Are You Game?

My boys spent many hours recently creating board games to play. They are all creative and all very male. Let me take you through some of the finer points of these games. I promise they won't disappoint.
First up, is Benjamin's game entitled, "The Most Impossible Game in the World". I tend to agree with that title. In order to move your pieces you have to close your eyes and turn a trapezoid made of cardboard around and around in your hand and then pinch a spot on the edge and then open your eyes to see what number you got. If you hit a dark spot you have to go back to start. When you think you've reached the end, you haven't because it's really just a portal to another game board. I watched Benjamin play this game with his Opa and when Opa actually made it through all the lands, he just quickly drew a new one. "Now you have to get through Bat World!" "Oh no, you've landed in Evil Robot Town!" The game board is literally infinite. Unless Benjamin runs out of ideas for more perilous dimensions. So, definitely infinite. Featured here are the areas known as "Bomb City", "NoNo City", "Spider Land" and "The Spiky Future".

Gabriel's game is called "Wheel of Terror" which makes me picture some crazy version of Wheel of Fortune where if you guess a letter incorrectly something bad happens to you. "I'm sorry! There are no D's. Hand over your wallet." The game is terrifying mostly because you aren't sure if you are ever going to make it through in under an hour. I can write that because Marc and I have had extensive talks with the boys about their games and game theory and what makes games fun. Gabe and David John understand now, I think, that just being hard doesn't make it fun- especially if it is entirely luck based. Anyway, what I love about Gabe's game is that he made his own working spinner out of cardboard and a twist-tie. I also love that one of his game pieces is a person of color, that two of them are girls and that one of the girls is wearing leggings and a long shirt instead of a dress. Way to be aware of diversity son. I adore the box that he made for the game because it says "2-4 people players". I'm glad we've made it clear what species you need to be to play the game. Sorry dolphins, you might be smart, but you can't play.

David John made an elaborate game called "Doomland". His box even has subtext. It says, "the weapon-picking-up, enemy-destroying race game". This game has four amazing phases. Phase one doesn't have a name but there is a man-eating venus fly trap and a pit of hot lava to contend with. The only way out is to advance to Goblin Caves by landing on the fifth space. To move you roll a six-sided die. If you miss it, you have to just wait until you die, which will happen, and get sent back to start to try again. In Goblin Caves you have to pick up swords by landing on them and each successively large goblin requires a certain number of swords to get past him. Thankfully, there are check points so that when you die you don't go all the way back to start. Once you've defeated the largest goblin you are treated with a trip to Zombie City where you have to pick up guns to defeat successively larger and scarier zombies. Having survived the zombie apocalypse, you can now have the fun of traversing Death Mountain. Death Mountain has been over-run by skull-shaped robots who can't be killed with swords or guns, oh no. You need bombs for those robots. When you have collected twelve bombs and defeated the gigantic skull-robot boss you are rewarded by getting to go outside. And after taking the 2-3 hours it requires to finish this game, going outside is a pretty awesome reward. Really. Wanna play?