Class Date: 3/5/2026
This week’s game was Decorum, a cooperative logic puzzle that includes limited cooperation. The theme of this game is a group of nonconfrontational roommates trying to decorate their house so that everyone is satisfied. At the start of a game, the player’s choose a scenario with a certain difficulty, or the next scenario in order if playing the 2-player campaign. The scenario provides the house’s initial setup and the conditions that each player needs to satisfy. Player’s take turns making a change to the house (adding a piece of decor, changing the type of a piece of decor, removing a piece of decor, or painting a room), then each other player make a positive, negative, or neutral comment about it. The key to Decorum is that these comments are meant to convey no additional information. Player’s can say that they don’t like a change, but not that they will be fine with it if something else changes. In addition to these turns, players are occasionally given the opportunity to share one of their conditions with one other player. If each player satisfies their conditions, the game is over and everyone wins. If the final round is met and not all of the conditions are satisfied, everyone loses.
The hardest part of this game was learning what types of conditions are even possible. One of the conditions in my group’s playthrough was that more rooms needed to have cool colored walls (blue and green) than warms colors (red and yellow). I never guessed that condition because my conditions never categorized colors like this. When wall colors kept being changed I did my best to avoid changing them unless I needed to which helped solve the puzzle without me ever deducing the condition.
The leadership topics that best connect to this game are compromising and understanding the needs of people even when they don’t communicate them. The lack of information in this game often makes it difficult to solve the puzzle, one of the ways to satisfy your conditions may make it impossible for another player to solve their conditions. Figuring out when to compromise and pivot to a new way to satisfy your conditions is important to helping everyone. This game also helps teach how important it is to clearly communicate your wants and needs in real life. If all of the player’s were allowed to do this, finding the solution would be much easier.
This game was probably my favorite of the one’s we have played so far. I enjoy logic puzzles and this game does a good job of packaging a logic puzzle in a way where one player can’t just solve the game and find the answer on their own. Though this could become the case if everyone shares their conditions with the same player, instead of distributing them equally.