4. The Game of Life

The Classic: It’s just like real life, only even more pointless of a game. Things just happen, and that’s it. It’s more a lesson on life than an actual game, really.

The Problem: Have I mentioned yet how pointless The Game of Life is? It really is.

The Replacement: CV

Solving The Problem: CV is everything The Game of Life wants to be but couldn’t quite achieve. As a player goes through life over the course of the game, you discover jobs, perks, and other awesome stuff that makes your journey just that much more entertaining. And here, your choices actually matter, and you don’t just go through life with little to no agency and with an actual endgame in mind.

3. Guess Who

The Classic: By asking yes or no questions, two players narrow down a 24-strong guest list of people to find out which the other player picked. “Does your guest have brown hair?” If the answer is yes, then you proceed to eliminate from your 24 characters everyone with brown hair, and so forth.

The Problem: Only one of the guests was black. Whoops. And now, with the latest edition, they’re all white. Hoo, boy. There’s nothing really wrong with it unless you think they’re being either unintentionally racist or whitewashing, but it’s practically a gimped version of 21 questions, or for the more sophisticated among us, Pinoy Henyo.

The Replacement: Spyfall

Solving The Problem: For starters, it operates on the same premise that you have to ask questions to hopefully figure something out. The difference is, you ask questions to figure out who the spy in your playgroup is, as while all of you are looking at a particular location in the cards you get dealt with, the spy is looking at an indication that he or she is a spy. In essence, the spy has no idea what location you guys are talking about, so it’s up to you to make your questions vague but apparent enough to anyone in the know that you do know what the location is, without tipping the spy off as to what the location is. Make it too obscure, people will think you are the spy. Make it too obvious, and the spy will figure it out and get to play right along.

2. Scrabble

The Classic: Come on. Do we need to explain this? It’s a word game for two to four players, where they use letters with assigned point values and place them across the board to score points. It’s tons of fun for people who have massive vocabularies and impressive math skills!

The Problem: Not so much a problem, so much as it is simply so old hat, and there’s little incentive to play if you’re bad with words.

The Replacement: Letter Tycoon

Solving The Problem: In addition to making words from the letters in your possession and a common pool for all players to use ala Texas Hold ‘Em poker, Letter Tycoon’s conceit is in the ability to buy patents on letters in the game that grant you money whenever someone makes a word using a letter that you have a patent to. On top of that, some letters give you additional powers beyond just making money from people breaking your patents. Not bad for a word game, huh?

1. Monopoly

The Classic: This is the game that ends friendships. This is the game that only the guy winning ever cares about trying to finish. Welcome to Monopoly.

The Problem: To be technical about it, the endgame leaves a lot to be desired, and almost nobody is willing to take the time to get to that point of the game because it’s obvious who’s winning usually less than halfway through. Not to mention the randomness factor that removes all semblance of strategy, for that matter.

The Replacement: Cash And Guns

Solving The Problem: All the backbiting and betrayal of classic monopoly, with powers, strategy, and the realization that like Monopoly, you’re all a bunch of thieves just trying to get one over everyone else. The biggest improvement for this, other than being a completely different game from Monopoly in all aspects except “whoever has the most money wins” is that until the end of the game, people aren’t allowed to count the loot they’ve accrued all throughout, making the winner of the game somewhat in doubt until the very end.

What other board games do you think need upgrading? Let us know in the comments section below!

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