Top 5 Worst Board Games to Live In

You know what they always say about Candyland: “It’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.” Just kidding – obviously I’d want to live in Candyland. Or would I? I would die of malnutrition almost immediately, after finding everything – vegetables, meat, vitamins, candy – is made out of candy, and no nutrients exist anywhere. I’d then succumb to the desire to eat my delicious nougaty self, obviously.

As river guide Paul Templer could tell you, getting eaten by a hippopotamus isn’t fun, so why would a game as sick as Hungry, Hungry, Hippos be fun? Like the Candyland scenario above, living in Hungry, Hungry, Hippos, (as a ball, like Templer) would be a terrifying existence, full of bouncing around and being devoured.

What other board games would be terrible to live in?

1. Chess

While we by no means live in a post-racial society, ‘Chess’ takes place in a world where people with different skin color are in a perpetual state of war with each other.

The unjust universe always allows the white side to go first, and forces pawns to be… pawns of their own fate.

The dichotomy between the queen and the king is either anti-man or anti-woman: the Queen is all powerful, more or less, but the neutered King is the whole point of the game. There’s some kinda gender inequality in there, but I’m not sure which is the disadvantaged one. I’m gonna say the King, because men never get to be disadvantaged.

And the bishop works for the army? What about the separation of church and state?

2. Snakes and Ladders

I hate climbing ladders, and I’m scared of snakes. What about Puppies and Elevators instead?

3. Scrabble

If we lived in a Scrabble world, writers would be the richest people in the world, as the more valuable a word, the more ‘points’ you would have, and points are the lifeblood of the universe. However, writers or ‘wordsmiths’ or ‘point miners,’ as they’re called, begin to have existential crises: just because a word is worth more points, why is it better? What makes ‘za’ a better word than ‘ant’? What value does my work have? And what is the significance of points anyway? But after, at the end of a game, as their letter tiles, their work, is poured back into the letter bag, they’d forget their existential worries, forget all their memory actually, and start a new game, fresh-minded, a blank slate (or blank tile, if you will), only to immediately descend into the same existential quandaries.

4. Monopoly

The Monopoly world would be hellish because some people would have an unfair advantage after getting lucky the first few rounds and seizing control of the board, crafting the parameters of the board so they can prey on those less fortunate… oh wait.

5. Trivial Pursuit from 1970

In order to advance in life – and by that I don’t mean like ‘move up the corporate ladder’ but simply advance forward as in move from point A to point B or point B back to point A – one most answer trivia questions in the Trivial Pursuit universe. But while the board grows older, spending time in Grandma’s TV room, the questions become more difficult as the last few people to know the answers die out. What was once common knowledge starts to fade out among the generations. The entirety of humanity drags to a standstill, stuck on an outdated bit of sports trivia, or a question about the Soviet Union, their pies forever unfilled, the center forever unreached.

So yeah, those would be crappy board games to live in. What’s your favorite board game?

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