October 10th-11th: Overnight at John and Carissa's

Hilary stayed overnight with John and Carissa and played a few games that night and the following evening. The star of the night was definitely Primordial Soup, a game where players take on the roles of evolving amoebas. During the game you must eat, poop, replicate, and evolve. When you eat, you eat the poop of the other player's amoebas, but poop your own color. Various genes you can buy over the course of the game allow you to eat less and/or less restrictively, give you more control over your one-celled surrogates, or even attack other players amoebas.

This is a moderately long, complex, and fiddly game, but much to my surprise, Hilary really enjoyed it, to the point where we played again the next morning. The fact that she liked this (and hated Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation - a much shorter, less fiddly game), made me rethink what it is she does and does not like in games. She really prefers games where everything happens "in the open". She dislikes having to guess what cards someone is holding or what piece they are moving towards you. In Primordial Soup, everything happens in the open.

After our evening game of Primordial Soup, Hilary retreated to the couch to read/play with her iPhone/fall asleep, and John, Carissa, and I played a 3-player game of Bohnanza, the best ever game about bean farming. Bohnanza is a trading game, and it really works better with more people - with 3 there's a tendency to try to gang up on whoever is winning (by not trading with them). However, Carissa and I managed to mess this up as John was way behind to begin with and we kept trying to avoid helping each-other to the point where John managed to eke out the victory, which I think surprised all of us.

The next morning, we played Primordial Soup again, which Hilary was actually excited to play! Which made me excited! See all the exclamation points!!?!

The first game, none of us had bought the improvement that allowed us to attack one-another (Struggle for Survival, shown below). This game, I made sure to save up for it. At first it seemed like it would only allow me to pick which other player would win, as I lagged behind for most of the game, but in the end it allowed me to do so much damage that I managed to pull ahead right at the end of the game.