Our guests this week are video game designer and Seth Scott, creator of Membrane for the Nintendo Switch, and YouTuber Brian Lewis, creator of the Magic: The Gathering advice channel Tolarian Community College. We discuss how to use party games and card games as icebreakers, channels for creativity, and full-blown hobbies.

I know, chores are chores. But take it from Mary Poppins, the O.G. Supernanny: "In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun." To save yourself from the drudgery of daily household maintenance, you must find that element.

The Commonwealth Games saw records fall and last week, the Villain Of 80s Nintendo, Billy Mitchell, had his Donkey Kong records erased from the record books. Breaking a swimming world record of getting the highest score on Donkey Kong takes forever - why bother with that when you can try and break the World Record for Farthest Water Balloon Throw?

While the writing and plot might have been a little hokey, there's something about being able to share a story. So you're looking for narrative experiences for a party or to kill some time with a friend, here's 15 games worth checking out.

Here's a cool Amazon Alexa skill you may be unaware of: Interactive storytelling. There are a bunch of interactive audio games you can check out now with your Echo. Here are a few worth trying.

It's hard to say exactly why children with autism are some of the greatest devotees of Minecraft, the computer game in which you build endless worlds out of LEGO-like blocks. Stuart Duncan, a father of two, believes it's because it's a perfect union of two opposites. On one hand, Minecraft offers structure - everything from the water to the doors to the falling lava behaves with a certain predictability that they need. On the other hand, it gives the player infinite freedom. There's no story, no levels, no bosses presenting participants with quests to complete. Behind the shield of their computer screen, players can do whatever they want to do in a sensory-friendly space - recreate the Taj Mahal, light up a house with torches, or hide in a cave.

The maximum number of face turns needed to solve the classic Rubik's cube is 20, and the maximum number of quarter turns is 26. It took 30 years to discover these numbers, which were finally proved by Tomas Rokicki and Morley Davidson using a mixture of mathematics and computer calculation. (The puzzle does have 43 quintillion possible configurations after all.)

So how did the current world-record holder SeungBeom Cho manage to solve Rubik's cube in under five seconds? (4.59 seconds to be exact.)

Dear Lifehacker, I was wondering how much I could get for an Atari 2600 in good condition? It comes with everything needed to get up and running (cables, joysticks, etc.), plus 23 games. I've had a look online, but no two prices are the same. I subsequently have no idea what to ask for!

The PlayStation 4 just released a firmware update (5.50) that brought a ton of great features, such as comprehensive parental controls. Here's how you can set age restrictions for certain types of games and movies, set spending limits in the PlayStation Store, and regulate game time each day using the new Family Management feature.

Like the thousands upon thousands of games it hosts, Steam has secrets. Secrets that its pays to know about.

In Bad News, a ten-minute web game by Cambridge social psychology professor Sander van der Linden, you play a devious conspiracy theorist spreading fake news. The point, van der Linden tells Fast Company, is to teach people how disinformation is made and spread.

G'day! Here are some cracking deals for Lifehacker readers today!

Everyone who has a child in a competitive hobby knows the types: The boy who disputes every call the referee makes, the parent who hurls invective from the sidelines, the girl who can barely bring herself to shake hands after her team loses. Playing sports and games is hugely valuable for child development: They learn teamwork, strategy, patience, and get a workout to boot. But things go awry when kids can't place winning and losing in the proper perspective - when a loss is devastating or a win is cause for unseemly gloating.

Thanks to AppAnnie.com and Reddit poster IrwinRSchyster1, we've now got a visual trip down six years of app-memory lane, with an infographic showing the most popular apps every year from 2012 through 2017.

The fortune-telling game MASH, kept alive over decades by primary-schoolers, requires nothing more than pencil, paper and a friend. Here's how to play this little bonding game.

Throughout the year it's inevitable that a couple of games will run afoul of the Australian Classification Board, but rarely do we see the true scope of what goes through their doors. Here's a little look at a year's worth of games for the good ol' classification board.

If you need a really last minute gift, try this nerdy card game you can print on card stock and play today. Gut Check, designed by microbiome researcher David Coil, pits your microbes against opponents': you can contract infections, take probiotics and watch antibiotic resistant genes spread through the population.

About ten years ago, I went to a New Year's Day brunch party. Frankly, I hadn't really wanted to go. That particular time in my life was a low point; I'd just gone through a breakup and was feeling unusually forlorn, and I wanted to wallow at home. But the hostess was a good friend and she had invited other interesting, cool people to a good restaurant... so I dragged my feeble, mildly hungover self downtown.

Six days left in your vacation and you're running out of Lifehacker posts to read. The only games at your parents' house are Sorry and Monopoly. Try Eurogames, the European style of tabletop game that isn't so competitive or chance-driven. The site Happy Meeple replicates the board and card games Finito, Hanamikoji, Lost Cities, Level X, Glastonbury, Migrate, Keltis, and Siberia.