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When we visited family over Christmas, they had the card game Exploding Kittens (with the expansion pack of wild cards.)
This is my new favorite game. For me it's the perfect balance of everything that makes a game fun. I've been wondering what makes a game good, and am still not completely sure. You have games like chess that are pure strategy with no random chance thrown in, and they are fine, but not what I would call fun. They are serious business. Then you have games like the card game War, that are pure chance with zero strategy, and they aren't very fun either. Just something to do with your hands while hanging out with someone.
A good game will have a balance of strategy and chance. But there are other factors as well. Monopoly has a mixture of both, but can be really tedious and painful as you try to build up your wealth and you become attached to your properties and the dice go against you so you lose. The other players always roll the perfect roll to skip right over your properties. You get so invested that it hurts when you fail. I've seen many people get a little upset playing that game.
With Exploding Kittens, I think it's such a fun game because you can try to strategize, but there are so many different ways to handle each move that each move is a little leap of faith, and you know that you might fail with each move. So when you do fail, it's no big deal. You don't get invested in some long reaching plan that might fail, but at the same time, you can have a technique of playing that will tend to lead to success. Plus there are so many moves you can make, you really do feel like you hold the future in your own hands and that what you do will determine your success.
I'm rambling a little bit here. The bottom line is that I was really surprised how much I liked Exploding Kittens, especially with a handful of people playing. It kept everyone's interest and led to a bunch of laughter and comments about how the game was going.
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