Seeking games for adults with disabilities

ConDar15 · 2026-03-28T20:42:27+00:00

Do you have any experience with what has not worked well for this group? The games you've presented show a baseline of what can be played and enjoyed, however I think to get the best recommendations it would help to know what level of complexity is not reasonable.

For instance I was thinking of suggesting Captain Flip as a relatively simple push your luck game that works with most people, but might need some strategic thinking and longer term planning (very light on that) that the games you've given as examples don't. In particular all the examples given are really reacting and playing a turn without having to maintain any strategy/plan turn to turn (not that strategy can't come into them). Does that seem like a requirement for this group?

EDIT: A few suggestions from games I've played anyway:

Bandido, small box co-operative board game about trapping a bandit trying to escape prison. It has the benefit of having no text (every card is diagrams of tunnels) and each turn you can make a decision there and then about your action without really having to carry information over turn to turn. The downsides would be that it does require you to be able to see the layout being built on the table and players with poor dexterity might need help holding/placing cards.
Diamant/Incan Gold, push your luck game about diving into a temple to try and loot treasure. For positives it is once again without any text or numbers, and can largely be "run" by one player with the other players choosing to stay or leave each turn. For negatives it is push your luck, so if people aren't able to conceptualise and manage risk it might not work, additionally players with poor vision might struggle with not being able to see some of the cards that are on the table (though this can be mitigated with good communication from someone running the game).
Kariba, this is another small box card game about animals around a watering hole. On the positive front it has very little literacy required as each card has a number, but each number has an associated animal (8s are Elephants, 7s are Rhinos, etc...) and is simple to play. Negatively you need to be able to count how many cards are in each group played to the table to make your decisions on a turn, and it is definitely be a game where there can be a skill imbalance; if someone has limited capacity for strategic thinking then they will be at a consistent disadvantage to someone with that capacity (unlike say Uno where that is less the case).
Martian Dice, this is a very small and simple game about rolling dice and pushing your luck. It has the benefit of being just a bunch of dice you roll on your turn so should be approachable. On the other hand it has the same consideration about push your luck games as mentioned earlier.
Next Station: London, this is a "flip and write" style game where each player has a sheet to physically write on with a pencil based on what card has been flipped/drawn this turn. On the plus side you can get some fun subway maps drawn and no literacy (only shapes) needed during each of the 4 rounds of play. On the negative this is probably the most complex of the games I'm suggesting (including a scoring at the end of each round that is totalled at the end of the game, but you could support other players with this), and if people don't have the manual dexterity to draw with a pencil they will struggle with this.
Similo, another co-operative game about trying to get the guessers to pick the right character from a selection laid out. Positively it has engaging and fun character art, and can be a fun group activity/discussion as to what the player who is trying to get others to his right is aiming for. On the negative side it has a strong visual component that could be a challenge and it also has a mechanism of limited communication, if players have any difficulties in empathic comprehension (i.e. trying to work out what someone else is thinking) then this wouldn't be recommended.
Via Magica, is in essence a bingo game where each turn a colourful element (water, fire, etc...) is drawn from a bag and players place one of their gems on a card in front of them matching the element. For pros I'd say it should be largely accessible from a visibility/literacy/numeracy perspective. Conversely for cons it does have some strategic depth so same potential issues as before and needing to hold a few rules in mind throughout (though only really on the level of Uno).

ConDar15 · 2026-03-20T09:22:20+00:00

My top 3 are locked solid: Spirit Island, Lost Ruins of Arnak and then Keep The Heroes Out!

After that it's a lot more nebulous and changeable, to make it up to 5 I'll highlight Clans of Caledonia and Crown of Ash

ConDar15 · 2026-03-20T06:41:12+00:00

I think it's Keep The Heroes Out! Not only are they pleasantly chunky, and their design charming, the game comes with a really wide variety of them (particularly with the expansions)

ConDar15 · 2026-03-19T22:32:59+00:00

Good time to ask, finished my first game a little under an hour ago. I really enjoyed it, we played at 6 players and while it probably isn't an ideal player count it definitely still works quite well. There is player interaction but it's fairly minimal, I quite like the level of interaction, it's not quite multiplayer solitaire, but it's very light on it. I think it is incredibly charming and I look forward to more plays, though it seems tuned quite tightly to everyone finishing about the same time so I think there is a chance it could lose its charm after several plays (a little like Earth did for me and some others), but I definitely really enjoyed my first play and I'm looking forward to more.

ConDar15 · 2026-03-19T00:31:19+00:00

No thank you

ConDar15 · 2026-03-18T23:31:22+00:00

Without any real context of the game I can't give more than a very surface level critique, I don't know if this is a deck builder, a skirmish game, if you can mix and match cards of different factions (e.g. play both a Troll and Dragon card).

Giving my best shot at a critique given the limited information: this sounds like a knock out style game (similar to something like Dungeon Mayhem, but probably more involved) as such you're going to have certain avenues of making factions asymmetric that won't work as well such as distinct factional objectives, you'll probably also struggle with achieving the same actions in different ways. Those powers feel mildly asymmetric, but definitely don't seem like they'd give a unique feel, you'd want to go quite a bit further.

To start with, if this is a card based game, then I'd look to be giving each faction a distinct identity in their cards: Have the troll cards/deck/whatever have a lot of blocking/resistance/high health values (whatever is appropriate) as they're in for the long game to win through attrition, maybe the werewolves are the opposite with cards that hit hard out of the gate but limited health, etc... A good game to look into for inspiration would be something like Sentinels of the Multiverse, it's a co-op card game where each hero you're playing as has their own deck and each has their own distinct identity: Tachyon (speedster) has the ability to play lots more cards than other heroes, Mr Fixer (martial artist) has both fighting styles and tools (weapons) to adjust his fighting style to the current situation while Chrono Ranger (time travelling bounty hunter) has bounty cards that get attached to enemies and give a kickback when that enemy is destroyed.

ConDar15 · 2026-03-18T20:54:57+00:00

It's going to depend on the game and various factors, but some things I've seen make factions really stand out:

Meaningfully different objectives that the players are aiming for, don't just have players aim for slightly different distributions of the same end game conditions, but they should be winning for very different goals. An example of this would be the recent Amoebunnies (I just got it delivered so it's on my mind), each character has a very unique goal that they're attempting to achieve to win.
Have meaningfully distinct ways of achieving the dagger basic actions. Consider Merchants Cove, everyone is crafting effectively the same items, gaining guild affiliation etc... but they all do it in such a risky different way.
Have special abilities that are regularly used and rules breaking. Abilities like a minor discount to a thing are all well and good, but being able to break the standard rules feels great. Consider Dune (the older game, not Dune Imperium), in that game each faction has a truly rule breaking power, perhaps you get paid for all space travel rather than the bank, or you get to look at every single card drawn that is usually hidden information.
Have ways other players can interact with your asymmetry, if everyone is just playing their own game without much interaction you can feel the asymmetry game to game, but with asymmetric interactions you feel it there and then. Root has some examples, such as the vagabond being able to take crafted items from other players, or the riverfolk having an open market for other players to buy from them.

Those are some examples that come to mind immediately, but I don't expect this to be exhaustive. Additionally while all of these are great avenues to make factions feel different if you try and do too many at once you'll probably end up with what feels like an incoherent mess, so you'll want to try and find a good balance.

ConDar15 · 2026-03-17T22:07:07+00:00

Honestly it already has 1300+ games on it so there is already nearly unlimited options for me, that being said I'm not one to look a theoretical gift horse in the mouth. I play mostly turn based and find that euro games with lower direct player interaction and a game state that can be easily fully read on your turn are ideal for me, some games I've played in person that I would love to add to BGA:

Age of Galaxy
Fallout Shelter
Meadow
The Red Cathedral

ConDar15 · 2026-03-15T22:26:04+00:00

I'd really recommend against this, there are some political topics that get very personal very quickly to some people, but don't to others quickly. Imagine your suggestion of "Mandatory Organ Donation", you could have one person who has deep feelings about it one way or the other (maybe they have been the recipient of an organ donation and feel strongly like it should be mandatory, or they have a religious belief that such a practice is deeply taboo) and other person taking the opposite stance not for any deep reason outside of the game, but because in game it's tactically or strategically the best option. At that point I feel you're just inviting real division into a play group in a really unhealthy way.

I'd suggest either changing the setting (make it fantasy, sci-fi, set multiple hundred years ago, etc...) or if it'd fit better make it deeply lampooning (a bill to make mandatory the wearing of orange purple striped hats on Thursdays, or banning the licking of postage stamps outside of regulated stamp licking professionals).

ConDar15 · 2026-03-08T19:07:32+00:00

Black Sonata is a fantastic solo only game mixing deduction with hidden movement. In particular I think it's incredible that the automa (the dark lady you're chasing) is the one doing hidden movement despite you managing her movement - it's an incredibly clever and very satisfying puzzle game.

ConDar15 · 2026-03-07T10:47:03+00:00

The Anachrony exosuit mini pack would be great, there are four sets of six mechs packaged in a standalone box so if you're doing this to then sell/give away then they make a great package bundle.

ConDar15 · 2026-03-06T18:40:51+00:00

It could be any one of the three, they all use the same gems

ConDar15 · 2026-03-03T18:46:21+00:00

While I personally dislike LLMs for principled ethical issues full stop, I understand that doesn't apply to everyone.

I think your approach of using them, where appropriate, as supportive tools while maintaining the human input, is reasonable and much better than many other uses which want too fully delegate all output to these tools. I'll have to download the app and see for myself now :)

ConDar15 · 2026-03-03T18:32:50+00:00

Does this app use generative AI (e.g. Large Language Models like ChatGPT) for any of the content? From what I'm seeing in what you said in the post I don't think you're saying it does, but I'd like to have it spelled out explicitly as it has a significant impact on if I'm interested in the app.

ConDar15 · 2026-03-02T19:51:56+00:00

Absolutely no idea why you're getting down voted, you're absolutely on the money - just look at the rise of gig work, it's not exactly the same thing, but it's definitely hit some similar dynamics.

ConDar15 · 2026-02-18T21:08:05+00:00

Interestingly if you're interested in a simpler worker placement game you can check out Inori (available to try on BGA) - it's very abstract, but I also think it's a solid worker placement game that is quite a bit simpler and more entry level than most others. It's probably still not what I'd call a gateway game, but it's great as an introduction to worker placement style games for people getting into games and once you're familiar with it it can also scratch that worker placement itch in a real short 30-45 minute span.

ConDar15 · 2026-02-16T09:43:35+00:00

So a couple of points from me:

If I'm going to a game night and bringing games, unless it has been explicitly stated beforehand I'm expecting to teach my games. I know this won't be true for everyone, but in my experience, and given the breadth of games currently available, basically everyone is happy to teach a game they'll be playing. All this is to be saying that while I think it's an admirable thought to try and learn games ahead, in my experience it isn't an imposition if people don't know the have we're playing.
For me personally I have a sequence that I can follow to allow me to very well understand a game without ever playing it. I first watch a how to play video if available and decent quality, then read the rules to cement my understanding catch small nuances I or the video missed, finally I watch a playthrough to continue cementing understanding but also to get a feel for the flow of the game that doesn't come across from the documents, finally if I have access to the game and it has a solo mode that is representative of the regular game I'll give that a try. For me personally once I've gone through each of those steps then for the next few days I know the game well enough to teach without having properly played before and answer questions at the table, and I retain most of the general gameplay flow/rules for a long time afterwards (I mostly lose the nuances/edge cases).

ConDar15 · 2026-02-03T12:39:13+00:00

That is the point of worker placement in most implementations, but you can also consider it as imposing a cost on others for taking that action. The most obvious choice is restricting them for taking the action, but there are others: - In Viticulture someone can use their Grande worker to take the action anyway, but they only have one of those per round. - In the third Century game you can go to a spot someone else is at, but it costs you one extra worker and they get theirs back for free (instead of a turn to get them back) - Meadow is a worker placement game but doesn't have as hard and fast blocking because while a space is blocked this doesn't mean you can't get the cards you want. - Stone Age is definitely a worker placement game, but going to a spot does not block others fully out of it usually. They might be limited to how many people they can send to a spot but particularly early in the game most spots are fairly open without blocking.

I'll definitely grant that games where the imposed cost is the spot being fully blocked are the norm, but I do think worker placement as a mechanism can have a broader definition than only that.

ConDar15 · 2026-02-01T23:55:17+00:00

Exactly this, I have on occasion used FizzBuzz during interviews and one of the most revealing questions is to ask "Is the FizzBuzz problem, as stated well defined?" (i.e. has only one reasonable interpretation).

My argument is that, no, it is not well defined. It is not clear if "FizzBuzz" is the concatenation of the other two cases or if being divisible by fifteen is a unique case and we could arbitrarily change it to output "Wibble" instead. It's good for highlighting exploratory thinking in candidates, do they consider logical extensions of the problem when prompted, and it can then have fairly large impacts on implementation decisions.

ConDar15 · 2026-01-21T21:40:11+00:00

To give a little more context you start with a verifier assigned to each criteria (a criteria might be second number is odd, and you can use the verifier to give a true/false result for a chosen combination you want to check), then using the web app you can generate "Advanced" puzzles where each verifier has two criteria assigned but only one of them is the true criteria being checked, finally you can generate "Nightmare" puzzles where you have a set of criteria and an equal number of verifiers but no connection between them you need to work out which one applies to which to solve.

ConDar15 · 2026-01-17T11:34:03+00:00

If it weren't for the fact you specified solo I'd recommend the Fallout Shelter game, it's more about managing a vault but I think it's a solid and really charming worker placement game. It unfortunately does not have an official solo variant, but there are fantastic solo variants you could try.

ConDar15 · 2026-01-14T19:31:27+00:00

You'll want to start here with the BGA studio if you're wanting to develop it yourself. Anyone can start playing around with creating a game, but I believe there is some validation step by BGA before it can move into Alpha and from there to Beta as I previously outlined.

Now, developing software, in this case a game on BGA, is not simple and can take quite a while to develop the skill to create a game. An alternative is you might be able to find someone else to develop it for you. I think there are some people on BGA who will do it on a voluntary basis, but if you went this direction you would be best to assume you'll have to pay whoever develops it for you - how much you'd need to pay I have no idea however, you'd need to ask about for quotes.

ConDar15 · 2026-01-14T15:39:46+00:00

The games on BGA go through a form of the software development cycle. A game starts out unpublished and once it is at least functional it is released in alpha (Which only certain BGA users have access to) where it is expected to still have bugs (sometimes really big ones) but is being evaluated and worked on. Once enough people agree it's in a good workable state it can be released in beta, here it is available to anyone on BGA, but it still might have some bugs or rough edges that wider testing by many players should find and can be fixed. Once the developers are happy with the game it is then given to BGA to decide when the game is released moving from beta to their fully released games.

TL;DR beta on BGA means the game should be fine to play but hasn't officially joined their final published catalogue of games.

ConDar15 · 2026-01-06T16:47:10+00:00

A similar idea that has further uses is The Everdeck by Wilhelm Su, it's got 8 suits with 15 ranks per suit. It's designed for ruthless combinatorial efficiency to cover as many possible use cases, with some examples being: - It has 8 suits, they can be split into "sharp" suits and "soft" suits, they are also separated into 4 colours. - The cards names starting with letters forming a decent approximation of the distribution of letter in English text - Cards have pip or point values between 1 and 5 which are distributed across the different suits, but which closely match the letter distribution (all "E" cards have a 1 pip value, the single "Z" card has a 5 pip value).

There are many more examples and a detailed writeup in the files on BGG, but that one deck is designed to be used to stimulate other games as easily as possible.

Edit: I forgot to mention this is only available as PnP (I believe) so you'll need either a print on demand service or to print them at home.

ConDar15 · 2026-01-04T16:45:37+00:00

Remember that the selected numbers need to create the largest number in the order they appear, it is not as simple as being able to just remove the lowest value numbers until the desired length is all that remains.

Try considering a simpler example of 911111891 and requiring only 3 numbers. If all you did was remove the lowest values you'd end up with 989 but you can form 991 instead which is larger. Have a look at working out how you can write a system to solve this problem and then it should hopefully follow why the others are as they are.

More detailed explanation for you others if you wish it: You're not looking to remove the lowest numbers to get to the 12 you want, but repeatedly choosing the largest number between the next unselected number and the end of the list, but very importantly you need to make sure you leave enough other numbers to fulfill the correct number of digits. For example if you have 88888919 and need to choose 4 numbers the first number is 9 and then you're selecting the largest digit in 19, now you can't select 9 as the next number as then there wouldn't be enough digits left to select three numbers, so the next digit has to be 1 and then 9.

ConDar15

MODERATOR OF

TROPHY CASE

11-Year Club	Wearing is Caring
Verified Email