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Top games to gift in 2021

Group of young people gathered to play Alias game. Youth lifestyle, board games
Magryt
/
Stock Adobe
Group of young people gathered to play Alias game. Youth lifestyle, board games.

Shortages have been top of mind this season, as people are looking at gifts for friends and family. For gaming companies these shortages have meant fewer games being published and fewer games available to buy. For this reason, gaming expert James Lowder decided to focus on a variety of different games - including some older picks - for our annual games to gift conversation.

Family Games

The Adventure Of Robin Hood
Ages: 10 and up.

About: From the designer/artist of the popular Legends of Andor series comes this lightweight cooperative living board game. The Adventures of Robin Hood is a heavily interactive, narrative-based design, seen most clearly in its reliance on its hardcover book for story prompts and outcomes. The game unfolds as a series of missions of increasing complexity, though it does an excellent job starting simple so you can begin play within minutes of opening the box.

"The game includes a hardcover book that you reference as you encounter different events in the game and read those sections aloud. So there's the narrative working in novel ways again, and it actively engages with the players as a game teaching you the rules as you go along," says Lowder.

The Adventures of Robin Hood Game Cover
Micheal Menzal
/
Micheal Menzal
The Adventures of Robin Hood Game Cover

Horrified
Ages: 10 and up.

About: Dracula, the Wolf Man, the Mummy, Frankenstein’s Monster and the Bride, the Invisible Man, and the Creature from the Black Lagoon. The monsters from the classic Universal film universe are terrorizing a village and it’s up to a band of plucky local heroes to save their neighbors and end the monster rampage.

"A fully cooperative board game where players are heroes defending a village. From some combination of the six main Universal Monsters, each monster must be defeated in a special way. Dracula's coffin has to be destroyed before you can confront him directly," says Lowder.

Shifting Stones
Ages: 8-and up

About: In this “game of tiles and tactics,” players rearrange nine double-sided tiles to match patterns on the cards in their hand, but they must sacrifice a card each time they swap a tile. Points are scored based on the complexity of the patterns completed.

"Players rearrange nine double sided tiles to match the cards in their hand. [The game has] high quality components as you would expect from the publisher game, [it] plays quickly in about 15 minutes. Not terribly complex, but it's the right level of challenge for younger players." says Lowder.

Party Games

Decrypto
Ages: 12 and up.

About: Decrypto is a very well designed party game of code breaking. Each team has a screen with numbered spots for four keyword cards. After the keywords are placed, the encryptors on both sides draw a card with a three number code and offer clues that they hope their team will match with the numbered keywords.

"Unlike other party games, there's some flexibility here in what's allowed for clues. It's not just a single word. The great part about this design is as you are playing, the other team is trying to break your code," says Lowder.

Decrypto Game Cover
Thomas Dagenais-Lespérance
/
Thomas Dagenais-Lespérance
Decrypto Game Cover

Buildzi
Ages: 6 and up

About: Buildzi is a fun and frantic speed stacking game using different 3D polycubes. (Think Tetris pieces.) In one version of the game, the goal is to stack several different pieces exactly as displayed on a card, with players grabbing blocks from a central pool.

"The different rules mean that Buildzi works for a wide variety of players from adults who can serve as a great party game, down to kids," says Lowder.

Kid Games

Hedgehog Roll
Ages: 4 and up.

About: Kids as young as four will enjoy Hedgehog Roll, a cleverly themed dexterity game. Players roll a felt-covered hedgehog ball across the forest floor, hoping to pick up some of the Velcro-backed items along the way.

"There's a cooperative mode too, where players work together to outrace a fox. Parents are going to know which mode will work better with their kids. That one actually works for adults too. It's because a physical challenge game, it's not going to be boring for adults," says Lowder.

Dragomino
Ages: 5 and up.

About: Dragomino encourages development of visual perception skills, strategy and problem solving, and even rudimentary factoring for probability. It's part of the Kingdomino series of games and deserving winner of the prestigious Kinderspiel des Jahres award for 2021.

"It's an entry in the popular Kingdomino line. But this one is for kids as young as five. Players match dominant like terrain tiles to search for dragon eggs and collect dragons. It's a simple mechanic," says Lowder.

Dragomino Game Cover
Blue Orange Games
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Blue Orange Games
Dragomino Game Cover

Two Player Games

Spicy
Ages: 10 and up.

About: Three big cats got tired of fighting to see who was top feline so they invented a hot spice-eating contest. They couldn’t stop themselves from cheating, though, and the result was this entertaining bluffing card game. The underlying mechanics will be familiar to anyone who has played Uno, with players trying to empty their hands by matching cards through their suits or their number.

"It's fast and easy. There are alternate rules to keep gameplay lively and it's very accessible for players who have any experience with Uno," says Lowder.

Spicy card game
HeidelBÄR Games
/
Publisher HeidelBÄR Games
Spicy card game

Watergate
Ages: 12 and up

About: Watergate, designed by Matthias Cramer, is built around an excellent two-player theme. One player takes on the role of the Washington Post’s editor trying to connect President Richard Nixon to the crimes revealed by two informants. The other is Nixon, scheming to block and delay the investigations long enough to serve out his full term.

"It's a tug of war involving moving evidence on a research track, and trying to impact momentum in the investigation. You don't need to know the history, but the game includes a lot of reference material on the people and events. So as you play, it teaches you the history and invites you to learn more about it," says Lowder.

Hobby Games

Forgotten Waters
Ages: 14 and up

About: Forgotten Waters is another new board game that incorporates narrative elements in an interesting way. Over two to four hours, players will guide their pirate adventurers across a fantasy map that is remade with each new session.

"It's partially co-op, you need to work together to keep the ship afloat and the crew happy, but characters also have their own individual goals," says Lowder.

Forgotten Waters Game Cover
Plaid Hat Games
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Plaid Hat Games
Forgotten Waters Game Cover

Unfathomable
Ages: 14 and up:

About: Unfathomable is an excellent combination of resource management, hidden traitors, and even some basic roleplaying mechanics, with characters using skills to accomplish important activities. The game is part of Fantasy Flight’s Arkham Horror series of Cthulhu Mythos designs and is a rethemed version of their highly praised and now unavailable licensed board game, Battlestar Galactica.

"It's a rescan and update of an earlier Fantasy Flight classic Battlestar Galactica, terrific design, just all kinds of fun to play and very immersive as a storytelling game," says Lowder.

Role Playing Games or RPGs

RuneQuest Starter Set
Ages: 16 and up

About: RuneQuest is a game of mythic adventure set in the richly detailed Iron Age fantasy world of Glorantha, which was created by designer Greg Stafford in the 1960s and explored for more than five decades in board games, computer games, fiction, and roleplaying games

"It's more of an Iron Age fantasy than the Medieval fantasy of D&D (Dungeons & Dragons), with a rule set that models a different sort of game," says Lowder.

Runequest Starter Set Book Cover
Chaosium Inc
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Chaosium Inc
Runequest Starter Set Book Cover

Thousand Year Old Vampire
Ages: 18 and up

About: This is a game about making hard decisions and mulling over morality. It employs journaling techniques as well as a dice mechanic to move you through the story prompts. Skills and character resources add roleplaying and resource management aspects.

"It's available as a PDF and as a physical book, which I would recommend, the book itself is really well designed." says Lowder.

Lowder's Top Pick

The Crew Mission Deep Sea
KOSMOS
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KOSMOS
The Crew Mission Deep Sea

The Crew: Mission Deep Sea
Ages: 10 and up

About: This update of 2019’s The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine fine tunes an already great design. Both incarnations of The Crew are cooperative trick-taking card games, built upon mechanics familiar to Sheepshead or Spades veterans. Players take tricks based on four card suits, plus wild cards, while working together to complete various missions with more than thirty levels of difficulty.

"This one is just a gem and will be fun to play for gamers of all ages. From 10 up, [it] can be played by younger kids depending on the kid, and will be of interest to hardcore gamers and casual folks," say Lowder.

Joy is a WUWM host and producer for Lake Effect.
Kobe Brown was WUWM's fifth Eric Von fellow.
James Lowder has worked in fiction and hobby game publishing for more than three decades. He is the editor of the award-winning anthologies Hobby Games: The 100 Best and Family Games, available in print and now in select ebook formats. The anthologies feature short essays by the top game designers and publishers from around the world, sharing their personal selections for the most enjoyable and innovative card games, board games, miniatures games, and role-playing games of the last century.
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