Feb 03 2025 63 mins 9
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.
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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)
Rivages
Landmarks
Trio (our review)
Strato
MicroMacro Funfair Jigsaw (review coming, but you can find more from Hachette)
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!.
0:23:00 Backtalk
Listeners tell us about what game(s) they’d play to de-stress. See responses on Discord and Facebook.
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.
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). We’ve played a lot of other 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 – 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 charges players to solve a problem without a separate “bad stuff” turn. The Crew has a little more story and does something similar.
The Adventures of Robin Hood is a “story” game. The best of these have multiple ways to “solve” the puzzles involved. Some escape room games 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 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: The Crew
Worker placement: Endangered
Word games: Illiterati (NOT a guessing game!)
Deck building: Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle
Ladder climbing: The Mind
Dungeon crawl: CoraQuest
Set collection: Tesseract
Press your luck: Mickey’s Christmas Carol
Abstract: Ultimatch
Heavily themed: Disney Animated
Deduction: Purrrlock Holmes
And don’t forget about the whole genre of timed cooperative games! This can be pure puzzle solving like Kites or Skyrockets, or a memory game like Panic Island.
TFG Favorite Cooperative Games
Similo
Shadows over Camelot
Illiterati
The Grizzled
SkyTeam
1:00:00 New Backtalk Question
Question: What is your favorite cooperative game? Why is it your favorite?
Would you like us to break this out more and dive into specific genres of cooperative games?
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