Having now played hundreds more titles and grasped a bit more of gaming and ourselves as gamers, we’ve found the comfort zone and I’ve grown to really appreciate the pseudo-relaxation of the lab.ĭesigned by Darrell Louder and originally released in 2013 by Dice Hate Me Games, Compounded has modestly withstood the test of time. After playing some more suitable welcoming games and familiarizing ourselves with modern mechanics, everything started to make sense, but I’m still not sure I’d say we enjoyed the next few attempts. We weren’t ready for its even moderate complexity the first time. After laboring through that first play, the game sat on our shelf for quite some time while we tried to develop a mental category for what we had experienced.Ĭompounded is a game, however, that keeps finding its way back to our table.

I specifically remember wondering what I had gotten us into as I stickered the wooden discs and punched the tiny little diamond-shaped chits. My wife is a biochemist and we’ve always sought out games with a scientific setting, but I would hardly label this little box a gateway game. Certainly before Everdell carried me through the tabletop floodgates, there was this little chemistry engine that could. Before Ticket to Ride: Europe or New York 1901-even before Catan (obviously I’m a supremely late bloomer).

I would need a Wayback to verify, but I believe Compounded was the first modern era board game to enter my collection.

Periodic table dice game