Working together for an enjoyable evening
A very enjoyable genre of the booming board game scene is cooperative board games. Examples of this genre include Pandemic, Robinson Crusoe, Ghost Stories, Space Panic, and Fury of Dracula. These games remove the competitive short-comings of many competitive board games by pitting the players against the mechanics of the game itself instead of each other. Cooperative board games can be a very popular alternative for groups who want to work together instead of against each other.
Typically cooperative board games have a long-term goal all players are working towards to win, short term crises players have to address to avoid immediate failure, as well as asymmetrical player roles and abilities to add replayability and cut down on so-called “quarterbacking”.
Some of these board games, like Fury of Dracula and Dead of Winter are considered “semi-cooperative”. Fury of Dracula has one of the players taking the role of Dracula who plays actively against the other players. Dead of Winter features personal goals for each player in addition to a main goal they share. This results in some conflict between the team members and adds challenge to the experience.