Episode 390 – Cooperative Games

This week, we’re talking about cooperative games – what they are, what makes them a good fit for families, and we explore the breadth of games that can be considered “cooperative”. 0:00:00 Fact for 390 While the exact number fluctuates, there are around 390 known species of sharks in the world, from tiny lantern sharks to massive whale sharks. The average weight of a full-grown jaguar can reach up to 390 pounds, making it the largest cat in the Americas. Sponsor Message If you want to talk through your specific situation and how to achieve your goals set up a time to talk FOR FREE at firstmovefinancial.com/familygamers (https://firstmovefinancial.com/familygamers) today. 0:04:15 What We’ve Been Playing Combo (review linked below) Flower Fields (review coming soon) Holiday Hijinks: The Marriage Mix-up – two thumbs up! In Vino Morte (our review (https://www.thefamilygamers.com/cow-tiger-santa-claus-in-vino-morte/) ) Rivages Landmarks Trio (our review (https://www.thefamilygamers.com/trio/) ) Strato MicroMacro Funfair Jigsaw (review coming, but you can find more from Hachette (https://www.hachetteboardgames.com/products/micro-macro-puzzle) ) 0:20:45 Monthly Report – January Anitra: 29 plays of 19 unique games. H-index 2 (A Nice Cuppa played 6 times) Andrew: 18 plays of 14 unique games. H-index 2 (In Vino Morte, Video Game Champion, Flower Fields) The Family Gamers Community We’re so glad for new members who joined us on Facebook. Cookie Monster says hi – and you should too!. (https://www.facebook.com/groups/familygamersaa/posts/3934989810123813/) 0:23:00 Backtalk Listeners tell us about what game(s) they’d play to de-stress. See responses on Discord (https://discord.com/channels/1157003438425653379/1239323617368604672) and Facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/familygamersaa/posts/3927678220854972/) . (https://www.thefamilygamers.com/combo/) 0:32:00 SNAP Review – Combo Do you combo? We review this semi-cooperative game of making the best card combo across all players. Watch the video or read the transcript, and check out Combo for yourself. (https://www.thefamilygamers.com/combo/) 0:38:20 Cooperative Games The last time we talked specifically about cooperative games was all the way back in episode 108! (Top Cooperative Games With Kids) (https://www.thefamilygamers.com/episode-108-top-cooperative-games/) . We’ve played a lot of other cooperative games (https://www.thefamilygamers.com/tag/cooperative-games/) in the last 6 ½ years. Where are good places and times to play cooperative games? Coop games can be a great way to bring younger kids into gaming. Any perfect information game can work for this, but in a cooperative game, your littlest can easily be part of the team. Also good for preventing sore losers (https://www.thefamilygamers.com/4-ways-sore-loser/) – or sore winners! Categories of Cooperative Games Anitra decides there are three basic categories: you either work together to solve a puzzle, work together to tell a story, or one person is giving clues to everyone else to guess. A lot of the puzzle-type cooperative games have players take turns and then “bad stuff happens”. But not all! Ultimatch (https://www.thefamilygamers.com/ultimatch/) charges players to solve a problem without a separate “bad stuff” turn. The Crew (https://www.thefamilygamers.com/the-crew/) has a little more story and does something similar. The Adventures of Robin Hood (https://www.thefamilygamers.com/adventures-of-robin-hood/) is a “story” game. The best of these have multiple ways to “solve” the puzzles involved. Some escape room games (https://www.thefamilygamers.com/tag/escape-room/) do this really well; some just present puzzles you have to solve a specific way. Most clue-giving games are word-guessing games, but not all. Similo (https://www.thefamilygamers.com/similo-card-game/) is a great example of one that is NOT a word game. All Kinds of Mechanics It seems like every game mechanic has had some kind of take on how to do it cooperatively: Trick-taking (https://www.thefamilygamers.com/tag/trick-taking/) : The Crew Worker placement (https://www.thefamilygamers.com/tag/worker-placement/) : Endangered Word games (https://www.thefamilygamers.com/tag/word-games/) : Illiterati (NOT a guessing game!) Deck building (https://www.thefamilygamers.com/tag/deck-building/) : Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle Ladder climbing (https://www.thefamilygamers.com/tag/ladder-climbing/) : The Mind Dungeon crawl (https://www.thefamilygamers.com/tag/dungeon-crawl/) : CoraQuest Set collection (https://www.thefamilygamers.com/tag/set-collection/) : Tesseract Press your luck (https://www.thefamilygamers.com/tag/press-your-luck/) : Mickey’s Christmas Carol Abstract (https://www.thefamilygamers.com/tag/abstract/) : Ultimatch Heavily themed: Disney Animated Deduc...