Episode 228 - Simple Complexity
February 6, 2025
Ambie and Crystal discuss a couple games they played recently, including Holiday Hijinks: The Groundhog Gambit and The Cupid Crisis, Dorfromantik: The Board Game, and Wandering Galaxy: A Crossroads Game. Then, we talk about how both simple and complex games can have value.
Intro: 0:00
Announcements: 0:47
Recent Games: 2:23
Simple vs Complex: 16:06
Outro: 25:32
Bloopers: 26:36
Games discussed this episode:
Freelancers: 10:08
Gen7: 13:26
Bunny Kingdom: 19:05
The Mind: 19:59
Obsession: 24:02
This episode was sponsored by Grey Fox Games. Use the code "BLITZ10" to get 10% off your entire cart.
Board Game Blitz's theme song was composed by Andrew Morrow.
Transcript
[0:06] Crystal: Hello and welcome to Episode 228 of Board Game Blitz, a podcast about all things board games that you can listen to in less time than it takes to assemble a K'Nex roller coaster. Board Game Blitz is sponsored by Grey Fox Games. This week we are talking about simple versus complex games. First, we discussed some games we've played recently, the Holiday Hijinks Groundhog Gambit and Cupid Crisis, Dorfromantik: The Board Game, and Wandering Galaxy: A Crossroads Game. Then, we talk about the benefits and downsides of playing both simple and complex board games. And now, here are your hosts - Ambie, and Crystal.
[0:47] Ambie: Before we start the episode, we have an announcement. We have a new merch store. So, a couple of months ago, we had a new TeePublic store, but now we have a separate merch store through that, but it's at our domain. So, merch.boardgameblitz.com. You can go there to see all of our designs.
And with that, we have a new design. And by we, I mean my five-year-old son, one of my kids made another t-shirt design with board game components. It's very mixed media. He drew a picture, cut out some things, and taped them on, and then also put meeples and cubes on top of it as a mosaic. And it's like skeleton pirates. So, if you're interested in that--
Crystal: It's very niche, but it's adorable.
Ambie: Yeah. And you can check out our other designs, too. He's made a Sugar Skull mosaic as well. And then we have other designs that have not been made by five-year-olds.
Crystal: Yeah. And I guess if anybody out there wants to see more merch and has ideas for concepts they would love to see us make in our merch store, let us know. Hit us up on social media or in our Discord. And Ambie has become-- I mean, Ambie's always been very talented at just about everything, but your artistic skills, I feel, have leveled up over the years. And so--
Ambie: Well, I used to do art in high school and stuff, but I just haven't in a long time. And so I have some more time for it now when my kids are in art class. They went to art class, and so I was like, "Oh, I can do this while I'm waiting in the car for them."
Crystal: Yeah, that's awesome. So I'm loving it.
[02:23] Ambie: Recently, I played two more holiday hygiene games, which we've talked about before. These are 18-card escape room games published by Grand Gamers Guild and designed by Jonathan Schaffer. I played the Groundhog Gambit and the Cupid Crisis, themed around Groundhog's Day and Valentine's Day, respectively.
Crystal: Which Groundhog's Day will have just passed when this episode comes out, so the timing is very nice.
Ambie: Yeah, and Valentine's Day is coming up.
Crystal: And Valentine's Day is just around the corner, yeah.
Ambie: Yeah, so the Groundhog one is 120-minute mystery for one or more players, and the Valentine's Day one is a 60-minute mystery for one or more players. Usually, there are 60 minutes, but yeah, the Groundhog Day one is longer. It has the same number of cards, still 18 cards, but we used them in interesting ways, so I thought that was really neat. I did have to use some hints on it, but I enjoyed it. And then Cupid Crisis, I enjoyed that one too. I think the Cupid Crisis was more word puzzle focus in the Groundhog Gambit, seemed more like different types of logic puzzles, but both of them have a mixture of puzzles, like all of the holiday hijinks do. In the Cupid Crisis, the last puzzle for me actually felt almost like an "aha" moment. When I play puzzle games, puzzle video games, an "aha" moment is when you go "aha." At the end, you're like, "Oh, that's what happened."
Crystal: I think everybody knows what you're talking about, even though it's that feeling of you don't figure something out immediately, but when you do figure it out, it's a moment, and it feels really satisfying.
Ambie: Yeah, so the Cupid Crisis, usually these smaller puzzle hunt-type games, they don't have "aha" moments for me, but the Cupid Crisis did, it felt almost like one, so that was pretty cool. And yeah, I didn't want to go into spoilers, so those were quick, quick reviews of those, but I did also play-
Crystal: So have you seen the movie Groundhog's Day?
Ambie: Yes, I did see it like last year for the first time.
Crystal: Oh nice! It is my partner Dan's favorite movie of all time, so... I mean, I had seen it many times before he and I got together, but we've definitely watched it since then as well, and there were definitely nods to the movie in the game.
[04:27] Ambie: Yep, I also wanted to talk about Dorfromantik: The Board Game, which I played just one play. So, Dorfromantik: The Board Game is based on the video game, which is like a board gamey tile-laying video game, but this is designed by Michael Palm and Lukas Zoch and published by Pegasus Spiele in 2022. This is a cooperative tile-laying game, you have little hex tiles with different features on them, like a village or a forest, or there's a river and a railroad track, and you have to like place them next to other hexes, and you want to line up the railroad tracks, you have to line up the railroad tracks and line up the rivers, but other features don't have to be connected, but you kind of want them to sometimes, because you're trying to fulfill these tasks, so each time you have to have three tasks at a time, and if you flip over a task tile, it'll say like the feature that the tile has, and you flip over- it is a number of four, five, or six, so you want that many of that feature connected, and so when you have exactly that many connected in that region, then you get to complete the task, and chairs are trying to get through all of the tasks, and then you also get points for how long your longest railroad and longest river are. It's also a campaign, or like you unlock things, so kind of campaign game with like achievements and stuff, which kind of feels video game-y, because it is based on a video game, but like after we play the game, you get points for like how well you do it, and you get to mark off little checkboxes on this campaign sheet, and then you open a box when you get to that part, and there's like branches of the tech tree, so you open a box and you get new tiles, and get new achievements that you can get, and so it's like if you get this score or something, then you get an achievement, so that's kind of cute. We only played one game though, but yeah, it felt like a very casual, chill, solo slash co-op game. There's no hidden information, so it's just like on your turn, you flip over the next tile, and then place it, and everyone can like cooperate, so it's like a solo game played cooperatively, kind of. It's one to six players. We played three players, which was fine. As long as there's no like quarterback or something, then you can play cooperatively. It depends on your group, you know.
Crystal: It is interesting that they specified that the player count is one to six. Like that seems like a lot, I guess, for what is a relatively simple, chill game, right? Like if I have six friends, I'm probably not gonna pull out Dorph romantic.
Ambie: But the target audience probably isn't like board gamers, maybe, because it comes from video games, so if you have like a group of six video gamers or like people who don't play board games together, they would be playing like a party game or like they could play this together as well as a nice like activity while they're also hanging out or something. So it's like a chill game. For me, it was just like it was fine, and like I enjoyed it, but it's not something that's like exciting or anything for me. Like it was a nice casual, chill, cooperative game, and I enjoyed it. It's not something that I would like ask to play or like bring specifically to play, but I'll play it if people want to. So that's my...
Crystal: Did you play the video game?
Ambie: I played like the demo or something, but I don't like board gamey video games. Okay. So yeah, I never got into it and also like those types of puzzle games, I'm not as into, I want like more progression in my video games.
Crystal: Yeah, there was a moment, I think it was during the pandemic when Dorfromantik came out and like it felt like everybody in the online board game community was playing it all of a sudden because basically everybody said, they're like, "Oh, this is a video game that's a board game." Basically, and I do have to, I wonder what the process of taking it from a video game to an actual board game was. I'm imagining in my head that the people who made the video game heard all the chatter online about all the board gamers going, "This is a great board game!" And they went, "Oh, should we make this into a board game?" Like that's the way I'm imagining it happening. I'm guessing they did not have plans for a physical board game at first, but then they realized they created a good idea for a board game. So it usually goes the other way around, I feel, but I played the video game, but I have not played the board game version. I will say the video game definitely chill, lovely experience, unless you're trying to go for crazy high scores.
Ambie: So the adaptation seems good, like it has a similar feel, I think, even though I never like got into the video game. Yeah, yeah.
[8:43] Crystal: Well, the game I'm talking about today is also one that I am kind of more or less giving first impressions about because I've only played one game of it so far. And that is Wandering Galaxy: a Crossroads Game. So this is the new Crossroads game from Plaid Hat Games designed by Jerry Hawthorne. You all are probably very familiar with the fact that I love most of the stuff that Plaid Hat Games comes out with, and especially their Crossroads games, which over time have just gotten better and better and better generally.
It feels like there are some board game publishers who find a winning idea for a type of board game, and then they kind of hammer it to death. And by the end of the series, you're like, "I don't need 800 versions of Azul." No hate to Azul, I really like Azul and some of its versions.
But with the Crossroads series, the very first one, Dead of Winter, came out so long ago now, and the series has really grown and changed and evolved. It hasn't stayed stagnant, and the way Crossroads work within their games has changed. So this is closest to their more recent games, Forgotten Waters and Freelancers, which both of which I've talked about on the show previously. Freelancers was my favorite game of 2023, and I would not be surprised if Wandering Galaxy ends up near the top of my list for 2024. Obviously, having only played one game of it so far, I cannot definitively say that. But where Freelancers was a one-off game, Wandering Galaxy, while you do have the ability to play one-off games, it also has a campaign. And so you get to create characters that grow and change from game to game. It also adds in some mechanics that the previous Crossroads games did not have. Similarly to other games in this series, you are a group of people who are tasked with doing things together. And in this instance, you're a group of spacers who are going to be going around the galaxy, creating jobs and trying to earn money to pay off your ship, basically. The way you do that is similar to the two games prior that I mentioned, where you go to a location and you have a book of destinations that you're going to be flipping pages in. And then there are actions listed in the book that you can take during a given round. And then often something on the other side that kind of depicts where you're at. But they've started using the book for some more other creative purposes, including like minimaps and things of that nature. And they have implemented a skill deck in this game, which is new. There is a deck building element where all of the characters have their own deck of skill cards. And when you do a skill check in this game, you're flipping cards over from your deck and looking for the right icons for that particular skill check. And as the games progress, you get to add and remove cards from your deck to make it better like any deck building game. So it's a little more customizable in that way. And you will get to improve and grow throughout the experience, which I think is a really neat addition. Similarly to the other two games, it also has some humor in it. It uses a web app to facilitate the game. And there is voice acting, which is done really well. And there's a lot of humor in how the writing is completed. It is not as crass as freelancers was. Freelancers was, I would say you don't want to play with children. This one so far would be probably okay to play with kiddos. It does say age 14 plus though. So there might be content coming that is a little more adult in nature that I haven't run into yet. But yeah, like this game is a mash of so many mechanisms and yet it works. Like there's real time. There's worker placement. There's deck building. There's pickup and deliver.
There's oh my gosh, I know I'm missing things. Like it is so many different things all at once and yet it works. And I don't know. I just this series is it's something I really enjoy. So like I said, I've only played the first game of the campaign so far, but it's going really well. You look like you want to say something.
Ambie: I mean, I'm glad that the series is still good and getting because like I still have only played dead of winter and then like one partial game of Gen 7 and Gen 7 was not.
Crystal: Gen 7. I what's funny, I actually own Gen 7, but I've never played it. I will admit that when it came out and the reviews were not great, I didn't pick it up. But then I was buying games online at one point and it was like heavily discounted. I think I got it for like it was like a small enough amount that I think I would be embarrassed to say how much I purchased that game for. And I have not played it yet, but I like the price was so low that I was like, I have to do it. Even if I only open the box and look through everything, it'll be worth it.
Ambie: Use the components for something else.
Crystal: The idea of Gen 7 was fascinating to me. And I'm sad that whatever the experience ended up being didn't quite nail it, I guess, for most people.
Ambie: But yeah, I think was the rule book was not good, I think.
Crystal: That actually brings up something interesting because these games, because there's a lot going on, they can be a little bit weird to learn. But for this game, at least in particular, you do not have to read the rule book at all to start playing. You can go on to the Web app and there is a full tutorial. It will guide you through the setup entirely and it will teach you how to play as you start playing the first scenario.
Ambie: Oh, that's neat. That's the cool thing about like app assisted games, like you can just have tutorials in there.
Crystal: And it was a really good tutorial, too. Like, I think there are probably some little nuances and rules that it wasn't able to get into. And it did specify that once we finished the tutorial, it was like, here's a couple other things that you're going to need to know. And obviously, I'm probably going to be looking through the rule book for other stuff that hasn't come up yet. But it got us going right away. It helped us set it up on the table and just start playing. So I think that makes it a lot more accessible, especially to people who might be more intimidated about a larger game like this. I loved that experience with the tutorial. It worked really well. So kudos on them for that, at least. So, yeah, that was Wandering Galaxy, a crossroads game. You will probably hear me talk about it again about a year from now if I had to guess. But we'll know if it's oh, it's 2024. So it would be the Blitzies will be doing. Oh, gosh, I would have to play it. Oh, no. I don't know if I'm going to be able to play it enough to get it in the 2024 Blitzies. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Because it just came out in December. Yeah, like barely. Plaid Hat. Why have you done this to me?
We'll see what I'm able to make happen there, I guess.
[16:06] Crystal: If there is one thing that I think could have been a way that we would have defined the members of this podcast when we first started it, not knowing a lot about each other, I would say the complexity of the games that we liked differed to some degree.
Ambie: Also, like the types, the types, too
Crystal: for sure. I was definitely
Ambie: you were like the thematic,
Crystal: thematic games, medium weight
Ambie: Cassidy did euro games.
Crystal: But she also liked the lighter stuff, too, because she liked a lot of the little card games, right?
Ambie: Maybe. She hated dice.
Crystal: She did. She did hate dice. Shout out to Cassidy. We miss you. And then you were you had not learned 18XX games yet. But you did like heavy euros.
Ambie: No, I learned that-- I liked heavy euros. But my first game that I talked about was also Ghost Blitz. So which is not heavy.
Crystal: That is about as simple as it gets.
Ambie: Yeah, I like heavy euros are super simple games.
Crystal: Well, and that is a really good lead in to our discussion today, which is simple games versus complex games, because I do think there are people within the board gaming community who will try and gatekeep to some degree and argue that games of a certain simplicity are inherently worse than the other games or don't have as much value. And obviously, we are not those people. But I kind of wanted to have a discussion about where simple games and complex games both can live and what the benefits and downsides of both of those categories are.
Ambie: Yeah, they're both. I mean, I don't play a lot in the middle tier anymore. I don't play a lot of complex games anymore now, too, because of time. So complex games can be like really good. Like when I used to play heavy euros, they would be complex. They would be thematic, too, like Vital Lacerda games. They they're very complex because they go with a theme and like you have little holes to go with the theme and make it really thematic. But then it's also good mechanics and stuff. So it's very complex, just like all the little steps you have to do. And I like all of that building and stuff, but they take longer, longer to set up, longer to learn. And so if you don't have the time to play a longer game, it's hard to get those played. And so simple games are good for when you don't have the time or energy to play a complex game. And they can still be a lot of fun for a shorter time.
Crystal: Yeah, time absolutely is a luxury and not everyone has it available. I think the rise in online versions of board games has potentially helped with that a little bit. Sometimes it's easier to learn a game in an online format where the rules are enforced because it basically prevents you from.
Ambie: Like if you have to count the score at the end, it helps with that. You don't have to set up.
Crystal: Yes, like I'm in the middle of a game of Bunny Kingdom on board game arena right now. And I hadn't played Bunny Kingdom in years because while it is fun, it's annoying to have to do that much multiplication throughout the whole game. And I don't like math. I was good at math when I was young, but I don't I don't want to do math when I play board games. That's not what I'm here for. And so it's lovely playing it online because it does all that work for you.
Ambie: Also, we play with a lot of different types of people. So with people who aren't used to playing a lot of complex games, you're not going to bring out like an 18xx game for the first game. You're being like, oh, do you want to know about board games?
Crystal: Like watch all of their eyes glaze over.
Ambie: So, yeah, like I think that's another reason we got into like we were into like super heavy games, but then also super simple party games and stuff because they're great for playing with all types of people like the mind, which I love a lot. I've played with so many different people like everyone. I know we just it's so easy to get played and just and sometimes also people don't want like a it depends on what you want at that time. Like you're not looking for a heavy thinking experience. You want to just maybe hang out with friends and just have something to do or something like so simple games are good for like people. People want different things at different times.
Crystal: That's really a good point, because if you ask the question to anybody who plays board games, like why do you play board games? You will get a variety of different answers. And even from the same person, you could get multiple answers. Right. Like for me personally, I play board games because I find them to be fun because I think they stretch my brain in interesting ways and keep it pliable, which as I get older will become more important. It allows me to spend time with people that I care about. It allows me to meet new people that I don't know in certain situations. I think you'd be hard pressed to find people who if asked, why do you play board games? The only answer would be to win board games. Like I don't think I'm sure that that guy does exist. He probably exists somewhere. But like we don't we don't we don't that that dude is not the norm. And I that to me is why both simple and complex games have merit and why people who dismiss simple games outright are really doing themselves a disservice because of all of the different things that you as a person can get out of a board gaming experience.
Ambie: It is hard to compare them.
Crystal: That's the thing. It is right. Like you and I have both made top hundred lists and we've used pub meeple. Shout out to pub meeple. They have a rankings engine on their website that you can use to rank your board games. And when you are looking at something like The Mind versus maybe Kanban, I know you don't play Kanban as much anymore, but let's you know, you like both those games. Yeah, it's hard to directly compare them because they are situational and you do potentially use them for slightly different reasons. And so to say one is better than the other doesn't really make sense. But I guess that's why, you know, top hundred it isn't this is better than the other. It's I like this more than the other. And yeah, it was hard.
Ambie: Hard like, yeah, it's like depends on my mood that day. Right. That's why it's hard for me to rank games or like rate games, too. Like I don't know. It depends how I'm feeling if this game is a nine.
Crystal: I like on board game geek the the word descriptions that they use.
Ambie: Yeah, I try to use that. Yeah, it's like, oh, I want to play this all the time. I'm like, there's no game that I want to play all the time because sometimes I just want to sleep.
Crystal: Well, OK, but that's not they. I think they mean like any time you sat down to play board games, if that game hit the table, you'd be happy about it.
Ambie: Take it too literally.
Crystal: Yeah, a little bit. Like they're not expecting you to learn how to play board games in your sleep. But yeah, like the difference between I'm looking at board game geek right now and like a five star rating out of 10 is mediocre. Take it or leave it. For me, if I rated a game of five, that means I really probably don't like it very much. Like a five doesn't feel good enough for a game that I like. But then six is OK, we'll play it if in the mood. It's hard for me to think of games that fall into that category where I don't like them, but would be willing to play them. Situationally, there probably are.
Ambie: Well, it's like a game that you would play if your friend wanted to. Right. Like that's true. It's like I feel like there are games like that for me.
Crystal: You know what? That's true. There's some really good board games that just in my plays of them haven't struck me as strongly, but my friends enjoy them. So I would totally sit down and play them again. I think obsession is probably a good example of that. I know a lot of people really love obsession and I didn't dislike it, but nothing about it really grabbed me and made me want to play it again. But Kathy loves obsession. So if she came over with it and wanted to play, I'd play it in a heartbeat. Like that would be fine. And I'm sure she's packing it up and coming over to my house right now as she listens to this. But yeah, I mean, rankings and ratings are all subjective and arbitrary, right? They mean things until they don't. And then it's the meaning is only what you prescribe to it. And if you don't attach meaning to something, then it doesn't really matter. But I do think that gamers who are more open minded about the types of gaming experiences that they're willing to potentially have are likely to have more opportunities come their way. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're better or that their game sessions are significantly improved over other people, because there are people who are like, I'm a career, you know, Star Wars X-Wing player, and that is all I play and that is all I want. And if that's what somebody wants to do, that's totally fine. There's no there's nothing wrong with that. But I do think that there is value in being willing to go outside of the things that you are most familiar with and most comfortable with. And sometimes you'll explore and you'll go, oh, no, I want to go back in my cozy cave. And that's that.
[25:33] Ambie: And that's it for this week's board game blitz. Visit our website boardgameblitz.com for more content and links. This episode was sponsored by Grey Fox Games. Mark February 25th on your calendar now because that's when Champions of Midguard's 10th Anniversary Collectors Edition is coming to Kickstarter. And as always, Blitzketeers get a special offer when shopping at greyfoxgames.com. Use the code BLITZ10 at checkout to get 10% off your entire cart, including exclusives. Join the Blitzketeer community on Discord for game nights, discussions and more by following the link in the show notes. Support the show by leaving us a rating and review on your podcast provider. And if you like us a lot and want to support us monetarily and give them cool perks, check out our Ko-fi at ko-fi.com/boardgameblitz today. Our theme song was composed by Andrew Morrow. Until next time,
But she found me in the ballroom
Crystal: It wasn't me.
Ambie: Saw me carrying the lead pipe.
Crystal: It wasn't me.
Ambie: And even found a secret passage.
Crystal: It wasn't me.
Ambie: How did she catch me in the study?
Crystal: It wasn't me.
Ambie: Bye, everyone.
Crystal: Bye.
[26:36] Crystal: You know, the meaning is what you prescribe it to. Or
Ambie: prescribe to it.
Crystal: Yes.
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