Our 10 Favourite Comfort Games

welcome to allies our enemies I'm Jess and I am Sean and we've got our coziest hoodies on because we are going to talk about Comfort games and by Comfort games we mean games that we play when we don't have the brain power to play other games so we don't want to learn a whole bunch of rules as games we're very familiar with not too competitive kind of give us a bit of a cozy feeling yeah these are like like a warm blanket of games these are these are the games we don't even have to like look at the rules for a second the setup is like three seconds and we're just off and playing and generally they're games that we just we don't even care that much if we win or lose we played them so many times we played these games like 20 30 40 times I think one of these we played over 50 times just because it's late at night we don't want to think about it and we're just like you know what let's just play that again and just like they're not too competitive when we play them this list isn't either so this isn't a top 10 in order it's just 10 of our comfy games we just kind of threw 10 together we put them in an order that felt comfortable and we're gonna talk about them like that so let's let's just get rolling with our top 10 Comfort games thank you first up is probably our comfiest game and that is between two castles of Mad King Ludwig and I think what makes it so comfy is that it has no setup all the tiles come in these trays and so during the game you just take a pile and you're ready to go and we wait until we've used all the piles and then we we Shuffle it up and then we're ready for like a good four or five more games and the game itself is just just taking tiles and putting them next to each other to make a nice little uh castle like it says although we only play the two-player variant I think we've played the the correct way once and we didn't like it nearly as much no the great thing with two players is you to pick one of the tiles to keep for yours and you have to give the other person one that you're hoping they're not gonna want at all so it's just really fun to hate draft them tiles and then end up with your castle and making the best of them which it doesn't sound comfy but really every towel you get is going to be kind of useful so you're always you're mostly okay with whatever you get and you just end up with a A lot of these games you just end up with a thing at the end because that is a thing that we love in a game uh so let's speaking of that let's move on to the next one which is draftosaurus and I love this game I love dinosaurs so much I cannot overstate how much anyone who knows me knows how much I love dinosaurs because I'll talk to you about dinosaurs within the first five minutes of meeting you and this is just drafting dinosaurs you pulling dinosaurs out of a bag you're putting dinosaurs into a park that's it what's not to love and part of what makes this so comfy comfy I think is so simple and it's that tactile element of holding that handful of dinosaurs and then when you put them out the board explains it perfectly where they go so it's so easy to just start playing although every time you always have to figure out how many we draft in two players but once we get through that it it just plays so fast and that we usually play at least twice when we play yeah and again there is also a lot of our games yeah element because again it's a two player variant and again you are taking one well here instead of giving one you're keeping one and you're throwing one away so you are looking at what does the other person want I'm not gonna give that to them but even with that it's just you're just filling up dinosaurs and we almost always play front seat backseat yeah because the board specifically comes with two sides so it's almost like we're we know you're gonna play this again so flip it over try it with slightly different rules and play it again and we do next up is parade which is probably one of our favorite card games and I think part of that is it looks beautiful and it's an Alice in Wonderland theme so all the characters on the cards look fantastic and I I really do feel the theme of a parade because all the characters go out in a line and we always make sure that they're facing the correct direction which is very important and then you you have to add your characters and it's it's a bit mean but there's something about it that it just feels so chill I like how orderly our comfort needs to be yes because it's not comfortable they're not facing the right direction we've played with Maniacs cool and you know who you are who will turn them upside down but yeah they just you just line them up in a parade and you play a card you count the numbers the number that is on the card you ignore those cards and then you take any cards after that that are the same color or the same number or lower and then you put them in like a stack you don't want to take cards because this is the lowest point to win but if you do have to dig a card you want to get all of those cards if you if you've got the most of something it only counts for one if you don't have the most or something and God's words full amount and that's basically it you're just playing cards taking cards every now and then going one two three eight okay good I can play the Mad Hatter now I do Wonder Maybe the counting forms part of the reason why it's a comfort game because it gives it and you're always invested too because anytime the other person plays a card you're really hoping they get rid of a whole bunch of the characters yeah so there is like oh what they're gonna play what do they play oh they're going for Reds I'm gonna go for Reds too you get up to this point of like oh no there's ten I'm taking something next time and then you know what I'm blowing it up I'm taking a whole bunch because they're not worth that much then but it's just it's yeah it definitely has this kind of Zen Rhythm to it uh the next one is a bit of a surprise on this list kind of and that is Ganymede and ganyme means again that I feel like we talk about a little bit but kind of flew onto the radar and the thing I love about Ganymede is it it is like a kind of a complex game but in a tiny amount of time it's like the fullest game you can squeeze into 20 minutes I think if you're just you're moving people from Earth to Jupiter and it's just it's like combo combo combo but so easy in how it all fits together I think that's the thing because you described it as a complex game and it does give you the feel of a complex game but you're you're really easy you are just taking one thing either a card or a tile and then doing the action on it and so it's something about that Simplicity of like what is the one thing I'm going to do but that leads to a lot of strategy and and that ability to to combo which makes it so great another game that plays very quickly as well is Trails of tucana and this is one of my favorite roll and writes and I think what I really like about it is you are just drawing one line and so you flip two cards and then I'm always the announcer so I always announce what the terrains are for those oh they feel like a bingo announcer I'm so sad that their announcement's waiting for her announcements and that and she feels like when she puts it oh no this doesn't look yeah people are like telling me like oh please make it a sand I'm like oh Mountain to oh sorry mountain and there's just I have that role and I think that makes it part of the Comfort experiences I know what I'm doing for this game I'm also playing it as well and it's just super fun to build a map yeah that's all you and I think instinctively humans like making Maps there's something about another one that didn't make this list but could have I think as cartographers as well yeah or explorers or Merchants Guild of exploring explorers I don't I hate that name so much than that last one the Roland rights I think in general make a really great comfort game so on the rolling ice we we ended up just taking two because we could have done this list could really just be wrong right but our other one is welcome to and welcome to is the Roland right that God is into Roland rights and it just keeps staying at the top of that list I never Tire of this game we must have played this game 50 60 time yeah and I I think it's interesting because it's a bit of a more complicated role in right as far as rolling rights go it's it's very simple but there are a few things to wrap your heads around her head around it but once you do it that kind of deciding which way to go are you know I'm gonna do Parks this time I'm gonna do swimming pools there's something about it that we could just play again and again and again and it's filling up those houses putting those numbers in it's always so satisfying if you can end the game by having every house numbered oh yeah if you'll be so rarely end up and that's situation especially if you hadn't had to use abyss and if you haven't played welcome to this is all it is you get a number and you get like a power and you write a number on one of your houses and your houses have to go in order on their streets from lowest to highest and so you just add your number wherever you feel like and then you add your things and it is really simple and I know you said complicated and we don't think it's complicated but then you try to explain it to someone and there's this bit of a tricky where some of the things happen on that square and some of the things can happen anywhere it's like once you know it you really it's like embedded in your brain we could burn the rule book and never need to look at it again but just to get over that hump you realize like explaining this to a parent a little trickier than you wanted to it's totally worth it though because it is it's just so great it we could play it all the time next up is the game that is newest to us on this list and that is dwarf romantic and I think this is is the definition of a comfort game it is when I am not feeling like a game at all I am always up for it it has such a chill Vibe you're only placing tiles and building out your village and you're trying to complete tasks as you do it and you work together so there's something about that that Cooperative experience of trying to just get the best score and it just immediately every time we play it I just I feel so happy yeah it's like one of the kind of negative things people say about this game is that there's not really a point to it you're just putting tiles and building on a map and I'd say the great thing about this game is there's not really a point to it you're just putting down tiles and building on a map and there still is that stress of like we definitely want to fulfill all of our goals and we want to beat our score but if we don't we don't really care we just play it again I think that's part of it is we do play it's like competitively because we always want to get the best score that we've ever got so we're always aiming to do better than the time before but the key thing like you said is if we don't that's fine and then I'm always just like oh can you just play it again maybe this time we'll get like a fantastic score Jess will play this again forever yes we have with like we'll play this four or five times we've already played this game over 30 times and we've only owned it for a month and a half and every time we play this every time Jess is like can we just play this once I know this is what we're playing tonight this is all we're playing it is one that I always suggest yes and you've been very good so far at always saying yes as well so there's going to be lots of dwarf romantic in our future another Co-op game we love co-op games and co-op games I think work well as comfort games because they're you know it's nice to be competitive it's nice to win but it is nice sometimes just to kind of chill and and just play against the game and this is horrified and specifically the universal monsters version of horrified because well because it's the first one we had because we love Universal monsters you're just moving around the village trying to save villagers who are really doing their best to walk to their doom and picking up stuff and trying to fulfill the goals and all the monsters play different you mix and match them there's like a million different ways to play this game but the actual rules are like three rules yeah it is super replayable because of being able to mix and match the monsters and you can almost adjust your comfort level as well if you want to have a for sure win only play with two if you want it to be a little bit more stressful you can play with four monsters four is a lot more we almost always play with three four is like a you gotta Play Perfect you gotta be on the ball yeah three is kind of that where you feel like you've achieved something but you usually still win also in the horror genre is gingerbread house and in gingerbread house you are playing the is it is it the witch who owns the house you're a witch who is murdering fairy tale character it acts like it's a nice nut organ this is a horrific game yeah you're first like trapping them in a prison or taking them directly from the forest and then then killing them I suppose I think so yeah and it's but it's the good and bad guys it's not just the the good guys there are the bad guys that you can capture as well and and so you're you're doing this by taking these gingerbread tiles and putting it on your board and getting these resources that attract the different fairy tale creatures and it's first some reason it's one that isn't really in our like top games but is definitely one that we always tend to pull out for this kind of comfort game category yeah anytime we're like really stressed there's something about this just put down these little two-piece tiles and you just lay them down and what you lay on top is the kind of gingerbread you get yeah you're like Baba Yaga style witch who's just trying to trick these characters and maybe the violence that's just underneath is part of the Comfort I don't know it's like a stress reliever that you're like secretly murdering these murdering both the Big Bad Wolf and Little Red Riding Hood at the same time by tricking them into your gingerbread house and then and then they just go away quietly in the night it is just a small grid that you're you're building up and I think it's that kind of vertical build as well that is just really pleasing as you put the puzzle together last one on the list and this isn't number one this is just amongst them these are all kind of shared number ones number tens all at the same time the last one on the list is the one that we have played by far the most it's the game we've played the most out of every game that we own and that is strike and the reason we played this so much is because it takes three minutes a long game takes five minutes it's just rolling dice you roll dice if they match you get them if they don't match they stay there if they end up on X's they're gone and the original strike has this Gladiator theme um kind of yeah because that's what they're meant to be they're Gladiators fighting in the arena and this one we only have there Harry Potter version because it's the only version you can find anymore but the Harry Potter one adds these magic spells which is great as well and we just we play it over and over and over and over it takes zero brain capacity and I think there's just something that's a bit of a stress reliever when you roll the dice and you're also trying to aim the dice and knock the dice so you're able to the physicality of it I think also helps but one of the things that keeps us going is I always want to play again because this is one that you have beaten me at like so much more often we've played like 60 games and I've won eighty percent of them yeah and so you're likely gonna win and that keeps me wanting to play again and again and again to try and finally beat you and then maybe even catch up yeah I win 80 I've never ended the night as the winner because Jess will not stop playing she'll win once and then go that's enough let's play something new just retires as champion at the end of every every session I fall into this same thing I'll win like eight in a row she'll win one and go that's good I'm done it would have taken me nine games to get that win I think that is a good way to wrap up the evening and that is it those are 10 of our favorite comfort games and it was really tricky actually to pick 10 because we have a lot of comfort games yeah there's we got a million rolling right so we got a lot of tile placement games those are all things I kind of think of I always think of camping I always think of like games you would play when you're camping and some of these wouldn't quite fit because they got a too big of a board or too many pieces maybe but anything like that anything that would fit that you could see yourself playing under like a Starry Sky next to a campfire with people who maybe don't generally play games those are Comfort games and I really I feel like we gravitate to those more and more which makes sense because that's why we gravitate towards people look comfortable I'm gonna you know what I'm gonna say it being comfortable better than not being comfortable well said yeah yeah I'm gonna I'll put that out there but we will hear from you what are your go-to comfort games let us know in the comments and as usual please like subscribe and hopefully we'll see you next time for another game foreign [Music]