This is a good example of the sort of thing I mean:
nostalgic kid's games. You need to tailor said nostalgia to the age group of your friends.
'Ghost Train' was a seemingly-legendary game around the playground back in the 1970's, where no-one ever had it, but there were whispers of friends of friends who
maybe once got to play it. I eventually found it at a jumble sale when I was about 7, and bought it with money from my paper round.
I only had it for a week or so, but I felt like a King of the School. Unfortunately, my Dad tripped over it one night in the dark, so it went out into the garbage.
I discovered it on Ebay recently, and, then bought it thinking some old friends would lose their minds over it. Once it arrived, I sat down with a beer to open it up and start the many repairs I expected it would need, given its age (1974), only to find it in almost brand new condition. Weirdly, it was cheaper than something like 'Last Night On Earth' or 'Zombicide', which I was given as a gift but have never completed a game of, because the complexity bores everyone.
I took that photo and sent it to a friend, and she rang 30 seconds later, squealing and screaming with excitement, wanting to know if it was 'out' again and how on earth I found it.
A group of us played it recently and had a good time. Although it seems like a basic 'move from start to finish' game, it has this ingenious interlocking gear / turntable system where the wheels move in different directions. The idea is to land on the turntables to be able to spin other players in bad directions, which also moves the ghosts around. If they sending other players flying, they are sent back to the waiting room, whilst you hopefully run for the exit. There's two main problems: you always have to move in the direction you left your car facing at the end of the previous turn, meaning you have to plan ahead of time; and there's this damn spider that can be raised or lowered to block the exit, meaning, if it's down as you approach, you have to loop halfway back around the board again and try again.
Most of the strategy of the game involves deliberately-fucking over the other players in the situations where you can choose directions - maybe you choose to go backwards to spin the turntables, or aim to lower the spider. You can block player movement by turning a skeleton holding a lantern - you can't pass unless the light facing you is green. Unless you're extremely-lucky, you'll go around and around the board multiple times trying to get out that damn exit before someone drops 'that bloody spider'.
It's just the right combination of simple-but-complicated, meaning kids and drunk adults can play it so you can talk without having to concentrate too much. The backdrop and design is beautiful and fun to look at - I always loved the skeletons sharing a drink on the edge of the board. My nephew lay his head on the edge of the table and kept staring at it saying "That's
so creepy," in that spooked-out but totally-fascinated way you do when you're a kid. I had to explain to him what a Ghost Train is / was - I guess it's another part of culture that's vanishing.
One great little design touch is the player figures. The girl looks o-mouth scared, whilst the guy has a Pepe-style shitlord smirk,
just like real life. Contrast with something new like 'Zombicide', where the female characters are the ugliest tranny-dyke things I've ever seen.
I suspect anything pre-1979 is worth a look - I think games of that era were expected to be played as a family activity rather than just aimed at children. After that, there's seems to be a deliberate-dumbing down of board game culture - if you want such classics as 'The Game Of Life', 'Payday' or 'Careers', you need to experience their older, more complex versions, particularly to experience the design culture of Mid-Century art. (My friend's kids are fascinated with my '65 'Game Of Life' due to the enormous size of the board).
This was another good one. 1979's 'Electronic Detective' - so complicated the instructions came on a flexidisc, where a post-'Get Smart' / pre-'Inspector Gadget' Don Adams explains to you how to play a game. I didn't understand the choice - he always played lousy detectives.
It's basically a boardless, more complicated 'Cluedo' where you grill suspects and use elimination and deduction to find the culprit. It's good in that only one player uses the machine at once, freeing up lots of time to talk, but your turns are involving enough - picking the suspect who can give you the information you're missing, then questioning them via the screen - to keep the interest up, but not so hard being drunk won't mess things up too much. Definitely worth a look.