Today, I want to know what board game is your go-to that you will advocate for the most when people get together to play games.
Pop Culture Theme Time is a feature where I put a question to you to see what you think about a particular theme. I might later revisit the theme for a future Drawing Crazy Patterns or Top Five.
As long as people have gotten together to have game nights, there have been certain games that serve as “go-tos” for everyone, the game that you will always recommend for a game night.
For me, while I ADORE Scattegories, I think I will go with Exploding Kittens, a game that’s basically a card version of Russian Roulette where you have to use the cards in your deck to try to avoid having to possibly pick a card that COULD be an exploding kitten (or, in the alternative, you can just risk it and hope that the card that you’re picking is NOT an exploding kitten). It’s easy to pick up and endlessly fun for the whole family. It is fun when you can mess with other players to try to get them to explode instead of you.
Okay, that’s my pick, what’s yours? What’s your go-to board game that you’ll always recommend playing for game night?
Feel free to suggest future topics via e-mail at brian@popculturereferences.com!
I too really like Exploding Kittens, but the game I advocate for the most is Dixit. It’s a fun game with a low barrier to entry that new players can get into immediately, it involves getting cards with imaginative art on them and try to come up with a word or phrase related to a card in their hand, then everyone else puts cards from their hand with a similar theme, and everyone has to guess which is the card the turn player put down. The twist is the turn player loses if everyone guess their card or if nobody guesses, so they have to be careful, and players get extra points if other people choose their card instead.
For simple fast playing, my go to game is “Love Letter”.
Everyone gets dealt just one card so its easy to play, and rounds go quickly.
There’s always “Batman Love Letters” if you want to play the same game, but reskinned for those who prefer superheroes over medieval romance.
And there’s always “Lovecraft Letters” for those who want to add and little more complex play and the chance to be driven insane by the supernatural during medieval romance.
The various Fluxx games are family favorites here. Our first and favorite is Oz Fluxx. We also have SciFi Fluxx, but that’s a little bit more involved and a little harder to play casually. You really need more than two people for it.
The Fluxx board game reminds me of the game Bonkers that my grandparents had as both games are predicated on using game elements to change the board as you play.