Author Topic: Free, cheap or DIY game recommendations  (Read 1314 times)

PMG

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Free, cheap or DIY game recommendations
« on: July 07, 2020, 07:49:04 AM »
We recently bought the game Too Many Poops and have been enjoying learning and playing it. However, imagine my dismay when we checked out the makers website and found they have a free printable version after I’d paid $20! Gasp! 

Cards Against Humanity has a printable version. 

Are there others?  A google search was just coming up with knock-off children’s games, but I thought this forum is the place to go for this kind of recommendation.

A separate but related ask would be recommendations for games that are good for two players.

DIY games:

Too Many Poops: Cats vs litter box
http://www.playneatgames.com/tmp-main/

We have a set of die and print or just use scrap paper Yahtzee score cards.  This makes it very small and portable. 

We have printed-on-cardboard scrabble letters that we use for more informal word games.  Again, very portable. 

I think Phase 10 would be an easy one to DIY and good for 2, but the real cards are inexpensive. 

Hula Hoop

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Re: Free, cheap or DIY game recommendations
« Reply #1 on: July 07, 2020, 01:56:19 PM »
We've been playing DIY Yahtzee too lately.  We had 5 dice and a plastic cup lying around.  We looked up scoring on the internet and drew up scoreboards in an old notebook that was also lying around.

We also play charades regularly from a free app I have on my phone.

With your letter cards you could also play bananagrams for free.  It's very simple and you can find the rules online.
« Last Edit: July 07, 2020, 01:58:31 PM by Hula Hoop »

Playing with Fire UK

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Re: Free, cheap or DIY game recommendations
« Reply #2 on: July 07, 2020, 02:20:51 PM »
Four Against Darkness is a very good print and play game that is lighter and quicker than Dungeons and Dragons and doesn't need a DM to plan or run. I found it online for free and but was happy to pay around $5 for expansion books. You can get apps to simulate 8 and 4 sided dice if you don't have any.

More here.

honeybbq

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Re: Free, cheap or DIY game recommendations
« Reply #3 on: July 08, 2020, 12:30:45 PM »
I think exploding kittens is 1.99 on ipads. Not bad... the expansion packs are more though.

SimpleCycle

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Re: Free, cheap or DIY game recommendations
« Reply #4 on: July 08, 2020, 12:56:46 PM »
Have you heard of Cheapass Games?  https://cheapass.com/

Lots of printable games, and lots of them are good for two players.

BookLoverL

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Re: Free, cheap or DIY game recommendations
« Reply #5 on: July 08, 2020, 04:25:24 PM »
If you have a pack of cards, there are a very large number of games that can be played with those.

You may also be able to get second hand games of various kinds cheaply from people who are selling off a bunch of clutter at a typical car boot sale / yard sale / garage sale or whatever, though there's a small chance with those that some pieces may be missing.

PMG

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Re: Free, cheap or DIY game recommendations
« Reply #6 on: July 17, 2020, 09:47:18 AM »
Thank you all for these suggestions! Once we need a new game i think we’ll start with one of the CheapAss games.  Maybe Four Against Darkness. I’ve never played DND, I feel like I’d have a lot to learn. 

I definitely wasn’t finding any of these in my own searches.

Someone gave me Exploding Kittens and we tried to play it but just didn't “get” it.  We decided it either needed more players or ore alcohol.  I think I gave it to a friend during one of our moves.  I kinda wish we could revisit it now that we’re on a game kick, maybe we just didn’t dig in enough.

Thanks again!


AMandM

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Re: Free, cheap or DIY game recommendations
« Reply #7 on: July 17, 2020, 11:31:31 AM »
Our family's favorite two-person game is cribbage. It's more fun to keep score with a cribbage board, but totally doable to use scrap paper instead. Also chess and checkers.

Guessing games that only need paper and pencil are cheap: charades, Fruit Salad, Stadt-Land-Fluss (not sure what that's called in English? Categories?), hangman, 20 questions,....

PMG

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Re: Free, cheap or DIY game recommendations
« Reply #8 on: July 17, 2020, 12:10:12 PM »
oooh.  I’ve never played Cribbage.  After a brief look at a description that looks like something we might really enjoy!

We’ve done some of the other games you mentioned, but it’s always good to have reminders!  I really miss word games.  English is not his first language, and though he is fluent and will sometimes play word games to make me happy they just aren’t as enjoyable for him and I have quite an unfair advantage, but we’re pretty evenly matched on number and strategy games! 

PurpleEi

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Re: Free, cheap or DIY game recommendations
« Reply #9 on: July 17, 2020, 07:10:15 PM »
Regarding word games with ability difference - we had the same issue in my group of gamer friends, so we experimented with some handicapping, which we found could work quite well.

The game we particularly like is bananagrams (and I guess you could make your own version on little squares of paper for free, or use a scrabble set if you have one, though the letter frequency might be different). Bananagrams is kind of like free-form speed scrabble, but way more fun than scrabble!

Some constraints we placed on the better player only to make the game more even:
* Only allowed to use themed words (super hard, but fun)
* Not allowed any two-letter words (even on crossover words) - this was our favourite in the end; balanced well
* Only allowed odd numbers of letters
* Not allowed to used plurals or verb forms
* Only allowed words of a certain length, say 4 letters (super hard)
* Some combination of the above

For your situation, have you tried playing word games in either his language, or where you are both allowed to use your first language (this would work fine for bananagrams)?

PhilB

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Re: Free, cheap or DIY game recommendations
« Reply #10 on: July 21, 2020, 05:37:22 AM »
We get over the ability difference by playing Bananagrams in a non-competitive way.  If it's just DW and I then we build a grid together taking letters in turn and trying to get the best possible words without too much rebuilding.  If playing with the kids then everyone has their own grid but you have to wait until everyone is finished before taking a new tile each, at which point you rotate one chair to the left and add it to that grid instead!