Board games as artistic masterpieces on your table

Oleksandra Pervunina, QA Engineer at Wix.com

Image by You X Ventures on Unsplash

What do we think about when we hear the word “art”? I bet that we all imagine some beautiful picture from the museum, some famous sculpture or maybe some interesting performance at the theater. It proves that all people are visual from birth. We love beauty and aesthetics around us, we love to see beautiful things. It inspires us and gives us energy and a good mood.

But art itself does not appeal only to our eyes. Art can influence our all five senses — sight, smell, taste, touch and hearing. For example, it can be not only a masterpiece of Van Gogh for our eyes, but it also can be niche perfume for our smell, delicious food for our taste, incredible embroidered shirt for our touch and some Mozart’s music for our hearing.

Art is everywhere — this is a motto for my whole life. And what about table games? They are often perceived as simple games that we play with our friends from time to time on the weekends. Or maybe they are something bigger? I think some of them can definitely be art and they can evoke emotions and provoke thoughts, much like other forms of art. Table games can engage players on an emotional or intellectual level during the playing — players can learn something new with different and various topics — birds, history, traveling, architecture, etc. They definitely widen our horizons and develop our imagination.

Below I want to list some of my favourite table games and prove to you that they are really masterpieces and you can feel true visual aesthetic pleasure playing them.

1. Wingspan

Wingspan is a board game designed and published in 2019. It is a card-driven, engine-building board game in which players compete to attract birds to their wildlife reserves. In Wingspan, players spend food resources to add birds, which are represented by 170 individually illustrated cards, to the forest, prairie, and wetland habitats on their player boards. Each habitat is associated with a different player action: gaining food resources to pay for birds, laying eggs on birds, or drawing cards. Players are satisfied with the feeling of collecting beautiful things — dice, eggs, little food’s cards. The game, which includes 170 cards, was hand-drawn by artists. For sure, the role of artists in creating the illustrations could be interesting and very important.

This game is created for your visual pleasure. And throwing dice, collecting tiny food’s cards and colourful eggs is pleasure in touch for sure. In addition, this game is really cognitive and learnable — you can learn everything about birds — their names, habitat and even wingspan.

2. Marrakech

Close your eyes and imagine — you are in bustling and bright Marrakech — one of the largest cities in all of Morocco! Marrakech is a board game in which players compete with carpet traders in this city. It was first published in 2007. Two to four players can play the game, but four is recommended. The game is played on a grid having 7 squares per side. Players place “carpets” of the size of two squares, possibly overlapping each other. Each player has a color and plays only carpets of that color from their stack. The players also move a single “trader” piece on the grid using a special six-sided die. When someone moves the trader to an opponent’s carpet, they have to pay an amount of game money equal to the size of connected carpet squares of the same color to the owner of the carpet. The players aim to earn money this way and to have less of their carpets covered by other pieces of carpet.

I like the bright colors of the carpets in this game, and more importantly, touching them — they are so soft and pretty.

3. Azul

Azul is an abstract strategy board game released in 2017. Azul is named after “azulejos”, the brightly coloured geometric tiles sported by beautiful buildings across North Africa and Portugal. In this game players collect sets of similarly colored tiles which they place on their player board. When a row is filled, one of the tiles is moved into a square pattern on the right side of the player board, where it garners points depending on where it is placed in relation to other tiles on the board.

This game is a festival for your eyes — playing with beautiful printed plastic tiles will bring you real satisfaction. During the game, you are transported by your imagination to warm and sunny Portugal, where you walk through the city and take photos of these wonderful tiles, known as “azulejos”.

4. Sagrada

And now you are traveling to hot Spain and its largest city — Barcelona. Sagrada is a dice-drafting board game published in 2017. The object of the game is for each player to construct a stained-glass window of Sagrada Família’s church using dice on a private board having 20 spaces. The available double-sided window boards have a complexity rating ranging from 3 to 6, which also represents the number of favor tokens with which the player begins the game. A game lasts ten rounds. The game was runner-up for the categories “family game” and “artwork and presentation” of the 2017 Golden Geek Awards.

This game will be loved by people who appreciate the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. It is a wonderful board game for the entire family that looks so stunning on your table.

5. Canvas

In Canvas, you play as a painter competing in an art competition. Players will collect art cards, layering 3 of them together to create their own unique Painting. Each card contains a piece of artwork as well as a set of icons used during scoring. Icons will be revealed or hidden based on the way players choose to layer the cards making for an exciting puzzle. Paintings are scored based on a set of Scoring cards which will change each game. Once players have created and scored 3 paintings the game ends.

This game will be adored by art lovers, artists and all people who like paintings, art, hand-crafting and creativity itself.

In conclusion I want to say, that table games for me are not only about “time with friends”, and even not only visual aesthetic, that always evoke a sense of artistic appreciation. They are also discussion of themes with friends, the presence of narrative elements and game mechanics that contribute to the overall artistic experience for me.