Friday Fun: What's your favorite game and why?

[Deleted user]

Hello Atlassian Community!

Today is my turn to ask you a Friday Fun question. 

What's your favorite computer/console/phone/board game and why?

For me, there are are many, but I have 1 that is so special I always can come back to - TETRIS. Honestly, this game inspired me to be a game developer, move to the United States (I'm originally from Russia where this game also originated from) and it has one of the best implementation of simple to learn but hard to master mechanics. It is also timeless and has been ported to every single platform out there.

So what's your favorite game and why?

[Jim Schwilk]

For me, I am not a gamer so this one is hard for me. I recently have started playing board games again with my 6 year old daughter. She loves playing checkers, connect four, uno, yatzee, sorry, candyland and life. So I guess my favorite right now is a toss up between those but mostly just because of the quality time with her. I know I didn't narrow it down so I guess if I had to pick one of those to play over and over with her, I would probably pick uno.

[Scott Theus]

Yatzee is one of my favorites! I have a small set I take with me every time I go hiking, because sitting around a campfire and playing a dice game in the middle of nowhere is the best way to disconnect from the world. 

[Monique vdB]

@Jim Schwilk I am a board gamer and mom, and my daughter is 8 and has loved games for a long time! Check out the cooperative games Mermaid Island or Hoot Owl Hoot, and if she's ready for a slightly bigger challenge, Forbidden Island is a co-op game that's also fun for adults, and you can do a lot of guidance since it's cooperative. 

[Scott Theus]

I love playing Risk and Axis and Allies; they cater to my analytical mind and I enjoy the challenges that can arise from  getting stuck with countries that have little or no power and be able to win the game. 

That, and world domination. 

[Tim Keyes]

I have always enjoyed Risk.  My go to strategy (not always successful) has been to take over Australia early on and hold it with as many troops as possible!

[Gregory Van Den Ham]

My mobile favorite right now, Golf Clash.  I really don't know why other than its kind of nice to look at grass and trees.  The only thing about real golf that I enjoy is driving the golf cart. 

PC games, this was the game of all games.

And then there's this.  Settlers of Catan.  of Course, Ticket to ride, also fun, but ya know. 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

>Ticket to ride, also fun, but ya know. 

The arithmetic to work out who has won.  The one thing TtR fails totall.  I tend to stick to playing it on a computer.

One thing I'd love to see is an AI-backed camera for gaming.  Stick it to the ceiling above your current game table, and let it watch the game.  Feed it the scoring rules for any games where it matters, and let the AI become a referee (and add-er up-er)

[Andy Heinzer]

Tetris is a great game.  I recall the first time I got to play it.  My father brought home a computer from work, it was a Compaq Portable III - a 20 pound giant computer by today's standards, with an orange LCD screen. It was lots of fun.

I think I could spend hours telling you about my favorites, but here is a very condensed list:

Atari 800 - Miner 2049er - a platform game from the days before super mario.  Maybe the first computer game I can remember beating, only after many hours of gameplay.  Also the radioactive waste monsters (strobe flashing effect) was amazing fun. In one of the last levels you get to load yourself into a cannon, and need to make sure you enter the correct amount of charge to shoot yourself up to the higher platform.

NES - Sid Meier's Pirates! - It's got history, geography, navigation, swashbuckling, sailing tactics, treasure maps, and oh yeah Pirates!  Any two of those would have been enough to get me to play it, but I like all those things.  The way the game plays is great.  You have to manage lots of different aspects from managing the relationship you have between rival governments, to playing a micro economics simulator when trading goods between ports, to managing the size of your fleet and happiness level of your crew, to figuring out how to best combat other sailing vessels of the period given your armament and weather conditions.  Lots of ways to play the game.  Hands down way more fun to me than I thought I would ever have playing any game on NES

Android - Seedship - Its the future, humanity has left earth to search for a new place to call home.  You play an AI system in charge of making decisions for the humans in hyper-sleep in order to find them a suitable planet, and keep them alive over huge periods of time.  It's a text based strategy game.  Actual game play takes only a few minutes per round.  Lots of replay value. It's also free, and doesn't require active network connection to play, but I find it a lot of fun because at the end you get a score based on how well the humans you carried survive/prosper. 

[Earl McCutcheon]

Personally I Love video games and play them all the time, Mario is one of my favorites along with Tetris like you noted, all the way up to many of the current gen 3d world games.  But, if I had to narrow down all games to my absolute favorite I would have to take a step back to something old school and a game that I always circle back to and love more than any other, which is Chess.

There is something about the tactile nature of moving the pieces around the board, each piece has a set of rules that constrain their actions giving strengths and weakness, balanced to a point that every piece on the board is more powerful than the others completely contingent on strategy from the Pawn to the King.  Yet with a highly restrictive ruleset, there are almost an infinite number of outcomes, and it all comes down to the intimate challenge of engaging not in the game directly but the opponents mind on the other side of the board and their thought process bound within a rule set.

“Chess holds its master in its own bonds, shackling the mind and brain so that the inner freedom of the very strongest must suffer.” – Albert Einstein

I can always come back to a chess board and have an amazing time win or loose.

-Earl

[Mohamed Benziane]

Crash bandicoot in PS1 and metal gear solid 1 are my favorite game.

[Jodi LeBlanc]

I like Sims as it brings be back to the days of playing it in my childhood. I also do a few games of luminosity every day, the coffee game is my favourite as you have to raise against the clock while having coffees at various stages (lots of multitasking). 

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

I'm going to wimp out of the "favourite" - I do have favourite games, but they change too often.  Mostly because I finish them and don't go back, in the case of computer games.

But, random list (which I will probably edit soon):

• If it runs on SCUMM(tm), you're in the right area.  The early Monkey Island games are fantastic, but it's a toss-up between Day of the Tentacle and Sam and Max ("Hey! I'm a lagomorph, not a malefactor" is the best line I've seen in a game) as to the best of them.
• Slay
• I enjoy FPS games in some cases, with Borderlands, Morrowind, Skyrim and Half-Life being the ones I might go back to, as they're fun, but the best by far is the first "Deus Ex" - not because it executed the combat well, but because it is truly "open" - every level gives you a scenario and the freedom to "solve" it in any way.
• I enjoy puzzle games too.  Not so much "adventure" type or "hidden object", but the more abstract free to do what you like ones.  I'm seriously considering getting a VR rig before installment 5 of The Room  arrives.
• Dogmeat lives.  Through all of them.  The instant he died, I reloaded from the last save.
• I tend to pick up and play "tower defence" games a lot.  Not sure why they appeal.

In real life, I like a pretty standard set of board and card games:

• Backgammon
• Cards against humanity (to the point where I played an utterly vile card on one of Adaptavist's founders and told the head of HR that I expected to be thrown out of the building before it was turned over.  I kept my job, but I've been barred from playing it at work)
• Chess (I used to be good, but lapsed.  I was my county under-11's champion for a couple of years, and was never beaten during that time other than by my best friend Cormac who beat me in around 7/10 games.  Going to secondary school ended that, I probably couldn't beat the cat at it any more, let alone a human)
• Joking Hazard
• Bridge
• Exploding Kittens
• Ticket to Ride
• Mahjong (not the match-tiles rubbish, but actual Mahjong)
• I have a soft-spot for Cluedo, despite not finding it particularly challenging.  People hate me playing because I "cheat" apparently.  Not looking at cards I shouldn't see, but I write down what all the other players ask and who responds and how, which lets me rule out more wrong answers than only noting your own.

[Nic Brough -Adaptavist-]

So, after some nagging from @Simon Haighton-Williams , I tried, and then got, an Oculus Quest.

I'd shied away from it before because, although I could see the potential, I'd tried a Rift and a Vive, and lasted less than 2 minutes before I got queasy (arguably worse than the headaches that start the same time into a 3D film).  But the Quest seems to be OK.

So I want to add "Beat Sabre" to the list now.  And I've just found "Pistol Whip", which works as long as you pronounce it the way Stewie Griffin would.

[Max Foerster - K15t]

I mean, Stewie's right. Pie tastes better with cool whip! 😉

I read your post while I was thinking about which games I liked the most so far and I'm with you on "Day of the Tentacle"! It was hilarious and I'm very happy my parents got me the CD version with speech back then. The sound effects and music were great.

Dune 2 is also one of my favorites and without it, there would be no Command&Conquer. :)

The last favorite is the first Age of Empires. Do I need to say any more?

[Monique vdB]

Okay, going to go with first thought, best thought because I could list games all day long.

Favorite boardgame: Terraforming Mars. I love the rich theme and the card drafting elements of it. There's a lot of depth. I also love Wingspan for the amazing bird artwork and theme. 

Favorite PC game: I do love and miss The Sims but recently I've rediscovered Rollercoaster Tycoon Classic so probably that one. I love simulation and tycoon-style games, even simple ones like Sim Tower, anyone remember Sim Tower? Something about the minutia of tiny worlds is just satisfying to me.

Favorite console game: Lego Harry Potter. Working through that one slowly with my daughter as she reads the books. I like the theme, and it's clever and cute. 

[Jimmy Seddon]

Any of the Lego games are great!  I tried playing the Sims but I'm not very good at taking care of them :(

[Kat Warner]

Take care of them? I'm good at that in the Mafia sense. The urns make great decorations. *evil laughter*

[Bryan Trummer - ReleaseTEAM]

I have only played Terraforming Mars once, I enjoyed and I know there are some people who adore the game. I look forward to playing it again to really dig into it now that I have played it once.

[Dharma Ramos]

I really like Terraforming Mars as well.

[edwin vasquez]

Words with Friends on phone, Madden football on Xbox one when I have time!

[Jimmy Seddon]

@[deleted] I love this topic!  I'm an avid gamer so I can speak to all the categories you have mentioned.  However, like Nic I'm going to wimp out a bit on an absolute favorite for each in some cases because there are too many games I love to play to be able to pick just one.

Favorite Computer Game:  I can't name a single game but I can name a single company: Blizzard.  I regularly play pretty much everything that Blizzard has: Starcraft 2, Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch, Heartstone, Diablo 3 (I used to play World of Warcraft and I will get dragged back in by Friends every once in a while, but I really don't have that much free time anymore).  I grew up with the Blizzard games I like the variety in genre so they have always been special to me.

Favorite Console Game: Again hard to give it to just one, but if you made me choose the best I could do is say anything and everything Final Fantasy.  Every Sony console I have purchased (and will purchase in the future) has been so I can play the latest and greatest Final Fantasy game.  Final Fantasy 4 was the first time I ever played a role playing game and I fell in love with that genre and the Final Fantasy Franchise.

Favorite Phone Game: Here I actually like what Nintendo has, if I don't have to drive I will jump between a number of the mobile games here:  Super Mario Run, Fire Emblem Heroes, Animal Crossings Pocket Camp, Dragalia Lost, Dr. Mario World, Mario Kart Tour.  I don't play mobile games much, so for me they need to be something I can play for a few minutes and then stop, and all of these provide that, also much like Blizzard I like to have a variety in genre.

Favorite Board Game:  This one is easy, I do have a single favorite here and it's Pandemic.  It's co-operative, which is important to me because I hate seeing friendships nearly end of the stupidest things in competitive games.  It also requires strategy, and since your role in the game can change every time you play it always feel fresh.

Thanks for making such a great conversation starter!

[Heth Siemer]

Blizzard has by far the best cinematics as well. I'm not a diablo player but holy cow I get goosebumps just thinking about that trailer.

[Dharma Ramos]

I am the same way with WoW and Diablo, I get dragged back in every now and then. We are playing Guild Wars 2, because it captured my daughter's attention. We also like Pandemic, though we tend to play the Cthulhu version.

[Heth Siemer]

Looks like everyone is playing the Corona version now!

[Jimmy Seddon]

I'm pretty sure by the board game rules we've already lost the game...

[Kat Warner]

Dammit! I just lost The Game.

[Kat Warner]

My timesink of choice right now is Bejeweled Stars: Free Match 3 which I play on my mobile and tablet. It is free to play and the specials are given frequently enough that I can keep progressing without linking to Facebook, relying on others giving me lives or specials, and/or paying money.

Minesweeper, the old WIndows classic, is my forever favourite timesink. I can now pass Expert reasonably often with speeds around 160 seconds.

Card Against Humanity is great fun but an old school pack of cards is super versatile.

[Poorvi Jhawar]

Super Mario is an absolute favourite when I was young my father was the dealer for the video game in India, so we would play it all the time. It’s one of my fondest childhood memory. 
UNO, Monopoly and Poker are my all time favourite.
I love game night with friends. 😊

[Bryan Trummer - ReleaseTEAM]

Now, this is a great topic! I say this as we just bought a Kallax to start storing more of our board games. I like all the games so let me do my favorites. I might have 2 for each category though haha.

Favorite Computer Game: I have to go with 11th Hour and/or 7th Guest (they also made board games based on this series). I remember playing these with my dad and it was an event, the amount of time we spent on these games and by the time we beat them it was truly an accomplishment!

Favorite Console Game: This is where I will have to wimp out as I do have three favorite ones that I can put one ahead of the other. Resident Evil 2 was another one of those games when you beat it, it felt like an accomplishment, and you could go back and do things a little different, so the replay value was high. Final Fantasy 7, this was such a fun adventure of a game. Can't wait for the re-polished version of this one. The Shenmue series is absolutely one of my favorite series of all time (only 2 games long as of right now) but you could do so much here and was very much a sandbox game. I just downloaded these again on Xbox to play them with my son. 

Favorite Board Game: I just got done doing a top 100 list on a site called Pub Meeple. According to that my top game is Marvel Legendary, which I tend to agree, deck building is one of my favorite mechs in a board game, add Marvel and sold! Pandemic is another one that is in my top 5 as well. Of course, Catan, Ticket to Ride will always be special games for me to teach anyone who wants to learn them!

[Dharma Ramos]

I like deck builders too, my current fave on my phone is Star Realms. I just responded on Jimmy's response above that lately we tend to play Pandemic Cthulhu more so than the original.

[Revol-Xut]

Hollow Knight is my personal favorite. Its an indie game developed by an little Australian team ("Teamcherry"). Its an metroidvania, side scroller with an amazing soundtrack and very challenging boss fights.

[Jimmy Seddon]

I don't have the skill to play it but I've seen it and it does look amazing!

[Paul Mata]

I was literally just talking to my kids about this last night! I am a classic tabletop RPG gamer first and foremost (D&D primarily, but I've played loads of others) and I have been playing since I was around 12 years old. What I love about TTRPG games the most is the cooperative critical thinking skills. What I mean is that you are presented a challenge that your characters have to work together to overcome. If you are playing with a good group, you know it isn't always about being a murder hobo...sometimes diplomacy comes in to play and sometimes walking (or running) away from an uncomfortable situation is the best choice.

These are skills that have served me well throughout my life and I am happy that my kids are showing a little interest in playing so that I can help them learn those skills as well.

[Dharma Ramos]

Agree with you about RPG's, I was running a kids table of D&D at my husband's store last school year, but we have been too busy to start it again this year. 

[Heth Siemer]

Board Game Eldritch Horror. I'm really into creepy things, like H.P. Lovecraft, and in Eldritch Horror you and up to 7 (or more depending on the expansions involved) of your friends work together to take down one of the Lovecraftian Ancient Ones like Cthulu. I think Hypnos and the dream realm is my favorite so far. I have not yet actually defeated an Ancient One.

All Time - Computer Game Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine Online was a MMOJRPG (massive multiplayer online japanese role-playing game) that takes place in the post-apocalyptic future of the same universe that the Persona series is in. The demons and personas you see in Persona you could befriend, fight, fuse, and level up kinda like Pokemon then use them in raids and dungeons later in the game.

They've since shut down the American servers.

Current - Computer Game I separate current and all time as I can no longer play Imagine :( The game I am currently absolutely obsessed with, is Subnautica. You crash land on an alien planet that's completely water save for two extremely small islands I just recently found. I've only been playing this game for a week and it's made it to one of my top favorite games of all time. The music is beautiful, the sounds are amazing, the wildlife is colorful and goregous. There's sharks... which we all know may make me a bit bias about the game lol.

Switch Game I will be the first to admit that I am thumb-dumb and suck at using a controller. But I do have a Switch and there is a single game on the Switch that deserves the biggest shout out ever...

Hollow Knight is a 2D platformer with absolutely goregous artwork, a smooth experience, and a immersive lore... with no plot. You know nothing about anything going into the game, however, just by exploring (which is always my favorite thing to do in new games) you get pieces of the big picture. Depending on how many of those pieces you put together you get different endings. Every time I thought I was getting close to the end the game threw a curve ball at me and revealed even more hidden away.

Beware: this game is 2D Dark Souls and one of the most frustrating games for me to play. After completing it the first time, I went to a completely optional area... the hardest area in the game... and proceeded to cry and make my boyfriend finish it for me. I just recently picked the game back up. Still so worth the play through.

[Shaun Sheehan]

I am getting some great ideas here for new games to look into!  We have game night monthly at work and I've learned a few new ones through that.  It's a great way to let loose and bond socially with my work family. :)

Favorite? It's hard to pick just one, so here are my top board/card games:

Dixit - The artwork on the cards and expansion packs is beautiful and, as it's all up for interpretation, the game will never become outdated. The goal of the game is to give a clue about your card in play (quote, sing, hum, pantomime...anything) so that at least one, but not all, players guess which card is yours. 

Sushi Go! - A cute "pick and pass" card game that can be played in 10 min rounds. Great if you don't have a lot of time to play. 

Quirkle - A tile build-out game of building sets of six in either shapes or colors. It requires a lot of table space and is good with two or more players. 

Taco! Cat! Goat! Cheese! Pizza! - A fsimple ast-paced variation of the slap-jack and war variety, it's a great way to test your reflexes and usually leads to some great laughs.  A tension-buster, for sure. 

...and my go-to "in transit" smart phone games for travel and commute:

Two-Dots - A game that lets you go at your own pace in clearing a board/hitting goals- no race against a clock

Wordscapes - a modified version of a word-scramble and crossword puzzle 

2048 - a slide the tiles to add them up game 

Anything hidden object - I like the challenge of searching for things that are right out in the open but require a bit of effort to find. 

[Alex Laycy]

Great post! 🤓

I'm going to break with the other posters here..and say that i'm terrible with sticking with games and seeing them through to completion!

So if i do manage it, it's something quite special that must have really gotten it's claws into me 🦀

With this in mind, it would put Doom (2016), Wolfenstein 2 and Dishonored high on my list from recent years. As much as i love open world games, with a well crafted story and in depth lore - i just can't finish them!

What Doom, Wolfenstein and Dishonored all have in common for me is fantastic, smooth, addictive gameplay that i can pick up and drop - but with really memorable moments throughout (and in Wolfestein 2's case, a bonkers story).

- Alex 

[Dharma Ramos]

My husband owns a gaming store so we get to break into at least one new board game every week. It is hard to name one favorite, but some of the ones that we keep going back to are Splendor, Mysterium, Mansions of Madness, Pandemic Cthulhu, Lanterns, Forbidden Desert, Dead of Winter, Azul, Tokaido and I am sure I am forgetting a few. 

On my phone, I am addicted to Star Realms, oddly enough I rarely play the card game at the store.

On PC, Slay the Spire, though I play a lot of MMOs as well, current fave is Guild Wars 2.

[Shaun Sheehan]

My husband owns a gaming store so we get to break into at least one new board game every week. 

That is so cool! 

[Ulrika Eriksson]

I like the Atlassian team playbook, but also Ticket to ride. Educating and like to travel.

[Adrian Stephen]

Dota2 !

[Jason H]

Hello, my name is Jason and I am addicted to Dominion. It has been less than one day since my last game.

Jokes aside, for the last few years I would play the physical table-top version every lunchtime with my co-workers. Now I play the online version a few times a week (https://dominion.games).

I love it because every game is different. The selection of cards available in the game is random each time you play it, so you need to be able to create a different strategy each time you play.

Easy to learn, hard to master.

[Monique vdB]

@Jason H omg thank you so much for telling me there's an online version of Dominion! I really liked it the times I got to play it. I can't wait to try this!

[Fernando Bordallo]

I started reading the post and hit the magic word. TETRIS!!!

I can't count the hours I've spent playing. My family was fully invested in the game, to the point where my mother would have extra batteries for the Game Boy (remember that huge grey block? 🥰) in the bathroom, my sister would sneakily hide up in a tree to play without interruptions and we ended up investing in a second Game Boy to play the cable-connected multiplayer style. Hours ... so many hours!