Plenty of us are stuck inside as the world attempts to “flatten the curve” of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus. Kids are home from school, parents are working from home, and all but the most essential businesses have been shut down in many communities.
To get through this, we’ve got to keep our distance — and lots of folks are stepping in to make doing so a bit easier. World of Warcraft players have been offered double XP for the next month. Microsoft opened up a new educational category in Minecraft, offering free education content — like a Minecraft tour of the International Space Station — to students home from school. But if board games are more your thing, there’s stuff for you, too.
Coronavirus/COVID-19: What you need to know
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Everything you need to know about the coronavirus
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Originally released in 2010, The Board Game Remix Kit has been made available for free on itch.io. Dicey Dungeons writer Holly Gramazio tweeted about the kit’s re-release on Thursday morning. “We thought we so many people staying inside at the moment, occupying themselves with whatever’s available, it was worth digging the old Kit up and putting it out into the world again,” Gramazio said.
The Board Game Remix Kit uses pieces from board games that people likely already have, like Trivial Pursuit, Monopoly, Scrabble, and Clue. Stuff like pen, paper, and “other household objects” are used, as well. In total, there are “26 different suggestions for ways to play,” plus four more in the Valentine’s Day expansion, also available for free online.
Here’s the sort of games you can expect:
- Full Houses: poker, but played with Monopoly properties
- Citygrid: a single-player city-building game
- Use Your Words: Scrabble with storytelling
- Them’s Fightin’ Words: a game of making anagrams, and arguing about which one would win in a fight
- Hunt the Lead Piping: hiding and searching for the Cluedo pieces in your actual house
- Guess Who Done It: A series of yes/no questions to identify the murderer (contributed by Meg Pickard)
- Zombie Mansion: use the lead piping to defend the Cluedo mansion
- Judy Garland on the Moon with a Bassoon: a drawing game that uses the answers to trivia questions as prompts
The Board Game Remix Kit is available for free as a PDF, but the team suggests a donation to the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Response Fund.
D&D Essentials Kit
The Dungeons & Dragons Essentials Kit is “the single best introduction” to the fantasy role-playing game we’ve ever seen. The box includes everything you need to start playing D&D, including an introductory rulebook, a DM screen, a set of 11 dice, a handy set of cards for things players need to keep track of (initiative, magic items, etc.), and a brand-new adventure, Dragon of Icespire Peak.
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