I swear I’m smart and have pretty ok reading comprehension…but when I pick up a new game I have the hardest time understanding the rules and mechanics by just reading the instructions. Watching videos is helpful but I still really only pick it up while playing the game and going through the motions.
So I’m slowly collecting games that I can’t play until I find people who know how to play.
How easily do you pick up new games?
It really depends on the instructions provided. Sometimes it’s not so well-written. xD
Same for me. Generally I am pretty quick to understand even complex rules. I was a Magic the Gathering tournament player and judge and a D&D DM. So lots of practice with rules questions. But some games simply have poor explanations or bad card wordings. Then it can help to watch a video.
Aeon’s End and Deep Rock Galactic immediately come to mind here. Both are great games, but the instructions are terrible.
AE somehow manages to extend fairly simple rules into very long paragraphs, making it seem way more complicated than it is in practice.
DRG lacks icons for most effects, which decreases readability. It’s also sorted in a way I can never look something up quickly without reading entire pages to find the relevant paragraph, with some explanations being in the scenario book instead to make it worse.
I’ll add Mysterium to the list. Not sure if it’s the translation I have, but almost all pieces have similar names. You read a paragraph and are just like “??” Super simple game.