Playfulness in Adults - An under represented field

I recently wrote about how I believe playing can be considered a rebellious act in a society that does not value playfulness in adults. Bizarrely, this received more backlash than I was expecting from people who did not appreciate me thinking more deeply about the sociology of playing games. While I firmly believe that choosing "unproductive" play in a society that favours productivity, is inherently rebellious, I am aware that some people prefer to focus on the inward-facing benefits of play. Or perhaps my attempt to look deeper into an activity they would rather just consider fun will also be met with resistance?

Saya Des Marais, writing for Psych Central ascertains that "playing is just as important for adults as it is for children. Among its many benefits, adult play can boost your creativity, sharpen your sense of humor (sic.), and help you cope better with stress". However, Proyer and Ruch, writing for SpringerOpen, claim that despite this, there has been comparatively little literature or research on playfulness in adults. I feel that this lack of research into playfulness and the benefits of play in adults supports my believe that western society does not value play in adults in the same way as it might in children. 

Proyer and Ruch found that the results of their own research indicated that "playfulness in adults relates to positive psychological functioning". They highlighted the need for further studies to illuminate the contribution of playfulness to well-being in adults. Furthermore, a 2013 study in the European Journal of Humour Research, also by researcher Proyer, found that a predisposition to play in adults was positively linked to well-being and life satisfaction.

So what exactly are the benefits of adults playing games aside from just being enjoyable on a surface level?

Playfulness can be defined as "the predisposition to frame (or re-frame) a situation in such a way as to provide oneself (and possibly others) with amusement, humour, and/or entertainment". Framed the context of this article, playfulness links with table top games in their ability to frame specific themes, subjects, or actions in an entertaining way. Patchwork by Uwe Rosenberg is a perfect example of how the act of making a patchwork quilt can be reframed to make it a less arduous, more competitive, and potentially a more entertaining task. 

Adults who participated in playful activities display five types of playful behaviours outlined by Proyer and Ruch: spontaneous, expressive, creative, fun, and silly. Leading on from this, people who scored higher in these characteristics were also recorded as having higher creativity, a better ability to appreciate beauty, a greater sense of hope, lower stress, among others. As such, playfulness in adults can be directly linked to a boost in overall well-being.

These characteristics may feel like they are considered as some inherent aspect of someone's personality and as such might feel inaccessible to someone who does not necessarily consider themselves playful. However, Dr. Stuart Brown, researcher and founder of The National Institute for Play, has identified eight "play personalities". People who enjoy table top gaming will undoubtedly associate with multiple personalities and below I have taken the liberty of providing suggestions on how they translate to the hobby.

1. The Collector - you enjoy building collections. TCGs, Warhammer, Board games, they are all collections.
2. The Competitor - you enjoy playing (and winning) against others in games that have clearly defined rules.
3. The Creator - you enjoy making things. This could be miniature building and painting, or even creating our own TTRPGs.
4. The Director - what table top group doesn't have that one person who drives the play, learns the rules, schedules D&D sessions?
5. The Explorer - you play through discovering new things. Often linked with the Director, this is the person who will favour games not yet played to bring to the table.
6. The Joker - you play games that bring out the silly or foolish in all of us. Happy Salmon anyone?
7. The Kinesthete - you enjoy using your body to play. From Jenga to Junk Art, you rule at dexterity games.
8. The Storyteller - you play table top games for the opportunity to create stories and get lost in the collective imagination of the group.

As Saya Des Marais writes, "Playing is just as much about your mindset as it is about the activity you're doing", so for your own sake, have a think about how you play and how you might build this into your adult life. Dare I say, it will be a rebellious thing to do?

Preview: Grave Keeper

Become a Grave Keeper in a new print-and-play roll-and-write game by Martyn Hedges that has just launched on Kickstarter. The game, for one or more players, promises to transport you to Victorian England as a sickness "sweeps across the land, claiming rich and poor alike". Players will tend to the crypts of four noble families and vie to gain the highest reputation for their work buying the dead, maintaining the grave site, leading funeral processions, and fending off pesky grave robbers. 

The game has a charming, hand-drawn aesthetic that fits the morbid theme well. Players will roll dice to determine who will have died from the aforementioned families each turn, and then use these dice to determine what actions they will be completing each round of a six round game. These actions include burying the dead, installing monuments to increase prestige, leading funeral processions, and lighting lanterns to deter grave robbers. Of course, there is only so much you can do in a day and any corpses left untended during the day will rot and decay overnight, costing the player their reputation points.

Pre-release reviews have been overwhelmingly positive and some are comparing the game to The Bloody Inn, released in 2015 and already a fan favourite.

At the time of writing the Kickstarter has exceeded its funding goal by 500% with 13 days still to go. You can keep abreast of its progress here and back the project for the low, low price of only £3.00.

Hand Limit 2025 Event Announcement!

Readers will know Hand Limit is a blog about the positive impact that in-person games can have on mental health, community, and well-being. However, it's our hope that the blog will turn into something more substantial that online musings and reviews. This means we are very happy to announce that 2025 will see the first in-person Hand Limit gaming event.

The event, as it stands, will take place on 5th June 2025 at Fruitworks Coworking and Coffee Shop in Canterbury, UK. The intention is that this should fall on the same day as Canterbury Pride and exist as a fringe event for people who wish to celebrate Pride and need a break from the crowds.

We will be hosting a number of stalls selling jewelry and artwork and the primary space will be given over to table top gaming, with a generous library of games and volunteers ready to help guests find their next favourite game. 

What's more, this event will be absolutely free to attend. We are very lucky to have secured a number of sponsors, who will be announced shortly, which is helping to cover the event costs. However, we are looking at taking donations for a local charity in place of charging an entrance fee as it will be a Pride/LGBTQIA+ event and we feel it is important to show our support.

Keep a close eye on future posts for further information and please feel free to get in touch if you have any questions or wish to be involved.

Review: Wiznerds - A TTRPG for lovers of chaos

I love chaos. Specifically I love the chaos factor of any tabletop game. This is the game's ability to pull sharply at the rudder in unexpected and sometimes catastrophic ways. It is always just as entertaining to me when things go magnificently wrong, as when they are serendipitously fortuitous. My favourite games are always those that leave players constantly on edge no matter how carefully they have planned their moves and the game I am reviewing today is a master at this.

Wiz-Nerds by Michael "Wheels" Whelan from Just for Fun is a TTRPG in which players take on the roles of bright-eyed first-year students at Ibus Engleberry's School for Aspiring Wizards (IeSAW). However, before they can even get started learning simple spells, something at the whim of the GM will have gone terribly wrong and our unlucky characters must use their introductory spell books to save the day. The catch? They don't know what any of the spells actually do!

All players are equipped with three columns of bizarre words. Each word represents either an Aspect, Form, or Target relating to the spell, meaning that combinations of words work together to make surprising results. Players will need to ascertain what each word actually means through good old fashioned trial and error. Whenever the players want to do an action that can be considered challenging or dangerous they have the choice to roll for it or cast a spell, but from our experience the dice will be left almost untouched as it is far more exciting to shout out three magic words and see what happens!

Of course, the sensible thing to do would be to carefully find a quiet corner and experiment with the words methodically until you have a good grasp of the spells needed to save the day, but really who has the time for that when some bad guys are after the mystical MacGuffin!? No, the only way forward is to run in blind and figure things out as they go.

This is a beautifully simple and silly game that requires little preparation from the GM and players, in fact it is advisable not to keep too firm a grasp on any of the story as it will undoubtedly be wrenched from your hands the first time a player accidentally turns a vital NPC inside out with poorly timed spell experimentation.

The format of this game works well in person or online and can be stretched or shrunk to fit almost any time requirement. Available on itch.io on a "name your price" basis, I cannot recommend this game enough and Whelan could easily be asking for a fixed price.

If you are looking for something with a healthy dose of chaos and silliness for your next one-shot RPG session, you could do a lot worse than getting over to itch.io and grabbing a PDF of Wiz-Nerds.

Review: Tiny Epic Defenders - Tower of Terror

I am a huge fan of Scott Almes's Tiny Epic series. I think the man is a genius when it comes to condensing genres that typically span entire weekends and take up multiple tables into sweet little 1-2 hour experiences. Whilst they will never fully live up to the in-depth, crunchy nature of some of their larger cousins, I think they pay wonderful homage to the themes and make them far more friendly to the average table top or cafe. Furthermore, Almes always takes time to ensure there is a suitable single player mode built into the games wherever they will work well. 

I recently got hold of a copy of first edition Tiny Epic Defenders and quite unexpectedly it rose to be one of my favourite quick games. When it comes to condensing a genre, tower defense, into a short, cafe friendly experience, Almes really hit it out of the park with this one. Whilst all Tiny Epic games are relatively low complexity, games such as Tiny Epic Dungeons can often get slowed down by a rule book so thorough that you'd be convinced it cane in a much bigger box. This is not the case with Tiny Epic Defenders. All mechanics have been boiled down into such a neat package the rule book is only a few pages long and can be digested easily right before the first game.

Defenders, is a cooperative experience for 1-4 players, who take on the role of heroes drawn from classic fantasy stock; orcs, elves, skeletons, mages, knights. Each of these heroes come with their own unique special ability, though not all are created equal, allowing for future challenges if you find yourself cracking the formula for success (if you know it, please let me know).

The turn system relies on a deck of cards that are shuffled and drawn one at a time. This deck contains both enemy and player turns meaning each round is luck of the draw when each player is able to take their alloted 3 actions. This helps to keep players feeling as though they are having to play reactively and flexibly in order to keep on top of the hordes of enemies.

Enemy cards target specific areas of the kingdom, which will cause the threat in that region to rise. Should the threat level ever rise to critical point, the region is considered lost and the location bonus action will be unavailable for the rest of the game, plus any future attacks to their region will instead be directed at the capital city. Of course, should the capital city fall it's game over. Players can position their characters in locations and defend them against the onslaught by taking damage rather than raising the threat level of the region. 

Each round of the game adds further enemies to the turn deck, meaning the waves of enemies get more ferocious as the game progresses, culminating in the arrival of a boss enemy. These large monsters require slaying for the game to be considered complete, all while constantly maintaining defense against the unceasing onslaught.

TE Defenders offers a very polished experience without an ounce of fat on it. It takes up very little table space and perfectly encapsulates the tower defense genre into a very small box and quick experience. Of course, this will probably fall short when you are after something to really get your teeth into, but for what it is, it is a very impressive little game.; 

Also in my collection but as of yet untested is the TE Defenders expansion: Defenders Dark War, which expands on the available characters and final bosses, plus the need to defend caravans of refugees fleeing the various realms of the kingdom. Dark War also introduces the Tiny Epic staple gimmick ITEMeeples, small meeple figures that are able to hold even smaller weapons. Ultimately these don't add anything to the actual game play but they are quite cute. Sadly, I have a first edition copy of Defenders, meaning I only have the regular meeples that cannot hold items. If I cared that much I could easily borrow the ITEMeeples from TE Zombies, but I just don't think I'm that bothered.

All in all, TE Defenders is a solid edition to the TE collection and stands out for how neat of an experience it is.

Arctic Anarchy and the Arctic Quest

Following our review of Arctic Anarchy, Hand Limit was lucky enough to have a chance to speak to the creators, Rick and Lydia Vadgama about their game and the exciting story of Arctic Quest 2026.

Arctic Quest 2026

Readers of the blog will know that Arctic Anarchy, the fun card game about saving polar animals, was created with the intention of raising money and awareness for a Kent Scouts expedition to the arctic circle in 2026. Rick and Lydia run a Kent-based scouting group and are part of the team of leaders across Kent who will be leading this expedition of 10 young people (aged 16-25) and 10 leaders, to retrace the footsteps of explorer Frank Worsley in 1926, 100 years prior.

Worsley set out on a voyage to the arctic with co-leader Grettir Algarsson on his ship The Island, setting sail from Liverpool in June 1925. However, the ship was damaged by an ice-floe not long into the voyage, forcing Worsley to continue on the journey by sail in what he later described as "sail's last unaided battle with the polar pack". He wrote extensively about his voyage published under the title "Under Sail in the Frozen North".

Following in Worsley's efforts, Kent Scouts will also be making this journey under power of sail and sailing to Svalbard on the schooner, the Noordlicht (pictured below) to "easily" navigate the icy arctic waters. The ship will be crewed by experienced sailors but the young people taking part will be expected to have a hands-on role in sailing the ship, there can be no passive passengers on a voyage so physically, emotionally, and mentally challenging. A key element to their trip is the focus on having a positive environmental focus and the chance to raise awareness about a part of our world that is shrinking rapidly.

"This is more than just voluntourism."

The expedition has 4 proposed objectives:

• Voyage - An adventurous expedition 'Under sail in the Frozen North'
• Projects - Undertake group and personal projects and present the results
• Worsley - Celebrate the achievements of Frank Worsley
• Outreach - Share the experience with thousands of young people

This trip is really about pushing boundaries for those lucky enough to be participating. However, it does not come easily. Regardless of how grueling the journey will be, the journey to the journey will be no walk in the park either. Before anything else, these young people and leaders need to raise the required funds and with a group target of just over £133,000 this will be no mean feat. Many of the scouts who will be going on the expedition will be working to raise this money while also fighting their way through academic milestones such as GCSEs and A-Levels.

Arctic Anarchy

This is where one of our favourite card games of the year comes in. Rick and Lydia are both keen board gamers, so it stands to reason that when presented with a problem, like so many other fans of the hobby, the answer seems to be through playing games.

As it happens, Rick and Lydia were already sitting on an idea for a board game that came about a year or so before. Of course it had quite a different theme that I won't go into here (all I'll say is it was set in a pub rather than the frozen north!), but the mechanics of the game translated perfectly to what they wanted to achieve. Work began on refining the concept and a few sample cards were printed off on a home printer and presented to players at the board game club they run. 

Following the success of this home-made version, Rick and Lydia set out to attend UK Games Expo where they received valuable insight into games production and yet more positive feedback on the game. Pretty soon, Rick was the recipient of 7,500 professionally printed cards that all required counting, checking, and sorting into decks.

"I would always say yes to a game of Catan" - Lydia

"Simplicity was the key to the game," Rick says. "The biggest inspiration was Bounty Hunters." This drive for simplicity in the artwork, game mechanics, and rules can really be seen in the current iteration of the game with its smooth game play and rules that have been condensed to fit on a couple of playing cards within the box. Lydia added that in certain respects the game can be played more like Ticket to Ride. However, they wanted to make the game feel like a unique experience. In this respect they were successful.

Arctic Legacy

When asked what their future hopes for the game would be, Rick and Lydia were both keen for it to remain a source of funding for future Scout expeditions and to continue to raise awareness for young people, providing a link to what is happening environmentally elsewhere in the world.

"An expansion [to the game] would be good but we need feedback on what people would like to see," says Lydia. For an expansion they are keen to know what they are expanding and what this would hope to achieve with the game and its wider environmental message.

Furthermore, they want to take the lessons they've learned in bringing their game to life and share this with other scouting groups, with the hope to create more games to help promote further messages and raise money for future trips. 

"[We're] not looking for profit" - Rick

During our conversation, Lydia brought up a potential future version of the game that could be used to raise awareness and tackle poaching in Kenya. As soon as this was brought up, I admit my head was filled with Kenyan wildlife and the bright colour palette in Rick's geometric designs. Specifically, Lydia was keen for a future game to support the charity Harambee for Kenya, which focusses on "putting poor people on their feet again to rekindle burnt out lives with fresh hope, restoring dignity and respect to their lives." 

So where can people find out more and grab a copy of the game? Currently there are no official outlets, so it's best to get yourself over to the Arctic Anarchy Facebook page and message Lydia and Rick. Alternatively, head on over to their weekly board game club in Hollingbourne, Kent where they will be happy to sell you a copy.

Also, keep an eye out for future editions of Games On Location to see how well Arctic Anarchy fairs being played in the Arctic Circle!

Review: Stay At Home - A little shared trauma as a treat

The other day I found myself looking at the release date of a game on my shelf and came to the shock realisation that 2020 wasn't just a year or two ago. It's been four years since the world was plunged into a pandemic and the chaotic response as various governments tried desperately to ignore deal with the socio/political/economic ramifications of entire countries trying to isolate themselves nationally and internationally. It feels as though many of us have struggled to move on from this global event and the way this has manifested is the shared delusion that this all somehow happened more recently than it actually did. 

Stay At Home - Three ominous words

Despite that odd symptom, I have come to realise quite how much my brain had chosen to forget through the game we played last night, Stay At Home.

"A card game that's nostalgic for all the wrong reasons"

First of all, I would like to send my thanks to the creator of this game who kindly gifted me a copy for review!

Stay At Home is a simple card game by Fizzgig Games in which 2-4 players strategically take and play cards to try and end the game with the largest proportion of their household "Out", meaning not stuck in isolation. This is done through humorous cards that allow one or more of your household of 4 to leave the house on errands such as "drug run", "toilet paper quest", and a very disgruntled looking "key worker" (round of applause anyone?). However, working against you are regular government announcements and stop cards which work to complicate play or send members of your household home again. There are also stockpile cards which work against you during play by clogging up your hand, but are valuable in the event of a tie-break at the end of the game.

The winning player is the one who has the most "out" cards in front of them at the end and a decent supply of stockpile cards in the event of a draw. 

While the game was quick to play and learn, I felt there was decent replay value through the luck of the draw. Sadly on our first play through we seemed to draw almost all the government announcement cards at the start of the game so there was little effect (we hadn't had a chance to get many people out of our houses yet!), but despite this there was fun to be had in fighting each other and sending people home.

During the game we found ourselves reminiscing about the weird and confusing times, which was fun in a gallows-humour way and it was an easy game to play while also holding conversation. I also really enjoyed the mechanic of the four house cards in front of each player that flipped over as members of the household are allowed out. I'm not sure I've come across something similar in other card games of the like.

I think it would be a fair comparison to liken this to games such as Fluxx and Exploding Kittens; an easy and accessible game to play with family (depending on how raw feelings still are about that turbulent period). 

It would be interesting to see how the game changed with a greater number of green cards that enabled house holds to go out, would this also increase the underhanded actions of players as they vie for top place? Furthermore, I feel the game would re-skin well to cover a different theme, something along the lines of medieval plagues would be a fun redesign.

Overall, this is an enjoyable game to bring out at family gatherings and the humour sticks the landing, without feeling contrived.