Remember when you’d walk into a local music, book, or video store and there’d be an adorable section where the employees would recommend what they were interested in that month?
Welcome to our little version of it, called Remap Recommends.
At the end of every month, we have an edition of Remap Recommends focused on video games. But in the middle of the month, we'll have an edition focused on...everything else. It's a chance for the staff at Remap to let you know what they've been reading, listening to, or watching.
Patrick Recommends: A Minecraft Server
In 2022, I said Minecraft, a game released all the way back in 2011, was my second favorite game that year. The reason was my oldest daughter taking an interest in Minecraft, which led to me taking an interest in Minecraft. Here's what I wrote:
"As kids get older, it becomes harder and harder to connect on the same level as them. My oldest is only six years old, and I can already sense that tension at work. [...] With Minecraft, my daughter and I can play in the same world together, and the power balance shifts completely. She is the one in control, the one with more knowledge than me. She’s the one guiding me from one area to the next, telling me what to do and what to build. She’s the one asking me to find this or that resource, to help build a house she’s working on. When I’m asking her to do homework, I’m a parent. When we’re in Minecraft, we’re peers."
The difference between 2022 and 2025 is that my six-year-old is now eight years old. At the time, my youngest was two years old. Today, she's on the verge of turning five years old. (Life goes fast, man.) Minecraft, to its credit, remains borderline indecipherable. You could tell me the UI is exactly the same way it was in 2011 and I'd believe you, with the major change being lots of new monetization.
(I know that's not the case, and by all accounts Microsoft's been a good steward. But it's wild how strange and arcane Minecraft remains.)
But another difference between then and now is that Minecraft has now clicked for my youngest. She can fly around the world. She can build things. She has big ideas. It's lead to family Minecraft nights, as we all sit around on the same world, and also prompted my neighbor to set up a private server, where the kids dip and out during the week, then convene on the weekend to talk about what they built. It's super cool. It's like a playground that exists in and out of time and space.
Cado Recommends: Harmonies
Harmonies is a board game where you take random sets of wooden tokens and arrange miniature landscapes on a hex grid with the goal of creating specific habitats for animals to live in. It’s quick to learn, has gorgeous components, and yet the random elements make for a devilishly delicious puzzle each time. Every turn you choose a set of three random tiles from a central pool. You can arrange these tiles however you’d like onto your board, with some tiles (like rocks) allowing you to stack them for better points at the end of the game. One rock makes a small hill but three rocks stacked on top of each other makes a large mountain, and that mountain is worth six more points than the hill!
You can also take an Animal card during your turn. Animal cards have specific arrangements of tiles on them that, when created, will score you extra points at the end of the game. You score these points by placing a small animal cube on the corresponding tile when you’ve completed the arrangement on the animal card to represent that these animals have moved into that habitat.
Part of the wonderful puzzle of Harmonies is then trying your best to maximize how many animals you can house at once. Once a cube is placed on a tile you can’t place further cubes or stack any more tiles on that space. Those two stacked rocks that make a medium hill are now stuck as a medium hill, but the monkey that moved into that space will hopefully make up the difference in points by the end of the game. At least you hope.
The main tension in the game comes from the fact that Animal cards all require you to place the same animal cube multiple times for the most points. The first monkey that moves into my hill by the river only gets me five points, but if I do that twice I’m gaining 11 instead. But now, that hill won’t be able to grow into a mountain, and my fish wants to live in a river next to a mountain, not some dinky medium hill!
The beautiful moments come when you find two animals that love to be neighbors. These sting rays want to live in a river next to two small hills...but they only lock the river in. You can build their habitat and then continue to stack rocks to attract those monkeys later! It’s in finding these small harmonies (haha) between different animals where the game really sings, that “hell yes” moment of realizing a perfect turn of tiles and animal cards that scratch my brain’s puzzle solving centers just so. The wooden habitat tiles add that extra tactile “oomph” that a good board game needs, and the whimsical illustrations on the animal cards make each draw of the animal pile a new visual delight.
Image courtesy of Libellud Studios
It's really a perfect storm for a game this simple, and one of the reasons I picked it up after playing it just twice at a local board game meetup. The fact that it also allows for a solo game that is just as engaging as the multiplayer mode means that I can easily play a game in 15 minutes on my own and feel satisfied with my time.
Who wouldn't want to make a home for these adorable animals to live in? Have you seen those ducks? Delightful.