I believe Race for the Galaxy is the first time I encountered synchronous play. 7 Wonders might be the first time I heard it heavily marketed as a feature - you can scale to nearly any player count without expanding the temporal footprint!
Since then this has of course been used a lot. Time & Space, Sidereal Confluence, Planet Unknown, Compania, most Roll & Writes, Space Base, Quacks of Quedlinburg (now that they’ve officially changed the name I am compelled to add Quedlinburg every time) come to mind, some for prominence and some for simple recency.
Over time I’ve developed mixed feelings on it.
What are everyone else’s thoughts? Any bright lines that can be drawn down good and bad implementations?
Most implementations I have a are very straight forward: everyone picks their action in secret, then reveal, then execute your action → usually on your own tableau/board. With very few exceptions.
I generally enjoy synchronous play with larger groups of players–the synchronous part saves a lot of time on decision making that scales up nicely for higher player counts. Games like 7 Wonders or Planet Unknown play really well at 6 because of it. But after the action selection the resolution takes me down into my own game that is a bit distinct from others. Often very heads down–which is fine by me most of the time but not the pinnacle of interaction. 7 Wonders deals better with this than Planet Unknown for example because the competition over the fights can be much fiercer–except then they went and made all those possibilities to dodge a fight in 7 Wonders’ expansions. Planet Unknown has the competing objectives and they are important enough in the final score but they are harder to track and will only be evaluated once as opposed to the 3 times in 7 Wonders. I like these games because they allow me to host a larger group on the same table.
Daybreak has a nice variant that is not just “action selection” where the main phase is played in parallel but because you need to coordinate moves across the table there is still interaction (or as much as is needed anyway).
Space Base does not really qualify as synchronous play for me, but you do get to do something during other players turn. Still it is someone’s turn and they get more out of it than you. It’s more of a hybrid. Getting “stuff” on others turn makes for a faster game with more players however so I think that’s a very neat design.
Gloomhaven shows up on my filters when I filter for “Simultaneous Action Selection” but it’s not really synchronous play like the other examples… you just select your action and then execute in order of initiative. Each player turn is distinctly separate. Still because players have to “select” at the same time, it saves some time on the decision making process.
Might have more thoughts later, but work now calls.
My complete list for the Simultaneous Action Selection mechanic (I can't think of another one to filter for this style of game right now). I haven't played all of them a lot.
6 nimmt! 25 Jahre
7 Wonders
Let’s Go! To Japan
Cosmic Encounter
Daybreak
The Resistance: Avalon
Die Macher
Food Chain Magnate
Forks: 2nd Edition
Frosthaven
Ginkgopolis
Gloomhaven
Heat: Pedal to the Metal
The Isle of Doctor Necreaux
Krazy Wordz
Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest
Mission: Red Planet (Second/Third Edition)
Nidavellir
Orléans
Planet Unknown
Race for the Galaxy
Railroad Ink Challenge: Lush Green Edition
Railroad Ink: Deep Blue Edition
Robo Rally: 30th Anniversary
Roll for the Galaxy
Septima
Sidereal Confluence
Spirit Island
Sushi Go!
Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition
Trailblazers
Waypoints
Welcome to the Moon
I’ve kind of soured on it. The ideal is that you don’t wait but I think waiting in games might be good. Things like fromage and so on do it. but everything is so sterile and in your own head. It’s like a worse variant of solo game - neither here or there
I think the appeal is perhaps sometimes waiting can take too long too often and it colours things a bit too much leading to design solutions such as simultaneous play. At best a multiplayer game is smooth which obviously has almost no emotional resonance (there’s no deep memories of things that just happen in an unmemorable way)
I think something like Sidereal confluence (never played it) shouldn’t really count in this as it’s synchronous yes but not really isolated in the way I think of the term “synchronous” or “simultaneous” play
Actually: I think there’s a lot going on with this term (as Yashima Does). I don’t like the ones which feel like they are baked in the design to overcome a problem. You’ll see it in the kickstarter “Simultaneous Play!!!” Whereas I think a true negotiation game simply wouldn’t promote itself this way even though it is also simultaneous play.
Last Light was the most recent such game I played. Not everything is simultaneous, but most of the actions are, so we got through a 7-player game in an entirely reasonable time. I really enjoyed it.
Are there any frantic “against the clock” games which are simultaneous actions and shouting? I feel like there are bomb / space / science lab ones I’m forgetting. Hourglass games for all players at the same time?
I think synchronous play pushes a game towards a more head-down view: I’m concentrating on my own stuff, and I don’t want to dawdle, so I don’t really have time to look over at what anyone else is doing. (Flamme Rouge, Revolution!, VOLT, all have this kind of simultaneous planning phase then resolve in a set order.) Quacks of Quedlinburg (yes, I similarly feel that it deserves its full name) mitigates this by making the decision a simple one, but also by making the explosion an attention-getting event: everyone stops to laugh, then goes back to their own thing.
Steampunk Rally’s race phase is true simultaneous play and does a solid job of it, carefully avoiding effects that would depend on play order. (But when I’m teaching it I generally do the first race phase one player at a time to show them how it works, and this doesn’t break anything either.)
NMBR 9 is so head-down you can effectively may it massively parallel: similarly Railroad Ink.
I play a lot of roll and writes, as generally they can be played online as everyone has access to a pdf to draw on.
Other than those, these are simultaneous games I have played regularly: Dream Crush which is a very light simultaneous guess who your friends have picked. Confident has everyone writing a trivia answer down at the same time, Flamme Rouge, Diamant and Quacks have everyone secretly choose a card or choose to draw for their turn simultaneously. Ready Set Bet is a betting game where people can bet at any time. The Mind has no turns and everyone is playing together trying to figure out when they should go. Sushi Go has simultaneous drafting.
Social games like Blood on the Clocktower tend to have everyone chatting at once.
And I’d argue that games like Spicy, where players can jump in at any time, count as simultaneous play.
So I suppose I have quite a few simultaneous games. I play a lot with people who wouldn’t consider themselves gamers and it’s a nice way to keep everyone engaged instead of checking out after their turn is over.
This may actually be what planted this topic in my mind. I’ve played once and I left very surprised by how little interaction I remembered having. It felt like a long, solitary experience. I definitely want to play it again, but it really cemented how simultaneous play makes it so that you focus on your own stuff all the time - in this case only looking up when you figure out what you need and having a short interaction with someone who looks like they might be able to help out.
My growing issue with simultaneous play is twofold - first, for new players, they often make mistakes and no one is watching to correct them. Much later you find out that your Dad (completely hypothetically) has been buying 3-4 tokens each buy phase of Quedlinburg or doubling up on the same color. And they, for their part, don’t have a chance to see what others are doing and get a chance to learn the nuances of the game. Often by design, these games don’t shine as well when you slow them down to “take turns.” So…I tend to avoid these with new players.
With experienced players, the fact that people always have something to do means that they are always heads down doing their things. And, as others are saying, simultaneous play can be some of the worst solitaire games you’ll find.
Thinking through when it does work, I’m also coming to similar conclusions. Simultaneous decisions, inputs, setup, and then a shared resolution stage. Nidavellir, Libertalia, Mission Red Planet, (even Quacks a bit, as you all check who blew up and who earned the die). These are games without real turns, but all the simultaneous work comes together and everyone is forced to see what everyone else did with their time and how it affected a shared game space.
The interaction in SideCon seems to be in the supply-and-demand. The game made it more difficult without a price system (any type of money would have been great). So, the player who swap their rarer small cube for a more common small cube just screwed themselves and the player who got it nicely benefitted.
“Simultaneous play” can have all the problems people have highlighted above, but “simultaneous action selection” is a good mechanism used in games like Race For the Galaxy, Dungeon Lords, and Food Chain Magnate. It loads the most thinky and time-consuming phase of the game into a shared moment of looking round the table and trying to figure out what everyone else is doing and second-guess what they think you might be doing and adapting to that.
Asteroyds and Space Alert and other ‘programming’ games come to mind. Everyone programs their turns simultaneously, and then you execute everyone’s program to discover what actually happens. The likes of Galaxy Trucker too.
Thinking of the “player is doing it wrong, nobody notices” problem: Flamme Rouge is simple enough that as long as you put down one card from each deck, and they have different backs to let everyone see that, it’s a legal move. (Maybe not a good move but that’s for later.) I’ve seen people mess this up on a first turn, but at least I have seen it.