December 27, 2024: Games: Gifts That Keep On Giving!

If you live in a household with some folks and you all game together, here's a holiday idea: surprise yourself!

Figure out how many game days you want to play this holiday season. Divide those days among the number of gamers in the household. Next, each person picks a number of games equal to their assigned number of days from your game library and wrap them up. (Our household loves gift bags with tissue paper both for their reusability and their capacity to obfuscate the size and shape of gifts.)

Once the game day comes around, someone "unwraps" an appropriate game-present, and that's what you play that day!

So, for example, if you have six more days before you have to go back to work next year, and there are three of you in the house, you each pick two games and wrap (or otherwise disguise) them.

Obviously, if there are not a conveniently divisible number of days and players, you'll just have to let some players pick an extra game to make the numbers work out . . . or each person picks an equal number of games regardless and wrap them all, knowing that there will still be mystery. (Five game days and three gamers? You each pick two!)

This is the absolute barebones idea; it can be tweaked according the needs of the gamers and household. (For example, if you normally play games that take one or two hours each and you want to fill six-hour sessions, then you'd each wrap three or so games per session.)

Still, the idea is to rotate through some lesser-played gems in your collection and add a spark of mystery and holiday surprise – at a super-low cost, since you already own the games!

-- Steven Marsh