Is Simultaneous Play the Perfect Solution for Boardgames?
A few weeks ago the Board Game Design Lab FB group polled its members on Simultaneous Play vs Turn play for roll and write games. The poll was overwhelming in favor of Simultaneous Play but a few members pointed out drawbacks of using simultaneous play in board games.
Simultaneous Play usually solves (or at least mitigates) one of the things that ruins games for me. I hate sitting and waiting for people to take their turns. I played a game recently that made top ten lists for 2023 and I absolutely hated it. (almost) Nothing that the other players did on their turns affected me but turns took a fair bit of time. I will never play this game again.
The original Board Game Design Lab FB poll specifically mentioned Roll and Write games but Simultaneous Play is also used in big box games like Quacks of Quedlinburg and Raising Robots.
Simultaneous Play is a very easy way to reduce down time in a game and it is absolutely something that should be considered as part of a new game design. However it isn’t the only way to reduce down and there are some drawbacks.
The typical way that Simultaneous Play games reduce time is by having players perform actions on their own board at the same time. This can reduce playtime by half for a 4 player. The drawback to this significant time savings is that many times Simultaneous Play games tend to feel like multiplayer solo games.
Quacks of Quedlinburg might be the best implementation of Simultaneous Play. Players pull tokens from their bag at the same time pushing their luck filling their cauldron. After players stop flirting with disaster or if they bust they then buy new potions from the market simultaneously. The game remains highly interactive despite both main portions of the game being simultaneous play. Easily one of my top ten games largely due to the simultaneous play mechanisms implemented in the game.
Sonora is a really cool dexterity flick and write. Players take turns shooting their tokens into the play area and then there is a simultaneous play phase where you write your choices on your player sheet. It would move very slowly if it was turn based but it’s very difficult to know if someone is playing the game correctly. The downside to simultaneous play is that players could make mistakes while marking each of the tokens on their sheet. I suspect that my students don’t quite understand the rules because I always lose this game. Or I am really bad at this game…
Simultaneous play was the perfect choice for Raising Robots.Raising Robots isn’t like most games with simultaneous play since it is a midweight Euro game but it would probably be a three hour game if it didn’t have simultaneous play. Some complain that the game is a bit like multiplayer solitaire but nobody wants to sit through long turns. But one downside is I wish I could follow how other players build their engines in the game so I can improve my strategy.
Overall I think that Simultaneous Play is a great option to reduce downtime and game length but there can be some drawbacks to including it in game designs. I plan to look at some turn based games that minimize downtime without simultaneous play in a future blog post.
What do you think of simultaneous play in games you have played before?
What are some of your favorite examples of simultaneous play in board games?
What are some turn based games that do really well at minimizing down time in board games?
Are there other examples that reduce down time?
Lynx Lake Games 