I like depressing games sometimes.
On BGA:
Expedition: Northwest Passage--exploring in the wake of the doomed Franklin expedition? Yeah, that's depressing!
In the Year of the Dragon--basically, only one positive event can happen in this game (a fireworks festival). The rest is Mongol invasions, plague, taxes, drought, decay. You usually lose or send home most of your household by the end of the game. It's brutal. I like it a lot.
Dungeon Twister--there's something visceral about a game whose entire point is killing the other person's pieces, whether for points or to get them out of the way to make a run for the exit. I haven't decided whether I like this game, it's a lot more mean-spirited flinging a fireball into the face of a Thief than say capturing a rook in chess.
[I also find Quantum depressing but largely due to the way its total lack of balance encourages aggressive, mean-spirited play; thematically it's got a nice vibrant space-opera vibe.]
Off BGA:
Definitely Galaxy Trucker. Build a spacecraft and spend the second half of the game seeing it shredded by meteors or ransacked by pirates and slavers. Every so often you lose enough of the ship it breaks in half and you have to pilot the pathetic remaining chunk or just give up. Actually, a lot of times it makes more sense to give up a flight halfway through if things go wrong.
On BGA:
Expedition: Northwest Passage--exploring in the wake of the doomed Franklin expedition? Yeah, that's depressing!
In the Year of the Dragon--basically, only one positive event can happen in this game (a fireworks festival). The rest is Mongol invasions, plague, taxes, drought, decay. You usually lose or send home most of your household by the end of the game. It's brutal. I like it a lot.
Dungeon Twister--there's something visceral about a game whose entire point is killing the other person's pieces, whether for points or to get them out of the way to make a run for the exit. I haven't decided whether I like this game, it's a lot more mean-spirited flinging a fireball into the face of a Thief than say capturing a rook in chess.
[I also find Quantum depressing but largely due to the way its total lack of balance encourages aggressive, mean-spirited play; thematically it's got a nice vibrant space-opera vibe.]
Off BGA:
Definitely Galaxy Trucker. Build a spacecraft and spend the second half of the game seeing it shredded by meteors or ransacked by pirates and slavers. Every so often you lose enough of the ship it breaks in half and you have to pilot the pathetic remaining chunk or just give up. Actually, a lot of times it makes more sense to give up a flight halfway through if things go wrong.
