GAMES & PINBALL

We buy and play games based on a variety of factors. Price (we'll take a chance on a game that seems to fit our general criteria if we find it for under $10), we sometimes will back a Kickstarter game if it looks cool, and we usually try to play a game we see during browsing at a store or at game convention library based on other people's recommendations. Some games people have panned, we gave a chance and had a different opinion. Likewise, we have found some highly praised games uncompelling because we don't share the same taste.

When we first started getting into the board game addiction, we attempted to play a game a week. Work interfered with that plan. When we realized we had acquired a number of games during a convention, but hadn't played them, we decided to make a focused effort to play through our Shelf of Opportunity before the next convention. We've managed to keep the shelf down to five or fewer games at a time (until we binge at a convention again), and our game evenings are more frequent. Our game decision making process is speeding up, which means we can play MORE games at a convention without falling into analysis paralysis and trying to play "perfectly" each game we try out.

We haven't tried out any "campaign" games as wargames and role-play games aren't really our thing (our D&D collection notwithstanding), plus leaving things set up overnight invites disaster being visited by Miss Zoey Parkour.

Games We Liked Enough to Share We used to play board and card games...back in high school and University. And then we stopped. Just before the pandemic, some friends encouraged us to attend a board game convention. Stuff has CHANGED A LOT since the 1990s! We now have a game library in addition to our traditional book-oriented library and video library. Yet another addiction....
Agricola Medieval farming and resource management	Disney's Animated Players cooperate to finish their own animated features. Fun and nice components!	Artifacts, Inc. Earn prestige by recovering artifacts. Die rolls indicate what you can do each turn.	Bamboo Loosely based on feng shui, can you decorate your home in a way that is pleasing?
Blazon Great SCA-adjacent game that uses the principles of good heraldic style to create coats of Arms.	Castle Panic Cooperative tower defense.	Castles by the Sea Build sand castles, but suffer the random hazards of the beach.	The Castles of King Ludwig Polyomino-based game. Construct the nicest castle based on what is available and what you can afford.
Chomp Small box game. Place your habitat tiles to ensure your dinosaurs survive and thrive.	Coralia Reef exploration game. Your points are based on the number and variety of fish and treasures you find.	Cosmoctopus B-movie/Cthulhu-inspired game. Summon the Cosmoctopus from the Great Inky Beyond.	Dice Manor Die rolls determine what rooms you add to your mansion. The best floor plan wins.
Dirigible Disaster "Real time" cooperative game. Launch the first passenger dirigible. But during your maiden voyage, everything goes wrong. Each minute, stop the fires, calm the passengers, keep the steam from leaking, and maintain flight. Survive 10 minutes, and you win!	Everdell	Fantastic Factories Engine building. Build factories to produce goods and earn money. Cards and dice determine what you can build and when.	Firefly Press-your-luck dice game based on the show, Serenity.
Flamecraft Resource management game in which dragons run the village.	Forbidden Jungle Fourth in the "Forbidden" series of games. You've crash landed on a jungle planet inhabited by large spider like predators. Cooperate to block off their access to you and you win!	Forest Shuffle Grow a forest with a variety of trees and inhabit it with a variety of animals to acquire points.	Habitats Pilot your off-road vehicle through the wildlands and collect specimens for your safari park. But your specimens require the right habitats to thrive.
Hickory Dickory Each player has a group of mice that are trying to acquire small items for their nests. Reaching the items depends on where the clock hands point to and whether your mouse is on the hand.	Illumination SCA-adjacent 2-player game. Two monks attempt to illuminate their respective manuscripts. But the illuminations apparently don't get along....	Imagineers Theme park building and management game. Visitors navigate through the park, and the different rides gain prestige for the Imagineer that created them. (Not affliated with Disney)	Junk Drawer Polyomino placement. Can you arrange to get all the random junk into your junk drawer?
King of Tokyo Kaiju battle to take control over Tokyo. Simple, silly, and easy to play.	Lost Cities Set collection game themed around exploring 5 different lost cities.	Luxor Be the first archeologist to enter the main tomb at Luxor.	Mandala Stones Similar to mancala, acquire colored stones based on the placement of your artist, and score points based on how you've managed to distribute them.
Maps of Mysterra Explore an island and see how well your explorations match the projected map	Mini Rails A variant on the connect and deliver railroad network building games.	Neotopia Pick and place resources according to your immediate criteria and gain points as larger patterns emerge.	Night Parade of 100 Yokai Based on a Japanese scroll - The Night Parade. Your clan of yokai try to place temples on an archpeligo of islands. The first to build 5 temples wins. Cute artwork, and one of our first Kickstarter games we funded.
Parfum Acquire aromatics and produce perfumes for your clients. Dice control the success or failure of your acquisitions.	Prehistories Worker placement based on Stone Age living. Can your hunters bring back enough to record on the cave walls?	Ra Bidding and worker placement based on ancient Egypt.	Race to the Raft Rescue the cats from the island that is on fire. This is a sequel to the Isle of Cats game.
Railroad Rushhour Solo puzzle game. Manuever the cars and locomotives in the yard to allow the red locomotive to escape.	Raising Robots Resource management game to...build robots	Run Run Run Cats, archeology, pyramids, undead mummies. Cooperative game to explore the pyramid and stop the mummies.	Sequoia Small box game. How well can you cultivate redwoods when the dice tell you which ones you can grow?
Southern Rails Invest in Southeastern US railroads, connect cities, deliver goods. This is one of several variants of a game from Rio Grande games. J.T. couldn't resist it because it is the Southern Railway.	Steampark Who can build the best steampunk-themed amusement park?	Takenoko Develop the most pleasing environment for pandas and the Emperor.	Tesseract 64 dice form a "tesseract" that will potentially create a dimensional rift. Players cooperate to isolate and defuse the dangerous elements of the tesseract.
Tides of Madness Card game based on H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos.	Trains and Stations Goods delivery	Traintopia Tile placement where you try to connect all your railway stations and industries.	Tsuro of the Seas This is a sequel to the Tsuro game in which you try to meander around the playing field without falling off. If you connect to an existing tile, you must follow wherever it leads. The wrinkle to this game is there are kaiju wandering the seas as well. They destroy your wake, and if you get too near, you're sunk!

Pinball & Video Arcade Those same friends who got us back into board gaming also got us into pinball. J.T. has always liked pinball, but has not been so serious about it to invest in machines or enter tournaments. Christine also likes pinball, but the pinball games she likes are the vintage ones from the 1970's and earlier, whereas J.T. likes (some) of the modern themed ones.
Doctor Who Classic from the 1980/90s. There's usually one at conventions we go to. It would be terrific if there were an updated version with all the Doctors and clips from the series.	Donkey Kong Some of the early video arcade games are the best. Simple game from Nintendo that has spun off into other games like Mario Brothers. In Donkey Kong, Mario is known simply as "Jumpman"	Foo Fighters Fun and amusing themed around the band, Foo Fighters.	Godzilla One of JT's favorites. Clips from the 1960's Godzilla movies are used to enhance the game play.
King Kong From 2025. It is OK, and there was a lot of hype, but it failed to engage our interest.	Looney Tunes As an animation fan, this should have been an automatic draw for JT. It is OK, but the game play was confusing to figure out. Although Looney Tune cartoons, by their nature were rather random, I don't like it in a strongly-themed pinball game.	Scooby Doo Anyone who knows J.T. would guess correctly this is his favorite pinball machine of all time. Story, medium difficulty to advance, and lots of classic music, villians, and sound bites.	Register This is an example of a pre-WWII pinball machine. Sometimes collectors will bring them to conventions and allow people to play these vintage pure mechanical games. We like these as slow-paced games that don't overwhelm you with flashy gimmicks.