Your Favourite Romance Tropes As Board Games
I read a shameful amount of fanfiction growing up.
Like many fanfiction readers, one reason I was so hooked was the ease with which I could find stories written based on romance tropes that I enjoyed. I could search these tropes – enemies to lovers, fluff, slowburn – and read stories by a diverse range of amateur writers hinging on a similar plot point.
When I was a preteen in the late 2000s, I knew maybe one other person in my school who was into fanfiction. I don’t recall having any real-life conversations with people about fanfiction until I was an adult, and could use my distance from that time in my life to find humour in it – like, ha ha, I used to be into fanfiction as a teenager, but I’m totally not anymore and am so distinct from it that I can bear to bring this up in front of you, another human being.
It was certainly startling to discover that these tropes, which used to occupy a distinct subculture online, were being discussed in the mainstream by younger (and, I know it’s cringe, but there’s no other way for me to say this) Gen Z audiences on TikTok. People reference them in videos or comments about fictional or celebrity couples, and even on personal TikToks posted by regular people who aren’t influencers or celebrities. Some people even use these tropes as labels for their own relationships.
In that spirit, and in celebration of Valentine’s Day this month (and romantic love all throughout the year, whenever you may read this), I bring you my favourite romance tropes as board games!
Fake Dating / Friends to Lovers
This is a fun one because you get to live out the Fake Dating trope in real life!
We added some Fly-A-Way bird meeples – or should we say lovebird meeples – to our game of Fog of Love!
Fog of Love is a 2-player storytelling game where you roleplay a romantic relationship between characters you’ve created out of a variety of Occupation, Trait and Feature choices.
Throughout the game, you’re presented scenarios where you have to make decisions that affect the trajectory of your relationship. Just like in real life, you’ll have to balance all the surprises of this new romance with the goals you had going in.
If you’re partnered, this game will allow you to explore the Alternative Universes (AU) to your real-life love story. What if, instead of becoming an accountant, you’d pursued your dreams of becoming a rock star? Would you still be together if one of you had amnesia? Fog of Love may help you find the answers to these questions.
And as any Fake Dating story will tell you, there’s nothing like simulating a romantic relationship to help you fall in love for real. If you have a friend with whom you’d like to change the terms of the relationship, this is the perfect game to segue into that conversation.
Long Distance Lovers
Long distance is a trope that allows for lots of mutual pining – the bread and butter of fanfiction. While many of us love board games for their tactile qualities, there are periods when the limitations of time and space don't permit us to be at the same table.
Luckily for us, digital implementations of board games have become more common, with many contemporary board games releasing digital variants on platforms like Tabletop Simulator and Tabletopia.
Oceans set up on Tabletopia.
One of my favourite digital implementations to play with my partner is Oceans, a beautiful engine builder where players try to evolve their species to adapt to the ever-changing ocean ecosystem. While this game doesn’t really follow the trope, it’s a great option for real-life long-distance lovers.
On each turn, other than evolving your species, you must ensure that they can Feed and Age. The Feeding phase incorporates several Take That mechanics that make 2-player games feel extra aggressive, such as parasitic organisms, or evolving your species into Apex Predators that feed by attacking other players’ creatures.
The species on the right is both Parasitic and an Apex Predator.
At the end of every turn, your species Age, which in-game translates to transferring a certain number of delightful fish-shaped tokens into a bag, depending on how you’ve evolved your species. Each fish earns you 1 victory point (VP). However, you only score at the very end of the game, and there’s no score tracker to give you a quantitative indication of who’s winning as you’re playing.
This can lead to some pleasant surprises. During one of our many games of Oceans, my partner had evolved many predators and was attacking my species quite relentlessly. I spent the 90-minute game discouraged as I felt like I was just hurtling towards my own defeat. However, I had evolved my species to Age rapidly each turn, and ended up winning by a couple of VP!
There are some nice touches that come with playing Oceans digitally. For example, you save time on setting up as the game comes fully set-up on Tabletopia. Hovering over the bags also tells you how many tokens there are in there, saving you from having to count those fishies manually.
Hovering your cursor over the bag tells you how many tokens are inside – and how many VP you have!
Enemies to Lovers
The enemies to lovers trope is pretty self-explanatory – two people who start out as enemies end up in a romantic relationship.
As former enemies, you probably have a long and tumultuous history together, and may be looking for a game that matches the excitement of your former rivalry.
Dustbiters is a competitive 1v1 game that’ll give you the feeling of that high-stakes chase. You play as rival car gangs trying to outrun a giant dust storm, with each card representing an elaborate monster truck-type car.
Official image from Dustbiters.
In order to foil your opponent’s plans, you’ll have to watch their every move, or risk your precious cars getting destroyed in the dust storm. This game has a killer art style and is fast-paced and aggressive enough to simulate the passion of those early days, when you were trying your best to kill each other.
What are some of your favourite games to play with your partner, or with 2 players? Let us know in the comments!
