My favorite games this summer [#64]

Life update: I recently went to my UT orientation session, which was a ton of fun (except for class registration, which was not optimal)! I've also been working a part-time job and doing some math & chess tutoring to earn some extra money for college.

But I'm fortunate to have a lot of free time this summer, so I've been playing a lot of fun games with family & friends. Here's my list of recommendations:

1. Ticket to Ride: Europe

I've played Ticket to Ride: Europe (TTRE) 20 times this summer with my friends and family. It almost never gets old.

There are a few things that I love about TTRE:

1. The game is a lot less combative than the original Ticket to Ride game. In the original, there are considerably more opportunities to completely block an opponent from making one or more of their tickets. In TTRE, the new mechanic of train stations largely eliminates this problem.
2. TTRE just has a way more interesting board. The board is larger, the city names are cooler, and there are new routes that require special combinations of cards.
3. No strategy works every time. No one ever wins in exactly the same way. Some people win because they have a lot of points from playing routes. Some people win because they have a ton of completed tickets. Some people win because they ended the game early and messed up everyone else who thought they had more time.
4. For a board game, it's really, really simple to explain. The goal is simple: get the most points. On each turn, you can only do exactly one of four things. The mechanics are simple. It's great!

2. Villagers

Villagers is an accessible card-drafting, engine-building game. Unlike most "heavier" engine-building games, it's pretty easy to learn. I taught my 11 year-old cousin how to play over the course of one game.

And the game art is beautiful. I mean, look at these cards:

Not only is the art beautiful, but the gameplay is rock solid. The two different dynamics of "drafting" (drawing) villagers versus "building" (playing) villagers mesh really well together. Also, no one villager is too "overpowered" or "underpowered" — every villager can be useful.

The official Villagers game has unfortunately been out of stock for a while now. But Sinister Fish, the gamemaker, was nice enough to post the Print-and-Play (PNP) version so anyone can print out all the cards on paper, then fold & cut them to construct the whole game.

3. A Dark Room

A Dark Room is a minimalistic text-based game you can play in your browser. I consider it an absolute masterpiece.

I can only tell you a little bit without saying major spoilers:

1. The entire game is constructed with only ASCII text. There are no images. Despite this (self-imposed, perhaps?) limitation, the game is still incredibly engaging.
2. The game is a mix between resource management and exploration. Thankfully, there's no way to lose. All resources are renewable, and so you'll never run into a point where you're "stuck" with no way to continue forward.
3. Not sure how to progress? Keep exploring and buying stuff, and you'll figure it out pretty quickly.

Best of all, it's completely free-to-play. I recommend A Dark Room so much. This game isn't sponsored: I seriously love this game so much.

4: Pac-Man

I recently rediscovered how spectacularly fun Pac-Man is. This is because we've been on vacation, and my family's Airbnb has a retro Pac-Man machine in the basement. It's awesome!

This game was made forty-four years ago in 1980. Isn't that wild? No wonder why it's still such a recognizable video game today: it takes like 5 seconds to learn, but years to master. The ghost logic is so cool too: they don't all blindly chase after Pac-Man. They all have different targeting logic. It's seriously so cool. I wish I had a Pac-Man machine at my house.

Conclusion

I've given you four recommendations here. You should try at least one of them this summer! They have my seal of approval.