We enjoy many games and normally choosing a favorite is very difficult. Which game we play depends on the situation and the party we’re with. If it’s just the two of us we play one of our favorite games for 2 players, if we’re with a bigger party we gravitate towards the best social deduction games, and if some of the players want to play something more relaxed we pull out one of the top 6 party games.
But, during the current Corona crisis, we have an absolute favorite board game. This has everything to do with its theme, but don’t be mistaken, it is also one of the most award winning board game ever.
During the current Corona crisis we really like to play Pandemic. The Corona pandemic can give us a strong feeling of helplessness, but the Pandemic game enables us to fight the spread of a Pandemic. This gives us agency over our own fates, if only briefly and in a simulated version of our current global crisis. It feels good just to be the decider of whether to enforce a total lock down, to close the borders, to research a vaccine, and so on, feels good. In this game, the outcome of the Pandemic is all in your hands.
We wrote in a Pandemic buyer’s guide why we like Pandemic Legacy even more than the original Pandemic. Basically, Pandemic Legacy is a not a game but a campaign that takes 12 to 24 sessions to finish. Our weekly sessions help to bring back structure in our family’s life and it gives us something to look forward to every week. And we really hope that as our Pandemic campaign runs near its end a few weeks from now, so will the Corona lock down.