Tonight I attended the regular campus gaming event and picked the game Everdell to play. During this summer I found myself at a board game bar in Dayton they had this game but I didn’t have the opportunity to play it. Originally the artwork is what interested me in playing the game because I like the forest and the animals remind me of children’s books I used to read a lot growing up. If I had to envision myself in an ideal happy place, it would be a magical forest, hence why the game I designed takes place in a similar setting.
I took a look at the other games available tonight but I just kind of knew that I wanted to play Everdell, even if that meant playing it by myself. I’m not very good at figuring games out on my own so I called Grace from class and told her if she could make it to the gaming event, she should try so I wasn’t stuck figuring it out alone. I assembled the tree and by the time I got the board set out, Issac came over and asked if he could show me how to play the game and play it with me. I didn’t know many people at this event and the people I did recognize seemed very interested in the games that they had picked to play, so I wasn’t eager to recruit anyone. I am glad Issac took the initiative to come help me, and he seemed genuinely excited to play, he said this game is one of his favorites. Eventually, more people expressed interest in playing and we were able to start. Originally one of the first comments that were made was that Everdell is comparable to Wingspan in terms of complexity and I really think that was an accurate statement. I’ve played Wingspan and really enjoyed it, but I think I enjoyed this game more just because of its theme and interactive game pieces.
When playing the game I really enjoyed all the cards, understanding the cards is definitely the most complicated part of the game but I feel like I was able to comprehend them after they were explained. I tried to play high-value cards but ended up without a lot of points at the end of the game and my city only had 10 cards instead of a full 15. Even though we played the game for almost two hours, it seemed like it went by too quickly and that we should have had more time to build our cities, I guess that just means that I was having fun. I felt like I consistently had a lot of cards, and was running out of resources, so maybe I should pick a new strategy next time. At the end of the game, I definitely lost and did not have the first or second highest amount of points, but I know what I need to do next time. In the future, I feel like I would like to understand more about how this game could be played as a single-player game or just with two players, and to what extent that changes the gameplay dynamic. Overall I am so glad that I finally had the opportunity to play this game. I definitely want to play this game again and will likely get it as a Christmas gift.