Seven exciting real-time games to liven up game night
There's nothing like intentional, organized chaos: Here are seven games that bring that to your table.
Ah, hello there! I hope this week’s edition of Don’t Eat the Meeples finds you well. Before we get to this week’s topic — real-time games that I really enjoy and think you might, too — some more general items for your consideration.
First, I’ve taken advantage of Substack’s referral program, and to that end, if you refer three friends, I’ll send you a small token of my appreciation in the form of a shiny Don’t Eat the Meeples sticker. The leaderboard page gives you a little more detail about that.
Second, I’ve been watching a lot of horror lately. We just finished the latest Mike Flanagan TV show, The Fall of the House of Usher, which was quite the ride throughout, and I’ve been making my way through Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s catalog slowly. What a filmmaker! What have you been watching or reading this spooky season?
Fit to Print
One of my top games of the year is Fit to Print, a real-time tile-laying game about filling the front page of a newspaper. You’re playing as an editor (and a very cute animal editor, at that) gathering stories, advertisements and photographs, and you’re doing all that in real-time. It bears a striking resemblance to Galaxy Trucker from the outside, but it feels very different inside. Rather than building something that is then destroyed, you’re building something that’s ranked by scoring criteria on your own board.
I talked with the game’s designer, Peter McPherson, about the game earlier this year.
Galaxy Trucker
Real-time games can be frustrating, difficult and ridiculous, sometimes all at the same time. Galaxy Trucker is all of those things and then some. In this game, you’re building a spaceship to haul goods, picking them up from planets and delivering them to others. Along the way, your ship will take damage, losing essential pieces and potentially getting stranded in space.
The random events each round make for a wildly entertaining game as you and your opponents limp to the end of each round. The collective groan around the table when an asteroid just misses your ship, leaving you relieved and excited: That’s the sound of Galaxy Trucker.
Fit to Print designer Peter McPherson had this to say about Galaxy Trucker when I interviewed him earlier this year, and I think it sums up the game really nicely: “You make decisions; you watch your ship fall apart. It's hilarious. I love it.”
Nine Tiles Panic
Easily the most simple game on this list, Nine Tiles Panic sees players taking a stack of nine tiles, then building a 3x3 grid of those tiles, trying to beat the clock (the panic, if you will). They aim to meet three different scoring criteria, which are randomly selected. It’s a fast-paced game with a simple set of rules: Build your grid, and make sure the roads connect appropriately. That’s it.
Well, that’s mostly it, at least. You do have to read the rules for each of the scoring cards, which adds a bit of heft. Nothing too extravagant is coming from these scoring possibilities, but there’s enough variation in scoring to keep things interesting from play to play.
Ready Set Bet
A real-time game that’s largely gambling on dice rolls and features one player who definitely cannot win the game? It sounds slightly preposterous that this would be a rollicking time, but Ready Set Bet, a game about betting on horse races designed by John D. Clair, is an incredible time.
One player plays as the house, rolling dice, moving the horses forward, and ideally, shouting loudly as they impersonate a race caller. Everyone else places bets throughout the race, earning more for earlier bids and less for those placed later. Because the movement of the horses is based on dice rolling, you can’t be guaranteed that a horse in an early lead will win — but if you don’t get your bets in early, you’ll end up making considerably less money.
Now Boarding
Real-time games make for an interesting twist on games that are otherwise just sort of focused on optimization. The excellent cooperative game Now Boarding fits that bill neatly: If you take away the real-time aspect, this is a pretty straightforward optimization puzzle. Everyone plays as an airline trying to shuttle passengers across the United States, but if too many passengers don’t get on a plane in time, you’ll lose.
Each round is played over two phases, the first of which isn’t timed — you have as much time as you want to discuss your plans for the real-time phase. The second is timed, and it’s when new passengers and their destinations are revealed. As a result, there’s only so much you can plan, allowing this game to take flight. (Hah!)
Magic Maze
This cooperative real-time game features one of the absolutely most annoying mechanics I’ve seen in a game, which is why it has a near-permanent spot in my heart. Magic Maze is a game in which you and your teammates control specific movements of pieces on the board but not the pieces themselves — so you might be able to move any piece down, but not any other direction. As dungeon crawlers working through a shopping mall to retrieve your stolen weapons (I don’t really get it either; don’t worry), your goal is to get those weapons and get out of the mall.
It’s a game that requires some intuitive cooperation, because you can’t talk, but vitally, you can pick up a big red token and bang it obnoxiously in front of another player as you hope they understand why you’re trying to get their attention.
Spaceteam
Real-time games invite chaos, and none of these preceding games can even remotely match the chaos of Spaceteam. This is a cooperative card game in which you and your fellow players must work together to keep your spaceship in running order. Each player has a stack of malfunction cards in front of them, and those malfunction cards around the table must be resolved to win the game, because throughout that deck, there are special ‘systems go’ cards that must be put together to win. That’s simple enough, right?
Well, imagine if half of those malfunctions are comprised of words, prefixes and suffixes you’ve never combined before, and the other half are pictures of devices you’re going to have to somehow describe. It’s a game that doesn’t devolve into wild shouting — it’s a game that starts there. And somehow, for some reason, I really enjoy it.
Well, thank you, as ever, for joining me on this adventure this week. What real-time games do you love that I missed? I’ve got plenty more that could have made my list, but I’m trying not to hit the 2,000-word mark every week, for both our sakes.
Next week: Don’t get the decorations out just yet, but it’s time for my annual holiday gift guide. But if you can’t wait that long, check out my 2020, 2021 and 2022 board game gift guides.
I'm surprised to not see one of our favorite games on your list: Kitchen Rush!
Fit to Print is one of my all time favorite games!