Top 10 Games For Students!

Today is International Students' Day! To find out about its origins, click here. The day is now a worldwide celebration of students in general, as we come together to give a MEGA thanx to the droves of students that fill our streets, shops, clubs, libraries and universities, breathing life into cities across the globe! We'd also like to remind you to MAKE THE MOST OF IT, before all of your free time flees in the night and the 'real world' comes knocking at your door. In the spirit of this, we want to help you trap your adolescence in a bottle forever like a warped Peter Pan, and how do you do that? Play games! Here are 10 of the greatest games for students, like, EVER:

Boss Monster. 2-4 players. 30 minutes. If you're a student in this day and age, then you remember classic video games! You had a British childhood full of rainy days and Sega Mega Drives, long summer days and hours on the Nintendo 64. You might remember Mario games, Ecco the Dolphin, Spot or even my personal fave, Crash Bandicoot. Those were the days, my friends. Boss Monster is a competition, inspired by these classic vintage games with pixels n' all, to build the ultimate side-scrolling dungeon. Lure heroes into your lair and defeat them - bash 10 and you're the winner!

Ca$h 'n Gun$. 4-8 players. 30 minutes. Safer than a BB gun, far more legal than a real AK-47, this game pits you as gangsters after a mahoosive heist. You want more loot than the others but the tricky thing is - so do they! How you gonna decide, eh, boss? Shoot each other. Shoot each other dead. And bluff your way through the whole thing of course. The last person left standing with the biggest share of the loot lives to die another day! P.s. don't underestimate the thrill of holding a black foam gun in your hand and feeling its power, its weight. Does naff all, of course, but it can make you feel alive.

Adventure Time Card Wars. 2 players. 30 minutes. We currently only stock the Princess Bubblegum vs. LSP online, but we have tons of Finn vs. Jake in store! If you've watched Adventure Time (lots of students do, but often with a questionable 'herb' involved...) then you may have seen the episode 'Card Wars'. Bingo, bango, bob's your uncle! If you haven't seen it, then this game is the ultimate card-based battle to determine who will be Dweeb or the Cool Guy. It features all your favourite totally rad spaced-out characters from the series, man! That's... that's what students talk like, right?

Smash Up. 2-4 players. 45 minutes. The last sentence of Smash Up's official publisher's description is, 'And did we mention the dinosaurs have laser beams?' If that isn't enough to get your pulse racing, then you need to re-watch every Jurassic Park film ever made (yes, even the third one that no one liked). Each player takes two factions, meaning you could be a pirate-ninja battling against a robot-zombie or an alien-dinosaur, each trying to 'smash up' more bases than anyone else! In the end, you're a bunch cross-bred mutant monsters with anger issues. Fabulous, daahhling!

Chez Geek. 2-5 players. 45 minutes. Students playing Chez Geek is like a banker playing Monopoly - you've got a real head-start. All players are roommates and are all designated cards featuring a job, an income, a special ability and a Slack goal. The first player to - you guessed it - accumulate the most Slack points is the yawning and oblivious winner! Part of your priorities in the game are to 'Drink cheap booze, hang out at the cafe, and play with the cats,' which is an oddly accurate depiction of student lifestyle, including the cat reference. Weird.

The Resistance. 5-10 players. 30 minutes. Oh man, if you've got trust issues, then leave now and never return! Your mistrust of your friends might just echo on even after the game's over, if they're successful enough in their lying... While some of you are the do-gooder resistance fighters, spies lie silently in your midst, bluffing and tricking their way on to your mission team in order to make it fail! Choose teams blindly, but carefully. And try not to let the paranoia affect you too much afterwards - no one is trying to poison your Sugar Puffs. Probably.

Arkham Horror. 1-8 players. 2-4 hours. A great game for an evening of evil, Arkham Horror takes you back to the roaring 20's, but things have gone weird - missing people, bizarre creatures and a creepy feeling that even your moonshine won't shake off. The Ancient Ones are stirring! Each player becomes an investigator, with their own backstories, abilities and equipment. Together players must stay strong together if they have any hope of coming out alive! Great for students who feel Sherlock needs a 'rated 18 for unspeakable horror' kinda twist. Play it and imagine yourself as Benedict Cumberbatch shooting a giant tentacled beast in the face. Give that boy an Oscar!

Marvel Legendary. 1-5 players. 45 minutes. We've all seen Marvel's list of upcoming movies (it reaches 2019, for heaven's sake - are WE supposed to plan our lives that far ahead?!) and it's handy because it lets us know exactly when we'll be craving the sweet taste of superheroes (ew). This deck-building game does a grand job of curbing those satanic desires by allowing players to recruit powerful hero cards, making their deck more powerful in order to combat villains! Hulk and Wolverine are just two of the bad boys to make an appearance, but interestingly Spider-Man's in here too. Well, they had to let him be in something.

The Walking Dead. 1-4 players. 30 minutes. "It's a board game about us, Caaarrrlll!" You get the gist. There's one about the original comic, of course, but for die hard fans of Rick and the crew, this is perfect - you're in the apocalypse, collecting all the food, supplies and transportation you can get. If you're a bit twisted, you can play as a Walker, rather than a Survivor, and the game features both Survival Mode and Team Game, depending on how selfish or hungry you're all feeling. Caaaarrlll!!!

Holiday Fluxx. 2-6 players. 30 minutes. Now how could I write a list of student games and leave Fluxx in the corner, crying its tiny, randomised eyes out?! If you're unaware, regular Fluxx is 'the card game with ever-changing rules', meaning New Rule cards keep you on your toes and make absolutely no sense whatsoever. Try playing it drunk! No, seriously, I dare you. Holiday Fluxx is, of course, the festive edition right in time for Christmas, with bubbly beverages, New Year's Eve, presents, candy and no consistent rules. Merry jingle bells, students!

There we have it! Guys, if these games don't get you breathing heavily over your saucepan of cereal, then I don't know what will. Stay chilled and living life to the max, people, and don't forget to play a truckload of games while you do so. Cheers, students - keep on being you!