Alrightgames: Muse

Muse

2017 / Card game / 2-12 players

****

Essentially Dixit or Stella for teams, though its cooperative two-player variant was more appealing for our needs. It doesn't spark imagination quite so much, but its restrictive instructions still encourage the six year old to think outside the box – like giving me the three-letter clue "agn" that baffled me until I finally realised it was an abbreviated "dragon." Nice one!

Already having surplus Dixit cards, this was easy to DIY at first by writing down the Inspiration cards and rolling dice to choose, but then we upgraded to the proper game at Christmas, whose purpose-built cards proved a greater challenge.

Alrightgames: Sushi Go!

Sushi Go!

2013 / Card game / 2-5 players

****

Similar set collecting to Sea Salt & Paper, with the twist that hands get passed around, so you need to strategise your next turn in advance, or more likely curse yourself for giving your opponent what they're after while trying to make the best of your selection, forgetting that the same thing will happen again. The cute Squishmallow sushi made it a hit with the six year old (let her have all the puddings), who was eager to head to the shop to try sushi again straight away, and apologised to the game for finding it "disgusting."

Alrightgames: Top Trumps Monster High

Top Trumps: Monster High

2013 / Card game / 2-6 players

**

An inevitable product and gift, she tends to use these more as a Guess Who than the proper game. It was good to see that no more thought was put into the stats than with the My Little Pony set, with Frankie Stein's SAT score of 1 making them considerably dumber than the overachieving pets.

Alrightgames: Monopoly – Sailor Moon

Monopoly: Sailor Moon

2024 / Trading board game / 2-6 players

***

This was a bit of a Christmas dilemma when searching for affordable Sailor Moon stuff, but I wanted us to upgrade from Monopoly Junior anyway (which barely even counts as a game) and the curiously specific theming around the exact season of the anime we just watched (the best one) and the pieces doubling as shiny souvenir tat ultimately triumphed over my distaste for completely irrelevant board game adaptations, especially ones that nonsensically use characters in place of properties. How do you mortgage Tuxedo Mask? What the hell is going on???

None of this bothered the young player, who wanted to play it every day of the school holidays after Christmas (and had to be talked out of multiple rounds for the sake of sanity). We use the house rule of everyone starting out with three random properties characters, keeping games within a tolerable range of 15–90 minutes depending on who shuffled.

Alrightgames: Star Realms – Rise of Empire – Backer Promo Pack

Star Realms: Rise of Empire – Backer Promo Pack

2024 / Deckbuilding card game expansion pack / 2+ players

****

I've got no interest in starting over with new factions in Star Realms' legacy game, but fortunately they recognised this when making the latest generous assortment of briefly-exclusive ships and bases for their loyal Kickstarter backers more of the same old shit instead. Hooray! These made their way to an apathetic eBay before long, where a seller perhaps disappointedly accepted my offer for cheaper than a standard base set.

This is mainly variety for its own sake, but Hero cards are new to me, since I'd avoided having people in my spaceship game before, and it's nice to see more docking action and double faction bonuses. Along with the Frontiers Promos, I've now got enough nu-school cards to separate the two eras (pre- and post-Frontiers) to suit almost imperceptibly different moods.

Alrightgames: The Settlers of Catan (Third Edition)

The Settlers of Catan

1995 (1997 edition) / Strategy board game / 3-4 players

***

Resold

I decided Catan wasn't really my game when I upsold the swanky new Sixth Edition set that I found cheap on eBay, but then I saw a tatty old-school '90s set going for even less, but with more character.

I hadn't realised it was the modern artifice that was putting me off, but as with Cluedo and Carcassonne, I don't need or want old games to be remastered so they appeal to people born in the 21st century. That gigantic box with its wasteful compartments, personal tuckboxes, bland card text and boardroom-abbreviated title wasn't for me. A sensible jigsaw-sized box where everything gets chucked in on top of a black and white A4 rulebook that makes it hard to tell which type of tiles are being depicted? That's more like it!

It's the same stilted and slightly boring game of development and trade as before, but it feels like I'm playing a classic now, even if it does need an expansion to be worth bothering with.

Alrightgames: Ticket to Ride – Europe

Ticket to Ride: Europe

2005 / Board game / 2-5 players

Resold

The last of the modern board game trinity after Catan and Carcassonne, it looked to be a promising silver medallist (with bonus geographical and historical education angles helping to justify it as a family purchase), but the six year old showed no interest in playing with plastic trains, and it's not really one I can play against myself, so I had to settle for upselling it for minor profit.

Alrightgames: Rory's Story Cubes – Actions

Rory's Story Cubes: Actions

2007 / Dice activity / 1+ players

***

With our existing sets being heavy on the nouns, this verby batch seemed a necessary addition to get full creative use out of the concept, so I set up a budget price alert about a year and a half ago that finally paid off. I now supposedly have everything I need to create endless roleplaying NPCs and situations on the fly, except perhaps for an optimally functioning mind.

Alrightgames: Basic Fantasy Adventure – Island in River (Adapted)

Basic Fantasy Adventure: Island in River (Adapted)

2011 / Roleplaying game adventure / 2+ players

****

These laid-back prompts for an island trek were just what I was hoping for when the young player wanted to play 'Story Game' on the Catan board again with no preparation and I grabbed a trusty Adventure Anthology off the bookshelf. The map helped to populate the hexes (not to scale) with equivalent creatures, structures and morbid ambiance as our characters set about gathering wood to build a bridge across a narrow channel back to the mainland, even though one of us can fly and the others are capable swimmers. All those points put into Mind were clearly a waste.

Alrightgames: The Game

The Game

2015 / Card game / 1-5 players

***

The most abstract of games was a charity shop steal (not literally), though sorting ascending and descending number piles isn't the most rewarding solo activity in my roster. It'll be more useful as maths practice when my daughter's a bit older, and not being allowed to warn young teammates about potentially costly mistakes is no doubt where the real challenge lies.