During unexpected times of confinement, people will find all kinds of ways to entertain  and keep busy in isolation. In some ways, there’s never been a better time to have an abiding interest in board games. Of course there are far more serious concerns on all of our minds — but escaping into a good game project can make for an excellent way to cope.

That said, it’s understandable if boredom starts to set in. Maybe solo gaming has lost its luster, and playing with friends over Zoom isn't cutting it. Or maybe you’ve dived so deeply into your board game collection in these first few weeks of isolation that even your old go-tos aren’t quite doing it for you.

Whatever the case may be, we came up with some ways to handle boredom when it starts to set in. And rather than just recommending board games you already have (or at least know about), we decided to suggest some gaming-related projects that might keep you busy. We hope these help a bit!

Adapt a Video Game With Things you Have Around the House

[caption id="attachment_20522" align="alignright" width="300"] Rampage made a killer transition to the table.[/caption]

If you’ve never tried it before, it’s actually a lot of fun to take…

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I’m going to let all of you game designers in on a secret. If you want me to salivate at the idea of getting my hands on your newest title, there’s one guaranteed method: give me a really strange theme. I’ve seen dragons and knights, and I’ve seen spaceships and aliens. Ghosts? Been there, done that. Farming? I practically have an honorary agriculture degree.

I’ll play games with these familiar themes, but the bar for success is a lot higher. If you hand me a game that’s all about warring intergalactic civilizations, it’s going to be held up in comparison to giants like Eclipse or Forbidden Stars, and that’s a really tough mark to hit.

Contrast this with games like Burgle Bros (inept cat burglars trying to rob a building), Panic On Wall Street (screaming investors and sellers trying not to go wildly broke in thirty frantic seconds), or Celestia (a bunch of people on a skyship trying to avoid gusts of wind as they hop from cloud to cloud). These games plant a flag in the ground, trumpeting their unique theme, and by doing so, they anchor everything that happens in the game to that theme. It also makes the game easier to sell to your friends. Want an example? Sit…

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Now, to be fair, this normally wouldn’t be too much of a burden in most people’s lives. I’m certain that there are legions of men and women who, after being ground under their cousin’s capitalist heel in a game of Monopoly after Thanksgiving dinner, made the
choice to pursue other hobbies. Unfortunately, I’m also a huge fan of board games, with more and more space on my shelves and in my budget gobbled up by this pursuit. And while I’m not particularly good at games, the circle of friends that often join me on game nights are
intelligent, canny, and altogether far too talented at racking up victory points while I watch meekly from third or fourth place.

What’s amazing is that, by and large, I’m okay with this.

I once heard someone say that games were machines in which we invest our effort, and the game outputs fun. In the last decade, as designers have learned more ways to generate these joyous experiences, many games have come out that seem bound and determined to create a machine that produces fun for every player, not just the winner. An experience that gives every player the chance to walk away from the table with a grin on their face, regardless of whether…

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