What is a Creative Board Game?
A creative board game is not merely about winning or losing. I particularly like seeing how, for example, players do not tally up their points in Dixit because the focus shifts elsewhere. Creative board games revolve around storytelling, imagination, and stepping out of conventional frameworks. These games often offer open-ended gameplay, allowing players to create, imagine, and choose their own paths. We build civilizations; we craft stories.
Benefits of Creative Board Games
Creative board games are tremendously developmental, whether you consider cognitive or emotional skills. They encourage players to think critically, solve problems, and adapt to changing game dynamics. This not only strengthens cognitive flexibility but also fosters skills such as empathy, negotiation, and collaboration. Furthermore, creativity is often linked to the arts, which can be somewhat intimidating because it is synonymously used with talent. However, these games are excellent at bringing out the inherent creativity in everyone.
Examples of Creative Board Games
You're probably eager to try these games out, but where to start? Here are some popular creative board games:
Dixit: This game tests your ability to think creatively and interpret others' ideas.
Mice and Mystics: It’s a game where players are turned into mice and must navigate through a castle's many dangers.
Betrayal at House on the Hill: This game offers a new spooky storyline every time you play.
Each of these games stimulates creativity in unique ways, offering a departure from traditional point-scoring or race-to-the-finish board games.
Who are Creative Board Games For?
Creative board games are not just for children. Like board games in general, they target a wide audience—from children and teenagers to adults. Games like Rory's Story Cubes are great for children—though I've seen adults playing it too—while The Extraordinaires Design Studio is excellent for teenagers. Adults can enjoy Pandemic Legacy: Season 1, which requires complex decision-making and strategy. But these are just a few examples; the point is that everyone can find their own game within the creative category.
How to Choose a Creative Board Game
When selecting a creative board game, consider your interests, who you'll be playing with, and the skills you want to develop. Look for games that align with the themes or narratives you enjoy, and consider the game's complexity and length. And dare to experiment. Games that require creativity often take you on unusual paths, but that's the essence of their appeal, and it can be greatly rewarding for all players. It’s fair to feel that playing such games presents a greater challenge, often taking you far out of your comfort zone, but it’s worth it. Really.
Creative Board Games in Education
The benefits of creative board games are not limited to home use. Educators are increasingly using these games to foster creativity and promote active learning. Games such as Snake Oil and Once Upon a Time have made their way into classrooms, helping to teach various subjects in an engaging way. Here, it is especially important to let the board games do their work. There's no need to generate educational situations; the goal is to create play situations, engage with the creative games, and let the board game handle the rest.
The Future of Creative Board Games
The trend towards creative board games shows no sign of slowing down. As board game design continues to evolve, we can expect to see an increase in games that break traditional molds and offer unique and imaginative experiences.
So, whether you're a seasoned gamer looking for a new challenge or just want to unlock your creativity, there's a creative board game out there waiting for you!
Most Popular Creative Board Games
Betrayal at House on the Hill
Players explore a haunted mansion, encountering creepy phenomena and omens until one player turns traitor, leading to a climactic showdown.
Age
Recommended for ages 12 and up, 60 min, 3-6 players
Tools
The game comes with multiple room tiles, character tokens, and cards.
Skills
It stimulates strategic thinking, cooperative play, and narrative reasoning.
Instructions
Players take turns moving through the haunted house, revealing new rooms and encountering events, items, and omens. When a certain number of omens have been revealed, a 'haunt' begins and one player usually becomes a traitor. The exact rules for the haunt vary based on which of the 50+ scenarios is triggered.
Concept
Players have to guess a concept (which could be anything from 'dinosaur' to 'Eiffel Tower') based on a series of icons.
Age
Recommended for ages 10 and up, 40 min, 4-12 players
Tools
The game includes a large game board with various icons and cubes to mark these icons.
Skills
Encourages non-verbal communication, logical thinking, and creativity.
Instructions
The active player chooses a concept, then places cubes on the icons that best represent that concept. The other players guess what the concept could be, based on the icons chosen.
Dixit is a card game that invites players to rely on their intuition and imagination to guess which card one player, the storyteller, is describing.
Age
Recommended for ages 8 and up, 30 min, 3-8 players
Tools
Dixit includes a deck of 84 unique, beautifully illustrated cards, a game board, six wooden rabbit tokens as player markers, and 36 voting tokens in six different colors.
Skills
Dixit develops creativity, abstract thinking, and social interaction skills as players interpret and guess the story behind the images.
Instructions
In Dixit, one player is the storyteller for the turn and makes up a sentence or phrase that might describe one of their cards. Then, each player selects a card from their own hand that they feel best matches the storyteller's description, and after shuffling and revealing the cards, all players except the storyteller vote on which card they believe belongs to the storyteller.
Mice and Mystics
Players, transformed into mice, go on a whimsical adventure through a castle full of dangers.
Age
Recommended for ages 7 and up, 60-90 min, 1-4 players
Tools
Game includes mouse figurines, cards, tiles, and a storybook.
Skills
Enhances problem-solving, teamwork, and storytelling abilities.
Instructions
Players choose a chapter from the storybook and try to complete it as a team. Each turn, players can move, explore, battle, and make story decisions, which will affect the outcome of the game.
Once Upon A Time
A card game where players become storytellers, competing to weave a tale that includes all their cards.
Age
Recommended for ages 8 and up, 30 min, 2-6 players
Tools
The game includes story cards and ending cards.
Skills
Enhances creative thinking, storytelling, and language skills.
Instructions
Players start with a hand of story cards and one ending card. The first storyteller begins the tale and continues telling it, playing cards from their hand to match the elements they introduce. Other players can interrupt and take over the story if they have a card that matches a story element just mentioned.
Pandemic Legacy: Season 1
A cooperative board game where players work together to prevent global pandemics.
Age
Recommended for ages 6 and up, 20 min, 1-12 players
Tools
The game includes a board, cards, and tokens, with additional elements revealed as the game progresses.
Skills
It fosters strategic thinking, cooperation, and problem-solving skills.
Instructions
Players take on roles such as scientist or medic, and work together to travel the world, treating diseases and finding cures. The game changes over time, with new rules and components introduced.
Pictionary
A classic drawing game where players have to guess what their team-mate is trying to draw.
Age
Recommended for ages 12 and up, 90 min, 3-16 players
Tools
The game includes a game board, word cards, a timer, and drawing tools.
Skills
Enhances creative thinking, non-verbal communication, and teamwork.
Instructions
Players move around the game board by guessing correctly what their team mates are trying to draw within a time limit. The first team to reach the end of the board wins.
Rory's Story Cubes
Players roll dice with different images and weave a story based on the results.
Age
Recommended for ages 6 and up, 20 min, 1-12 players
Tools
The game includes nine dice, each with different images on the faces.
Instructions
Players roll the dice and must tell a story that connects all of the images shown.
Snake Oil
Players invent unique products and sell them to all sorts of quirky customers.
Age
Recommended for ages 10 and up, 20-30 min, 3-10 players
Tools
The game includes word cards and customer cards.
Skills
Encourages creativity, persuasive speaking, and entrepreneurship.
Instructions
Each player takes turns being the 'customer' while the other players combine two word cards from their hand to create a product and then 'sell' it to the customer. The customer then decides which product they liked best, and that 'salesperson' gets a point.
Scrabble
A word game where players earn points by constructing words from individual lettered tiles onto a game board.
Age
Recommended for ages 13 and up, 90 min, 2-4 players
Tools
The game includes a game board, letter tiles, and tile racks.
Skills
Encourages vocabulary expansion, spelling accuracy, and strategic thinking.
Instructions
Each player draws a set of tiles and tries to form words on the board, crossword-style, during their turn. Points are awarded based on the letters used and where they are placed on the board.
Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective
Players work together to solve intricate cases by following leads and piecing together clues.
Age
Recommended for ages 13 and up, 60-120 min, 1-8 players
Tools
The game includes case booklets, newspapers, and a map of Victorian London.
Skills
Encourages problem-solving, logic, and cooperative play.
Instructions
Players choose a case and start reading the introduction. They then decide where to follow leads, consulting the case booklet, newspapers, and map to gather information and piece together the solution.
Abszolút képtelen sztorik (Hanna Győri - Máté Lencse, 2022)
In 2022, I also designed a creative board game. Its title could be translated as "Absolutely Improbable Stories" It's a story-writing game. We defined eight story elements (character, twist, setting, object, etc.) and the title. Each story card contains 9 instructions. Each round, everyone writes a sentence based on their own card, and then we vote on which sentence should be included in our collective story. The elements are written in a random order, so there are games where we start with a setting, sometimes the hero appears right away, or we give a title even though we don't know what our story will be about yet.
Two important aspects of the game design stand out to me. First, the game values (scores) voting for a good sentence just as much as writing a good sentence. So, not only players with great writing flair can win the game, but also those who have a good sense of public taste. The other point I would highlight is that in this game, you can vote for yourself. I think this is a missing skill. We find it hard to admit and proclaim when we do something well. However, the game mechanics are structured such that if I write a bad sentence and vote for myself, it’s a mistake because my sentence won’t be included, nor will I score points for voting for a good sentence. I usually laugh a lot during the game, for example, when we have to incorporate a handsome garbage man into a sci-fi story set on an alien planet. The game requires solving incredible improbabilities, which demands considerable creativity.
