My Father and I really enjoy playing board games with each other. We recently played through Alea’s (Ravensburger) Puerto Rico, my dad’s personal favorite. The main objective of this game is to develop your plantation on the island of, you guessed it, Puerto Rico, and ship your goods for victory points. This game is turn based- and you must choose between a limited set of actions each turn (produce, settle, ship goods etc.) each turn. Shipping space, production space, and resource types are limited, leading to extreme player competition to get your goods (of varying production types/times/costs) onto the limited boat spaces before your competitors can.
These player interactions and competitions create an extremely interactive (although somewhat slow-paced for my preference) game. However, one gets so wrapped up in beating out your competing plantation owners for profit and development, that they fail to recognize, realize, or even care about the historical meaning of coffee, sugar and other such plantations in the Caribbean. Being so involved in the interactive player competition allows players to be thrown into the perspective of past plantation owners. The only things these (problematic) people could consider was production and profit, not the morality of slavery.
Despite this somewhat upsetting revelation, this game is still fantastically fun and chalk-full of interesting strategic choices. Couldn’t recommend it more if you want to sit down for a few hours and develop a master plan.
-Noah Leibert
