1660: Stop Wasting Cool Licenses on Monopoly

Hey! Listen! There’s a Legend of Zelda board game coming! Awesome! Take a look!

…Oh. Monopoly. Again. Great.

Yes, indeed: the latest in a long-line of quick-and-easy cash grab Monopoly sets is one based on Nintendo’s Legend of Zelda series, a franchise that has been running almost since the dawn of gaming, and one which has consistently provided gamers with some of the most enchanting interactive adventures of all time, blending childlike wonderment with epic heroic fantasy.

The Legend of Zelda, meanwhile, has not been particularly known over the years for its protagonist Link’s desire to build up a sizeable portfolio of property, nor has Hyrule society ever been particularly dependent on capitalism. Link, more often than not, does good deeds out of a sense of altruism, or occasionally for the promise of “something good” (inevitably in bold print) — said “something good” is rarely financial reward, with questgivers instead tending to give him something of much more practical use.

I’m a bit annoyed about this. I’m not a particularly huge Zelda fan myself, but this is, without a doubt, a colossal waste of an awesome license. Monopoly is a terrible board game to shoehorn the Zelda license into. It’s a terrible game in its own right, too, but I’m aware some people still like it, so I’m not going to push that angle too far — besides, my own personal dislike of Monopoly isn’t why I’m frustrated to see Zelda squandered like this.

No, instead I find myself wishing for a more appropriate use of the license. It doesn’t have to be an original board game in its own right — though that would be cool: spectacular Polish RPG series The Witcher is soon to get its own cool-looking original board game, so it’s not without precedent either — but surely, surely there are better ways that Zelda could be adapted for tabletop play?

Here’s just a few suggestions:

The Legend of Zelda: Carcassonne — Standard Carcassonne, except the tiles are all made up of actual tilesets from past Zelda games — A Link to the Past’s 16-bit top-down graphics would be ideal for this. Meeples could be replaced by the different, distinctive races of creatures you come across in a typical Zelda game — one player could have a set of Gorons, while another could have Zoras, another still could have the Kokiri, and so on.
The Legend of Zelda: Catan — Much like Carcassonne, the bare minimum you need to do to make a convincing Zelda Catan set would be to redo the tile artwork in an authentically Zelda-esque fashion. You could incorporate some of the new rules and tweaks from things like Star Trek Catan — variable player powers is neat, for example — and Catan’s numerous expansions for different scenarios.
The Legend of Zelda: Talisman — Talisman is, while flawed as a game, a decent depiction of an epic quest to achieve something. Reskinning this would be a more appropriate use of the license than Monopoly.
D&D Adventures: The Legend of Zelda — The dungeon-crawling co-op adventure games carrying the D&D brand are ripe for adaptation with Zelda artwork, enemies and items. You could even do a “Four Swords” thing, with each player having a differently coloured Link to control.
Arkham/Eldritch Horror: The Legend of Zelda — Okay, stretching things a bit here in terms of theme, but the mechanics of Arkham and Eldritch Horror are ripe for adaptation into a Zelda-style epic quest. There’s exploration, treasures, character progression, battles, boss fights… everything a good Zelda game would need.

And this is just off the top of my head. All of the above would need very little adaptation in order to create a more convincing tabletop Zelda experience than Monopoly ever will. Come, on, Zelda Monopoly even still has “salaries”, “Go To Jail” and “Free Parking”, the latter of which in particular is completely incongruous with the setting.

So, this is pissing in the wind, I know, but please, please, license holders: when considering whether or not to license your awesome property for tabletop adaptation, please look a little further than Monopoly. It may be one of the most well-known games in the world, but there are hundreds, thousands of other, far better board and card games out there, most of which would be much better-suited for adaptations of this kind.

#oneaday Day 565: Board Stupid

Board game enthusiasts often get a bit snobby about the more “mainstream” games out there. Sometimes this is with good reason — Monopoly is pretty tedious, after all, and is inclined to go on for hours and hours and hours because no-one really knows the rules properly. But there’s a few amongst the pile that are actually worth playing.

Scrabble, first and foremost, is still a great game, as anyone who’s played Words with Friends or the numerous Facebook ripoffs will be able to attest. Simple, effective, clear rules, well balanced play and a nice sense of competition — plus the requirement to actually use your brain rather than play based entirely on luck.

Lexicon is an interesting card game based around building and modifying words. It’s very quick to play but it’s pretty fun, plus random enough to provide a different play experience each time.

Rummikub is an odd game that makes your brain hurt after a while. Ostensibly very simple, the mechanics of the game actually require that you remain very observant throughout and plan ahead.

Yahtzee is a decent game, though mostly luck-based. It has a nice element of poker-like gambling to it though ultimately there’s not a huge amount of depth. Word Yahtzee, on the other hand, is a much better — if less well-known — game. Requiring you to build words according to specific criteria (such as “two letters”, “three words” and the like) the game requires much more in the way of brainpower than regular Yahtzee but as a result is significantly more difficult.

I remember board games being a staple gift at Christmas and birthdays when I was young. Theme-heavy games such as The Gunge Game and The Bigfoot Game were often filled with exciting plastic bits and pieces but tended to be largely based on luck. Titles such as Scrabble, Yahtzee, Rummikub and the like were often set aside due to their focus on mechanics and strategy rather than theme. But it’s those games that stand the test of time a whole lot better — I have no desire to ever play The Gunge Game again, for example, despite its awesome little rubber snot-monsters. I played Lexicon, Yahtzee and Rummikub tonight, however, and I expect I will do so again.

Interestingly, a lot of these classic games have now spawned a bunch of more quick-playing spinoffs. Monopoly, for example, now has a card-based variant named Monopoly Deal. Monopoly Deal is, ironically, significantly better than Monopoly, largely because a game takes about twenty minutes (if that) rather than three bajillion hours. Scrabble also has a couple of variants, such as the fast-playing, hectic Scrabble Dash card game which is a lot of fun but probably better with more people. And there’s variants on Cluedo and Boggle out there, too.

So while some classics may not, in fact, be the best games in the world — some of them genuinely are, and in some cases they’ve spawned spinoffs that are decent things to play in their own right. So while I’m not saying you should cast aside your copies of Catan and Power Grid just yet, dust off that Scrabble box once in a while and give it a chance. You might be surprised.

#oneaday, Day 341: The Five Best and Worst Holiday Board Games to Teach Your Family

As the Coca-Cola advert says, holidays are comin’. (To go off on the earliest tangent I’ve ever gone off on, the word “Coca-Cola” is seemingly indecipherable to Americans when pronounced with a British accent, as I discovered at the cinema the other night.) In fact, holidays are pretty much here, what with it being Christmas Eve and all. Actually, by the time you UK types read this, it is Christmas Day. Happy holidayweenukkahmas. Fuck it. Happy Christmas.

Anyway. You may be currently locked in a house with the rest of your family, in which case it will at some point become necessary to devise some form of entertainment in order to prevent you all from killing each other. It is probably a little late to recommend things to go out and buy right now, but you’ll know for next time. In the spirit of List Season, which always seems to coincide with holiday season, here are the five best and worst board games to break out during a lull in the conversation and/or turkey consumption. Well, maybe not the “best” and “worst”. But five good ones and five less appropriate (though still good) ones, in the order that I thought of them.

The Best

Ticket to Ride

Ticket to Ride is a relatively simple game. The basic goal is to collect sets of coloured cards in order to claim train routes on a board representing America, Europe, Scandinavia or one of the many other variants out there. Bonus points can be attained for claiming the longest continuous unbroken route as well as completing specific “point-to-point” routes between two cities across the board via any line. It all seems very simple until near the end of the game, when a lot of blocking each other’s routes comes into play. It’s simple enough for kids as young as 7 to understand and enjoy, yet there’s enough strategic play in there for the adults to appreciate, too.

Carcassonne

Carcassonne is a game about laying tiles on the table to build up a map of a geographical region featuring cities, roads and fields. Points are scored by claiming these regions with little wooden people commonly referred to as “meeples”. It’s another simple game that is expandable with about a bajillion optional expansion packs. There’s only one rule—the “farmers” rule—that is a little difficult to explain to everyone. The rest is very simple. There’s also a great iPhone and iPad version for those lucky enough to have Apple products under their tree, and there’s a similarly great version on Xbox LIVE Arcade, too.

Settlers of Catan

Catan is a game about building and trading. There is lots of interaction between players as you attempt to collect combinations of resources for building roads, settlements and cities. There’s also an element of luck thanks to a roll of two dice determining which resources are “produced” each turn, though the luck factor never overwhelms the strategy element. Catan is perhaps a bit complex for young kids, but is a lot of fun for older kids and adults. It’s also expandable with several additional packs, though not quite as many as Carcassonne.

Robo Rally

Robo Rally tasks players with racing through a series of checkpoints using their robots. Robots can be programmed using “instruction cards”, which allow the ‘bot to do things like turn 90 degrees left or right, move forward a certain number of spaces and a few other things. Each turn, players can give 5 instructions to their ‘bots from a pool of cards in their hand. It becomes a game about planning where you’ll end up and making the best of the options available to you. It’s simple to play, with lots of different variations and tracks included in the box.

Space Alert

Space Alert is a thoroughly silly game where you start by listening to a CD filled with sci-fi alerts telling you where threats are appearing around your spacecraft. Using hands of “order cards” (a bit like Robo Rally‘s instruction cards) players plan in advance how they’re going to take care of all the threats and keep the ship running smoothly. The twist is the amount of time they have to plan all this is determined by the length of the track on the CD. If they dawdle too much, jobs won’t get done, normally with disastrous consequences. Said potentially disastrous consequences are revealed after the CD has finished, when the orders laid down are revealed and resolved on a turn-by-turn basis. It’s genuinely horrifying to see a well-laid plan screwed up and resolve itself in turn-by-turn slow motion, but it’s hilarious.

The Worst

Arkham Horror

Arkham Horror is a brilliant co-operative game set slap bang in the middle of HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos. However, its shortest variant takes three hours to play, with more difficult opponents taking four or five hours to take down and usually ending with the players’ defeat. It also has a bajillion rules to learn, which are easy enough to remember once you’ve played a game or two, but nightmarish to explain to newbies. Save this one for gaming nights with plenty of time to spare.

Power Grid

Power Grid is an in-depth simulation of competing electric corporations attempting to supply power to cities in either Germany or America. It has a few elements in common with Ticket to Ride but also has an in-depth simulation of supply and demand in its resource market, as well as a requirement to be good at both maths and forward planning. It’s quite heavy going for newbies and is rather depressing for people who don’t do well with numbers.

Monopoly

When was the last time you finished a game of Monopoly? Exactly. The simple reason for this is that people always forget two things: firstly, that the “you can take all the tax money if you land on Free Parking” rule is complete bollocks and was never in the game in the first place, and secondly, if you don’t buy a property when you land on it, it’s supposed to be auctioned off. Following these rules (which no-one ever remembers to) makes games a lot quicker. Alternatively, you could download the Board Game Remix Kit and make Monopoly worth playing again.

Warhammer Quest

Warhammer Quest is awesome, but has a big-ass rulebook, hundreds of bits of cardboard, cards, counters, miniatures and all manner of other things to deal with. While it makes an awesome Christmas present, it’s best saved for a night you can devote to it with a group interested in taking part in a full campaign.

Agricola

Agricola is a great game (that is a lot more interesting than its concept—”a game about 13th century German agriculture”—sounds) but takes approximately a thousand years to set up thanks to its hundreds of little wooden bits, thousands of cards and board that comes in far too many pieces for its own good. I also hate it because I never win and that means it’s bullshit.

So there you go. All of the above are worth spending some Christmas money on. Not all are worth trying to explain to your grandma, unless she has a particular interest in trying to take down Cthulhu.