What to Do If... A Game is Just So Adorable?!

Castles of Burgundy is widely considered one of the best strategy games in the board game hobby and designer Stefan Feld's masterpiece. Ranked at 19 on Board Game Geek's website, Castles of Burgundy combines dice, tile placement, and lots of ways to score to form a tight puzzle of a game with just enough player interaction not to feel like you are playing Solitaire on an airplane tray table. If you have not had a chance to play it, get online, find a copy of the game, and spend the requisite $30 to buy it right now... Don't wait - - it's worth your time.

Now, if you have played it before, or if you just received it through Amazon Prime shipping and you are punching out the tiles, you know that this game is as homely as it is well-designed. With sketchy (literally) art, floppy card stock, and enough beige to make a medieval monk blush. Oh, and must I mention that the theme is as pasted-on as your novelty version of Monopoly? For as much craft and care was infused in the rules and tactics, very little emphasis was placed on the art design as if Mr. Feld truly didn't want anything beautiful to distract the players. Castles of Burgundy is as vanilla as it gets (but I believe that was intentional, even by early 2000s game art standards).

Fast forward twenty or so years to 2022. Art standards and production values continue to surge upward. Kickstarter, Gamefound, and other crowdfunding sites are replete with games that feature meticulously molded figures, vivid card art, and high-quality paper with just the right rigidity and thickness. One would be hard-pressed to find any (successful) game on a crowdfunding site that does not boast incredible illustrations and highly detailed miniatures. Likewise, established game producers like Asmodee, Z-Man Games, and Gale Force Nine Games (I'm kind of excluding Queen Games and Alea/Ravensburger here... They sometime err on the side of bland) undeniably pursue artistic excellence when it comes to board games. Conversely, I can only imagine the number of games that may have some ingenious mechanics or brilliant game design that end up falling to the wayside because the designer (possibly Queen Games or Alea/Ravensburger) did not have the business acumen or foresight (which would be mildly ironic for a strategic game designer not to predict marketplace failure) to hire an artist who was not her cousin or dodgy neighbor with a community college arts degree (not to denigrate people with community colleges). To state it simply, in the world of board games, art tends to cover the warts of mediocre game design much more than superior game design obfuscates cheesy drawings.

In any case, that is not the precise point of this article, though the point is still relevant. Actually, I am looking at those board (and card) games that possess an affable quality -- a certain je-ne-sais-quoi --that I can only identify as "cute." If you saw these kinds of games, you'd know what I am talking about. Here's a classic example: Carcassonne. Yeah, that tile-laying game with the "meeples" that, for a time, became ubiquitous as other games appropriated these pieces. There is just something so adorable about putting a meeple on a bucolic field tile as if it is having a rest. If you look closely at the tile, you might spy sheep frolicking in the countryside. Another cute game (in my estimation) is Boss Monster. I relish looking at those 8-bit-rendered heroes and villains; it sends me back to those days when I would play Legend of Zelda on my Nintendo, and then slam my controller down in frustration as Link died due to some suspect maneuver (Okay, calm down, calm down...). A lot of the Tiny Epic games are lovable with their tiny zombies, motorcycles, and weapons. Have you seen the illustrations of Belfort or Harbour (goodbye, Tasty Minstrel Games)? I even find the animeeples of Agricola scrumptious with those sheepish little sheep and the cows that look so at-home in your house (or in your Cooking Hearth).

There are a ton of examples of cuteness in board games, whether it is a small aspect of the game or a greater part of its design (Bunny Kingdom or Stuffed Fables, anyone?). Sadly, though, cuteness has a way of covering up the gangrene underneath... Okay, that's a bit extreme, but it is similar to the point I made earlier: beauty covers up poor game design (perfume on a pig?) much more effectively than great game design covers up blandness. Some games can win you over with something that you could figuratively hug and squeeze with overflowing affection. It is only when you have purchased such a game, unpacked it, and played it to realize that you have been seduced by cuteness. So, what do you do if a game is just so adorable? Here are my tips...

If you haven't bought it, research it.

This is a no-brainer, but sometimes we have to pause, take a beat, and think about the game. There are quite a few games that look great on the store shelf. You may examine the board game box and feel drawn to a bunny or a teddy bear on the cover. Look up the game on Board Game Geek immediately on your smartphone (Does anyone still have dumb phones? If so, I salute you!). Read a few reviews. Then, convince yourself that the cute game is not that great. When all else fails, take a picture of that lovable element on the box, print it, frame it, and hang it in your game room as a trophy signifying your ability to overcome a questionable decision.

If you already bought it, be open to liking it.

I know there are folks out there that would have no compunction about listing cute games on eBay after one play, but I recommend playing the game a few times to determine truly if you do not like it. Just because a game is not "good" does not mean that you would not like it. If you browse Board Game Geek's website enough, you may discover numerous reviews for pretty, yet perfectly mediocre games. Let's face it: if the game is adorable enough, you might find it in your heart to overlook its flaws and embrace the art.

If you bought the game and just loathe it, consider this...

What about keeping the "cute" part of the game and discarding the rest? Maybe you can cannibalize the tokens for another game, cut the pages or cards you like and make a fun scrapbook, or even make up your own rules. I have heard stories of people rewriting the rules for a game or creating a new game with parts from another. Personally, I have been known to take the gorgeously detailed coins out of one game and use them for another.

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Ultimately, to quote some random Star Wars character, "do not be seduced by the Dark side." A lot of game producers put great effort, time, and market research into crafting games that people would buy. If they are truly smart, they do their best to capture the "casual" gamer; if they can convince the "average" consumer that a cute game is a must-have item, then the game producer has done well and can be gainfully employed. She can spend her earnings at Starbucks or pay next month's rent. And, in a way, you can feel good that you have helped a starving game designer survive one more month.

When it comes down to it, game design and production is a business and people are just trying to feed themselves and/or their families, so the workers in this industry endeavor to sell games, even if they are duds with a pretty coat of paint. Be discerning, take a breath, and allocate times towards researching. I told my sons the same thing about dating: instead of jumping into a relationship, observe, take the time to know the girl, and pray. Of course, if you can ignore the warts and psychoses, maybe a "cute" game is all you need. Just be prepared to deal with a lot of baggage (am I still talking about dating?).

Appreciating the Great to Discern the Derivative

As time passes, it is confirmed for me, again and again, that the simplicity and pick-up-and-playability of "old" video games is vastly superior to the glitz and graphics of today's three-dimensional offerings. Sure, one may marvel at the visual explosion of garish hues of any PlayStation game, or guffaw at the side-splitting and muscle-tearing action of XBox Kinect or Wii games, or even be wowed by the audio saturation emanating from one's quadrophonic sound system as one plays games... well, on any of those consoles. However, I find that it is difficult to trump the quaint jaggedness of 8-bit or 16-bit sprites, the plip-ploppiness of 25-year-old game sound effects, or even the mind-bending elegance of one D-pad and two, three, or six buttons.

The reason why I am waxing nostalgic and gushing with needlessly verbose prose is because I experienced a moment of peculiar lucidity today. During a work training session, rather randomly, I asked one of the attendees (who happened to be my age) if he remembered the infinite-life trick in Super Mario Brothers for the NES. For a few seconds, the attendee (who was attending via WebEx, actually) admitted some ignorance, but then corrected himself and recalled with impressive clarity that if you jump on a certain creature (in this case, a Koopa) a certain way (on the edge of its shell as it descends stairs made of blocks), you can set up an infinite loop of life gain. Floored by his apparent recall of that tactic, I filled in the blanks of his description by noting that it happens in World 3 and results in cryptic symbols replacing numbers next to the Mario life indicator that is displayed before the start of each level.

As this moment of lucidity passed, I was reminded that though games like Super Mario Brothers were easy to learn and somewhat challenging to conquer, there were arduous aspects of the gameplay that made even seasoned gamers pause, such as trying to advance anywhere in Legend of Zelda; also, there were wondrous moments of revelation that etched indelible impressions in our psyches, such as the infinite life trick. What was revealed to me was that while the simplicity of those old games lured us into becoming fans, it was the hidden and the discoverable that kept us returning to play over and over. There was something eminently rewarding about unearthing such tricks or conquering levels of ridiculous difficulty. I contend that games today, even with their Easter eggs, hidden levels, and downloadable content do not have the payoff of  the infinite life trick, of setting the correct tree on fire, or climbing the once-inaccessible tower to find a 1-UP (a la Knuckles the Echidna). I suppose it's because these games live in the rosy-tinted world of my memories. However, when I watch my sons play the old games or I hear a co-worker describe his son's admiration of Super Mario Brothers, I realize that if we all bring up our children to appreciate the things of the past, we bless them with the gift of discerning what is great from what is derivative.

The Legend of Zelda: 1HN Epic Questing

What else can be said about The Legend of Zelda on the NES that hasn't been said? It was a genre-defining RPG? It was a wonderfully rich game from a time when such games were rare on consoles? It has two of the most well-known videogame characters out there today -- Link and Zelda? It was easy to learn and fun to play, and yet difficult to solve and challenging to beat? All of these things have already been said, so what would the point be in writing a blog review about this game? Well, there's one reason why I'd write such a blog entry: because, like most blogs, this blog is self-indulgent, right? (wink)

Humor aside, The Legend of Zelda was one of the most important games in my collection and represents the hours of fun I spent playing it. If I remember correctly, my first introduction to The Legend of Zelda was through my friend Brian, who lent it to me in 1987. I don't remember much about how I felt playing the game, though I do remember how colorful and thick the manual was and how informative the enclosed map was. I also remember when, quite accidentally, I pressed down on the game inside my NES console to release the game without turning the power off, which wiped all the data out of memory, including Brian's saved games! When I return the games to him, he was visibly distraught. However, when I got back the Lone Wolf books I had lent him (I'll write a blog entry on these books in the future) and noticed how white-lined and bent-up the spines were, I felt that by accepting my damaged books I had paid my penance for my sad mishap. In any case, I learned a crucial lesson: turn the power off BEFORE you eject a game cartridge.

I ended up getting The Legend of Zelda for Christmas in 1988. I still have the cartridge in all its gold-plated glory, though I cannot find the manual or the map. Recently, I started up a new campaign in the game and made it through the first dungeon. As I played the game, I noted how fun it was to go from screen to screen and blasting baddies with my sword (note: you can "blast" your foes with distant sword shots if Link is at full strength), but I also noted how Link seems to move as if stuck to a grid, which can render fighting more challenging than it should be, and makes dying an all-too common occurrence. I remember beating this game in four games, but I've already died six times in my current campaign! So, it's an understatement to say that The Legend of Zelda is hard.

Even in this day and age of graphically-amazing games, I would heavily recommend The Legend of Zelda as it is on the NES. The graphics are quaint and suitable for younger kids, and even the skeletons and ghosts look "cute." Of course, if you have a conviction against such creatures in a game, then I would consider the appearance of such foes as a chance to discuss if such creatures exist. The one thing I get from this game, though, is that Link is a hero who is on a quest to rescue the princess. There aren't many missions purer than that.