I mean, no, it’s going to take a lot more than that. But also, maybe?

Most games, I’d venture to say, are varying levels of thoughtful, but not necessarily empathetic or transformative. I love Flip 7 as much as the next guy, but I’d never say it has changed how I see humanity, for example. But there are games that can, that invite players to feel their feelings or to explore a story beyond winning and losing. I wrote about Holding On recently, and we just got into the library The Grizzled, another cooperative game about death. In The Grizzled, players are a group of friends conscripted into World War I who must face a series of battles (abstracted into a press-your-luck card game), take injuries, offer support to one another, and ultimately either survive til the armistice, or have a monument erected to their memory when they die. It is known as an engaging puzzle as well as an emotional journey for the players themselves. I love that games can do this, that they run the gamut from silly to sublime.

And taking a step back to look at a slightly wider picture, simply sitting down to a table with people you know and people you don’t can change how you look at the world. In particular, the act of coming together to play a game with new and different people forces a sense of community and empathy. Yes, sometimes it introduces a level of annoyance at another’s mannerisms, but that in turn invites us to practice patience and curiosity rather than simply annoyance. Think about your first college roommate or moving in with a partner or friend: you came to those relationships with certain scripts, certain expectations of how people are, and you learned how to deal with those differences, whether well or poorly! How we approach new people, even at something as inconsequential as a game table, can lead to world peace—I would argue that these new, curious relationships, even if momentary, can indeed save the world.

Alice C., board game librarian

Play Quacks (of Quedlinburg)!

It’s a modern classic, with an exciting press-your-luck mechanism and delightful, clacky potion ingredient pieces. Players pull those ingredients from their bags and add them to their cauldrons (shown above), trying to get as many in as they can without exploding their cauldrons. They can then get points and buy new and better ingredients for their bags, and then go again. Think you can remember what you’ve put in your bag and keep from exploding? Unlikely—even the best players enter a kind of fugue-state, only wanting to pull out more and more of the clacky, charming bits, thinking, “Just one more…”. Try it next time you’re here with one of our new signature drinks, the Quacks cocktail!

Try our new cocktail, the Quacks!

Named, of course, for the game Quacks, she’s tequila blanco, pineapple juice, melon liqueur, and our house-made strawberry syrup, garnished with a gummy worm! Truly a tasty potion for Halloween, Fall, and beyond.