Question
What are the best simple games?
Answer
My absolute favorite simple game is probably Tetris. I use it as an extended metaphor for accumulation of entropy in decision-making processes in my book, Tempo.
Many video games try to build in a "it gets harder over time" dynamic, but they have to do it in artificial ways (bigger, faster monsters at higher "levels"). Many non-video games like Chess or card games don't have this dynamic internally at all, and the increasing complexity comes from playing better players over time.
But in Tetris, this is an organic part of the game. Things just get harder as the stack height rises. It is also the simplest game that I know of that has a proper memory.
It also varies between "trivial" to "impossible" in random ways, based on the mix of falling pieces. I forget the reference, but the Z and S shaped blocks are basically the troublemakers, and if you ONLY had those, the game is NP-complete or something I believe. On the other hand, if you just have those symmetric blocks, the game becomes mostly trivial.
Runners up candidates:
Many video games try to build in a "it gets harder over time" dynamic, but they have to do it in artificial ways (bigger, faster monsters at higher "levels"). Many non-video games like Chess or card games don't have this dynamic internally at all, and the increasing complexity comes from playing better players over time.
But in Tetris, this is an organic part of the game. Things just get harder as the stack height rises. It is also the simplest game that I know of that has a proper memory.
It also varies between "trivial" to "impossible" in random ways, based on the mix of falling pieces. I forget the reference, but the Z and S shaped blocks are basically the troublemakers, and if you ONLY had those, the game is NP-complete or something I believe. On the other hand, if you just have those symmetric blocks, the game becomes mostly trivial.
Runners up candidates:
- Othello (a kinda Go for wimps). Go itself has too much of a learning curve, but you get a lot of the philosophical value from Othello.
- Monopoly: if you ignore the narrative complexity, the game boils down to a pure "concentration of resources" decision-making challenge. The first person to build enough hotels etc. on a sufficiently continuous stretch basically creates a cash-hemorrhaging stretch for the other players and gains an unbeatable lead. I'd like to see someone create a version of monopoly that throws out all the narrative and reduces it to this abstract level.
- Hide and seek: This is a seriously primal game, that gets right at our deepest hunter-gatherer instincts. We forget as we grow older how scary it can be to play the game as "It" in a sufficiently empty area. You are all alone and hunting for your friends, who are your temporary enemies. In the version we played, if one of the hidden people snuck up behind you and tagged you before you spotted them, you had to be It again, so the tension was high if you kept getting tagged.