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mburnamfink's review
4.0
Meeples Together is an encyclopedic treatment of cooperative boardgames. Given the paucity of good books about boardgames design, period, this book is important for game designers in general, and absolutely vital for anyone making a cooperative boardgame.
While competitive boardgames are made interesting by opposing tactics and hostile interference, cooperative boardgames pit the players against the rules. In order to make this interesting, to make it truly cooperative, the game must be flawed in some way, with imperfect information, randomness, or hidden teams and traitor mechanics. Meeples Together surveys the history of cooperative games, develops a general theory of what makes them fun, deeply investigates key mechanics for games, and conducts in depth case studies on about a dozen games. The paradigm games are Pandemic, The Lord of the Rings, and Arkham Horror, though other games come up frequently.
While this is an excellent book, it is on the dry and technical side. And given the otherwise exhaustive nature, I was puzzled by the omission of two games, the complex Pandemic successor and heavy gamer darling Spirit Island, and 2017 Spiel de Jahrs finalist Magic Maze. Certainly, a complete review of all games is hard, but both games are major contemporary coop games.
While competitive boardgames are made interesting by opposing tactics and hostile interference, cooperative boardgames pit the players against the rules. In order to make this interesting, to make it truly cooperative, the game must be flawed in some way, with imperfect information, randomness, or hidden teams and traitor mechanics. Meeples Together surveys the history of cooperative games, develops a general theory of what makes them fun, deeply investigates key mechanics for games, and conducts in depth case studies on about a dozen games. The paradigm games are Pandemic, The Lord of the Rings, and Arkham Horror, though other games come up frequently.
While this is an excellent book, it is on the dry and technical side. And given the otherwise exhaustive nature, I was puzzled by the omission of two games, the complex Pandemic successor and heavy gamer darling Spirit Island, and 2017 Spiel de Jahrs finalist Magic Maze. Certainly, a complete review of all games is hard, but both games are major contemporary coop games.
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