Small Games

 Small Games

Recently, I was at my friend John's house and he introduced me to this superb game called Lunar Base. It's got good-looking components, but not a lot of them! It's a card game and some dials. It's a competitive, city-building game in which players use the cards to expand our bases, score points on various tracks (one of which is tracked via the dial because it's spendable currency), and we're all aiming to win via one of 3 or 4 win conditions. It's simple, it's fun, and it's got a small footprint (on the table, the clock and the game shelf). I enjoyed it so much that I immediately went online to find it, did so, then bought it.

That last bit isn't uncommon for me except for one element: I don't usually go out of my way to buy smaller games because they generally don't excite me as much as the bigger games. I wrote about loving Skull so much after playing it at CabinCon that I immediately went out and bought my own copy. Same with Cartographers. But I just don't own that many small games in general. As I'm developing my own designs, though, I'm feeling like it's an oversight. Not just in my collection, but also in my experience as a gamer. Whenever I think of trying to design something small, I struggle. Not just because it's difficult, but because I don't have a lot on which to draw. The small games I have and value (Batman Love Letter, Coup, Skull) are almost all bluffing games with very few exceptions.

I generally don't enjoy bluffing and social deduction games that much anyway, so is it really any wonder I come up short on design ideas for small games? To that end, I think it's time I start prioritizing small games more for awhile. The bigger games will always be there, but in the meantime, I am starting to investigate small games a bit more to expand my knowledge base. Also, if nothing else, there are some really fun ones out there! A game need not last 3 hours to be a worthwhile gaming experience. This won't be illuminating for a lot of people, but I suspect there are a bunch out there like myself who generally get more excited for the bigger ones and forget there's a plethora of games that tend to fly under the radar simply because they're shorter or smaller. I'll keep y'all posted on what I find!