Gameschool Friday: Ravine

A quick and easy cooperative game for the whole family.

Game Title: Ravine
Publisher: Timber and Bolt
Players: 3-6 (more with the expansion)
Ages: 10+ (official) but 6+ with help easily.
Time: 20 mins

Close friends introduced us to Ravine when we crashed at their house for a quick date night with appetizers in hand. We were instantly taken by how simple it was to play right from the box, but had enough twists and turns to keep things interesting, even for four seasoned adult players. So, of coarse it immediately went into our online cart along with Space Team (review coming soon), which is another fun cooperative game that I will add to the list.

If you are unfamiliar with cooperative games, I wrote a whole post explaining the logistics and benefits of playing cooperative games with your family here.

In Ravine, the story is that you and your fellow players were on an ill-fated airplane that crashed on an island. You have to use your wits, tools, and foraging skills to survive long enough to be rescued.

What we liked about this game was that it is an extremely easy set up. You have piles of different types of cards that you separate and shuffle. Everyone gets an identity with an item scavenged from the crash, and everyone gets hearts that represent health. You roll three of the hearts for a nice random element of difficulty, and you are ready to play.

The game is cyclical, so it’s very easy for even the youngest players to understand the rhythm. There is night, something happens, or doesn’t, during the night, you as a team deal with the consequences, then you decide if you as an individual are going to forage for supplies at the cost of some health, or whether you are going to rest at camp. If you don’t rest, you risk spending valuable health for nothing more than some psychotropic mushrooms that paralyze you. If you do rest, you risk missing out on healing food or useful tools. You use the food and tools among the team, deciding who needs what most. Oh! Don’t forget to build things if you an, especially shelters. Then it’s time to sleep again. This cycle continues until the randomized rescue card shows up somewhere in the bottom 3 cards of the deck. Hopefully no one goes mad or dies.

We introduced this game to the kids and they were immediately drawn to the adventure of it. There is some reading, but having one adult or older reader is more than enough to keep the game moving. There is also a lot of humor and randomness which kept even the most distractable child engaged at every moment. The more morbid of my children think that the death and destruction is just amazing. All of them thought the madness cards were hilarious. We won the first game pretty easily, so they wanted to play again, and we all died in a mudslide. All of us. In our nice cozy cave. Sigh.

One thing to be aware of with this, and any cooperative game, is that sometimes you will have a child, or adult, who is a contrarian and just really loves to do the opposite of what the group wants. Some games actually encourage this, although this one doesn’t with the exception of a few madness cards. When you come across that situation, explain to all the players that we are there to work together and that making the experience un-enjoyable for everyone is not a good way to encourage family fun. In other words, no one wants to play with a poor sport. In our family, we have set pretty clear boundaries on this, and if a game might encourage sabotage we warn everyone ahead of time that it might be a possibility so they aren’t feeling blindsided or betrayed.

So, in conclusion, if you are looking for a quick game to play all together with your kids and spouse after dinner, Ravine would be a great one to add to your collection. It has great re-playability, so it’s a great bang for your buck too.