One of the games I absolutely love are Lateral Thinking Puzzles. The way the game works is that there is a storyteller who holds all of the information of the (usually crazy) story, and our job as a team is to ask the storyteller yes/no questions until we have uncovered the whole story. The story teller starts us off with one sentence that confuses us about the story, and the rest is up to us.
What I love most about these puzzles is is that they instill collaboration in a group of people, and allow us to get to know each other through the questions that we ask. The aesthetic of fellowship shows when we build on each other’s ideas and celebrate Aha moments. The aesthetic of challenge shows by how each team member has to stretch their brains in new directions to uncover parts of the story, which could be anything. The mechanics are really simple (just yes/no question) but the skill is in how creative you can think. That mechanic creates a dynamic where everyone is learning about people’s experiences and worldview through solving a puzzle together.
One example that I have played before is the famous “Albatross Soup” story. At the beginning, all we know is that a guy eats soup and kills himself. It makes no sense until you realize through questioning that he was shipwrecked, thought he ate albatross but actually ate his wife’s flesh and the restaurant soup’s taste revealed it to him, which is really horrible… yea.
