The 10 best games of 2020: In a pandemic, play was critical – Los Angeles Times

The text-based Blaseball allows the game to exist largely in the imaginations of its players.

(Game Band)

If I told you that even as a lifelong baseball fan I didnt understand everything about Blaseball, you would likely question why its on my year-end list of 2020s most meaningful games. But thats also the very reason its here.

Blaseball is vague. Blaseball, a free web-based game (blaseball.com), uses the language of baseball game box scores in fact, thats pretty much all it uses and asks us, the viewers, to do the rest. We can influence the world by voting on often-absurd choices, which are sometimes very supernatural in nature, but Blaseball is an ongoing experiment in community involvement.

Yet not in the standard video game way, where systems and controls will overwhelm. Blaseball lives in our web browsers, asking us only to pretend and communicate. For those who play, it can exist in the background, running autonomously while we dream up backstories. For newcomers, welcome. Dont be overwhelmed. Here there are no written or unwritten rules that arent meant to be broken.

Continue reading here:
The 10 best games of 2020: In a pandemic, play was critical - Los Angeles Times

Reviewed and Recommended by Erik Baquero