My year in games – 2025

About me

I’m Marion and I love board games. Born sometime in the seventies, as a child I mainly played monopoly and goose board. Later, all kinds of card games were added.

I can still remember rainy holidays when, crammed at the table of a small caravan, we played Canasta endlessly and fanatically.

On this website, I write about games, education and parenting. When I talk to people about Pen & Pion*, they often ask what exactly I do. All sorts of things! On this page, I tell more about that ‘of everything’ I get involved in 😉

Would you like to receive a monthly update? Then email me at marion@pen-en-pion.nl. I will use your address to send you an e-mail sometime during the month when there is new news on this page. You can also use this e-mail address to unsubscribe. Go to the privacy statement.

*Pen & Pawn

April

🎈 On 5 April, Spellenwereld Assen celebrated its first anniversary 🥳🥳 It is becoming more and more beautiful there, because recently they have also introduced Escape Rooms… er… routes. There are routes in the city itself that you can do on foot, but also routes through the region that allow you to see the most beautiful parts of this beautiful area by car.

 

🌍 Another article of mine in the trade magazine JSW this month. Finally, I could use my inspiration folder ‘fun uses of Ticket to Ride for geography lessons’. You can find the article in the PDF.

 

👩🏽‍🔬 ‘Do you also have a game for our peer-to-peer supervision group of 5 people?’

After some brainstorming about possible games, we came up with FunFacts. The FunFacts game is played with 4-8 people you know at least a little.

Each player receives an arrow in a specific colour with a corresponding colour of erasable marker. Everyone writes their name on one side of the arrow, visible to everyone. A stack of cards is placed in the middle of the table. Each card has a question that you must answer with a number. For example: on a scale of 0 to 100: How grumpy do you get when you are hungry? Everyone secretly writes their answer on the arrow.

One by one, the players place their arrow (with their name visible) on the table. One is always the first, then the other players place their arrows: are they less grumpy or grumpier than you when they are hungry? Once everyone has placed their arrow, the first player may move the arrow again. Then someone turns over all the arrows and you see the numbers that everyone has written down. Was this how you imagined it and how you see each other? Or did you learn new things about each other?

FunFacts contains a huge stack of questions. If you are using the game for peer review, it is advisable to select cards in advance that you think are suitable. To focus even more on your specific field of work, you and your colleagues can each submit four cards with questions. For example: What do you think is the ideal group size for a training session? / How many solutions do you know of in the current customer environment? / How well do you think you understand the customer?

March

💥 This year I teach a group of expats Dutch as a Second Language. It’s the second year for them. Last year I started at level 0 and meanwhile they speak and understand more and more Dutch. We do the book for a second time, but now can go deeper and do more. That’s why I thought: can I think of a gamified format for the chapter ‘Talking about your house’. And I thought of the game Dreamhome. The cards in this game give so much to talk about because of the details. The Dutch game publisher White Goblin Games lent me the game.

 

🎉 A celebration this month: it’s my son’s birthday. This year, no house full of visiting relatives, but a group of friends that mum and dad are not wanted at 😅. That makes sense when you’ve just turned 16. Fortunately, they did play a game and had a lot of fun: https://www.jackboxgames.com/games/junktopia. The brownies I baked were just a tiny bit too dark…

 

I receive so many great game tips from the education sector. For example, I recently came across this maths website (click the picture to go to the site):

 

On the page you will find 9 number cards. Use the cards, do various sums and try to get to 0 (this time). A really fun brainteaser. Thank you Christa for this tip!

January

🥳 After 6 years I’m at the Dutch school fair N.O.T. again. This time on invite of Leren Leren Nederland (Learning how to Learn). You’ll find me there at the 23th of January: hall 12.A019

 

👍🏼 In the same hall, you will also find educational publisher Zwijsen. With the language method Taaljacht in which I wrote a few items about language games in the classroom.

♟️How nice to read last weekend that there is such a thing as freestyle chess. In fact, it seems to be so popular that it surpasses classical chess. Very recognisable for me, as I find classical chess boring (sorry!) because there are no surprises in it and it can last endlessly. In freestyle chess, exactly these elements have been added. The surprise is in the random drafting of the back row and the ‘endlessly lasting’ is also abolished.

What I also find interesting to read is that the idea for freestyle chess has already raked in millions to put this idea on the map. I am also still looking for millionaires for Pen & Pion (Pen & Pawn) who want to invest in my website 😊 If you know and/or are one: email or app me to talk further

📖 As a Christmas present, I gave myself the game Eila and Something Shiny. It’s a solo game in which you travel with Eila and have to make choices with each map. Basically just those books from the past where you had a choice at the end: will you go to chapter 1 or to chapter 3? And actually a kind of computer game. Only here you turn over the cards yourself all the time.

The game goes as follows: you take a card from the deck. You put it in the middle: this is the current day ☀️ You read the story and decide what to do. Sometimes you earn items or need special items to perform something. You make a choice and carry it out.

Then, next to that choice, there is a left or right arrow. If the card points to <-, the card goes to the past and the game ends. If the card goes to -> then you put the card on the ‘future’ pile. At the end of a round, you shuffle the pile of ‘future’ cards and go through them again one by one.

The drawings are cute and I also read online that people are playing it with their children. However, I also read warnings that the story gets darker further on and is not so suitable for delicate children’s souls. Wonder what that does for me, as I can’t stand dark stories very well either. 😅

Idea: make a game together where each group works out a different choice. Am curious to see what great things that will turn out to be!

In the games shop this week, I stood doubtfully with this game in my hands:Pax Pamir

On the one hand, very interesting because it is about the history of Afghanistan. On the other hand: can you actually play a game about a country where women’s rights no longer apply?

So put back on the shelf. Should you be interested in it, read more here. Note that it is a complex (and pricey) game.

For a good history lesson, you don’t immediately need such a fierce game as Pax Pamir. You can also do it with board games you already have on your shelf. But how? This book contains all kinds of teaching suggestions for using (existing) board games in your history lesson. The book is in German, but I, with my high school German, find it easy to follow. The layout is very clear and where things get difficult, you get a long way with translation apps.

Furthermore, I wish you a warm January. Nice and close to the heating and with a game on the table ❤️

February

🫶🏽 How cool it was to spend another day (actually a day and a half) at the NOT. Many thanks to Tineke and Robine of Leren Leren Nederland who invited me so hospitably. I spoke to a lot of people from the education sector, heard a lot of tough stories too. About budget cuts, involved teachers, pupils in all kinds of educational types. It kept coming back that games are such a great way to connect and not to be teacher-pupils for a while, but just to play cards together (or make a puzzle) and then the stories come naturally.

Also encountered many creative people like Tanja de Jonge. She advocates the promotion of reading and has developed all kinds of inspiring material for this purpose.

🤖 Talked to Bowie Derwort of Game Tailors, a company focused on games. They turn teaching material into a game and have already done so for several educational institutions. At the moment, they are also working on an environment where you can develop your own game. Worth a look.

 

🎲 Education is increasingly attracting the interest of game publishers was also evident at the Education Fair. For the first time, two Dutch game makers were present: Tucker’s Fun Factory and 999 Games. Tucker’s Fun Factory is a small publisher from the east of the country (where the people call themselves the Tukkers 😉 ). Recently, they released Locus, which is another topper: great puzzling, plays fast and is ever-changing. In the same corridor was 999 Games with a maths box. Of course, they have lots of fast, fun maths games in their range. They now sell them in a box with a booklet containing the rules and promising all kinds of variations.

 

 

❓ I’m exploring new social media. You can now find me on Bluesky and Substack. Nice if we meet there too. On Bluesky, I already found this cute embroidery.

Just at the end of this month my article about Prime Climb appeared in JSW #6.

December 2024

📚 How do you encourage children to read more? For example, by having them play a game based on a book. Or, perhaps even more fun, letting them make a game! I was visiting teacher Monique of group 7/8 at a school in Utrecht. Her class participated in this year’s children’s book week and made a game about the (Dutch) children’s book King’s Play.

🌈 How nice it is to receive an e-mail asking to use one of your texts in a new teaching method. Yes, of course you can!

October 2024

This month, I want to try out more solo versions of board games. I am very excited about the accessible board game Mycelia. As far as I am concerned, it is an ideal family game with light deckbuilding. I have already played it regularly with two, three and four players. But so now solo. And then it’s a lot harder to win!!!

 

📩 Furthermore I am busy sending and distributing the magazine Leren met Spellen #3. If you would like to receive a magazine at home, please send me an email with your address details.

🌍 And… super cool…. the magazine has also been translated into German. You can find the pdf of it on this website (in German).

November 2024

🎻 Played lots of games! I started November right with a game day: played games from 11am – 11pm. Among other things, I learned Lacrimosa. And with that, what I always love about games happened: we wanted to know more. So first, we looked up the music. It’s this song And everyone actually knows it.

Then an extensive discussion of how this incomplete piece of music by Mozart was incorporated into the game. Impressive how music plays a leading role here! A tough game though, but if you have a day to learn it succeeds 😉

✍🏽 How nice, exactly on my birthday I received the formatted article I wrote for the November issue of JSW (a Dutch magazine for education). Nice present!

September 2024

🎧 At the beginning of the month, an hour of ZOOM with someone from a company that supervises large construction projects. At the beginning of such a multi-year project, she always does a game to get everyone on the same page. She contacted me because she wants to develop a new game for this purpose. Hour of ZOOMing and she had a list of ideas she could get started with.

🎲 Similarly, a couple of hours on the phone with Michiel from Gam’inBIZ this month. He wants to link his games to education and was looking for a sparring partner to think about it. After a few phone calls, he too was able to start working on new ideas. Look, you can just do that with me.

🇩🇪 In Germany, too, there are some great initiatives around games and education. That we can learn from each other is clear from the blogs my German colleague allowed me to copy. For example, this one about games in chemistry class and this practical teaching idea for practising lessons with Speedcups.

July 2024

🌱Worked very hard at the third edition of the magazine Learning by Games.

 

Designer is working on it now, at the start of the new school year there will be a brand new edition!

🎲 Learned a lot new games this month, for example these two:

August 2024

🏖️ We’re going on a holiday to Sweden. By train! Have a great summer!

 

June 2024

🙌🏼 Sometimes you come across games in the most unexpected places. For instance, I was taking my son to Scapino to buy new sports shoes. So I really thought Scapino only sold shoes and a pick of clothes…. Turns out they have a huge range of games! And not just some quartet variants, but really cool games. I had Splurt and Cross Clues on my wish list for a while. But they are no longer available anywhere. Well, so they are at Scapino ✌🏼

🛫 Cross Clues was immediately nicked by my husband, who regularly has to go to Sweden for work. His team always sets aside time to play games with each other. Cross Clues was a hit! A few words replaced with a post-it with the English translation and everyone could join in. Also in his suitcase: Set en That’s not a Hat.

🚲 Zelf bleef ik in Nederland en fietste naar kasteel Sypesteyn. Nooit geweten dat Loosdrecht een porselein industrie heeft gehad. En een beetje chique familie met een porseleinen servies had natuurlijk ook een porseleinen damspel 😄 Spellen zijn van alle tijden!