The background behind the game People Zoo can be found here: Link! but basically I taught a class where my students made games, and the top three games would end up getting printed. People Zoo was one of those games. In People Zoo, you are an alien going back in time and kidnapping famous people from Earth's history to put in your alien zoo.
I am making the art files for all of the games this year, including this one. I thought I'd show you what they look like. The black lines surrounding the card are the cut line; the line will be removed before sending in the file, but that is about where the card will be cut out from.
The backs of the six decks: One deck per time period you can travel to.
The aliens, and the two cards where you place your
time machine to indicate which time period you are going to.
So Henry was super cute this past week and I took a video of him, then edited it a bit in my movie editing program. Then I uploaded it onto Youtube for your enjoyment. Here you go:
So Winterim is wrapping up. Friday was our last full day, and we do have class on Monday, but it's only for 35 minutes, so it's not really class as it is somewhere to stick the students before the Winterim assembly. Speaking of the assembly, I made an awesome video for it from my Psychology and Science class, but because it drops student names like crazy I'm pretty sure I'd get in major trouble from FERPA if I posted it as public. So I can't share it here, as if I did try to post it it would give you an error and "video not found' and such.
Anyway, Winterim. My Game Design class also wound down. In Game Design the first week is spent playing games and learning the mechanics and what makes them fun and how they run and what-not. The second and third weeks are when the students break off into their final groups and create their own game. The top three games are then professionally created, with artwork and parts and such. Last year I got a one month free trial of photoshop to do the artwork. This year my wife got me the Pixelmator program, which is just like Photoshop. So I can handle the artwork. The parts will be done again through Printplaygames.com, which is a website that has pieces and can print off boards and cards and such.
The three winners this year were: People Zoo, Basketball the Board Game, and Contagion. People Zoo is a card game where you are an alien race that travels back in time to kidnap people to put in your future alien zoo. There are six different time periods you can travel to: Middle Ages, Renaissance, Classical, 1800s, 1900s, and the 21st Century. There are six different categories in each: Military, Writer, Artist, Religious, Theatrical, and Political. The goal of the game is to collect one of each category from one time zone or one from each time zone in one category. There's also worker placement and auctioning involved.
Basketball the Board game is a game where you play basketball. Each team has five players: a Point Guard, a something else, a something else, a something else, and a fifth one you can tell I know little to nothing about basketball. But each of those groups has a deck of cards, and you get one per category in the beginning, which tells you who that player is and could give them special abilities. And one one player does something, like scores or blocks a pass, their stats improve in that area. Once a player's stats improves enough, they get better, such as adding one to their die roll every time they try to score or something.
Contagion is a post-apocalyptic cooperative game, where you and the other players try to avoid zombies as you try to collect resources to find the zombie cure. Each player gets their own unique ability (think Pandemic, or Forbidden Island, or really any game with variable player powers). The board is a big hexagonal grid. After everyone takes their turn (which consists of using 5 action points) the zombies all move to whichever player is closet to them in true mindless zombie style. However, as the game progresses it becomes harder, with the zombies becoming faster, more zombies spawning, and so forth. If a player does encounter a zombie they have to draw a card from the Infection deck, which will either say Clear (more likely) or Infected (less likely). They keep it a secret though, which introduces the there-could-be-a-traitor-among-us thing that Dead of Winter and Shadows Over Camelot has.
So those are the three games. Students are buying copies of them, with the people that made the game wanting to get one, of course, but others were interested in getting a copy too. People Zoo will be around $20, Basketball around $32, and Contagion around $38. The Game Design budget will take a little bit off the top of that.
So last week during my Sunday nap (because we have 8 in the morning church and so we need a nap) I had this dream. In this dream I was playing a card game. And since earlier that week we had talked about Quantum Theory in my Psychology and Science class, it was fresh on my mind. So this game I was playing in this dream was a quantum particle game where the cards were like quantum particles: you knew what they could do, and they kind of existing in all their states at once, but once you played it and "observed" it, it locked itself into place and could only be in one of those states.
I knocked around in my head a lot of things I could do with that. And there's still tons of possibilities out there. (If you can think of any let me know.) What I finally settled down on though was a quantum computer idea, where the cards you play make up this big computer, and when a program runs through it it runs through your cards, but you never really know what side of the card it's going to come out of until you run it. Once I had that idea I bounced round some more ideas and came up with what I have developed over this past week.
The cards are hexagonal cards. The game consists of two parts: building the computer and then running it. In part one, you card draft your hand, then take turns playing cards from that hand onto the game board, which will be the computer. Next part of the game is running the computer. Each card, which represents a quantum particle piece of the computer, will have anywhere from two to four connections leading out of it into some of its six sides. Each connection will have a number or numbers on it from 1-6. When you run the computer and the information-bit-whatever-you-call-it (I've called it the Pulse because I don't know what else to call it), anyway when the Pulse goes into that quantum part, a die roll determines along which path the Pulse travels. And you get more points the farther down the Pulse goes in the computer, but according to how many of your cards the Pulse went through.
And there will be different ways of choosing a die, it won't be completely random. The most common example is, let's say it's a two player game. Three dice are rolled. The first player chooses one of those three dice and moves the Pulse. Then the second player chooses one of the remaining two dice and moves the Pulse. The third die is discarded, and three more dice are rolled. That kind of thing. So there's strategy in it, instead of just hoping the numbers turn out well.
Anyway, that's my idea. I've already got all 42 quantum tiles designed (yes, there are 42 of them and yes that was on purpose), and I'm working on the exact ways you can manipulate dice grabbing. The one above is the classic example, but there's also going to be crazy things going on in some runs as well, such as: roll four dice. The third player divides them into two groups of two, giving two to player one and two to player two. Player one picks one and gives the other to player three. Player two picks one and gives the other to player three. Player three picks one of the two he got and discards the other. You know, stuff like that.
This Winterim I am teaching a Game Design. Winter is the three weeks right after Christmas break in school where the teachers get to teach fun classes of their choosing. I, of course, picked Game Design as one of my classes. So the class is learning about tabletop games, how they work, and also making a game of their own. This year the first two days of class were playing 10 games to learn about their mechanics and how they work. Since a lot of people haven't played those games before, I made some youtube videos explaining how to play. They are posted below:
This Christmas break was amazing. I didn't get in my weekly post because I was so busy with everything else that was going on during break. And by everything else I mean playing games. But I'm back at school and blogging again.
During break I played a lot of new games, most of which I had never played before, including a lot of new ones that we got for Christmas. Following are some of my thoughts.
Seafall: Seafall was an incredible game and an incredible experience. I loved it. It was my first time ever playing legacy game, (and Ryan's as well), and it was a blast to be able to change everything about the game. From the cards themselves to upgrading your own province board to making your ships better, it was awesome being able to change things for future games. The best part though for me was being able to discover islands. Sailing out into the wild unknown waters and using an explore action to see if you could discover an island was so amazing. I was the first one to do it in my game. And while I was not the first one to set up a colony on one of the islands, I was the first one to get three, getting me that milestone. Like in Eric's blog, it's really hard to not talk about the best, most exciting moments of the game because of spoilers, but let me just say the stuff in those little boxes is awesome. The entire game felt like an epic story to me, unfolding a secret past history of the sea that we slowly uncovered and discovered. All in all it was a great game and I had a great experience. It's too bad I can't go back and do it again, not in the same awe-inspiring way, because uncovering the secrets was one of the best parts. There was one time when we knew what we had to do, but weren't sure how the game would know when to trigger itself when it happened, but as it turned out everything happened smoothly and the game knew just what to do with itself. I can't wait to play another legacy game, such as Pandemic: Season 2, coming out later this year.
Viticulture: I love this game. I can't even explain really why, but this game is so fun and amazing. I just love the fact that you can use your workers in summer OR winter, but not both, and how your grapes in the crush vats and your wine in your cellar age at the end of every turn--I love those mechanics. And the visitor cards give a whole new spin on everything. This game is just great, and definitely one of my favorites of all time.
My Village: I like this game a lot better than regular Village. There's the amount of growth you literally see in front of you as your village gets bigger and progresses. It's the cool fact that you have five guys and once one of them dies you need to replace them to keep doing that part of your village. But mostly it's the dice. That glorious mechanic of that dice pool. I love how you can pick any two dice to add up to the number you want. I love the fact that there are the black dice which you can pick, but cost you two time to do so. I love how you can activate your buildings with them depending on what number is on the banner. It just all comes together for me so neatly and clearly. But yeah, picking two dice from that dice pool is just a great mechanic.
Mystic Vale: It was so fun to be able to construct your own cards. Which pieces fit together the best? Will that card part even come up when this is out there? Building up supercards was one of the best parts of the game. And I like how when you spoil you get that one-shot free mana, but man, spoiling! I hate spoiling! But when you can pull it off--wow, you're feeling good about yourself. I haven't played it enough to get all little tricks and dig into all the corners and niches that this game has to offer, but I hope to soon.
Codenames: This was quite a fun party game. And it was a lot shorter than I was expecting it to be. I was expecting a game to last around a half hour, but most games only lasted from about 10 to 15 minutes. And it was fun being both the person giving clues and the person pointing at words based on those clues. They are about equally fun in my mind, because with one you can make awesome clues, but have to wince inside when your team just doesn't get it, and with the other you can try to extrapolate what the code master meant and try to delve into their thought processes.
Castles of Mad King Ludwig: This game was really fun. I loved being able to construct my very own castle, and loved how the extra points on the room tiles made sense. The meat locker wants to be attached to an outside room to let out the smell. The theatre loses points if it's next to a sleeping room because the noise coming from it would wake up the guests. It was little things like that that made playing so much fun. Plus, you even got to set the prices of the rooms every go around. My trick was not placing the rooms my opponents wanted too far out of reach, but I'd put them just low enough so that they would justify buying it and I would reap the profit.
Imhotep: This game was really simple, and thus fun. You grab stone, place stone, or sail. And that's it. Yet the game remains competitive and tense as you try to balance those three very simple things. Timing is so critical to this game. I only barely barely won my first game I played by one point.
Istanbul: Letters and Seals: This is a really good expansion. I don't see myself playing with it all the time though, because Istanbul by itself is so polished and tight and close to perfection in a game. The expansion adds a whole lot of neat nifty stuff, but as a result also adds a little bit of complexity and AP. With the added piece you can move it increases options on your turn and also the likelihood you'll have to pay two lira when you go to a spot. But it was definitely a lot of fun; all of the new added stuff is solid.
Caverna: Like Agricola, but you feel more free in this game to choose your own path. In Agricola you were always worried about feeding your workers and getting tons of every animal so that you didn't go negative, but in Caverna both of those problems are fixed.
Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn: I played with Alex twice. I lost the first one terribly, but almost one the second one. I was so close! I like how it's a card and dice game, with the dice activating card powers, and some card powers allowing you to change dice. The card drafting thing would have been so neat to do, but there was just no time this vacation.
Shakespeare: This game only lasts six rounds, which is incredible, because you think you won't be able to get anything done, and then by the end you look back and think, wow, I got a lot done. I really liked this game.
Alhambra and Fresco: I loved the city building of Alhambra with the wall thing, and I loved how if you paid for a city tile exactly you got to go again, and I loved how you could only pay for a tile using only one type of currency. It's a good game, and Heather really liked it too and was excited when she learned that we also got a copy. I loved the hiding-the-workers part of Fresco, where you reveal where your guys are going at the same time. But I don't know if this is just me but the only place where that really mattered was the market. It seemed like any other place it didn't really matter as much. Oh, and painting the ceiling too I guess because they might paint the section that you were going to paint, or move the abbot away from the place you would have gotten bonus points from. And I liked the getting-up-time mechanic, similar to the one in Viticulture. Plus, the mixing colors together to get other colors is just genius.
Treasure Hunter: A fun game. It has this really cool card drafting mechanic where you want to lowest in a suit or the highest in a suit, but not the middle of a suit, and so you're trying to build up a team based on their rank number to get highest or lowest. Plus there are dogs and coins and weapons and all sorts of crazy things. Also, a short game. That won a lot of points with me; I love shorter games.
Hey, that's my fish!: A simple game that can get deep if you want it to. My wife got me this for Christmas. I first played it with Brandon earlier last year.
Kingdom Builder: This was a fun little game. It's not super deep, like other games I like, and it is kind of annoying having a one-card hand (a hand of card?), but other than that it's pretty solid. I love how with the expansions it adds a ton of new goal cards, because those three goal cards are the focus of the game, and I'm a sucker for variety.
Dominion expansion cards: Speaking of variety, I got a whole bunch of new Dominion cards! Some of which no one has ever played with before because they're from the new second edition games that just came out. We actually didn't play this over the break though....
We made a list of who won what game with how many points and how many players were playing. I think Alex is doing some math to crunch some numbers to determine who is the overall Christmas break games champion. Or something like that.
In other non-game related news: The Fitbit challenge! My family is doing a Fitbit challenge where we see how many steps we get in one month. It averages out to about 7,000 steps a day I think. Because I walk to the bus stop to and from school every day, I easily rack up over 20,000 steps in one day. Plus as a teacher I'm up in the front of the class teaching too, so things are going well for me. But it's so funny, because now I love waking around and even go out of my way to do it now so that I get more steps to beat everybody else. So the challenge is working--it's getting me to exercise more. Right now I'm in first place. :)
Heather and I saw Moana over the break (thanks Hannah!) and it was great.
And everyone made it safely home! I'm so grateful that we were blessed with safe travels. Heather, Henry and I made it home safely, despite horrid Salt Lake City roads, and Eric and Ryan managed to make it to BYU-I safely, and my mom and dad made it back home to Fallon safely, all of which I am incredibly grateful for.
I just finished up my last day of school in 2016. Not that we did a lot; we watched some educational you-tube videos. Also, all of my grades are in and locked and so I'm free and good to go. School got out a little bit earlier today. The last hour of school was the students going around to their Winterim classes for 20 minutes each. My first block is my psychology and science class, and so I got to see a few of the people who would be there. I don't have a second block (I'll have lunch duty) so I spent that time cleaning my classroom and getting everything ready.
My third block is Game Design! I had previously made up worksheets for the class members to fill out to give me an idea of how familiar they are with games. Basically it was a long list of games asking them if they've played it or at least heard of it before. Then I explained what the rough schedule would be like for the three weeks of Winterim: first week we'll be playing games to learn their mechanics, including Settlers of Catan, Dominion, Sushi Go!, Scotland Yard, Blockus, and so forth. We'd also be doing little experiments where they'd have to make their own game under certain restrictions (it has to be an abstract cooperative game, for instance). The second and third weeks would be getting into their final group and working on making an original game, and the best three games from the eight groups would get theirs printed off all professional like, from printplaygames.com.
Right now I'm on the bus home from work. Heather and I will be leaving to go to Fallon early Thursday morning! I can't wait! I actually had a dream two nights ago that I was already there, but I thought it was too good to be true so I asked Ryan if I was dreaming and he said, "Yeah, you are." Anyway, I should be grateful that I'll be able to get to Fallon so soon. One of the sisters I home teach said that her school went all the way through Thursday, so my school got out a whole two days earlier. Plus, in all reality if I had a non-teaching job there would be no such thing as Christmas break. I'd have to work those two weeks like normal, only getting Christmas and New Years off, and maybe their Eves as well. So I am very grateful that I have a job where Christmas break is built into it so that I actually can go home for a few weeks. It will end up being about a week and a half in the end.
I am going to put my board of my laptop to work and put words down on this blog for you to look at and know what is on my mind. This is what I am doing right now; I am thinking of things to say and I am typing a lot of thoughts in my mind onto my laptop. Ah, this is so hard. Okay, so I am not actually doing that; I am just trying to put out a paragraph that has no E's in it. Man, that was tough.
It's almost Christmas! To celebrate, I'll do what my mom did and post a few of my favorite Christmas songs onto my blog.
Breath of Heaven. I love this song. There are a few different covers out there, but here's one where it sounds good and the video's good.
O Come, O Come, Emmanuel. Love this song. Love this version.
What child is This. Should that have a question mark after it? The name of the song doesn't.
Carol of the Bells. It is by far my favorite "secular" Christmas song.
Last week on Saturday we had a ward Christmas party! There was great food and we got to talk to friends and have a wonderful time. One of the things we did was the Primary and Nursery put on a little Christmas pageant for the ward. The Nursery got to be the main actors and the Primary got to play the farm animals that were in the stable. Hannah got Henry a little cow hat and so Henry was a cow for the pageant. I videoed it, and then put it on youtube. I've included it here for your enjoyment!
Last week I posted my list of games I am planning on playing at least once during Christmas break. My mom and cousin made a few more suggestions. They are as follows.
Liebrary: A fun (and funny) game where the players are read a book title and synopsis, and then have to make up what they think the first line of the book is. Meanwhile the player that read the card writes down the real first line of the book. Answers are collected, shuffled, and then read out loud, and players guess which one is the real first title. They move forward if they guess it correctly or if anyone guesses for their line. "Is this thing on? Is this thing on?"
Wits and Wagers: A trivia party game where you don't have to know the exact answer. All the answers are numbers, and once everyone guesses a number you arrange them from smallest to largest and guess which was was the closet to the right answer without going over.
Apples to Apples pictures: I looked this up online and I think its name is technically Big Picture Apples to Apples. Apples to Apples with pictures instead of words.
Oddly Obvious: A party game where the answers are written on the card; all you have to do is shout out the correct one before anyone else. Let's hope that I'm better at Alex than this.
Specter Ops: My cousin Ben made this suggestion. This was listed as one of the Dice Tower's top ten deduction games. It was also on their list of top ten games that stress them out due to the fact that all the players but one are tracking and hunting down that one player, and so playing as that one player is super intense, so I can't wait to try.
Well, that's it for now. Those were the suggestions I got from my family. But there are a few more....
For my Game Design Winterim class this year I've been getting stuff together. The first two to three class periods this year will be introducing the students to different game mechanics they might not have heard of before. Some have only ever played Monopoly. (If you just died inside reading that, I feel ya.) The following three games are games I ordered for the class that I might also bring down to Fallon to play this Christmas if there's interest.
Shakespeare: I picked this one because it has a worker placement mechanism, some blind bidding, variable turn order, and a little bit of card drafting. And it has to do with Shakespeare, which is awesome. This game actually arrived today! In Shakespeare you have six days to practice putting on a play, hiring actors, and getting set designers and costume makers to put on the best play possible. It has a very high rating and has received positive reviews.
Sushi Go!: This game is pure card drafting. Much like 7 Wonders, which I was considering for the class, but this one is much simpler and therefore I think better. You basically pass your hand around getting a new card every turn just like 7 Wonders and trying to complete sets of sushi. This game has also received very positive reviews.
Scotland Yard: This game won the Spiel de Jahres way way way back in the day in the year 1983. This is the game Mr. Baker recommended. It's asymmetrical, which is the main reason why we're picking it. For those on the detective side it's also cooperative, which is another reason why we picked it. I've never played it before (except for once on my mission where we just had the board and pieces but no rules so we made up the rules) but it looks fun. I've never player Specter Ops before either but just based off of what I know of these two games they seem pretty similar.
Okay, so Christmas is in a little less than three weeks. This Christmas Heather, Henry and I are headed down to Fallon to visit my parents this year. Eric, Ryan, and Hannah will also be there. With Alex too, of course, but he lives there so that's a given. My hope is that we'll end up playing a lot of games. Therefore, I have made up a list of games that I plan on playing this Christmas break. Note: In this list if I include a game, I assume all expansions as well, but I'm not going to list them because that would take too much time. So if I say "Dominion" just assume that it includes all of the expansions as well.
I have attached a video to each game from youtube. This video either explains that game, gives a brief overview, gives a run-through or part of a run-through, or reviews it. Or more than one of the above. If you notice a lot of videos come from The Dice Tower, and that's because I like their videos: in their videos they both give a brief overview of how to play and give a review in the same video. Also, I almost never listen to youtube videos on normal speed anymore. There's an option in the bottom right that allows you to adjust the speed, and I almost always watch videos at double speed, or a little less if I can't understand the speaking in them at double speed. Just a hint if you want to watch a video but don't have 15 minutes (or whatever the length is) to spare.
Okay, here we go:
7 Wonders: My second favorite game of all time, right after Dominion. I love this game because there's no downtime, and yet what your neighbors do still affects what you do.
7 Wonders Duel: I have not yet played this game, but I am looking forward to it. The two-player rules of the original 7 Wonders weren't that great, so this game will fill that gap.
Agricola: This was the #1 game on board game geek for a long time. A classic worker placement game that my cousins own. Caverna is even better, but I don't think anyone owns that in my family.
Ashes: Rise of the Phoenixborn: Alex's favorite game, and one which I look forward to playing for the first time on Christmas break. I'll probably start with a pre-set deck.
Avalon: The Resistance: When we first played this years ago, it was me telling everyone the rules, and we used normal playing cards as the cards. Last year my family got the actual game.
The Castles of Burgundy: Another game I have not yet played but am really looking forward to. It is currently #10 on boardgamegeek.com, and I can't wait to try it.
Christmas Present #1: Hey, That's my Fish!?: Okay, so I don't know if I'll get this for Christmas, but I mentioned to my wife in Toys R Us that I wanted it. Brandon has a copy we played, and while it might seem simple on the surface, you can also put some deep strategy into it if you wanted to.
Christmas Present #2: Mystic Vale?: Another game which I'm not sure I'll get but I asked Ryan for it for Christmas so there's a good probability that I'll be unwrapping it Christmas morning.
Christmas Presents other than those, as well as any other games I forgot to put on this list: Any other games we get for Christmas, or that the Jamiesons get for Christmas, or that I forgot to put on this list that I want to play. In other words, this is my misc. category.
Dead of Winter: A semi-cooperative game which I have never got around to playing yet, even though the option has been available to me. Hopefully knowing how to play from this video will help.
Dominion: My favorite game of all time. Plus, for Christmas I asked for some new cards, some of which not even Alex has played with. I hope he still knows where The Card is.
Eldritch Horror: Another game that has been available to play but I've never gotten around to it, but am planning on this trip. Assuming that my family hasn't finished all the modules for it yet.
Elysium: A great game I bought about six months ago. This game and Istanbul I let Eric and Ryan borrow so that they could play at Thanksgiving. If they're reading this: bring it for Christmas, too!
Five Tribes: I haven't yet played with the expansion "that introduces a sixth color of meeple and they're purple" so I'll definitely give that a go this Christmas season.
Istanbul: I really love this game. It's simple and quick and fun. My mom also really loves this game, so much so that I'm making a prediction right now that she'll get it for herself for Christmas.
King of Tokyo: Thus game is really fun. This is a lighter game, a good filler when your brain is tired from all the deep strategy games you've been playing all day. Plus, it's fun to beat up other monsters.
Kingsburg: A worker placement game using dice. I first played this years ago back in Campus Plaza at BYU. So when my family got it for Christmas a few years back I already knew how to play.
Love Letter: So much fun for having so few cards. And it is also very thematic. A quick little card game that is a nice little filler game to pass the time between larger games.
Magic: The Gathering: I haven't played this yet. This is the game that introduced (I think) manna as a resource, as well as tapping cards, which I need to be more familiar with as a game designer.
Monopoly (with Hannah): I have to play at least one game of Monopoly with Hannah this Christmas break. It doesn't even have to be regular Monopoly, it can be dad's Fallonopoly or something.
Oltre Mare: The more goods you can store the smaller your hand limit, but the larger your hand limit the less goods you can store. This is an awesome little mechanic that I quite enjoy.
Pandemic: The first major cooperative game. Pandemic went on to get a Legacy version, which is now #1 on board game geek, but which was already played by my family.
SeaFall: Speaking of Legacy games, I get to play this one! And I'll actually matter in the game; unlike Pandemic Legacy where people can come and go in between games in the campaign and it doesn't really matter, this one suggests having the same people play the same characters the whole time.
Small World: With all the factions, powers, and additional stuff you can add, you can never play the same game twice. But the base game itself is still really fun.
Somerset: I'll be bringing my game so that Alex can play it (he likes games where you collect resources) and so that we can playtest it a little bit as well. No video here, but here's a picture:
Steampunk Rally: I bought the print and play from Kickstarter for $5, then printed everything out and cut it all out and after a lot of time finally got the finished project ready to play.
Summoner Wars: Another one of Alex's favorites. Plus I think since the last time I've played he's gotten even more races/armies that he's told me about.
Terra Mystica: I've only gotten to play this a few times, and I am still majorly working on my strategy (in other words, I'm not very good). But this Christmas break will be a great time to improve.
Ticket to Ride: Any version of this, really. I even got Sarah an LDS version for her birthday a few years ago which they still have in their games closet. In my opinion Europe is better than the original.
Timeline: Another quick, fast game to play if your brain is worn out by heavy strategy games. Even if you remember the dates on the cards to give you edge in future games, you're still learning: win-win.
TZolk'in: The Mayan Calendar: This game is super deep and strategic. The expansion makes it even more fun. You can win in a variety of ways, even if you just go the Corn Strategy the entire time.
Village: A worker placement game where your workers can die. I've only played with the Inn expansion once but won with it, and haven't tried the Port expansion yet.
Zooloretto: A game my family got a little bit ago. I haven't played it yet. One time Hannah woke everybody up in the middle of the night to play it, and they did, so it must be a pretty good game.
