When we talk about cooperative games, we’re not just talking about playing together here, we’re also talking about working together towards a common goal. Cooperative games are another one of those sections in our cafes and have been around a surprisingly long time although only recently have grown in popularity.
There is also a surprising variation across these games… we’ll try and show you a bit of everything, hopefully there will be something that intrigues and challenges you.
For the narratively inclined… Escape the Dark Castle
In 2017 The Nottingham based company, Themebourne, was formed to run a Kickstarter to create their first game, Escape the Dark Castle. It was a rip-roaring success, they made almost eight times their funding goal to publish the game which, for a new company, is astounding.
This is a casual, cooperative, narrative game where you start as ordinary people, incarcerated in the depths of the eponymous Dark Castle. Challenges must be overcome and, IF you all survive them then the Boss must be defeated before you gain your freedom.
You’ll be throwing your custom dice to beat various obstacles be they monsters, guards, traps and events. With a simple set of rules by your side and hopefully some useful items (mmm… stale loaf of bread anyone? Yum!) hopefully you can survive your ordeal, if not… shuffle the event cards and have another go!
This is quick, promotes discussion as a group, and is a great way to introduce people to the idea of role playing… if you want a deeper challenge then Escape the Dark Sector takes you to a sci-fi world with new challenges and this year they release the eagerly awaited third game in the series, based on Naughty Dogs video game, Last of Us, called just Last of Us: Escape the Dark and we can’t wait!
For the strategically minded… Forbidden (the ongoing series)
In 2010, Gamewright published the first in the (currently) four game series that makes up the Forbidden Games. Taking some of the mechanics that made Pandemic so great and sprinkling a bit of fantastical world building and further variability, whilst also making the rules easier (well, to start with). Follow the story from the shrinking shores of the Forbidden Island, to the heat and sandstorm cursed Forbidden Desert, into the lightning and wind of the Forbidden Sky, finally reaching another planet where sinkholes and aliens will challenge you in the dense Forbidden Jungle.
You’ll represent a band of explorers looking to overcome the odds and varied challenges in each game. Let’s focus on the first one just so you get a feel for it. In Forbidden Island you are Indiana Jones types looking to locate the four elemental artefacts and get the chopper to safety. The island is different every visit and all you do on your turn is complete a number of actions on your go. The island then takes its turn and starts to flood. As the game progresses, the island will start taking more and more actions on its turn and the urgency to complete the task builds…
Tension, rules that get slightly more complex each game, a version for all levels of players… even the games themselves have built in difficulty levels. Even seasoned players can fail, for instance, the first time we played Forbidden Jungle we lost in 5 turns. Yeah… challenging stuff whilst you figure out together the different strategies required to win!
For a pair of spies… Codenames Duet
In 2015 a legendary new party game was released, Codenames. It stormed into the modern zeitgeist and is currently sold in almost 40 different languages across the world. Two years later the cooperative version appeared, Codenames: Duet and this has turned out to be just as popular, turning the team based original into a game of pure cooperation.
The game turns word association into an engaging back and forth challenge. Narratively you are spymasters trying to gather a group of 15 spies within a time limit, without accidentally approaching an assassin. Each of you can see 9 agents and the grid between you shows you which your partner can approach, relate the positions on the grid to the codenames between you using a single word and hope your esteemed colleague guesses correctly. Take it in turns and if you manage the challenge in time there is a set of differing challenges to complete of different difficulties.
This is truly a modern classic and the conversations people have afterwards on what the links were are always interesting, the more you play, the more synchronised you become and the easier (hopefully) the game becomes.
For those good at keeping time… Kites
Let’s go fly a kite… or more precisely, put on an impressive kite show without letting any of your kites come crashing to the ground.
Kites is a real-time game where the kites are represented by a series of egg timers of different lengths of time. Keep the egg timers running and play all the cards to win. To turn the timers and keep them going, all you have to do is play a card of a matching colour. Some cards have multiple colours and that means you turn multiple timers… hmm… are you starting to see the challenge? You can talk about what you have in your hand but can’t show your cards to each other. There are a few more rules and a series of challenging cards to add to your deck of cards. Our favourite? The Airplane card, whilst it is in play nobody can speak because the plane going overhead drowns out your voices! Smart!
Challenging and very different to the others on this list, if you’re looking for a fast and frenetic challenge, this is the one to try! We’re not stringing you along.
For the unusual twist on a classic… The Crew
The Crew: The Search for Planet 9 (to give it its full title) is a cooperative trick taking game. Trick taking games are the earliest known form of card game dating back to China, early in the second millennium. The earliest Western trick taking game dates from 1426 and they have developed and changed over time and cooperative versions only really appeared in the 1990s. The Crew dates from 2019 and in 2020 won the prestigious Kennerspiel des Jahres which is the ‘Connoisseur’s Game of the Year’. Yeah, we had to have at least one ‘Oscar’ winner here somewhere, didn’t we?
The challenge here is every game there is a set of rules you will need to abide by, it could be as simple as one of you must win the trick that contains a certain card. Winning a trick is a simple process. Whoever plays a card first selects the ‘lead’ suit and all must follow it if they can. The highest card played in the lead suit normally wins, if you have none of the lead suit you can either throw in an off-suit card and have no chance of winning that trick or you may play a ‘trump suit’ card which in this game are always rockets, the highest trump play wins. Easy… except… communication is very, very limited. In fact you can signal a single bit of info on one card in your hand at some point during the round and that’s it.
We say this word a lot but this is truly genius, another great modern game and a classic, there are 50 challenges to overcome that tell your joint adventure to locate Planet 9 and there has also been a sequel where things are complicated a bit further, if you like this, you’ll love that. Start that quest today, in space nobody can hear you cooperate.
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We have an expansive selection of cooperative games for you to explore in each of our cafes and are always adding more so, chat to one of out staff, see what they recommend, and get a friend or two together and work as a team, it’s quality time.