Mice and Mystics
Mice and Mystics is a great example of our goal today as it was created as a family experience in mind. It is a cooperative game that focuses on a story that the whole family goes through, working together to achieve a common goal. That being to stop an evil wizard that has turned you and your friends into mice and to help the good King before the evil wizard does him harm.
The mechanics of the game are as simple as setting up the board and then reading the story/goal, then proceed to use your cute animal miniatures to achieve goals, fight rats, centipedes, etc. Combat is a simple dice rolling system that has hits and defence dice, on which are also cheese icons that you can spend to use items or spells. That being said the experience is multiple part story and is not just a linear one with sidequests and different items to be found in each playthrough. A true story created by a family for a family.
Photosynthesis
With more kids now encouraged to stay at home, why not use a board game to both educate and have fun at the same time! In Photosynthesis, one learns how trees grow and use the sun's rays to create food for themselves to grow big and tall.
Gameplay starts with players getting their sun points by collecting points depending on which of their specific trees is not blocked by shadows of other trees and how old they are. For example, a level 3 tree will get 3 sun points but also cast a 3 spot long shadow depending on where the sun is shining from. From there, a player is allowed to spend as many points as they want to throw seeds, grow trees or kill a tree when it is old enough to gain points for feeding the earth for new life to start once again. A tool for science and biology education but also a strategic experience if your family is looking for that too.
Related: Top 10 Childhood Tabletop Games That You Can Still Play Online
Slide Quest
Now, this is the 3rd article in which I am promoting this game but I truly feel it is a singularly unique experience from both a gameplay and design standpoint.
Slide Quest comes with great components that work to create a super Mario platforming experience on the tabletop. You and up to 3 others are tasked cooperatively to help the brave knight go through 20 levels with only limited lives. And the way to do it is by Physics! Tilting the board one way or another to move the weighted knight to finish specific goals on each level, be it to push enemies into holes or get to an endpoint or both.
Again a nice quick experience that you can even "save" the game back into the box to come back to together and yet is fun enough to last several levels of the game at a time. And a good look at what is possible from a design perspective from even using the box of the game to create a game.
Clank! Legacy: Acquisitions Incorporated
Probably for older kids due to the somewhat more in-depth rules but with more time now at home, it is probably a good time to start a Legacy game. A Legacy board game being where you change the board or story of a game by making permanent changes by decisions the players make in-game. In the end, each copy is unique to you and your family and will become a piece of history you all can look back on and the best part the finished copy can still be played as a normal board game after for Clank Legacy!
The gameplay is at its base a deck builder, buying cards to improve your deck of actions during each game. The timer being when people collect treasures that are equal to points. Each time that is done, the big bad will attack more often and thus there is only a limited time and how far you can try your luck to get items that are more expensive but are also harder to get out before the end of the game.
Azul
When it comes to family games, simple rules are key and when it comes to simple and easy rules, fast to play but full of tactics, there is no better than Azul. Which is why it was one of the best selling games of 2018.
Azul is a game in which you are building the sultan's palace and thus you need tiles to do so. You collect tiles from the round factories in the middle of the table and when you collect tiles, you have to take all of the same patterns ones from one of the factories and push the rest to the "floor" in the middle. On any turn, tiles from the floor can also be taken. When tiles are taken, they have to be placed on your personal board/warehouse and the state of your board at the end of a round and the end of the game gains you points and the person with the most points wins.
Forbidden Desert
From the famed designer of cooperative games such as Pandemic comes Forbidden Desert. Your team's airship has crashed in the desert and to survive you need to collect all the parts and put them together before the sandstorm hits, which makes it impossible to do so.
This cooperative game sees players moving, clearing sand and collecting the airship's parts. Each player has a unique skill to use and when the ship is built and all players return to board the ship, the game is won! Sounds easy but the game has a mechanic that sees more and more sand covering the board as the game progresses, making it a tactical game of choice of clearing or just heading to collect parts. As neglect in one area will make future choices harder.
The best thing about Forbidden Desert is that you can make the game as hard or easy as you want and even on easy it is not a cakewalk. A challenging experience that the whole family can come back and work through together.
Chope
Lastly, a really simple party game. Something that can be learned in 2minutes and played in 15minutes and not only that but the game is designed locally and has a theme any local can relate to for a laugh. That of trying to get a table at a crowded hawker centre during peak hours.
Chope is a simple speed, push your luck and a set collection game. On your turn, you turn over cards and if a table card is opened, everyone even the person opening the cards has to use their tissue card to try to get the table, the first one to touch the table gets it. The player will then continue to open the cards and collect food, they will get all the food when they choose to stop or unless they open two of the same dish and then only collect one dish, thus a push your luck aspect to the game too. At the end of the game, tables with dishes gain points but tables without food or food without tables will lose you points!
So in conclusion, it is a hard time for all and so let us get through this together with as much joy as possible and I hope that all these games will bring a few more smiles to the world in this period and hopefully even after we get over this virus.
Email: [email protected]
Zhou Huibin is a smith of words who majored in Philosophy & History from the University of Western Australia and whose life has followed the flow of his hobbies. He seeks continual contentment in his ponders, reading, writing, painting and board games which fills almost all of his time.
]]>The board game industry has exploded. There are hundreds of new board games popping up all the time. You only need to look at Kickstarter or any crowdfunding website to see the rabid popularity. It can be a bit overwhelming.
What happened to the good ol’ days where families sat around the dinner table for a friendly game of Monopoly, shortly followed by a table flip and screaming match because Kendra never trades the green properties…?
But I digress.
Board gaming today has turned into a behemoth, with games and strategies becoming ever more complex and in-depth. With so many new gamers in the industry, imaginations run wild. The traditional view of what a board game is has been completely thrown out the window, the genres and mechanics becoming so intertwined that it can be hard to figure out “What’s in the box?”
To help guide you we’ve compiled a list of the most common types of board games that players will find and what to expect from them. Have no fear, Game Cows is here!
Abstract Strategy Board Games
When you think of an abstract strategy game the image of a socially awkward kid with tape around their glasses comes to mind (tl;dr chess club).
But abstract strategy board games have been around for a long time, since before written history, and have been played continuously by almost every culture in the world. Some of the oldest board games in the world are abstract strategy games.
Elements of Abstract Strategy Board Games
- Straightforward, Player vs. Player
- Rely on skill over luck
- No theme
These types of games do not rely on any real-world theme and the outcomes are entirely contingent upon the decisions that players make. Many of these games possess what’s called “perfect information,” in which players have nothing to discover, only must think through their moves logically.
Abstract Strategy games rarely if ever have a luck or chance component, such as dice rolls or card draws. They tend to have a set of simple rules that are easy to learn. The real challenge is the complexity of options that come after the short list of rules. These games are great for improving critical thinking, where players must think many steps ahead to outmaneuver their opponent.
Many players’ first introduction to board games will be abstract strategy games.
Examples of Abstract Strategy Board Games
- Chess
- Checkers (Draughts)
- Go
Educational Board Games
Educational games have been around for quite some time and they get a bad rap for being childish and silly or for being dry and trivia-heavy. Some of them definitely can be, but I have played many educational games that were actually quite fun. So yes even learning can be fun.
Elements of Educational Board Games
- Usually geared toward young children
- Focus on teaching a particular skill, technique, or field of inquiry
Most games have some kind of educational benefit, but there are a few whose sole purpose is to ensure their players learn something tangible from a game.
Ravensburger is a German game company that produces games specifically geared toward children. They are particularly interesting because each one has a specific educational quality.
Examples of Educational Board Games
- The aMAZing Labyrinth builds spatial and reasoning skills
- Enchanted Forest uses Grimms’ Fairy Tales to teach memory skills
- The Quest for El Dorado teaches tactics to complete an objective
- The Castles of Burgundy, which looks a lot like Settlers of Catan, is a resource management game, encouraging complex building, trade, and influence strategies
Kendra grew up playing a lot of these games and we still play them today, because even though they’re made for younger audiences, the games themselves are still tons of fun.
Games can be an excellent tool for education. When I was teaching eighth grade English Literature I was preparing my students for debates, so naturally, I forced them to play a massive game of Werewolf. It, of course, devolved into a screaming and shouting match, which led to my lesson on how to form arguments and argue them respectfully and accurately. The next time we played, after the debates were over, the game dynamic was much more articulate.
Educational games are excellent for families and small children. They tend to have very simple mechanics and are a good introduction to teach young children about cooperation and following a set of established rules.
Cooperative Board Games
Cooperative games are particularly good if you have one player that is more competitive than the rest of your gaming group. Your entire group is pitted against a common enemy, usually the board itself. This is an interesting mechanic and has seen some recent popularity in new board games.
Elements of Cooperative Board Games
- Players work together against the game itself.
- Players win or lose together
- Typically, higher difficulty objectives make up for player collaboration
This gaming genre usually has some randomized mechanic that acts as the A.I. for the board. Pandemic uses decks of cards that tell what territories are being infected. It doesn’t have to be a deck of cards but there is usually some kind of random element that the board will use against the combined forces of all the players.
Examples of Cooperative Board Games
- Arkham Horror
- Pandemic
- Dead of Winter
- Forbidden Island
- Castle Panic!
- Gloomhaven
- Robinson Crusoe
- Betrayal at House on the Hill
Eurogame (German-Style Board Games)
One of the most interesting types of board games I’ve found is the Eurogame. This genre originated in Germany after WWII and because of anti-war sentiment, many Germans turned away from the typical military themes that board games tended to have historically. Instead, they focused on economic topics, like agriculture, infrastructure, or building.
Elements of Eurogames
- Usually includes indirect player interaction
- Focus on economic goals over military expansion
- Encourages skill over randomized (luck) elements
- Players rarely get eliminated
I think it’s fascinating to see how anti-war sentiment had such a huge impact on the mindset of a people and to see how it manifested in their everyday life. If you’d like to learn more about the history of board games be sure to check out our recent post, which looks at the evolution of board games from prehistory to the modern day.
Eurogames have become a defining style of games worldwide. They’re typically easy to learn and require thought over random luck to win, and rarely is a player eliminated. This makes them excellent games for family or really any gaming groups. Most implement some sort of victory point feature that tracks the scores throughout the game and allow players to continually play instead of being attacked and forced out mid-game.
Examples of Eurogames
- Powergrid
- Catan
- Ticket to Ride
- Carcassonne
- Puerto Rico
- Dominion
- Dixit
- Tales of Arabian Nights
Hidden Traitor Games
Hidden Traitor games are incredible. There’s nothing that brings friends closer together then sitting down at a table and lying to their face. Well maybe not quite, but that’s exactly what happens in Hidden Traitor board games. The underlying premise of this game type is that everyone is working together except for a small group of players. The best part? The good guys don’t know who the bad guys are.
Elements of Hidden Traitor Games
- One or more players are on a separate team and will attempt to undermine the whole group
- Hidden Traitor games make great party games because they allow for larger groups of players
- Require players to question the loyalties motivations of others
- Incorporate lying, betrayal, and lots of broken alliances
- Are usually fast-paced, quick gaming sessions, with tons of replayability
As a “good” player you’ll have some shared goal with the other “good” members of the team. As a “bad” player, your goal is to undermine the “good” players through subterfuge. It makes for fun night of lying and betrayal with your besties.
The larger party games like Werewolf or Secret Hitler have a bit of theme to them but have the same goal of finding out who the traitors are and getting rid of them. It can seem simple but tend to get extremely complicated and loud depending on your gaming group.
In the larger party games, the action takes place off the table. It’s all about what you say and how you say it. The game relies entirely on your ability to convince or lie, or lie convincingly. If you have a group of players that really get into the spirit of the game it can be one of the most fun social events you can possibly have. It can also go south pretty quickly if you forget that it’s a game.
I’ve been in some games where tempers flared and the quiet players got steamrolled by the louder ones. If you’re in a larger group it’s sometimes helpful to have an outside player be a judge/referee for a few games so that they can oversee until everyone is comfortable with the rules.
There are also some larger box games that use a hidden traitor mechanic as well. In Dead of Winter one of your fellow survivors might be biding their time until they turn on the group. The same can be said for the Battlestar Galactica Game where one player is a Cylon in disguise. In the larger box games, the main focus isn’t on the hidden traitor, but rather on the overall goal of the game. The traitor is just another element in these types of games, always present and always a threat.
Examples of Hidden Traitor Games
- Avalon
- Werewolf
- Secret Hitler
- Dead of Winter
- Mafia
- Salem
Worker Placement Board Games
Enter: the iconic meeple. Meeples are synonymous with board games and one of the major components to most Worker Placement Games.
In a Worker Placement game, players will have a pool of meeples that represent the workers available to them. It’s up to the players how to allocate their workforce, and it’s important not to try to do everything all at once.
These types of games rely heavily on strategy and planning your workforce allocation.
Elements of Worker Placement Board Games
- Rely heavily on methodical strategy, rather than luck
- Players vie for limited resources
- Require organization and planning to be successful
- Usually, an individual player mat is incorporated into game components
One of my favorite worker placement games is Lords of Waterdeep, where you take control of one of the rulers of the classic Dungeons & Dragons cities, Waterdeep. You send your minions throughout the city to hire adventurers (resources) and complete missions for victory points. If you mismanage your few workers early on, then you’ll find yourself at a disadvantage in the late game.
Examples of Worker Placement Board Games
- Trajan
- Stone Age
- Agricola
- Lords of Waterdeep
RPGs (Role Playing Games)
Role Playing Games (RPG) have been sitting at the top of the nerd hierarchy for some time. Imagine, if you will, the stereotypical nerds locked in a basement with a bag jumbo bag of Cheetos and Mountain Dew…
This, however, isn’t necessarily the case anymore. The traditional Pen and Paper RPG (like Dungeons & Dragons) is alive and well, but along the way, someone thought to combine them with traditional board games, and it’s truly a match made in heaven.
RPG board games can give all the fun and excitement of a pen and paper RPG without arguing about who’s going to be the Dungeon Master. In typical pen and paper RPGs, you need a player to take on the role of Dungeon Master. They typically spend hours on coming up with fun campaigns for the players. Luckily for us, the board game version of RPGs takes the hassle out of building your own campaign. It’s much more structured, but it’s also much easier to get the casual player in the game.
Elements of RPG (Role Playing Games)
- Heavily thematic in nature
- Rely on leveling mechanics (where a player gains levels and improves their character over time)
- Often use randomized mechanics (such as dice) to act as A.I
In Mice and Mystics, the game setup and scenario takes the role of a DM/GM (Dungeon Master/Game Master) that runs the game for you. All that’s left for you to do is get into character and slay some monsters.
To begin a traditional pen and paper RPG is a huge time investment for all players involved. I love doing it, but it’s sometimes hard to manage and get everyone together. The board game RPGs are much simpler and offer a lot of the same experience. You get to roleplay and create a character, just like in traditional RPGs. Many RPG board games have leveling mechanics built in to improve your character and best of all it’s much easier to get everyone together to play.
Examples of RPG (Role Playing Games)
- Mice and Mystics
- Gloomhaven
- Kingdom Death Monster
- Pathfinder: Adventure Card Game
Legacy Board Games
Legacy games are the newest board game fad to hit the scene. Legacy games play differently than traditional board games. Each playthrough builds upon the previous game. Your first playthrough of a legacy game will play like a normal version of the game. But after that, it can get a little weird. Depending upon the outcome of the first game, players could get a bonus or disadvantage.
Elements of Legacy Board Games
- Persistent playthroughs
- Previous games will affect future games
- Typically, once the scenario is completed, the game ends
The idea is that previous games matter. Each game will affect the next game. Sometimes entire sections of the board will be altered, or even have entire characters or game pieces destroyed. I had to destroy several of the cards in my Pandemic Legacy game, and my character went insane and died during the last few playthroughs.
I think this type of game is fantastic especially if you can get a group together consistently to play through the entirety of the legacy.
Because the game is altered drastically between plays, the games themselves tend to have an expiration date. As you play the game you will destroy cards, write on the board, and change the pieces. There is no way to go back and no way to reset to the first game. It will drive OCD players absolutely nuts. (ahem, Kendra)
This adds tension to the game and adds real consequences to the outcome of each game, however, once you’ve completed the scenario there is a sense of finality to the board. If you want to go back and start over from the beginning you would have to buy another game or get creative with trying to replace everything you destroyed and wrote on.
Is it worth it?
So if you’re investing all that money and time into a board game that has a limited number of playthroughs, it begs the question, “Is it worth it?”.
I like to think so. The legacy games are designed to have about 12-20 plays of a game before the scenarios run out.
Math FTW
If you think about it mathematically (gasp) then it’s a pretty cost effective form of entertainment.
4 people getting 12 games out of the box at an hour a play.
4 x 12 x 1 = 48
48 hours of entertainment.
Divide the cost of the board by the hours of entertainment.
65 / 48 = €1.35 per person per hour of entertainment.
At least that’s how I rationalize my massive board game collections.
Examples of Legacy Board Games
- Pandemic Legacy
- Risk Legacy
- Werewolf Legacy
- Betrayal at the House on the Hill Legacy
- Aeons End Legacy
War Games & Wargaming
War Games cover a broad category of games and they’re completely different from Wargaming.
War Games are any broad category of board game that uses war and conquest as their overall themes. Any of the RISK games or Axis and Allies-style games are considered war games. Each player takes control of a faction and builds up their army to attack and destroy the other players’ factions. It’s highly strategic and requires players to plan when to attack and not leave their territories undefended by overextending their armies. They also rely heavily on dice rolls to simulate battles.
Elements of War Games and Wargaming
- Typically, large map strategy games
- Rely on strategy, but use luck to simulate battles
War games will typically rely on a large map as the board to simulate the field of battle. It gives you a feeling of being a general looking down on your war maps and positioning troops.
Wargaming is a hefty investment in both time and money and is 50% hobby and 50% game. Wargaming requires players to purchase individual models, construct them, paint them all before being able to play the game. Each player will need to buy and create their own customized army. It’s incredibly time consuming and expensive, but it is a lot of fun.
Examples of War Games
- Risk
- Axis and Allies
- Paths of Glory
Wargaming Examples
- Warhammer 40k
- Star Wars X-Wing
- Warmachine
Technology-Enhanced Games
Technology has always tried to integrate with board games, with mixed success. For most, it’s just been a gimmick like Monopoly’s credit card machine replacing the paper money. It’s always been on the fringe, and as computers get smaller and cheaper, it’s becoming much more common to include some kind of device to assist with your game.
Elements of Technology-Enhanced Games
- Incorporate an electronic element into the game
- Typically, smartphone apps are used to enhance play or give directions
- A relatively new mechanic in the industry
Technology-enhanced games can incorporate almost anything. Munchkin has an optional app that lets you keep score, and gives you a bonus. It’s not at all necessary for the game but it’s still an option.
Some games require you to use some kind of smart device and if you don’t have one you won’t be able to play it.
- XCOM the board game requires an app that times the game and yells at you whenever your players are being attacked.
- DropMix uses a phone or tablet on a smart reader board that plays and mixes music as you set down cards.
As technology advances, there is going to be an increased amount of electronics showing up in our cardboard boxes. One of the newer technologies that I’m personally excited to see integrated into traditional tabletop games is Augmented Reality. As with most new elements, it’ll most likely start off as a gimmick, but I think it’s going to be really interesting to follow how the games evolve from there.
On top of enhanced traditional tabletop games, there are a ton of games that are going completely digital. You can find most classic games on every app store as well as some of the newer and more complicated ones.
I must admit that I have mixed feelings playing these. On one hand, I can have a lot of my favorite board games in my pocket wherever I go. On the other, forgo on sitting around a table with all of your friends, and you lose a lot of the social aspects of gaming.
Examples of Technology-Enhanced Board Games
- DropMix
- XCOM
Most games coming out today are hard to classify into one core concept. As games become more advanced, the clear-cut genres begin to meld together, which can be a fantastic combination.
As board games continue to increase in popularity, we will see more and more innovation. It would be very rare to find a new game that is strictly categorized into only one genre. And as players, that means more options and more games for us to play.
If you’ve gotten this far in the article we assume you aren’t waiting for the “Classic Games” category, on the edge of your seat to read about Monopoly and all of its spin-offs. That’s just not going to happen. We’re not going to write about Monopoly. You can’t make us.
What are your favorite types of board games? Which do you avoid at all costs? Drop a comment below and let us know what you think!
If you enjoyed this article, do go to the Game Cows Blog and join the herd!
]]>Board gamers have largely been seen as competitive but it is not that board gamers are not a cooperative bunch, it is just that they did not have the games to prove it in the past. That though has changed with the boom in the popularity of cooperative games that pits all the players against the game, hence the players win or lose as a team together.
The cooperative genre also has an audience that took to the genre like wildfire and that is the family market. Before fully cooperative games were common, when a parent played a board game with a child, they often had to handicap themselves so that the child would have a fighting chance at victory but in a game where all the players are working together, that is not so. This is because the kids can be being guided by the parents and thus the game can still be designed to be challenging for adult players.
Cooperative games though are not solely for families as even hobby gamers have taken to the genre with gusto. This is well proven by the fact that the current most popular game on Board Game Geek is a cooperative game called Pandemic Legacy.
The general keys to making a successful cooperative game are first, it has to be challenging enough for your target players but yet not so hard that it feels impossible to get through the game. In fact, other than for kids, it is a general consensus that players should lose a lot more than they win as this creates a sense of accomplishment and the challenge is the thing that keeps them coming back for more.
Secondly, the game rules should be as simple as possible as the competition is provided by the game mechanics. If the rules are hard to follow, then victory or defeat might feel unsatisfactory just because players forgot to apply step 13 of 15 for example.
Thirdly, this is not a hard or fast rule but the most popular cooperative games do have a very strong theme to the game. The popularity of escape rooms proving that abundantly well as they are basically massive cooperative board games with the various themes you can choose from.
Related: Board Game Mechanics 101: Social Deduction
Pandemic
The game by Matt Leacock that is said to have set off the cooperative game boom. Released in 2008, it is still extremely popular and as you can guess is the inspiration mechanics wise for Pandemic Leagacy which we have mentioned above.
In Pandemic, each player plays an expert in a team of disease fighting specialist who are on a mission to save the world and find the cure for 4 new virulent diseases that could spell doom to mankind.
Gameplay is simply 4 actions, they are travel between cities, treat infected populaces, discover a cure, or build a research station. Cures are found by submitting 5 cards of the same colour at a research station.
The main "enemy" of the game comes in the form of epidemic cards, which are mixed into the deck of cards which players will be drawing from to refill their personal hand of cards. Whenever an epidemic card is drawn, a city will get infected and the disease will spread all over the board with an escalating effect.
Keeping with the difficulty factor of cooperative games, there are several ways to lose and only one way to win. The players lose if the player deck runs out of cards before the players cure all 4 diseases, if the outbreak of diseases chart goes pass 7 or if you wish to place disease cubes on the board but can't. All this hard thematic goodness in 45minutes to an hour.
Matt Leacock also made the game very versatile for all levels of players. This is because the difficulty of the game can be tweaked by varying the number of epidemic cards in the game. This move increasing the game's audience to even new gamers and is definitely a plus for families as you kids grow older, you can add more epidemic cards to make the game more challenging.
Pandemic is literally the first game most gamers would ask you to try if you have expressed any interest in the cooperative genre. The game is enjoyed by the newest of gamers to veterans of the hobby and thus why if you are looking to design a cooperative game, this is an awfully good game to start with.
Time Stories
Taking a page from Pandemic and another from the popularity of escape rooms around the world, Time Stories focuses on providing a cooperative experience with an extremely immersive story to go with it.
In Time Stories, the players play temporal agents or in layman terms, Time Police, who go back in time to solve crimes. You do this by inhabiting the body of people in that period.
Players spend "time" to interact with the world. This is done by picking up a card from a specific deck and reading it to the group. Events vary from you just picking up items, getting into fights or having to solve puzzles. Attribute tests from characters or events in the game are done via rolling custom dice and are affected by items or the statistics of the chosen character the player has chosen to inhabit.
To get an immersive story, they have tailored the game to have standalone mission expansions with set answers. This reduces the replayability significantly but allows for a more detailed and cohesive story.
No one knew how the market would react to having a board game you really could only play once but the gamble paid off though and the game was the talk of the board gaming world in 2015 and is currently the 35th most popular game on Board Game Geek.
Time Stories was unique in how different it was to the traditional cooperative game and shows there is always space to innovate in a design space. You just have to give your idea a try!
Pandemic Legacy
And now that you have read on what is the basics of the cooperative genre and how it can be innovated. Then you can take what is the core of the genre and then add another element to the game. In this case the legacy mechanic.
The legacy mechanic is a system board game designer Rob Daviau created with his game called Risk Legacy. Its premise is that every game counts and what happens in one game is carried over to the next game in a permanent way. Such as entire parts of the board destroyed and marked with stickers for example.
As the state of the board or characters are changed permanently, there is, even more, gravitas to every decision. Mix this with the solid mechanics of Pandemic and now you have created not just a story but something akin to an Oscar winning epic movie series for the players. A combo that is so successful that it has catapulted the game to become the number 1 ranked game in just about a year from its release.
Do note though that Legacy games are one of the hardest to design for due to the massive playtesting that is needed to fix any bugs or dead ends that might occur from the player's various decisions in the game.
In conclusion, the cooperative genre has several pluses going for it. There are firstly way less cooperative games out there than compared to its competitive counterpart and the market for the genre seems to be growing very strongly. Also, the family market has always been a staple of board gaming and like I said before, they do take to cooperative games most well. So put your mind to it and make the world a better place by getting people to work together.