This article will be a bit of a divergence from the normal fare we cover in this Best 3 Games with…Series but one that I think will be interesting and will hopefully generate some really interesting discussion. You might be asking yourself what in the heck is “The Feels”?!? Well, there’s a saying when something induces emotion in you and it’s “That hit me right in the feels!”. Meaning that hit you right in the heart and caused you to feel emotions. Joy, sadness, fear, humor, anxiety, tension, elation, envy, etc. It touched you. Got you to think. To consider something in a bit of a different light or from a different point of view. Feel for or have empathy with the characters or participants in the story. This is the feels! And, in this entry in the Best 3 Games with…Series, I would like to share some games that made me feel or think about things as we were playing them.

3. Endurance: A Solitaire Game of Antarctic Survival from Hollandspiele

Endurance is a solitaire game of Antarctic survival, based on Ernest Shackleton’s famous 1914 expedition. The expedition saw their fair share of struggles as they were stranded for eighteen months in the ice and snow and faced nearly impossible odds to ultimately survive the ordeal without the loss of even a single crew member. So right off the bat the game is decidedly difficult but tells the story of this somewhat of a miracle as these brave souls fought to stay alive by finding enough food, mostly eating canned goods from their ship’s hold but also hunting the local animals which consisted only of penguins, staving off boredom, sickness and injuries and frigid temperatures and attempting to keep their hopes alive by pulling together.

The game is based around cards that are drawn and force the player to make a series of checks to see if the tasks are successful or not. These checks are divided into Actions and Tests. They all require the player to either roll dice to see if they are successful or simply have the appropriate resources available to meet the demands on the card. When dice are rolled, you have to take into account both your successes, or rolls that were over the appropriate skill level of your chosen crew, and your failures in the form of 1’s rolled, and must come up with more successes than failures. These dice rolls were absolutely traumatic because as you fail your crew will become demoralized and exhausted and will be flipped over to reveal that they either have a worse skill check value or their will to help has evaporated and they can’t even assist any longer. Once they fail again, they are them removed to the hospital area where they then can die with further failures of the crew or bad events that come up. The game is absolutely brutal and very difficult to do well and make it to the historical result. But you become attached to each crew member as they fight for their lives. You feel their pain as you fail Actions and Tests and lose supplies as they are used up. You also get hit right in the heart when their animals, their sled dogs and beloved cat, have to be eaten in order to survive. The game is not a game of fun and entertainment but a bleak and slogging experience where you go from failure to failure, losing hope that you can make it any longer, until you do and then have a few fleeting moments of joy when you pass Tests, gain new resources or progress on your journey.

This game is also very unique because there are no victory or loss conditions. The game will simply come to an end when either the men are rescued or when rescue becomes an impossibility due to the loss of crew and morale. The beauty in the game is that it creates a great narrative, albeit a very sorrowful and tough one, that tells either a tragic or successful story. I have played the game 5 times and have never really done that well but that doesn’t matter here as it is about the story you create and the connections you make with the members of the expedition. I have never quite played a game that gave me the feelings that this one did and ultimately that is the focus and goal of the design.

Here is a link to our unboxing video of the game (don’t worry as there is a playthrough and review coming goonish on the Channel) to give you an idea about the components:

2. The Red Burnoose: Algeria 1857 from Hit ‘Em With a Shoe Games

The Red Burnoose: Algeria 1857 is a 1-4 player historical cooperative game that deals with the resistance of Fadhma N’Soumer and the Kabyle people in their fight against the invading French armies in the Kabylie region of Algeria in 1857. The name refers to the garb worn by the villagers here and specifically refers to the color of garb worn by Fadhma. The game uses very interesting mechanics such as deck-building to tell the story of villagers working together to defeat the invading French. The players will join forces and play cooperatively to survive as the French advance on their villages, either winning together or losing together. Players will all have a starting deck of cards that make up their available villagers who each have a special ability and function and can be used to perform various actions, such as ambush, gathering resources or mobilizing forces to the Game Board.

When you realize that this game is about ill prepared and trained non-military villagers who are being attacked by the hostile French forces in their villages, it makes you think about their plight. That of defending your home from hostiles and worrying that your children, extended family, friends and neighbors, even your way of life is under attack and that if you fail you basically consign those loved ones to a life of enslavement and worse even death, it really gets to you and makes you feel the feelings that the Berbers would have felt at that time.

I also really liked the aspect of the design that showed the importance and role of the various villagers in the defense and resistance of the villages. The cards are named after these roles including Elderly Woman, Woman, Young Woman, Youth, Elderly Man, Young Man, etc. and each has their own abilities and options to help the cause. It might not be on the front line fighting the French but is just as important in preparing and providing food, shelter, medical care and when needed fighting.

I have not played that many games where the focus is on civilians but this game is well designed to evoke those feelings of belonging and purpose as you build your deck and work together to keep the French at bay. And, in the end, losing the game means that your villages are destroyed and more than likely the fabric of your lives, culture, religion and family will be changed forever. This one really touched me and I enjoyed it greatly. Working together is also a very cool and interesting part of the design as you can send aid to your adjacent villages in the form of cards and troops as they are being attacked and maybe your village is not. Just a really great design that I have enjoyed playing.

Here is a link to our review video of the game:

1. Bomber Command: The Night Raids 1943-1945 from GMT Games

Bomber Command: The Night Raids 1943-1945 is a game of the night war in the skies over the Reich during World War II. The game recreates the great RAF bombing raids against the heart of Germany and the defense of the German Luftwaffe’s night fighter arm. This game is a follow up effort to Nightfighter (2011) by GMT Games. Based on an air combat system derived from the award-winning Downtown and The Burning Blue ‘raid-scale’ games, Bomber Command details the tactics of night fighting.

The game is designed for 2 players, with one player controlling the RAF and the other playing the Germans in their desperate attempt to protect the Reich and its industrial heartland. Strategic bombing during World War II began in September 1939 when Germany invaded Poland and the Luftwaffe began bombing cities and the civilian population in Poland in an indiscriminate aerial bombardment campaign. As the war continued to expand, bombing by both the Axis and the Allies increased significantly. In September 1940, the Luftwaffe began targeting British cities in what became known as The Blitz.

The setup and target selection is always a little stressful. You wouldn’t think that it would be but this game, like many of the other well designed World War II games by GMT Games, does cause you to immerse yourself in the moment and actually causes anxiety. I have enough anxiety and stress in my real life but this is different, this is good anxiety and stress as it allows me to get away from my life for a few hours! Making the long trip to bombing targets is also fraught with dangers as the Allied player will have to fight off intercepting German fighters and survive AAA fire as well taking hits, losing and injuring key crew members, but the real payoff for the game, and really the part that made me pause for a moment and think, was that of the bombing run routine.

But, before we go into that, there are really devious choices at the start of the game as you are trying to chose your loadout including High Explosive and Incendiaries. One of the goals of the bombing run is to do the maximum amount of damage to military targets such as shipping, manufacturing and industries. But, the use of Incendiaries can cause a fire storm that might end up burning down targets adjacent if you miss your target slightly so it is important to use a mix of both. The really tough part here is that the bombs can fall onto residential areas as well, due to damage to the bomber, high winds or other factors from cards, so you can never be sure you are only hitting military targets.

As you can see in the picture above, when bombs are dropped they can drift and end up landing in residential areas which include housing, schools, churches and the like. This is really where the feels start to take over as I considered what I was doing and it bothered me. Normally in a wargame, I am going against combatants who are trained military operators but in Bomber Command you are targeting civilians, either intentionally or unintentionally, and the damage caused by your actions can be catastrophic to these people. Remember, the average German resident was not necessarily the hardened Nazi scum who caused so much loss of life but were husbands, wives, fathers, mothers and even children but they suffered from the war just as much as the soldiers did and many lost their lives. The game was sobering when I thought about it in those terms and I know that this was one of the reasons that the Allies called off the type of total bombing that created the Hamburg firestorm and basically leveled the city.

Bomber Command is a great game, partly because of the hidden movement, the mission planning and the tension of the journey to target locations but also because it makes you think about what it is that is being done. Anytime a game can make me stop and think, I consider that a pretty special thing.

So those were my 3 Best Games with…The Feels! and I hope that you enjoyed what I shared and also got into the spirit of the post and started thinking about games that you have played that made you think. What are your favorite games that evoke emotion?

One final thing. Recently on a trip up to Noble Knight Games in Fitchburg, Wisconsin, we did a car video where we talked about this very subject and shared lots of other games that evoked emotions. You can take a look at that video at the following link:

Thanks as always for reading along!

-Grant