Cooperative board games are board games in which players work together to achieve a common goal rather than competing against each other. [1] Either the players win the game by reaching a predetermined objective, or all players lose the game, often by not reaching the objective before a certain event ends the game. [2]
In cooperative board games, all players win or lose the game together. These games should not be confused with noncompetitive games, such as The Ungame , which simply do not have victory conditions or any set objective to complete. [3] While adventure board games with role playing and dungeon crawl elements like Gloomhaven may be included, pure tabletop role-playing games like Descent: Journeys in the Dark are excluded as they have potentially infinite victory conditions with persistent player characters. Furthermore, games in which players compete together in two or more groups, teams or partnerships (such as Axis & Allies , and card games like Bridge and Spades) fall outside of this definition, even though there is temporary cooperation between some of the players. Multiplayer conflict games like Diplomacy may also feature temporary cooperation during the course of the game. These games are not considered cooperative though, because players are eliminated and ultimately only one individual can win.
Early cooperative games were used by parents and teachers in educational settings. [4] In 1903 Elizabeth Magie patented "The Landlord's Game", inspired by the principles and philosophy of Henry George. The Landlords' and designed as a protest against the monopolists of the time, the game is considered to be the game from which Monopoly was largely derived. In it, Magie had two rule-sets - the Monopoly rules, in which players all vied to accrue the largest revenue and crush their opponents, and a co-operative set. Her dualistic approach was a teaching tool meant to demonstrate that the co-operative rules were morally superior. [5]
In 1954, a board game version of Beat the Clock, a game show, was released. [6] In 1956, the Lowell Toy Manufacturing Corporation of New York City released a board game version of I've Got a Secret, a panel show, featuring host Garry Moore on the cover of the box.
Teacher Jim Deacove published the cooperative game Together in 1971. He founded Family Pastimes in 1972 in Perth, Ontario, [7] [8] focusing exclusively on cooperative games. [9] Family Pastimes has published numerous cooperative games, having released over 100 board games including the popular game of Max the Cat. The company also holds the trademark for the phrase, "A co-operative game". [10]
Ken Kolsbun and Jann Kolsbun founded Animal Town in 1976 in California. They invented cooperative games such as Save the Whales, Nectar Collector, and Dam Builders. [11] Animal Town was renamed as Child and Nature in 2003. [12]
During the 1980s, several cooperative games like The Wreck of the B.S.M. Pandora , Time Tripper , and Arkham Horror were published. In the Sherlock Holmes: Consulting Detective series of games published in the 1980s, players are presented with a mystery to solve, and they trace the evidence together. Many cooperative Adventure board game series with Role-playing elements like Citadel of Blood , HeroQuest , Wizards (board game) , Advanced HeroQuest , Deathmaze were released in this decade.
Minion Hunter is a board game originally released in 1992 by Game Designers' Workshop in conjunction with their Dark Conspiracy Role Playing Game. The game is designed to encourage the players to work together to stall and/or defeat the plans of four monster races as a primary goal, with the individual advancement of the players as a secondary objective. Star Trek: The Next Generation Interactive VCR Board Game is set in the Star Trek universe and released in 1993. [13] It utilizes a video tape that runs constantly while users play the board game portion. Events on the video tape combine with board game play to determine whether users win or lose the game. The video itself was directed by Les Landau and contains original footage filmed on the actual Star Trek: The Next Generation sets at Paramount Studios. Warhammer Quest is a fantasy dungeon, role-playing adventure board game released by Games Workshop in 1995 as the successor to HeroQuest and Advanced HeroQuest, set in its fictional Warhammer Fantasy world.
In 2000, Reiner Knizia published Lord of the Rings which influenced a number of subsequent titles, including Shadows over Camelot . Pandemic , designed by Matt Leacock was first published by Z-Man Games in the United States in 2008. [14] Space Alert is a cooperative survival designer board game created by Vlaada Chvátil in 2008. [15] Players assume the roles of space explorers on a mission to survey the galaxy. The crew is evaluated on teamwork and how they deal with problems that arise on their journey.
Other cooperative games of the last 10 years include Star Trek: Expeditions , Sentinels of the Multiverse , Freedom: The Underground Railroad, Mechs vs. Minions , [16] [17] Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island , The 7th Continent , Zombicide , Spirit Island , and Hanabi , which won the Spiel des Jahres award in 2013.
Gloomhaven is a cooperative board game for 1 to 4 players designed by Isaac Childres and published by Cephalofair Games in 2017. It is a campaign-based dungeon crawl game with a branching narrative campaign, 95 unique playable scenarios, 17 playable classes, and more than 1,500 cards in a box which weighs almost 10 kilograms (22 lb). [18] [19] Gloomhaven was selected by both a jury and fans as the Origins Game Fair Best Board Game of 2018. [20] As of early August 2018, it had sold about 120,000 copies. [21]
In José P. Zagal, Jochen Rick, and Idris Hsi's "Collaborative games: Lessons learned from board games", the lessons the researchers learned highlight what makes a good cooperative board game. [22]
These researchers also point out Challenges in designing collaborative games due to the following pitfalls that must be overcome:
Participants typically play against the game. Cooperative board games generally involve players joining forces against the game itself, and can be played without any player in the role of the opposition or Gamemaster. In Pandemic , for example, players work together to stop and cure different strains of diseases. [23]
Also, in some cooperative games, players actually cooperate with the opposing forces in the game. For example, in Max the Cat, players are mice who keep an aggressive cat at bay by offering him milk and other appeasements. In this way, all participants in the conflict scenario are fulfilled and the resolution is truly cooperative or "win-win".
In many contemporary cooperative games, randomizing devices help in varying game experience over multiple plays. Dice can be rolled, cards can be drawn each turn from a shuffled deck or various board sections of a modular board revealed to generate random objectives, events and challenges. These provide the conflict or challenge in the game, and make it progressively more difficult for the players. For example, in Save the Whales, players work together to protect whales from the challenges inherent in the game setting—radioactive waste, commercial whaling, etc. [24]
Most cooperative games bestow different abilities or responsibilities upon the players incentivizing cooperation. [22] Some cooperative games might have an added layer of intrigue by giving players personal win conditions. In Dead of Winter: A Cross Roads Game , a zombie apocalypse game, in order to win players must achieve the communal victory condition and a personal objective. Gloomhaven is a cooperative board game for 1 to 4 players designed by Isaac Childres and published by Cephalofair Games in 2017 where each player also has a personal objective.
In some games, there are opposing teams whose members cooperate with one another, working together against the other teams. Such teams may have equal or unequal number of players, in some cases taking the format of "one versus all". For example, in Scotland Yard and The Fury of Dracula , one player controls the "enemy", while the other players are cooperating to locate and defeat said enemy.
A traitor game or semi-cooperative game can be seen as a cooperative game with a betrayal mechanism. While, as in a standard cooperative game, the majority of players work towards a common goal, one or more players are secretly assigned to be traitors who win if the other player fail. Determining the identity of traitors is often central to such games. For example, in Battlestar Galactica: The Board Game , players secretly designated as Cylons can usually be more effective if the human players are unaware who they are, and can profit from the human players suspecting each other. Other games, like Betrayal at House on the Hill , start out fully cooperative, but assigns a player to be the villain mid-game.
NECA/WizKids, LLC is an American company based in New Jersey that produces tabletop games. WizKids is best known for its collectible miniatures games (CMGs) Mage Knight, HeroClix, MechWarrior, and HorrorClix, all of which make use of the company's Clix system, in which the changing combat statistics and abilities of each figure were indicated by a turnable dial inside the base underneath the figure. The company was founded in 2000 by Jordan Weisman, a veteran of the game company FASA. It was purchased by sports-card manufacturer Topps, Inc. in 2003.
A dungeon crawl is a type of scenario in fantasy role-playing games (RPGs) in which heroes navigate a labyrinth environment, battling various monsters, avoiding traps, solving puzzles, and looting any treasure they may find. Video games and board games which predominantly feature dungeon crawl elements are considered to be a genre.
HeroQuest, is an adventure board game created by Milton Bradley in conjunction with the British company Games Workshop in 1989, and re-released in 2021. The game is loosely based around archetypes of fantasy role-playing games: the game itself was actually a game system, allowing the gamemaster to create dungeons of their own design using the provided game board, tiles, furnishings and figures. The game manual describes Morcar/Zargon as a former apprentice of Mentor, and the parchment text is read aloud from Mentor's perspective. Several expansions have been released, each adding new tiles, traps, artifacts, and monsters to the core system.
A cooperative video game, often abbreviated as co-op, is a video game that allows players to work together as teammates, usually against one or more non-player character opponents (PvE). Co-op games can be played locally using one or multiple input controllers or over a network via local area networks, wide area networks, or the Internet.
Shadows over Camelot is an Arthurian-themed board game designed by Serge Laget and Bruno Cathala, illustrated by Julien Delval and Cyrille Daujean. The game was unveiled by the publishers Days of Wonder at the 2005 American International Toy Fair and was more widely released in May and June 2005. The game was also published in French as Les Chevaliers de la Table Ronde and in German as Schatten über Camelot. In 2008, an expansion for Shadows over Camelot was released titled Merlin's Company.
World of Warcraft: The Board Game is an adventure board game based on the popular World of Warcraft MMORPG. The game was designed and published by Fantasy Flight Games in 2005.
Descent: Journeys in the Dark is a two to five player high fantasy dungeon crawl published by Fantasy Flight Games in 2005. Descent was designed and produced by Kevin Wilson. The game is based on an improved version of the mechanics of FFG's licensed Doom: The Boardgame. In Descent, players take the roles of adventurers who delve into underground complexes in search of treasure. One player takes the role of the Overlord, who controls the enemies and plays cards to hinder the hero players. Descent differs from other games in the genre in that the Overlord player's goal is to win by exhausting the other players of victory points, rather than merely to facilitate play. The Overlord's resources are limited by the rules of the game, which require them to hoard and expend "threat" points, which are generated in response to the hero players' actions, in order to hamper the other players and to bring out additional monsters to defeat them. This mechanism is very much reminiscent of The Lord of the Rings when playing with the Sauron optional expansion.
Pandemic is a cooperative board game designed by Matt Leacock and first published by Z-Man Games in the United States in 2008. Pandemic is based on the premise that four diseases have broken out in the world, each threatening to wipe out a region. The game accommodates two to four players, each playing one of seven possible roles: dispatcher, medic, scientist, researcher, operations expert, contingency planner, or quarantine specialist. Through the combined effort of all the players, the goal is to discover all four cures before any of several game-losing conditions are reached.
Castle Ravenloft Board Game is a board game published in 2010 by Wizards of the Coast. It was the first game released in the Dungeons & Dragons Adventure System board game series.
Lords of Waterdeep is a German-style board game designed by Peter Lee and Rodney Thompson and published by Wizards of the Coast in 2012. The game is set in Waterdeep, a fictional city in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. Players take the roles of the masked rulers of Waterdeep, deploying agents and hiring adventurers to complete quests and increase their influence over the city.
A gamemaster's screen, also called a GM's screen, is a gaming accessory, usually made out of either cardboard or card stock, and is used by the gamemaster to hide all the relevant data related to a tabletop role-playing game session from the players in order to not spoil the plot of the story. It also hides any dice rolls made by the gamemaster that players should not see. In addition, screens often have essential tables and information printed on the inside for the gamemaster to easily reference during play.
Freedom: The Underground Railroad is a 2013 co-operative board game designed by Brian Mayer and published by Academy Games, their first game in the Freedom Series. The game has drawn positive attention for its approach and handling of the topic.
Codenames is a 2015 party card game designed by Vlaada Chvátil and published by Czech Games Edition. Two teams compete by each having a "spymaster" give one-word clues that can point to multiple words on the board. The other players on the team attempt to guess their team's words while avoiding the words of the other team. Codenames received positive reviews and won the 2016 Spiel des Jahres award for the best board game of the year.
Mechs vs. Minions is a 2016 cooperative board game published by Riot Games set in the League of Legends universe.
Gloomhaven is a cooperative board game for one to four players designed by Isaac Childres and published by Cephalofair Games in 2017. It is a campaign-based dungeon crawl game including a narrative campaign, 95 unique playable scenarios, and 17 playable classes. Since its introduction the game has been acclaimed by reviewers, and has been described as one of the best board games ever made.
Nemesis is a semi-cooperative science fiction Polish board game for 1-5 players, designed by Adam Kwapiński and published by Awaken Realms in 2018. The game is set in the spaceship Nemesis, and includes co-operative mechanisms with other confrontational mechanisms and conflicting objectives. Upon its release, Nemesis was positively received for its replayability, tension, and components, but its high complexity was met with criticism.
Return to Dark Tower is a board game for one to four players, designed and published by Restoration Games. The game is a sequel to the 1981 board game Dark Tower, by Milton Bradley Company. Return to Dark Tower has players cooperate or compete as they rule over kingdoms surrounding the titular Tower, with their chosen "heroes" gathering resources, defeating monsters and enhancing their strength. As the game progresses, the Tower dispenses corruption across the land, which players must cleanse, while also looking to identify the foe inhabiting the Tower, so that they may defeat it, to win the game. Return to Dark Tower features a circular mat that is sectioned into quarters, to represent the kingdoms, with a Bluetooth-powered Tower at the center, which is connected to an app that runs the game.
A digital tabletop game is a video game genre that includes video games that have gameplay similar to physical tabletop games, including board games, card games, and role-playing games. Many digital tabletop games are adaptions of existing physical games into the video games, though some of these are wholly digital games that use tabletop game mechanics. There are also tabletop game simulators that allow for users to recreate tabletop games from a variety of game pieces.
Tellstones: King's Gambit is a 2020 tabletop game created by Riot Games under their Riot Tabletop division. Two or four players take turns placing, swapping, and guessing tokens; the goal of the game is to either guess three tokens correctly or "boast" successfully by correctly guessing all hidden tokens. Developed as part of Riot's expansion into games outside League of Legends, the game is the company's second tabletop product following their 2016 release Mechs vs. Minions. Tellstones was released in September 2020; reviewers praised the game for its presentation and build quality, but criticized its gameplay as short and uninteresting.
Gloomhaven is a turn-based strategy role-playing video game, developed by Flaming Fowl Studios and published by Asmodee Digital. It is an adaptation of the tabletop game by the same name. Following two years of early access, Gloomhaven was released for Windows on October 20, 2021 and macOS on November 25, 2021. The game was ported to Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S in September 2023.