Games for traveling

Went on an international trip, of course I packed games.

We took a week long trip to Costa Rica! While we had a lot of adventures planned, downtime is always a part of air travel and hotels stays abroad. Our hotel wasn’t located in a walk-able area, so we were either on a tour or back at the hotel, waiting for and/or recovering from an adventure.

So, of course, I packed GAMES! These are actually the ones that made it out of my luggage. They are all solo games, as my family isn’t really into gaming - it’s more how I unwind and avoid doom scrolling (and, yikes, was there a LOT to doom scroll last week…ugh)

On the plane to Costa Rica, I finally started to play my copy of Murdle: Volume 1. This was perfect for the limited space that a plane allows - tray tables are not what they used to be and you never know if the person in front of you is going to lean back or if the flight attendants will appear with your next snack or beverage. So a book based puzzler was perfect!

If you’re not familiar with Murdle (and I was not until a friend mentioned it last year) it’s a logic puzzle game where you have a list of clues and you try to figure out who-dun-it. I made it through the first 25 games - which are the “easy mode” games - with all correct answers but after that the puzzles get more complex and apparently at 35,000 feet, my brain could not handle it so I only did a few on the flight home.

If you’re curious, free puzzles are still posted daily at Murdle.com so you can try out solving the crimes with Deductive Logico! The web-based version is REALLY nice, but obviously if you’re on the go, the book is the best choice.

Thursday was a “recovery” day after traveling all day Sunday and then non-stop adventure Monday-Wednesday. The only thing we had planned was a dinner in the evening, so taking it slow and chilling as the tone. So, of course, I broke out one of my all-time favorite solo games, a ButtonShy + Scott Almes classic - Food Chain Island!

In this clever little puzzle, you shuffle a deck of animal cards and randomly lay them out in a 4x4 grid. Then, based on the numbers assigned to the animals, you move cards around the board as they eat the other, lower numbered critters. Each predator has a power that activites upon eating, so you can manipulate other animals to line them up for munching. It’s quick and clever and, as usual, I lost more than I won the game but it is so quick, you just shuffle and set up again! I have all the expansions but have yet to add them in since I barely get through the base game.

Next up, I finally cracked open my copy of Sherlock Solitaire. This game is small enough, I was able to sit on the bed and play it in the space in front of me - you just need an area to make a few piles of cards. It is REALLY easy to learn, but a clever puzzle of managing cards and creating sets. I lucked out with my first game and won but after that, I did not do so well LOL - probably thinking too hard! There are 2 “cases” in the box and each case has 3 different modes plus Holmes and Watson have different powers that activate when pairs are put into your “crime scene” pile, which can change how you play. Looking forward to getting this to the table again. It’s so tiny, it’s going to travel with me everywhere.

But, of course, I can’t play games all the time! Sometimes, I need to wind down and unplug and just consume rather than engage. So, I read a book about board games! Tim Clare’s “Across the Board: How Games Make Us Human” had just arrived at the library as I was leaving for vacation so I checked it out and put it in my carry-on. I’m a little over halfway now and it is a delightful book about the history of games, gaming, and definitely makes it clear that To Game is Human. We all did it and do it, around the world, every corner of the land…perhaps the world would be a better place if we all got back to playing for fun.

Whoa, that was getting deep! Clearly, time to wrap up this post! Do you have any go-to travel games? Let me know in the comments or link me to your post! Thanks for reading!