Not every hundred plays weighs the same

 Playing a game a hundred times is a big thing. Maybe a big, silly thing but it is still a thing. There are a lot of games I haven’t played ten times after all. (Not counting the vast, perhaps unfathomable, number of games I have never ever played)

Of course, some games to are easier to rack up plays of. Getting in ten plays of Advanced Civilization requires not just a lot of time but organizing that time with a bunch of other folks. On the other hand, the short solitaire games that make up a lot of my current play are easier to play over and over. Playing Onirim daily over breakfast lets the plays add up lol

Anyway, the reason why getting centuries for individual games has been on my mind is that I noticed there were two games that I was creeping close to a hundred plays. And while they have some things in common (short, simple solitaire games that my copies are PnP), it’s the differences that made me feel like writing.

Tanuki Matsuri is one of the free games that were released during the Covid lockdown to help folks cope with life. It’s a Roll and Write where you are checking off boxes, so it works well even when you have smudgy dry erase markers. 

The appeal of the game is that virtually every space in the game (all but three) have you make some additional move. Part of the joy of playing it is setting up cascades of actions.

However, it’s not that hard to figure out what you need to do to get a high score. (Optimizing strawberries and flowers, by the way) It’s the fact that there are multiple paths to doing that keeps Tanuki Matsuri entertaining.

The other game is Food Chain Island and it’s a whole other kettle of fish. The first game in Scott Almes’ Simply Solo series (which means it probably needs no introduction), it honestly breaks down to being a solitaire peg puzzle with special powers. 

And it’s brilliant.

Admittedly, I am playing it more consistently lately but I feel like I’m still figuring things, still improving my game. The random layout means that the relative value of a card changes every game. And I still haven’t broken out the expansions or used one of the alternate layouts. There’s a lot of game left for me to discover.

Tanuki Matsuri is fun but the fact that I can play it on a clipboard and don’t need a table has helped it get so many plays. (It is far from the only game like that so getting this many plays is still a feather in its cap) Food Chain Island, on the other hand, is just plain solid. And it’s the one more likely to get two hundred plays.