Hi! This is Setsu Shimizu, North America Director.
What kind of board games do you like?
I’m a huge fan, and I’ve gotten hooked little by little thanks to friends who also love board games.
Let me introduce a few of them.
ITO
“ITO” is a card game where you communicate by expressing numbers through images.
Each player gets one number card from 1 to 100. Using the theme card, players represent the size of their number and try to arrange all the cards in order from smallest to largest. (AI explanation)
This game is great for getting to know each other and for team-building!
Here are three games I play seriously with kids… though I always lose.
SORRY!
“Sorry!” is a board game where you move your pawns according to cards, aiming to reach the goal before anyone else. It has strong elements of blocking your opponents. When you send someone else’s pawn back to the start, you say “Sorry!”—that’s the signature of the game. (AI explanation)
It’s completely a game of chance, but for some reason, I always lose to kids.
BLOKUS
Place your colored pieces on the board so that only the corners touch. Edges must not touch. The goal is to place as many of your pieces on the board as possible. The player with the fewest squares left at the end wins. (AI explanation)
You need to have a flexible mind to play this well.
Nanjamonja
Flip a card from the deck, and the first person to see the character gives it a name based on its appearance or intuition (e.g., “Green Old Man,” “Fluffy,” anything goes). Everyone memorizes the name, and the next person flips a card. When a character that already has a name appears again, the first person to shout the correct name wins all the cards that have been collected so far. (AI explanation)
It’s a memory game, so I always lose to kids.
Recently, the youth group at church has been playing Time Bomb.
In the board game “Time Bomb,” players are divided into two teams: the Time Police, who want to prevent the bomb from exploding, and the Bombers, who want to set it off. Each player gets a role card, which is secret from the others. The fun lies in bluffing, such as “Only two wires left to defuse!” or trying to deduce who is a Bomber. (AI explanation)
Since you don’t know who has which role, you can enjoy communicating and analyzing others’ habits.
However, it’s a little painful to trick each other right after worship 😅 (just kidding)
Other games such as PIT and RUMMIKUB are great!
What’s your favorite game?
