A Blog Post About Boardgames, Boardgames and Why I Love Boardgames: An Exploration of Hobbies and Mental Health
Strange Games and the Unlikely Joy of Boardgames
If you had told my twenty-year-old self that I would one day happily trade the hedonistic chaos of Glastonbury for a weekend of pushing cardboard and wood around a table, I would not have believed you. And yet, here we are.
The festival in question is called Strange Games. Running since 2016, it has grown in capacity every year, and this was my second time attending. It is, exactly as it sounds, a music festival but with no music and a very large number of boardgames. What it shares with the best music festivals, though, is a genuine sense of community. I met first-timers and seasoned players alike, all welcomed into the same warm, inclusive atmosphere. The game selection spans classic favourites to indie discoveries, and the staff bring the same energy to all of it. If you have even a passing curiosity about boardgames, I would recommend it without hesitation.
How Hobbies Change With Us
Attending Strange Games got me thinking about how my hobbies have shifted over the years, and what that shift actually means. Hobbies tend to get dismissed as ways to fill time, but that undersells them considerably. The things we choose to do in our free time shape our sense of self, our relationships, and our mental health in ways we don't always notice until we look back.
Boardgames have become one of the more important parts of my life in that quiet, unannounced way. They arrived without fanfare and stayed.
The Table as a Social Space
One of the things boardgames do particularly well is bring people together in a way that feels genuinely different from most modern socialising. Sitting around a table, sharing a physical experience, negotiating strategy or competing for the same goal: it's surprisingly rare. We eat together, occasionally. Otherwise, shared physical space has become less common, and something about that loss registers, even if we can't always name it.
The boardgaming community reflects this. It is remarkably diverse, drawing in people from backgrounds that might never otherwise overlap, and those connections tend to go deeper than surface-level friendliness. They are built on shared experience and mutual respect, the kind of bonds that form when you spend three hours trying to collectively save a fictional civilisation from collapse.
The Quiet of Solo Play
The social side is obvious, but I have also come to genuinely love playing alone. Solo boardgaming has a quality that is harder to describe: the satisfying weight of a piece in your hand, the texture of a card, the particular sound of dice. There is something tactile and present about it that digital games rarely replicate. It functions, for me, as a kind of mindfulness, a way of settling the mind by giving it something absorbing and immediate to do. It is challenging and calming at the same time, which is a combination I find hard to come by elsewhere.
Why Play Matters
Hobbies are not luxuries. Engaging in something we love, something that challenges us and brings us pleasure, is genuinely good for mental health. It reduces stress, creates a sense of accomplishment, and offers a reliable way to step outside the noise of daily life. Boardgames, in particular, offer an unusual combination of cognitive engagement, social connection, and sensory satisfaction.
And they are not all Monopoly. I say this with some feeling. Most people's mental image of a boardgame stops at Monopoly, which is understandable, but also unfortunate, because Monopoly is genuinely not very good. The range of games available now is extraordinary: different mechanics, themes, lengths, player counts, and styles. There is almost certainly something out there for everyone. You may just not have found it yet.
Boardgames arrived in my life quietly and have stayed. They have given me community, calm, and a reliable source of joy. In a world that can feel relentless, that is no small thing.