board games n stuff

i like to play board games with my friends! sometimes also card games, although i find those a bit more hit and miss. do not approach me with a pack of regular playing cards. i don't play a lot of video games but maybe sometimes i'll add those too.

Cattails: Wildwood Story

| like stardew valley but with cats

i got this in a recent steam sale (along with Graveyard Keeper which i've played before but on my ex's account) and it's been really cute and fun! it is super stardew-coded but you're the leader of a clan of cats. you explore the land and hunt animals, and collect specific things to invite new cats to join the clan. the main objective of the game (so far) is to grow the community and unlock the dark ruins, where you fight to clear the land of malevolent cat spirits?? something like that.

Galèrapagos

| cooperative card-based game about being stranded on an island

i think this is a french game? last night i ended up playing it with some very annoying french people who thought that cooperative game meant discussing each player's turn as a group for ten minutes. and then the game ended with a guy i hate killing his girlfriend because we didn't have enough food for one person and she didn't agree to his plan of killing the rest of us and escaping together. i think the first time i played it was a bit more fun but it's still kind of a meh game tbh.
last played: 21.06, i survived!

Scrabble

| the classic game - in french!

someone brought scrabble to the beach and we played it with french and english words (which irritated me a little but it's fine). realised scrabble is actually a good beach game because it doesn't have any light elements that would fly away in the wind.
last played: 12.06, ase won!

Ticket to Ride

| a train building strategy board game

this was pretty fun, i love maps and travelling and there was a good amount of goals, strategy, randomness and luck involved. i maybe prioritised building trains specifically in the regions that i care about irl a little too much (i managed to take edinburgh, marseille AND istanbul - no tallinn on the map unfortunately)
last played: 24.06, i won!

Let's Build a Zoo

| a zoo management video game

i was in one of my rare video game moods recently and bought this on sale. it's fun! i played all weekend and then got sick of it for a while and now i'm playing it again at a more normal level (as in, 2-3h stretches every few days rather than 8-10h a day every day). i'm enjoying collecting animals and animal variants, and there still seems to be plenty of new stuff to discover etc. i'm kind of tempted by the aquarium dlc too...

Calico

| a tile-laying puzzle game where you build quilts for cats

a cute game! i liked the puzzle aspect and that were a lot of different goals you could work on. the aesthetics were cute. i just felt it was a bit slow, but that's because i'm impatient and i guess my friends had worse tiles to strategise with.
last played: 23.05, i am writing this three weeks in the future and can't actually remember who won but i think i did pretty well

Pictures

| recreate pictures using limited components

this was interesting. very simple in terms of rules, fun and creative gameplay. i hated the string.
last played: 30.04, we somehow all tied?

Splendor: Marvel

| marvel-themed card-based resource management game

i have like a deep hatred of marvel so i was not interested in playing this game at all but my friends chose it and i needed to look past my aversions... the gameplay itself is actually pretty satisfying. i just paid attention to the numbers and the colours and focused on winning (which i didn't). would love to try the original version someday.
last played: 30.04

Parks

| resource management hiking game set in the national parks of the US

this is quite similar to wingspan - lots of really cool details, very pretty cards and other game elements (the resources are cute little blocks that we all had fun creating little scenes and pictures out of in between turns), fun nature theme and lots of different goals and missions to focus on. the main thing i would change is for the personal goal you pick at the start to give more points. if you give me a personal goal, i'm going to complete it - in wingspan, this felt really rewarding but in parks, the amount of points you could get was really small and in the end i regretted focusing so much of my strategy on it. in general though it's a really fun game and i'm excited to play again!!
last played: 21.04, got second place

Subterra

| a cooperative survival horror game set in a cave

played this for the first time and it kind of got frustratingly hard with the characters we chose. imo what's the point of having different characters to choose from if the game is virtually unbeatable without certain ones (i just wanted to be the diver...because i love water...)
last played: 11.04, we lost and i was dead for at least half of the game :(

7 Wonders

| a trading and negotiation board + card game based on the seven wonders of the world

i've played this a few times and it's pretty fun, there are a lot of different strategies to choose from. the world-building could be more detailed though (kind of the only thing you get from the world wonders or just ancient civilisation in general is the aesthetic and i feel like they could have done more with that).
last played: 10.04, i won!

Wingspan

| engine-building board game about birds

i've played this twice now and really enjoyed it!! i love a game with good collecting elements and missions, and this one has both. there's so many birds and so much detail in the game, which keeps things interesting. collecting the birds is so satisfying. there's a lot to do, so having concrete missions to focus on helps with building a strategy and knowing what i'm doing. this game just tickles so many parts of my brain right.
last played: 06.04, i won!

Saboteur

| mining-themed hidden role card game

i've played this too many times and am a bit bored of it by now, although a recent game with a larger group of friends turned out surprisingly interesting - i think the interest of this game really depends on the players and their strategies.
last played: 14.03

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