Episode 30 – 60 minutes or more

2 Replies to “Episode 30 – 60 minutes or more”

1. 

   RogerBW

   7 September 2021 at 3:59 pm

   Reply

   Great timing, to cheer me up as I was coming to terms with not going to Essen again this year…

   co-op games

   Easy for me: Aeon’s End, any version, deckbuilding with a twist. But there are others I may use later.

   dice games

   Lots of games have dice in them, but I think Alien Frontiers is sufficiently “a dice game” that it qualifies better here than anywhere else.

   word games

   Nothing in my collection; Letter Jam can get that long if you’re playing slowly. But I’d argue that Scrabble isn’t half bad…

   dexterity games

   Yeah, I got nothing. Something with a long campaign mode so that you play several games in a row?

   card games

   Here I’ll have Renegade, which is also co-op (and Aeon’s End is also a card game, of course). Puzzly deckbuilding, now unavailable thanks to company buyout shenanigans; a second edition is on the way, but it seems likely to have a completely different theme.

   area control games

   Running out of suitable things in my collection here; I do tend to favour shorter games. I suppose I should have put Alien Frontiers here. OK, how about Revolution! ? Mildly obscure now, but definitely one I’ve played quite a bit (even when I wasn’t being paid to) and still enjoy.

   tile games

   New Dawn, a sequel to Among the Stars that takes a bit longer to play. Not that I’ve actually played it yet, and I’ve owned it for a while…

   (I have heard of quite a few reliability problems with the electrical parts in Forbidden Sky.)

   deduction / hidden information games

   Tobago. I missed this when it first came out and only got into it relatively recently, and I’m still hugely enjoying it. Haven’t tried the new expansion yet, but I’m very much in favour of publishers bringing out expansions for decade-old games!

   I do like many social deduction games, but, all together now, “usually shorter ones”.

   resource management games

   It’s a bit marginal, but Leaving Earth is a game I try to squeeze onto every list, and I think it just about fits here (also hidden information).

   party games

   Nothing here for me. It may be just the sort of party I tend to have, but I don’t think a party game can be good at this length, because it takes such a chunk out of the time – unless it’s something like Don’t Get Got where you’re playing it alongside the rest of the party.

   (I’d say that if Munchkin were reliably a half-hour game I’d enjoy it a lot more, but it can easily fall into the ending trap that Antoinette described: Player A is about to win, everybody throws cards to stop them. Player B is about to win, everybody throws cards to stop them. Player C is about to win, and everyone else has run out of win-stopping cards. Which I just don’t find satisfying as a winner or as a loser.)

   strategy games

   Firefly! Yeah, still one of my favourite games and I had to put it in here somewhere.

   most unusual games

   Talon – a space wargame (duration depending on scenario). In most of these you have a counter or model on the board and some sort of individual ship display in front of you; in this game you track your changing ship stats by writing them directly onto the counter with a wipeable pen.

   hidden category: tableau building games

   Hmm. Pretty sure there’s nothing at this length in my collection, or that I’ve played…

   • 

     Oliver Kinne

     17 September 2021 at 3:47 pm

     Reply

     Hello Roger. We’re glad we could cheer you up with this episode. I love your list of games and am glad you also couldn’t find a dexterity game that takes 60 minutes or more. Definitely a gap in the market, maybe for a good reason.