We love games that tell a story. Whether the stories are driving the game, or encourage players to get into character and make their own story, these games are fun. Enhance your game-playing experience with some of these.

What We’ve Been Playing:

Scarabya (coming in October from Blue Orange). A multi-player-solitaire polyomino game. Fun, even though we can’t figure out how to say the name.

We are playing a lot of Century: Golem Edition. The kids even pulled it out before school one morning – they were so motivated to play that they were dressed and (mostly) prepared an hour before we need to leave for school! Also, the golems are so wonderfully illustrated.

We’ve started playing The Mansky Caper! Hear our interview with Ken Franklin & Chris Leder and check out our unboxing video.

Ad Astra – a space-themed game that feels like Catan with deck-programming and exploration.

Kids were playing Dragonwood, more Century: Golem, Sushi Go Party, Mall Madness… everyone had fun!

We’ve gotten our first look at Spy Club – very Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew/Boxcar Children/Encyclopedia Brown. You are kids working together to try solve a crime. Mechanics are easy enough for a 7-year-old to understand, but this is a hard game. It seems to be designed to make you play cleverly. The mosaic aspect of it makes for interesting stories (we almost solved one where the crime was bullying, location was museum, object was a hat, and motivation was fame. Someone making Youtube videos making fun of other people’s hats, maybe?)

We also finally pulled out Harry Potter: Hogwarts Battle. We wanted to wait until we were a few books into the series, but we’re there now. The first deck was fine. We’re looking forward to later decks to see the game get more interesting. This is a deck-builder with classic deck-building rules. It was frustrating that there was no way to cull cards, at least in the first game. We’ll see what happens later!

Solo gaming: Anitra is still enjoying Tempus Imperium (rules and print-and-play at BlueCubeBoardGames.com), but recently started playing Twin Stars from Button Shy. With six scenarios and twelve characters, there is a lot of replayability value. She’s rigged it to play in the car when waiting for school pickup, so expect to hear more.

Even more games!

Dice Forge

Mastermind

Simon’s Cat card game

Bob Ross: Happy Little Accidents party game

Shelf of Shame: What Should We Play Next?

Which one should we play this week? Ethnos (by CMON), Adventure Land (by HABA), or Above and Below (by Red Raven Games)? Let us know in the show notes or on social media.

SNAP Review

This week’s SNAP is Shaky Manor.

Storytelling Games

Games that tell the story for you:

Robit Riddle (our review)

Choose your Own Adventure game

T.I.M.E. Stories

Cardventures (a set of solo games we reviewed)

Above & Below

Many tabletop RPGs: Mice & Mystics, Tail Feathers, Stuffed Fables, Sentinels of the Multiverse RPG; pre-built campaigns for systems like Hero Kids, D&D, Pathfinder and others (for busy parents, we highly recommend the campaigns for Hero Kids)

Escape Room Boxes