Complexity Level is our way of telling you how of how complex we thing a given game is. This is not part of our rating of the game, and is meant as a guideline for players to gage how heavy or light the game is. For newer and casual players we don’t normally recommend games with a high Complexity Level (5-6). 1 to 2 is an excellent starting point if you are new to the crazy universe that is boardgaming.
Generally speaking the Complexity Level of a game can be seen as a combination of the following things:
- Length of the rulebook
- How long the game takes to learn and to play
- Amount of choices presented to the player each turn
- How many times you need to play the game to understand it
Complexity Level 1
Complexity Level 1 games are the most simple games out there. With simple easy to teach rules and not a lot of choices to make. They have a short play time and are good candidates for beginners.
Examples:
Complexity Level 2
Relatively simple games, short and easily understandable rules. Typically taking a little more time to play and presenting more options to players each turn.
Examples:
Complexity Level 3
The middle ground. Rulebook is typically more than a few pages and there are more elements things to the game. It also normally takes more than play-through of the game to fully understand it.
Examples:
Complexity Level 4
Games that have quite a few moving parts, and a longer rulebook. It takes some time to learn and to teach new players. You mostly likely need to play the game several times to fully appreciate them. These games can be of varying length but typically 90 min and up.
Examples:
Complexity Level 5
These games are complex, no doubt about that, with typically long rules books and a lot of decisions to make each turn. It’s games that will take some time to play and give you a (sometimes mind numbing) number of options each turn.
Examples:
Complexity Level 6
Very complicated games with a very long rulebook and many specific rules for specific situations in the game. Takes a long time to learn and long time to teach new players. Also typically these games have a long playtime (2 hours and up). It requires many plays to fully understand the game, but playing these types of games can prove rewarding and challenging to the right people.
Examples:
Twilight Imperium (Third Edition)