Photo provided Local residents enjoy New Year’s Eve while playing some of their favorite board games at Bored?Games! in Columbus.
A local games store is bringing back its “A Gaming New Year’s Eve” to welcome in 2025.
Opened in the spring of 2022, Bored?Games! features a wide variety of board and tabletop games, in addition to custom playing tables and a Dungeons & Dragons campaign room. Clai and Janet Putney, the store’s owners, held a New Year’s Eve event the first year they opened. After a great turnout, she said they planned to hold it the next year too, but had to cancel because of illness.
“I mean, we’re not a big store but we’ve got seven custom tables, so we can fit about 30 to 40 people in here if we put up a couple of extra tables,” Janet Putney said. “So, we ended up between 30 and 35 the first year so to us, that was a success… we thought ‘we’re going to try this,’ we didn’t know if we’d have five people or 20, and we had a full house and we just had a blast with it and everyone seemed to have a really good time as well.”
From board games to card games to tabletop games, attendees can select from the store’s library of games to play or may bring their own from home. Appetizers and snacks will be available, as well as a champagne toast at midnight. Door prizes including gift cards to local businesses will also be given out.
“We generally try and do some local, small businesses. We’ll get gift cards or gifts from, maybe it’s Viewpoint or one of the restaurants or something like that,” Janet Putney said. “It may just end up being we just have a prize drawing but we may also do some games if people want to participate in something simple like a dice game, something like that.”
The event begins at 7 p.m. with the ending time listed at 1 a.m. During the last New Year’s Eve event, by the time they had cleaned up and everyone had left, Janet said they ended up staying until sometime between 1:30 and 2 a.m. She said the event is a real blast and hopes that people who have not been to Bored?Games! come by and check it out.
”I just think it’s a unique (event)… my husband and I, we don’t get dressed up and go out and do big things on New Year’s Eve so this is a casual event that you can just come to and hang out and have fun with friends or meet new people, it’s just different,” Janet Putney said. “I like the fact that it’s not your typical New Year’s Eve party. It’s just kind of a different way to spend the evening and if you don’t feel like staying until midnight, you don’t have to stay until midnight. You can come and game for a while and, again, just hang out with people that have similar interests.”
“A Gaming New Year’s Eve” will be held on Dec. 31 at Bored?Games!’s location at 1540 Central Ave. Tickets are $25 a person, which includes appetizers and the champagne toast, and can be purchased at eventbrite.com. Links to Eventbrite to purchase tickets are also available on the business’ Facebook and Instagram pages. The event is for those age 21 and older.
