Creative & Non-Creative Board Games Decoded!

We have already discussed about board games can become a crucial resource for learning during the growth and developmental phase of a child. Apart from nurturing life and social skills, board games also help to build creativity. This is one of the findings in a recent study which also states that both creative and non-creative board games could help temporarily improve one’s divergent thinking capacity.

Let us look at what classifies under creative and non-creative board games and how they help.

Creative board games often involve drawing, storytelling, or coming up with unique concepts, while non-creative board games mostly focus on strategy and logic.

In creative board games, players need to -

-        Generate original ideas, open-ended actions, and storytelling elements

-        Combine elements in new ways, or think of innovative ideas to succeed

-        Encourage players to think creatively to overcome challenges

-        Focus on the originality of solutions or the narrative created during the play

In contrast, in non-creative board games, players need to -

-        Rely on established strategies, set actions, and clear decision paths

-        Decide move optimally based on set rules, and does not primarily focus on generating new concepts to win

-        Emphasizes tactical decision-making within a defined framework

-        Focus on achieving a specific goal like accumulating points or reaching a finish line. 

Examples of Creative Board Games:

• Pictionary: Players draw pictures to represent words or phrases for others to guess.

• Dixit: Players describe a card creatively to make others guess which card they are thinking of

• The Big Idea: Players combine cards to create unique inventions

• Telestrations: Players secretly draw a picture based on a word, then the next person has to write a description of that drawing, and so on

• Cranium: A mix of creative challenges including drawing, acting, sculpting, and answering trivia questions

• Concept: Players use symbols to communicate a word or phrase to others

• Storytelling games like Once Upon a Time: Players collaboratively build a narrative by adding elements to a story or Story Cubes: Players roll dice with different pictures and create a story based on the image

• Codenames: Teams try to link words to their secret agent identities through cryptic clues

Examples of Non-Creative Board Games:

• Snakes and Ladder/Ludo: Strategic game based on piece movements and tactics to outperform opponents before they do

• Monopoly: Players roll dice and acquire properties based on established rules 

• Scrabble: Players build words using letter tiles with a set point system

• Ticket to Ride: Players collect sets of cards to claim routes on a map, following established connection rules

• Checkers: A simple strategy game with limited piece movement 

• Risk: Players conquer territories on a map to dominate the world 

• Clue/Cluedo: Players try to solve a mystery by identifying the suspect, weapon, and room