The highly random and somewhat convoluted mechanisms remind me of something like character creation in the rpg classic traveller.

You do have a little choice there (unlike here), but I think the same appeal is present even without the choice.

The experience is a bit like reading fortunes from tea leaves.

The fun comes from assigning meaning to the outcomes. This happens, generally, automatically as a human instinct. In traveller, the process of character creation generates a kind of narrative in your head of who the character is.

I've been thinking about these kind of experiences a lot lately.

Is it a game? I don't think a discussion of definitions is very interesting, but I would call it a game by any casual meaning of the word. Certainty, in traveller's case, a roleplaying game. But I recognize the same appeal in these zero-player games.

You're playing something, just in your own mind. The primary game isn't what's on the table, but what's in your mind. You're not committing to choices in physical (or digital) space, you have no agency there -- but there's still a rich experience happening between your ears -- full of hopes, predictions, disappointments, elation, creativity. It's like reading but you're also part author. You're not reading from a book, but from pattern matching inside randomness.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around it myself. I have little more than the recognition of something interesting in this direction, but beyond that I can't articulate it.

A bit Off topic. I am looking for a Board Game for my step dad. He is a retired 80+ years old rancher. He doesn't know any english at all, so he is very limited on choices. Something that can be played by himself or with other person.

This sounds similar (but not quite) to Ready Set Bet [1], which is probably a lot easier to find than this.

This game, as the title suggests, is pure luck, based on the cards you were dealt.

In RSB, it’s real-time, and as dice are rolled to move horses forward, you can place bets on a number of spots, based on how the dice are being rolled (always by a designated player that is either part of the betting or not — recommended that they don’t bet if you have enough players).

Obviously still a lot of luck, as with most dice rolling games. But a decent amount of strategy in timing your bets, especially since bets freeze once horses get to a certain line in the game.

[1] https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/351040/ready-set-bet

There is also an even easier variant (best for young kids) where each person gets 1 or more horses.

You then have people roll the dice and move the horse one spot forward if the number on the dice match the horse number.

It's total luck but a great way to explain probability to the younger kids and probability distributions to the older kids.

Not to distract from what is undeniably a pretty cool thing, it's hard to even call these "games" as there's absolutely no decision making going on. I absolutely loathe games like these because you're not actually doing anything.

I thought this was going to be about physical horse racing game, where "horses" are moved by random ball interactions

see f.e. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/nDQEI3s_2aI

I love what they're calling here "zero-player" games. They're automatons that you can build other games on top of (often in combination with other automatons) or, like this, they are games where players can simply identify themselves with one of the game's components. The latter are excellent for groups of drunk people.

Spectator sports are basically zero-player games.

Another classic is "LCR" (Left Center Right), and one that was popular a few years back is "Yahtzee Turbo."

Reminds me of the horse racing game in needful things.

kalshi has a feature in beta right now that lets the public bet on the outcomes of this game

Candyland with extra steps.

A great uncle of mine had made a similar but simpler game like this we used to play, decades & decades & decades ago. He didn't take credit for it, but he'd gotten it printed on a huge nice sheet of paper, and had horses that advanced down it. You just place bets and turn over cards for each horse, and the highest card horse advances. On rainy days we'd sit in the living room, my sibling & I, basically on top of the giant horse race game, making bets & turning over cards to see who the winner would be.

Our game was shorter, and only had uhh 6 tracks I think. The odds rose quite a lot for the un-favored horses, like, a lot a lot. The horses/tracks all had names, but I can't remember their names.

Came to the comment(s) looking for this game. I've played this! Fun!

It's interesting to explore the spectrum of what people find fun. In large groups, it seems like games that tilt heavily towards luck can be a great deal of fun for everyone, while "board gamers" (like me) enjoy games where you can learn and leverage strategies to gain advantage, and the role of luck is diminished (to varying degrees).

As a board game host, you have to get that spectrum, gauge group size and preference, and pick a game that will work for them. Strategic games, in particular, take learning the rules, learning the strategies, practicing them, learning your opponents... it can take a dozen games before you're competitive. And for a lot of people, almost none of those games will be any fun.

A few games kind of nail this with an unexpectedly even playing field, where strategy helps, but luck offsets it. If luck really offsets it, very strategic players will also find that it's no fun.

Some luck-based games I really like include Lords of Vegas (not to mention... just Vegas), Bunny Kingdom, and Flip 7.

A lot of card-based strategy games like Terraforming Mars and Wingspan certainly have some amount of luck in them, but it can be dwarfed by good synergy / strategy.

Being allowed to place bets makes it actually not a pure luck game. That game can be optimally solved given knowledge of the world because there are choices involved.

TFA's base game, however, is pure luck - you place no bets, you discard no cards, you make no decisions. Perhaps you influence things by how you roll, but probably not consciously. If the same die roll sequence and same card shuffle sequence is replayed, the game is the exact same.