For many people trapped at home during the coronavirus quarantine, board games have become an invaluable resource for entertaining themselves. Some rely on their own personal stash of titles, while others find creative ways to play in spite of the fact that many local stores have shut down.
Johanna Pinzler, 45, and her husband Avri Klemer, 44, have a massive collection of more than 900 board games stacked throughout their Kensington, Brooklyn apartment. But it took the onset of the quarantine to make them appreciate the hobby.
“Now, I feel like we’re a little bit of a gaming refugee,” she says. “It’s been nice to get together with friends and just be able to sit down and have fun.”
While some board games have gotten the Zoom treatment, which allows players to connect over video-conferencing software, others are being played even in the face of isolation. Kendall Payne, a 25-year-old comedian, found that she was able to convince her three roommates in Bushwick to team up via the messaging app Zoom and play the spy-themed word game Codenames with each other remotely.
Another game gaining popularity in this time of confinement is Pandemic, designed by Matt Leacock and Rob Daviau. The cooperative game casts the players as members of an elite disease control team trying to keep four deadly diseases at bay while battling outbreaks and epidemics. Each player manages a hand of cards that let them do things such as remove cubes from cities, travel more quickly between hotspots or — if they collect five cards of the same color — discover a cure.