The Best Gaming Experience With My Kids – Andy Matthews
When my 4 children were younger I played games with them all the time, easily several times a week, and sometimes every day. In addition to time together, it was a chance for me to instill important values like fair play, good sportsmanship, and how to win (and lose) gracefully. Early on I came across a game called Zombie Kidz, a small box cooperative game about preventing zombies from escaping a cemetery. It featured cartoony artwork and a simple game loop: roll a die, put a zombie out on one of the corresponding 9 spaces on the board. Then, you could move your character to a nearby space and potentially eliminate a zombie there. The goal was to put locks on all 4 corners of the board and win the game. My kids loved it, and it gave me a chance to teach them about teamwork and the consequences of choice. Eventually, they grew out of the game, and we stopped playing it.
That is until I heard that the publisher was releasing a sequel called Zombie Kidz Evolution, targeted at a slightly older audience, exactly where my kids were at the moment. This new game not only continued the story, but was also more complex, and a “legacy game”. This meant that as you played the game, you could unlock special abilities and new rules that changed the game. My daughter was old enough that she wasn’t interested, so I jumped into it with my 3 sons and we ate it up (no pun intended).
Instead of being situated in a cemetery, this new game took place in a school building—a bit more familiar, and menacing, scene. Included in the game was a zombie hunters guidebook with dozens of brain stickers, and a checklist of sorts on the back of the book. As you played the game you placed brain stickers onto the checklist, which allowed you to open sealed envelopes, granting you the aforementioned special abilities and game-changing rules. Suffice it to say that these little boys clamored for game after game–to get just a little bit further so they could open the next envelope.
I’ve played many games with my kids, both before and after Zombie Kidz Evolution, but none of them have come close to the experience I had during those few weeks when the 4 of us sat around the table attempting to save the school from zombies. Just remember that when you’re playing games with family, you always come out the winner, even when you lose.
Type of Memory/Experience?
♥♥♥♡♡ – Beautiful memory/experience
Read more articles from Andy Matthews.
Sweet Home, Chicago – K. David Ladage
The first time my wife and I ever played Ticket to Ride was with our friend Rich. Rich and I met in the Navy and originally bonded over a love of Magic: The Gathering. My wife, LeAnne, is not one for games where the conflict is direct (i.e., she is not into wargaming at all). Her favorite types of games are cooperative affairs (one of her favorite games is Mysterium)..
At least, that is what she tells herself. Given the chance, my wife can be downright vicious in games. In our initial game of Ticket to Ride, at some point Rich was collecting new tickets and complaining about how he was not getting the correct color trains in the market to complete them or the ones he already had. I did not hear anything at all about Chicago, but somewhere my wife did. Over the next few turns, my wife took every single route into and out of Chicago. All of them. Once the last one was secured, Rich was getting upset. Evidently, he had some half-dozen tickets in his hand that absolutely depended upon his getting into Chicago. And there was nothing.
When the game ended, Rich was lamenting the lost points he had as a result. Then, as LeAnne was counting up her ticket points, he noticed that nothing—absolutely nothing—went into or through Chicago. He asked why she was in Chicago, and her answer was, “Because you needed to be there.” His jaw hit the floor. Please understand this was not meant with any meanness. My wife was learning the game, and it just seemed logical that if Person A needed access to city B and did not have it, and you had no other pressing places to be, blocking off city B made sense.
We often just say the word “Chicago” these days when my wife has managed to catch on to a brilliant strategy without anyone having to explain it to her. She gets flushed with embarrassment because, looking back on it, she feels a tinge of shame for being so aggressive. We all laugh because we all know it is just part of the game. And these days, nobody underestimates my wife in any game.
Type of Memory/Experience?
♥♥♡♡♡ – Fond memory/experience
Read more articles from K. David Ladage.
