Hive Pocket is beachproof, small, easy to learn but hard to master, and a lot of fun :)
this post was submitted on 04 Aug 2023
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Even full size hive is nicely portable, though getting a set with all the pieces is weirdly difficult and expensive.
Hive Pocket is awesome! Highly recommended
My goto travel games Sushi Go! Cockroach Poker
I highly recommend checking out a company called Button Shy Games, as they make wallet games (18 card games in a little wallet) that have varying levels of complexity and expansions, but the base games all start at $12 and they release a new one every month. Personal favorites of mine are Sprawopolis (and the other opolis games), Skulls of Sedlec, Wonder Tales, Tussie Mussie, and Revolver Noir for lower complexity games. I can't guarantee all those are in stock though. If you want to do a print and play, In Vino Morte will never steer you wrong.
@onkeybell I second any recommendation of Button Shy games!
I'm about 45 minutes from their brick and mortar store and I can't wait to check it out once I have time!
Oink games always have really compact games, super small boxes. Very easy to put one into a bag or something. Some of them to have a lot of tokens so I'm not sure if it's a great idea to play on the beach. A good place to start:
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Scout
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Insider
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Deep Sea Adventure
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Startups
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A Fake Artist Goes to New York
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Love Letter
I have Deep Sea Adventures, I'm not sure if we played it wrong, but it didn't seem like there was any deeper strategy that provided meaningful advantages
It's not a very strategic game, but from my understanding that's not what op is looking for. It's a very light push your luck game, you want to go as deep as possible to fetch the treasure but if you go too deep and someone goes back you might run out of air. I like it because it's so easy to teach and there's tension to find out if you're going to make it out alive and if it was worth the risk.
Common rule mistakes are playing a single round (I believe the game is 3 rounds) and placing the treasures back after the end of the round. In the 2nd and 3rd runs the path is shorter because it lacks all the treasure you Already collected so you should be able to get the deeper treasures in the later rounds.
Ah, yeah, I can see how that's not readily apparent right away.
There is tension & decision-space among the players. After all, if no-one takes any treasures, you could go all the way to the bottom and grab what you wanted. But as soon as people start looting, they start gasping and using up the tragically-common air supply. Some might deliberately try to drown each other by tactically picking up and dropping stuff. So it's a reverse chicken race, it's a game theory tense wonderful nightmare. All wrapped up in a super-classical roll-and-move shell that's easy to play and teach.
(I was gonna recommend Deep Sea Adventures in this thread! But I see several people are already recommending it, and that's awesome!)
I would also recommend Azul. I think its super easy but can have some depth to it. It has heavy pieces that should not fly away so easily. The sand of the beach will not be much of a problem either, besides that its sand. Tracking the points might be better done with a pebble or something.
There's a beach set of Uno with laminated cards. Classic.
I particularly enjoy Cabo & Phase 10 for their replayability.
- You‘re bluffing (competitive auction/bluffing/set collection)
- Bohnanza (competitive trading)
- The Crew (cooperative trick taking)
- Hanabi (cooperative set collection)
Love Letter would be great for this