Top 10 Favorite Minimalist Games

Hey, I'm Jimmy from Stonemire Games and today I'm going to talk about my top 10 favorite minimalist games. By this I mean games with minimal components and or art. And the reason I'm talking about this, the reason that I'm making a top 10 list about this is that I think it's a great reminder for me and maybe you as a designer that games don't need no necessarily need a huge art budget to be a great game.

If you have a certain types of great games, mechanically great highly replayable games, um may not need more than a few illustrations, maybe a great box illustration, um some effective graphic design, and maybe a few key like less than 10 even illustrations to bring the game to life. Um so I think this is one way for some games, not every game, but some games to really shine with a much lower sunk cost budget than other games.

You don't need necessarily a bunch bunch of fancy components, dozens and do dozens of illustrations to have a really great game. Um, I asked ambassadors about this and here are some of the picks that were echoed more than once through the ambassador survey. A Gentle Rain, Azul, Chess. Oh, and I should note that people had different interpretations of this.

So, you might see some games on this list and even from our panelists that don't necessarily meet exactly my definition of a minimalistic game, but that's okay. We can all have slightly different definitions of this. Uh, chess, cockroach, poker, code names, The Crew, Deep Space, D6, Dragons of Edinstone, Far Away, Farle, Flip 7, Hive, Just One, Liars, Dice, Love Letter, No Thanks, uh, Deep Sea Adventure, Project L, Quicks, Reicside, Rolling Realms, Scout, Seaside and Paper, Oh, Sea Salt and Paper, Seaside, Set, Skull, Skulls of Sedle, Spiralopoulos, and The Mind.

Let's start out with number 10. I have a few panelist picks here as the at the beginning of the top 10. Number 10 is Sea Salt and Paper. This was picked by our digital panelist, Caitlyn. Caitlyn says, "It's a nice game to just put in her purse if we're going out. There are a lot of games that are that are just cards, but the art on sea salt and paper is also stunning and fun." So you can see that Caitlyn had a slightly different interpretation of this of this category than I did because I would not say necessarily that the art in sea salt and paper is minimal minimalist.

In fact, I would say that the art took quite a bit of time and effort and probably budget to bring this origami artwork to life. Um, however, I think the gameplay and the simplicity or the small number of components in Sea Salt and Paper, like you can see the size of the box. This is a nearly a pocket-size game.

Um, definitely has a minimalistic vibe to it. Uh, it's been a while since I played it, so I can't speak all that effectively to Sea Salt and Paper, but I do remember having a really fun play of it on board game Arena. That is Sea Salt and Paper at number 10, Caitlyn's pick. At number nine, we have a game that I have never heard of before.

This is from Dylan, our heavy gamer panelist. This is Ishtar: Gardens of Babylon. Um Dylan says, "While the components are beautiful, they have a minimalistic minim minimalist feel that complements the abstract nature of the gameplay. The game is a bit heavier than it looks given the simple composition and moving parts.

For example, there's a sort of a tech tree with only two steps per column, but your interaction with your opponents manages to still make those choices meaningful and difficult. You can use trees to block other players from expanding their garden with one of those tech choices, but they could also choose an upgrade that gives them points for trees that are blocking them.

It all leads to subtle and interesting choices. On a related note, the minimalistic box cover is actually one of my all-time favorite pieces of cover art. Let me see if I can bring up that that box art so we can see what it looks like. Um, yeah, here we go. Yeah, that is a neat design. It evokes uh something kind of ancient but also beautiful in the box design.

That's really great. So, that's Ishtar, Gardens of Babylon. I need to try this one out. At number eight, we have A Gentle Rain. Another one that I haven't played, but I am curious about this one. Gentle rain was selected by Aaron, our solo gamer panelist. Aaron says, "This game has been amazing to me in these trying times.

Place tiles and create blossoms by matching two halves of the same blossom. A tiny game, but each time I play it, I feel a sense of zen. A truly meditative experience. When everything feels like it's on fire around me, it's nice to find a bit of rest by respit in a gentle rain. And I I feel like I've seen this game.

Again, I haven't played it, but I feel I feel feel like I've seen it on Instagram a lot in photos like this, like a a little game to start the day with or to take a little coffee break during the day um to to just relax and play this soothing game. So, I'm very interested in trying A Gentle Rain in the near future.

Thank you, Aaron, for your pick. And last, we have at number seven, Dutch Blitz. An older game, a card driven game. I think this has gone through several different editions, probably with different art styles. This is Skyler, our family game gamer gamer's pick. This game is a chaotic good time, but in the best way.

Each player has a deck of 40 cards, and you race to see who can play their cards in numerically ordered piles of specific colors. Everyone plays at once, and we always end up in fits of giggles as antics ensue. It is easily portable, great for number and color recognition for young kids, and can scale to larger groups with more decks added.

Skyler recommends this for ages five plus. And as you can see here in the in the uh the photo that I have there, there is a little bit of art in the game, but I think the art and graphic design budget was probably very reasonable for this game given the simplicity of the components. So that is a great pick for this minimalistic game category.

Now, I do have some honorable mentions before we get over to the games that I picked for this list. Um my honorable mentions are Fives. Fives is actually the game that got me starting to think about this list because it is a it's a color game that only uses a single color in the game along with different numbered cards, code names, love letter, reside, seaside, skull, sushi go, just one, and the mind.

And a couple of these echoed the idea that you can do a lot with a deck of cards or andor a uniquely numbered deck of cards. So the deck of cards doesn't necessarily have to follow the standard traditional deck of cards. you know, ace through ace through king. You can do your own versions of this and get a lot out of uh just kind of tiny tweaks on that deck of cards, that standard deck of cards.

So, at number six, I have Panda Royale. This is one that I've been itching to play again since playing at Geekway this past year. It scales up to, I believe, 10 players. Yeah, two to 10 players. And it is essentially just a big bag of dice along with a pad of paper and some pencils. So the only art in the game at all I guess there's is the box art really the box art you can see the the background of the box art was also used as the background on the the score pad.

So very very low art budget even very very low graphic design budget because the the only graphic design is needed for the rule book the box and the pad of paper the score pad that each player uses. But in this game, each player is drafting a dieice and then rolling that dieice and scoring for that die.

And then in the next round, everyone drafts another die and you roll all the dice that you have and do it again. So by the end of the game, you're rolling this big hand of dice. Uh and even though the components are technically very simple, they look right on the table. having a big bag of dice, have rolling a big number of dice that are different colors and different uh uh have different faces on them, it comes across as a bigger budget game than I think it actually is in terms of the sunk cost at least.

Uh there are, you know, a decent production costs that go along with with uh making these dice. But yeah, Panda Royale, minimalistic game, very min minimalistic game, but uh the sense of progression and escalation and the sense of value um compared to the the sunk cost and the price of the game, I think is excellent.

That's Panda Royale at number six. At number five, we have Deep Sea Adventure. And really, this is representative of the entire line of Oink games because I think Oink Games does a great job of making games feel minimalistic. They're smallbox games. They all have the same small box. They often have minimal art and uh a distinct graphic design look to them.

Um but uh but they come across they end up having a fairly big table presence and I've gotten a lot of replayability out of multiple oint games. But DeepC adventure I think is my favorite of their games. This is a push your luck game where you are sharing air with all players as you dive down in this spiral of tokens.

Um, and you're the key decision is deciding when to stop and when to kind of when to come back up to the ship because each of the three in each of the three rounds um you are as other players use up this air, the longer you wait, the less air you may have to get back and you may not make it back at all.

So you you you may have these tokens that slow you down and you just might not get back up to the submarine. you may not be able to keep those tokens, but all tokens that were removed from this spiral are uh are are permanently removed. So, it actually it gets easier to get down deeper to the more valuable tiles as the game goes on, leading to a pretty thrilling climactic third round in Deep Sea Adventure.

But again, the components fit into a small box. They're they're very sparse components. There's a die, there's a few meuples, this little boat, and then some tiles. And I would say there's maybe even technically no art in the game. It might just be graphic design uh for the box and tokens and rule book.

Yeah, that is Deep Sea Adventure at number five on my list. At number four is a modern classic game that I still like to get to the table when I have four players available. This is Blockus. Blockas is just a polyomino game where each player has their own set of polyominos. All shapes are unique that I have.

Um and you're trying to place them on a on a kind of a big plastic board where they they lock into place. so that the corners of your pieces are touching other corners, but you can't touch flat edges of any of your own pieces. So, if I'm playing red, this corner touching is fine, but I can't have this flat edge touching any other flat edge on a piece that I' I've placed.

And you're trying to place these pieces in such a way that other players have a harder time placing their bigger pieces because the winner of the game when no one else can play any pieces out on the board is the one who has the fewest squares remaining. This game again is similar to some of these other games I mentioned.

It needs no it has I guess just the art for the box and only graphic design for the rule book. Everything else is just these polyomino shapes that they did have to spend probably a considerable amount making molds for. But um but there other than that there were very few upfront song cost for Blockest.

But I've got a ton of replayability and fun out of this game. That's Blockest at number four. And number three, in a genre of delightful cooperative games, uh, I picked Blob Party, but I probably could have picked Just One. I could have picked uh um So Clover. Um, I could have picked Caution Signs. These are all games in this in this genre that I really, really love.

These are larger group, largely cooperative social games where they in this game there's there's illustration for the box and beyond that um there's really no art in the game at all. very minimalistic components, pens, uh, uh, cards with words on them. I think you can get, and that's another thing I wanted to mention in this list, you can get a lot out of these games that rely on a wide variety of rules of words just by having words in the game.

You don't necess you don't need illustrations for each of those words. You can just have the word and the word can evoke a lot. Um, so you have words on these cards and you have the the white scoreboards and your the goal of this game is to write down the same thing that everyone else writes down until you blob together.

And as you start to blob together, you present everyone is still coming up with their own clue, but you look at the other clues that your fe fellow blob mates wrote down and you're trying and then you choose the one you think is the most likely that other people who have not yet blobbed um write down as well.

So, uh very streamlined and minimalistic components, but I've gotten so much fun gameplay out of Blob Party. That's why it's at number three on my list. At number two, I have no thanks. So, I did want to choose a game on this list that had what I what I mentioned before, a not necessarily a standard deck of cards, but uh using numbers on cards in a way that uh leads to some really great gameplay.

And no thanks. You're basically auctioning to not take cards because every card that you take is worth points at the end of the game with a little catch being that if you had two sequential cards, you only score the lower of those two cards. So, if I have this 34 and the 33 comes up for auction, I might try to I'm okay with taking that 33 and I just wanted to accumulate a certain number of tokens that other players are bidding to not take it because they don't want it.

Uh so that I can use the these red tokens are worth their good points at the end of the game instead of the bad points on the cards. Um, in my copy of No Thanks, I I don't know how many editions have this, but in addition to numbers on the cards, there are also words that I hardly ever notice, but they are they're kind of silly, playful words that reference the number on the card.

So, I I like that. I thought that was a ne twist that even in a game that is just numbers uh on cards that you can be a little playful with that if you want to or you can just come up with a really clever numerical system. Uh, Rhiner Rhinoitzia has a ton of games that are just numbers in games on cards and tiles combined in unique ways.

I think this is a great example of how you can have a fantastic game in no thanks with minimalistic components. So, no thanks at number two. And number one, I have maybe the biggest stretch for this list, but this is Rumble Nation. Uh, and I think it's worth mentioning at least the the original version of Rumble Nation didn't have I I don't think it had any art.

It had some graphic design showing uh what the different unique card abilities do, but for for the most part, there were just two illustrations in Rumble Nation. There was the board art and there was the box art. And I actually I really really love the the new box art. In the newer edition, there is a little bit more art.

So, the art budget did go up a little bit because they put art on these unique uh some of these unique cards. I haven't played with those cards yet. I have just played with the uh the the special ability cards where you can choose one of those one of those per game. Um but for the most part really this is a game with a box art, a map and dice and you're rolling those dice to as you place workers on the board and then you have kind of this auto battle for the last five minutes of the game as the as the map battle plays out.

And the way that works roughly is that the player who has the most units on any given territory earns points equal to the value of that territory numbers from 2 to 12. And uh second place gets half points. And then you if you won that territory, you gain two extra troops I believe in every adjacent connected territory where you already had one unit.

So you have this uh this cascading effect in the game that I think is excellent. Um so yeah, that that is how how Rumble Nation works. And I I love this game. And I love that it gets by with such it it presents such a story every time you play uh without needing art or or or even story text to tell that story.

There's a huge emergent narrative that comes through in Rumble Nation with very minimalistic components. So yeah, that is my top 10 list. Obviously, we can all have different interpretations of what a minimalistic game means. Do you lean more into the simplicity of the components, the size of the box, the small size of the box, and or the amount of art and graphic design needed for the game?

I kind of thought of it as a combination of all those different things with some variances. Like Ror Nation has a slightly bigger box, but it doesn't need much art or graphic design. Um, so yeah, I I I just a a and a a little twist on on this topic of games that we talk about in case you are looking to publish a game but you don't have a lot of money to spend upfront on the art and uh yeah, specifically on the art I would say and on some of the other components as well.

I still think that uh investing in a really beautiful box cover is really really important for the game and investing in great graphic design is really really important for the game. Even if that graphic design is only used on for for numbers or text on the cards, the box and the rule book. Uh those are really really important.

I mean just yesterday I saw a a game um that I had never heard of before and I was intrigued by this by this game when I heard like the initial pitch of it. But then even at a quick CL glance when I saw the graphic design I was like, "Oh, this is I would have a really hard time playing this um uh because of of the lack of of solid graphic design." So I I think valuing and investing in great graphic design is can can elevate a game even when you don't have much of an art budget at all.

So yeah, I'd love to hear your thoughts. What is your favorite minimalistic game? How do you define this? And uh do you have any takeaways for designers who are looking for a low sunk cost budget um but they want to have a great game that they want to output a great game? Yeah, I look forward to hearing your thoughts in the comments below.

Thanks.