Replayability

Some time in the last year, I learned to play T.I.M.E. Stories. I'm not going to review it here, because it's a very different kind of game. I'll just give you a quick overview before going on to my main point.

The game itself is, similarly to a roleplaying game's core rulebook, more about the mechanics and less about the objective. Whereas most board games state, 'To win this game, you must collect the most gold coins' (or whatever), when you play a roleplaying game, the rules state, 'These are the mechanics involved in playing. Now decide what goal your group must accomplish in order to win.'

T.I.M.E. Stories's base game contains the board and all the counters you'll need to play. It also includes a deck of cards. Most of these cards are similar to the pages of a Choose Your Own Adventure book. Each player is sent back in time to occupy the body of a person in a specific place. Whilst in this body, the player must help to solve a problem of some sort to fix the timeline. You lay out the cards in a specific order on the board, and the art of these cards collectively shows you what you see. For example, in the included scenario, you are inhabiting the body of patients in a 1920's mental asylum. The first set of cards that you lay out on the board will, when seen together, show you the day room of the asylum. Here's what I mean:

'Pick the Right Answer' games

I was thinking about Dixit the other night, as a result of playing the game Mysterium. The latter was described to me as a combination of the former with Cluedo (or Clue for my American readers). This reminded me of one of my favourite board games: Balderdash. For those that don't know how it works, Balderdash has a set of cards, each of which contains five words that can be found in at least one English dictionary, but are not commonly known. This includes words like 'quincunx' and 'coprolite.' Players take turns as the 'dasher,' who reads off one of the words on the card. Everyone (including the dasher) writes the word on a slip of paper. The dasher writes the real definition of the word on his paper (the real definitions being provided on the back of the card), and everyone else makes up a definition for this word. The dasher shuffles all these papers together and reads out all the definitions. Everyone else then takes turns voting for the definition that they think is the right one. You get points for guessing the correct answer, and also for each person that voted for your own answer.

Dixit is essentially the same, but instead of making up definitions for words, you're coming up with simple (one to four word) descriptions of paintings. The cards are lavishly illustrated with elaborate artwork, often somewhat surreal in nature. Players take turns as the 'storyteller,' who chooses a card and gives a short description (something like 'Memory' or 'Loneliness' or 'Lost in the storm'). The other players then choose a card from their hands that they think can also be described by that word or phrase. All these cards are shuffled together, and players must choose which one they think is the storyteller's.