experiences.

This week in my newsletter, I wrote about three of my favorite games from 2024 (so far): Wyrmspan, Nocturne and River Valley Glassworks. I'll link in a subsequent post.

Wyrmspan is such an interesting case for me. I'd largely moved past Wingpsna — I get why it works for a lot of people, and I think I get what doesn't work for me: too much variation in goals and your goals being tied too directly to the cards that end up coming out; given there are so many cards, it's always a question if you'll get the cards you need.

Wyrmspan feels like it addresses that for my play style. With that comes some extra complexity — not a ton — but enough to help the game fly. (Ha.)

#boardgames

@HibaIssa i should log in to mastodon more! thanks!

@karptonite this is giving me heartburn just thinking about APIs changing formats like that ... (if you did a strict check for the boolean true, that's probably even worse! wild.)

@bedirthan a happy member of column B

@grayson thank you!

Finally, this game gives me that "one more turn" feeling so strongly. I find myself wanting to continue working through the deck of local projects and craft an even stronger engine. That's such a good feeling in a game.

From a surface perspective, it's a gorgeous game. I can't get enough of this color.

It's inevitable that a game with a local area you focus on would get that 'multiplayer solitaire' tag, but I think that misses a point the game's making. If you want to succeed in Daybreak, you have to coordinate and communicate — there's so much information going around at any given point that you'll end up struggling to coordinate and communicate. It won't happen naturally. You have to step back and communicate, because the game won't force you to. Maybe it doesn't incentivize communication enough (though I think winning is incentive.)

That's another way the game works thematically: Coordination and communication are key to climate action. Individual efforts aren't enough. I like the way the game doesn't force cooperative action, but it gives you the tools to do so.

Sure, the cross-player coordination isn't particularly huge in scope, but I think that's OK. This game has a vision for what it wants to be, and that's a game where action is taken locally, but coordination has to happen globally.

Daybreak, the latest cooperative effort from Matt Leacock, who co-designed the game with Matteo Menapace, is really good, and the way it integrates the theme into play is really, really interesting. That's not what I would have told you the first, second or third time I played the game. (I thought it was really good, but thematic? Less so.)

Daybreak, a cooperative game about climate change, can feel a little like there are a million cards, and you won't succeed if you don't narrow your focus — that's the game's machinations being akin to climate action, for me. Broad and shallow solutions hold less value than specific, actionable solutions.

@grayson That's a great point about reprints — wider availability makes a huge difference, you're right. And dev time is a very real thing.

Of course, that's not true scientific analysis — but it does show a clear trend that emerged. While plenty of games provided prior art — the first cooperative games on BGG are from the 1930s, and Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective is the first truly successful coop — Pandemic was the game that really pushed things to where they are now. And I think that's pretty neat.

@grayson It is!

And it wasn't just that more games were being released.
The cooperative share of overall games released shifted, too. It's dropped a bit more over the last few years, following a big peak in 2019.

Few genres in board games have captivated me like cooperative games. I thought I knew the history reasonably well, so I set out to write a newsletter about the topic.

After spending several hours gathering data then diving into it, I realized I knew less than I'd thought. I'd long thought Lord of the Rings in 2000 boosted cooperative games to such a point that they started flowing out, but it wasn't until Pandemic hit the market that the climb really started.