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Recently me and my wife started taking interest in board games. We got Risk and Monopoly and they are fun. However, being lazy bastards we are, we started looking for their PC equivalents.

And it got me thinking. Many years ago there were wonderful small gems like Jones in the fast lane that were fun to play together. Can you suggest some things like that? Im not restricting to any particular genre or theme, we're pretty flexible with that. They have to be however fun and relatively easy to play, so we don't have to spend a week figuring things out like in Space Empires

What kind of limits are you looking at for system specs? That'll pretty much determine what we can recommend.

AMD 2000 XP+, 1 gig ram GeForce 7600GS. Windows XP.

Lookup the Popcap family of games, there are some nice two-player games there. As a single player game which is also fun to spectate, I'll reccomend World of Goo where it is just fun to watch someone play.

Old, but still fun: Warcraft 3. I can recommend some good custom scenario maps that you can download to keep it interesting. With the help of the map archive at warcraft.org, I've kept the game fresh for years.

Rogue, I mean hotseat games

Don't really know what kind of games you like, but I've never been able to go past classics like Scorched Earth or Worms for competitive playability. The first is now freeware if you browse around. I'm sure Worms or Worms 2 should be bargain basement stuff by now.

I second worms. They've even come out with Worms 3D which should still run on your hardware, even if just barely. There are other options out there as well, like Alpha Centauri and other TBS games.

The best Worms game, for my money, is Worms 2. Armageddon, World Party, and the ones that came after weren't quite as good, and the 3D ones were just garbage.

Warlords 3: Dark Lords Rising is a very simple, very fun hotseat strategy game that I used to play with friends for hours on end.

Rogue 9 wrote:Old, but still fun: Warcraft 3. I can recommend some good custom scenario maps that you can download to keep it interesting. With the help of the map archive at warcraft.org, I've kept the game fresh for years.

StarCraft might be worth trying as well, since it also can be kept fresh through custom maps. It's more limited by the engine than WarCraft 3 though, so there is less variety in the creativity. My friend and I have gotten a few years worth of casual play out of both SC's and WC3's custom map community, long after he had gotten disinterested with the core games.

Singer wrote:

Rogue 9 wrote:Old, but still fun: Warcraft 3. I can recommend some good custom scenario maps that you can download to keep it interesting. With the help of the map archive at warcraft.org, I've kept the game fresh for years.

StarCraft might be worth trying as well, since it also can be kept fresh through custom maps. It's more limited by the engine than WarCraft 3 though, so there is less variety in the creativity. My friend and I have gotten a few years worth of casual play out of both SC's and WC3's custom map community, long after he had gotten disinterested with the core games.

I can't believe someone seriously recommended Starcraft for someone looking for casual games. Mind-numbing clickfest dependent on having a high aps != casual.

General Zod wrote:I can't believe someone seriously recommended Starcraft for someone looking for casual games. Mind-numbing clickfest dependent on having a high aps != casual.

Well sure, if you're playing non-custom, standard SC. The custom maps aren't necessarily like that though. I'll admit that I've been out of the SC loop for a while now, so maybe all of the custom maps have become clickfests at this point.

There's also the fact that someone else suggested an RTS earlier, and it was shot down because it isn't a multiplayer on a single computer game. Way to read the thread there Singer. Or the OP for that matter.

Singer wrote:

General Zod wrote:I can't believe someone seriously recommended Starcraft for someone looking for casual games. Mind-numbing clickfest dependent on having a high aps != casual.

Well sure, if you're playing non-custom, standard SC. The custom maps aren't necessarily like that though. I'll admit that I've been out of the SC loop for a while now, so maybe all of the custom maps have become clickfests at this point.

Because someone really wants to bother with custom maps when they're after casual games.

Braedley wrote:There's also the fact that someone else suggested an RTS earlier, and it was shot down because it isn't a multiplayer on a single computer game. Way to read the thread there Singer. Or the OP for that matter.

Oops. Sorry guys, I didn't realize how moronic I was looking. I'll shut up now.

Rogue 9 wrote:Old, but still fun: Warcraft 3. I can recommend some good custom scenario maps that you can download to keep it interesting. With the help of the map archive at warcraft.org, I've kept the game fresh for years.

Dear Jesus.

If you're looking for action-y games, things like Starcon supermelee are good hotseat games. For things more boardgame-y, there are doubtless PC versions of all kinds of board games (like Settlers of Catan etc). Of course there's always Mule and the like, and if I can remember what my favourite hotseat game is called I'll mention it. There are definately good games in this genre but they're not generally new or flash. Buy a console.

Thanks for all the suggestions, I'll check them out.

Also, if someone is looking for a good classical time-killer, I just found "Jones in the fast lane" by Sierra on the internet. We played it yesterday and it was still a kicker despite dated graphics and sound.

Also, depending on exactly how casual you want it to be, Heroes of Might and Magic 1 or 2 were pretty easy to get the gist of and are hotseat playable. By the time you get to 3 it was more about the campaigns, but the first 2 had some very small maps which equated to "run in and butcher what you can as fast as you can", which I always found fun.

Stark wrote:

Rogue 9 wrote:Old, but still fun: Warcraft 3. I can recommend some good custom scenario maps that you can download to keep it interesting. With the help of the map archive at warcraft.org, I've kept the game fresh for years.

Dear Jesus.

Awwwww, widdle Stark doesn't like my gaming. Is widdle Stark gonna cry? Jesus fucking Christ, get the fuck over yourself.

Liero! That's a bit of fun, and fairly simple.

The classic old Warlords series have a lot of hotseat play.

Arthur_Tuxedo wrote:The best Worms game, for my money, is Worms 2. Armageddon, World Party, and the ones that came after weren't quite as good, and the 3D ones were just garbage.

I felt the same way.


But then, my friends all hated me for the evil things I managed to accomplish with the ninja rope.

Rogue 9 wrote: Awwwww, widdle Stark doesn't like my gaming. Is widdle Stark gonna cry? Jesus fucking Christ, get the fuck over yourself.

You ignorantly suggest an RTS in a thread asking for hotseat games and people laugh at you. I laugh at you, in a post full of actual suggestions, and you single it out and attempt to flame me. That is, as they say on Star Trek, fascinating.

Do the later Worms games have proper weapon/etc configurability? The later games had really silly weapons that pretty much killed the non-random element, but were usually more polished otherwise.

And don't forget Buzz Aldrin's Race into Space is hotseat. There's a hackjob remake that works in modern OS's out there as well. It's heavily theme-reliant, but if you think rockets are cool it's fun to play. If you can get Chaos Overlords working, it's hella fun as a light strategy game with a bit of humour.

If you were REALLY brave, you could play When Two Worlds War, a very early hotseat, split-screen RTS before the RTS genre existed. It's got bad pre-mouse controls, but it's an 'interesting' game. Star Control is better of course.

Stark wrote:

Rogue 9 wrote: Awwwww, widdle Stark doesn't like my gaming. Is widdle Stark gonna cry? Jesus fucking Christ, get the fuck over yourself.

You ignorantly suggest an RTS in a thread asking for hotseat games and people laugh at you. I laugh at you, in a post full of actual suggestions, and you single it out and attempt to flame me. That is, as they say on Star Trek, fascinating.

Oh my God, not only is he self-important, he's fucking illiterate.

Tolya wrote:And it got me thinking. Many years ago there were wonderful small gems like Jones in the fast lane that were fun to play together. Can you suggest some things like that? Im not restricting to any particular genre or theme, we're pretty flexible with that. They have to be however fun and relatively easy to play, so we don't have to spend a week figuring things out like in Space Empires

I'm glad you brought this up with all the other people who laughed at you, otherwise I might think you have a personal problem with me. Did you see what I did there?

BTW, since SE is hotseat and he clearly wants to 'share' a game with his partner, Warcraft is still a stupid suggestion. I speculate he was referring to 'genre' in the sense of 'sword chop' or 'laser pew' and not 'a game we can't play together at all like Warcraft'.

I can keep this up all day, and ALSO continue to provide actual useful suggestions instead of just your butthurt mewling. Please, continue to hound me so I might troll you.

In the spirit of newer games, the LEGO games are pretty cool and are easy to play hotseat, especially if you've got a controller to reduce keyboard crowding. They're fun, everyone's got something to do, and the choice is really just based on what theme you prefer (although Indiana Jones didn't impress me). I still can't remember what the crazy econ-political game of screwing over your friends is called, though.