In a shop that specializes in selling tabletop games, ensconced in a small alleyway, a few friends are gathered around, totally focused, holding cards in their hands, competing to see who has the fastest wits in solving the mystery before them. In another part of the space, a different group of people grasp cards depicting characters from Western medieval history, and the players rack their brains to come up with strategies and tactics that will give them the best chance to win.

“The biggest difference with virtual gaming is that every player can see every other player—their disappointment, their laughter, their real emotions,” says Li ­Mingde, a store manager for Akmi Games. The passionate atmosphere surrounding a board game and the sense of “being there,” interacting directly with other players—things you just can’t get online—are the main reasons why many gamers have gotten quickly hooked on tabletop diversions.

However, it has only been since around 2000 that board games (which originated in Germany) have started into their current wave of popularity, thanks to the pioneering efforts of a handful of players. Akmi, which opened in 2000, has over the last 15 years earned a well-deserved reputation as one of the “founding fathers” of the genre in Taiwan. Li ­Mingde notes that they have had to familiarize people with board games from scratch, because in the early days most tabletop games came from the West, with few businesses in Taiwan importing them for sale, and the instruction manuals were all in English. No wonder nobody knew much about them.

Mainly through word-of-mouth networks of gamers and their friends, the number of people in Taiwan who have had some experience of tabletop gaming has steadily increased. What was once a niche market began to see explosive growth in 2010, and related businesses started springing up like mushrooms. A number of products which are suited to all age groups and are easy to learn, such as Dixit, began to come out, lending further impetus to the growing wave.

Yawan Stationery, a venerable 30-year-old firm which produces local versions of Monopoly, created the subsidiary “2Plus” in 2008. The new company’s playful yet professional design team has produced 19 new board games so far.

As this type of recreation has gained in popularity, many local game makers have, as individuals or with the help of designer teams at publishing houses, come out with tabletop games on a variety of themes. In 2008 Ya­wan Stationery Co., a firm founded 30 years ago that is the producer of Taiwan versions of Monopoly, founded 2Plus Studio as a brand making localized games for a Taiwan audience.

In the more than seven years that 2Plus has been in business, it has already come out with 19 games of its own design, including a whole series of games based on historical events such as The 1911 Revolution of China, The Chinese Civil War of 1930 and Voyage with Taiwan. The company has staked out a very unique niche in the densely populated tabletop gaming world.

Jog Kong, head developer at 2Plus, explains that a big reason they have focused on historical topics is that 2Plus product manager Wang Ya­wan, daughter of the company founder (who named it after her), is a history expert, having earned her master’s degree in that subject at National Taiwan University. But the desire to explore history and culture is one held in common by the whole design team at 2Plus. “We hope that besides being fun and interesting, board games can also become carriers of culture.”

2Plus game designer Jesse Li defines tabletop games as “the ninth great art form,” and says that their development can be compared to that of films, “the eighth great art form.” When motion pictures first came out, they were nothing more than a series of photographs connected together and shown in rapid succession. But as story-telling styles and camera techniques developed, films steadily came to have a profound and diverse cultural significance. He believes that this also applies to board games.

In 2008, 2Plus got together for the first time with the Academia Historica to develop a board game called The Ten Major Construction Projects (about historically important infrastructure projects in Taiwan in the 1970s). This really locked down the link between 2Plus and historical and cultural themes, and contributed quite a lot to defining the company’s game design path.

In fact, in the early days, before 2Plus had been in business for very long, besides extending the Monopoly series to make new products, they were still groping for a design direction. The Academia Historica, meanwhile, a rich storehouse of historical materials, was determined to break away from its existing path and come out with peripheral products that would be different from the standard coffee cups and DVDs. One of their choices was board games, because they are both educational and fun. The combination of the design-savvy 2Plus with the history-savvy Academia Historica was a match made in heaven: their joint efforts have dispelled the stereotype that history is as dry as dust and baffling in its complexity, and have made a real impact on the people who have come in contact with them.

In 2011, to coincide with the 100th year of the Republic of China, 2Plus came out with The 1911 Revolution of China. Thanks to the adept craftsmanship of the creative team, major historical figures like Dr. Sun Yat-sen appear in the game as a combination of stylish design laid over a foundation of solid historical research.

The four board games successfully developed in cooperation with the Academia Historica have created widespread name recognition for 2Plus, and have enabled the design team to realize that “games can also tell stories.” In 2014, after their collaboration with the Academia Historica ended, 2Plus got together with a group led by Hou Huei-tse, an associate­ professor at National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, to make a game that brought the focus of attention to the history of our island itself—Voyage with Taiwan.

The game is set against the background of the 400 years of Taiwan’s history since the Dutch landed here in 1624, subdivided into seven stages, such as the “Dutch and Spanish era,” the “­Zheng Cheng­gong era,” and so on. The game not only allows players to enhance (or dust off) their knowledge of Taiwan’s past but also, in a sense, to bring that past back to life. The game came on the market in December 2014, and in less than three months the initial production run of 6000 copies was sold out. It is now in its second printing. Kong suggests that the strong sales of the game reflect a rise in local consciousness in recent years among Taiwan citizens, who have seemed more willing to show serious interest in their own culture and history.

Kong reminds us, however, that while the design team is invested in introducing concepts from history and culture into their game scenarios, the raison d’être of games is to be fun and interesting. Otherwise they would be no different from cramming for an exam! Therefore, besides designing board games in the history category, 2Plus also offers many simpler, more accessible products, which have proven popular with adults and children alike. One of the hottest sellers in their product line is the game Shi­hua Shi­shuo (literally “true words, truly spoken”), which they came out with in 2012.

Besides being fun, board games can teach you about history and culture. The game Voyage with Taiwan, set against the backdrop of the most recent 400 years of Taiwan’s history, sold out all 6000 sets of its first print run in a flash.

Games that are designed to be played by small groups of friends can also have very subtle effects when applied to real-life endeavors like workplace management and psychological counseling. Kong, a longtime player of tabletop games, says that games not only provide players with recreation and entertainment, they also have educational significance and force the players to explore new ground and new ideas.

For example, Shi­hua Shi­shuo, apparently just a simple board game which doesn’t exactly shine with brilliant design or stylistic elements, can nonetheless be applied to solving problems from the workaday world. (Interestingly, this application was not foreseen at the time the game was produced!) In any case, Kong’s larger point, arrived at independently, is virtually identical with the proposition made by the American game designer Jane McGonigal when she gave a talk at the nonprofit organization TED entitled “Gaming Can Make a Better World.”

The boom in board games means that recreational choices are no longer limited to anonymous interactions with virtual friends on the World Wide Web. Now you can enjoy something much more human, much more genuinely interactive—competitions where every shout of joy and grimace of regret is right out front for all to see. No holding back here: everything is on the table!

Bored, lost touch with your friends? Call a few of them up and set up a board game, and you’ll all be carried away by the exciting atmosphere.