Family Games: The Best !00, though out of print is a wonderful book, 380 pages of commentary by some of the top minds in the game industry (Richard Garfield, Steve Jackson, Kenneth Hite, James Ernest, Robin Laws) on what each feels is one of the most enjoyable and most cleverly designed games from the last one hundred years. Some of the choices are unsurprising.
Lewis Pulsipher picks Blockus and Will Hindmarch chooses Cranium. However, there are a number of rather surprising choices as well. James Ernest opts for Candy Land as a game that appeals to both 3 year olds and professional game designers, while Dale Donovan picks The Omega Virus, which Milton Bradley released in 1992 (and I remember seeing under the arm of every other attendee at that year’s GENCON) for a design that’s “so absorbing, so immersive, so well conceived that it gets right under a player’s skin”.
Other games chosen include
Clue, Great Dalmuti, Magi-Nation and Faery’s Tale Deluxe. Even Monopoly has a fan in Steve Jackson, who
lauds the game’s combination of skill and luck as well as the fact that it has
one of the first official expansions for a board game, Stock Exchange, which
released in 1936 and the first electron expansion for a boardgame, Monopoly
Playmaster, released in 1982.
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