The way me and my friends just turned into apes whilst playing games in the same room together is a feeling I miss.
We all still play online occasionally and still have fun but having the whole room drop laughing when someone hits a bullshit headshot is a hoot.
I have only gotten the apes feeling playing Helldivers II when I’m with 4 other people who pull through the entire missions with me, regardless of we win or lose on the extreme difficulty.
It’s the sudden bullshit that catches you off guard that has your sides hurting. A few days ago, we were holding off bugs, the transport started countdown “bro, get on the ship!” “It’s too late for me” “Bro you got 14 seconds!” “There’s no other way” just as a 500kg crushes his body and blows up the charger a step behind him . “Bro, you had to sprint 3 meters!” “It was the only way” “Guys poor one out for liberty.”
Board games have been a pretty effective way to recapture that feeling for me. When a single dice roll or card flip wrecks everyone’s plans and the whole table erupts at once, that’s a good time.
Video games, especially online, feel a little too disjointed these days – like our consciousness isn’t synced up the same way as it is when we all know we’re looking at the same thing at the same time and holding our breath.
What board games do you recommend?
Do you use voice chat with your friends playing online?
Checkout tabletop simulator there’s a ton of different games in the workshop.
I think my friend group has the most fun turning games we know into absurd games. Like in uno, we’d turn on all the bullshit settings on so people’s hands are being swapped left and right while other people are picking up 50 cards.
I’m partial to pretending I’m a less pos version of Steve Harvey on Family Feud. You get to ham it up when someone replies with an answer that obviously is going to have sexual answers.
Tabletop Simulator has like real board games too but I can’t get my friends to read any type of game rules so that’s when I give up and start doing stupid shit
And yeah we use discord to talk
Some of my favorites that have a higher frequency of “major upset” events. It really depends on your group, and how they like to play.
I stick with pretty quick and accessible games, because we frequently have to teach new people and I hate spending 3 hours on one playthrough of a huge game and then the newbie never gets a chance to try again with their new understanding.
Favorites:
- Wizard reliably makes our whole table lose their minds
- Love Letter takes sudden drastic turns and is so quick to play
- Bang! (the dice version) has as much treachery as it does chaos
- No Thanks! is an exercise in collective sadism
- Nanuk has perhaps the best “oh shiiiiiiiiiiiii-” moments with a combination of hidden information, bluffing, push-your-luck, pleading for help, backstabbing, and high-stakes card flips
Bluffing games:
- Coup
- Skull
- Cockroach Poker
Card games with sudden win conditions:
- Five Crowns
- Mahjong
- LLAMA
Asymmetric information games:
- Secret Hitler
- Codenames
- Mysterium Park
Not as frequent, but sometimes perfect for the right crowd:
- Three Dragon Ante
- Get Bit!
- GUBS
- Ca$h n Guns has foam guns that the whole table points at each other at once, Mexican Stand-off style
Got my kids into halo LAN.
The only thing missing is enough players for a good infection or pirates. Just a big gutted my oldest is into mountain dew.
I feel like we all independently invented the absolute LAN party classic of halo system link:
Hang em high with rocket launchers & plasma grenades only.
Nearly as iconic as blood gulch IMO
GoldenEye split screen.
What is preventing you from organising that again?
I’m still having LAN parties at +30. The only thing that changed is the frequency and the games.
We are really into Pummel Party at the moment.
Yep, two on second shift. Another on regular but everyone got families and kids with little time.
Rare is the day when we get everyone together and it mostly just ends up drinking and doing some bullshit like who’s the most similar to each character on The Man From Earth but can’t decide so have to assign an alt for everyone and pull up a spreadsheet lol.
After a couple games of Um, Actually.
And even then, that was only 3 people out of the old group of ~10. Lost half of them to republicans and their dumb shit from being young turning into dumb shit as adults lol.
I miss LAN parties… Duke Nukem 3D, Doom, CS, Diablo, Alien vs Predator 2, Quake and the successors of those games. Good times. Online is nice and all, but nothing compares to playing the night away with friends in one room
AVP2, nice. That’s one most people don’t mention.
I played that a few times with friends/cow-orkers late at night in an office where I used to work. I scared the hell out of one guy when I just walked over to his office when he was playing as a marine. He was so keyed up thinking about sneaky aliens and it was so dark that he didn’t see me coming. I wasn’t even trying to scare him, just walking over to talk to him.
