Commissioned Board Game Review

Ever since my children were little, I always said I wanted a huge game closet. Each year our family adds a few new games to it as we LOVE playing games! We have all sorts of games for ages little to adult. We recently got to try out a game that is new to the market called Commissioned from Chara Games.

Chara Games was founded in 2014 by husband and wife team, Patrick and Katherine Lysaght. The word "chara" means unshakable joy in Greek. It was their vision to design games to create joy by bringing together people.

Typically when you think of group games, you think of a race to the end to see who can win first. What sets Commissioned apart from typical games is that this game is a collaborative game. Meaning, everyone playing works together to get to the end of the game to win as a group. There are not many games out there that I know of that are played like this. This is a unique idea to work on team building and learning to strategize together. Each player takes turn being the "elder" and making the call on what to do that round while the rest of the team can help encourage that person since they all need to work together.

Commissioned is aimed for ages 14 to adult though a slightly younger child can also play with the help of a parent or older siblings. My 13 year old is the one who mainly figured out how to play this game by watching their 24 minute video a few times.

Yes, this is a pretty deep game that takes some time to figure out but the video  a great tutorial to walk you through how it is played. This was invaluable! Even though the directions are quite detailed, it really helps to be able to actually see how to play it with a video.

The game allows for 2-6 players. The premise of the game is that the players are the early apostles that are trying to make their way across the land while growing the church, building your faith deck and collecting books of the New Testament. While they do this, there are trials and persecutions that can arise and threaten to snuff out the churches 5 candles. One thing to note is you do not need to know anything about Christianity to play this game. If you are into early church history, this game is based on actual facts from that time period.

Another unique trait of this game is that there are many ways to change up the game or to make it more difficult. There are  5 scenario cards you can choose from to base the whole game on. Also, the game board has 2 sides to it. One easy and the other one harder. Each of the apostles has different faith cards so if you play different apostles each game, that alone will change things up. There is also a more difficult set of trial cards to choose from as well. Because of all these options, no 2 games you play will be the same.

Once you understand the game, it takes about an hour from start to finish to play. One thing to point out is that the entire game set and pieces are very high quality! The board is extremely sturdy and colorful and all the accompanying pieces are made durable as well. This is a game that can be played often and not show any wear to it. You can tell the creators put a lot of thought and time into developing not only the game but the detailed game pieces. There is a variety of information that can be found on the playing cards. They also included a themed appendix that tells you specific details of each and every faith and trial card!

We haven't yet explored the more difficult side of the game yet but I have no doubt this will be a game our family plays many times and we'll work our way towards the other levels!

Chara games also recently released a new card game called 3 Seeds. While I haven't personally seen it, if the quality and attention to detail is similar to Commissioned, I have no doubt it will also be a family hit.

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