Swap

You know UNO. And you certainly know Crazy Eights. Which could understandably lead you to the conclusion that you also know Swap.

Like UNO, which is like Crazy Eights, Swap is a get-rid-of-your-cards-first kind of game. Like UNO and Crazy Eights, you do that by having cards in your hand that match the color or number of the top card in the discard pile. Unless you have a wild card.

Unlike UNO or Crazy Eights, one of the wild card things you can do is swap hands with other players. And it's this particularly wild thing that makes Swap into a unique and welcome addition to the Crazy Eights / UNO family.

The opportunity to swap hands results in such a profound change in the strategy and feel of the game, and adds so much to the general hilarity, that it becomes almost instantly and unquestionably Major FUN.

Hence, the award.

Wordigo

Wordigo really took us by surprise. We see a word-board game and we think: "maybe fun for the guy playing, but agony for the people who are waiting their turns." So we conclude "Word-board game = not really Major FUN material." Then we notice the different boards and four complete sets of tiles. This leads us to conclude that maybe all four of us can play simultaneously. No turn-waiting. Immediate gratification, verbally-playfully speaking. Except that there are six of us. So we play in three teams.

And the game just takes off. Sure, we are confused a little by the different boards in the set, and the funny arrows on the tiles, but we start anyway, racing against each other and the timer, using and drawing tiles and discarding, trying to fill our boards up with words. And then, when the time is reluctantly up, we figure out the scoring, which really gets interesting, strategic-implication-wise. The next round (we hardly ever play more than one round during a "game tasting," but this game was just too darn delicious), we are much more score-conscious so we get strategic and discover we really don't have enough time anyway. We also decide to start with the second board, only to discover that it is actually more challenging than the first.

The game comes with four sets of letter tiles with pouches, four sets of four different game boards (two boards with a different design on each side), the first and probably only seven-minute sand timer in the world, and a score pad. The tiles look remarkably similar to those letter-with-number tiles you see in scoring letter games, but they have arrows on the vowels. The boards are similar to kids' crossword puzzles, but without the clues.

The game can be played simultaneously with up to four players or with teams, which we think is even more fun. And you can even invite the kids to play or compensate for those with different verbal skills. The boards are of varying levels of difficulty. Those who want to can use the easier boards or start with more tiles or maybe recycle their discarded tiles.

Wordigo is the only word game I know of that allows you to use a dictionary while you're playing. Of course, looking something up in a dictionary while the sand is inexorably streaming your time away is perhaps not such a useful option. Unless you're playing in pairs. Which we just happened to be. And even then, we were all too wrapped in the rapture of it all to use anything other than our rapidly muddling minds.

For those of us who enjoyextended moments of time-free deliberation, the game is still entertaining without timers. Players just continue until all the boards have been filled.

Wildwords

On first glance, it could be easily mistaken for that highly popular word/board game, SCRA*LE. And, in truth, the similarities are close enough to make any SCRA*LE player to feel right at home. Of course, it's the differences that make it interesting - differences that are different enough to make it a completely new, and disturbingly compelling game.

Here is one play, illustrating the various possibilities inherent in a single turn of WildWords. You will note the SCRA*LE-like board. On closer inspection, you will note that despite the apparent SCRA*LE-likeness, there are differences - like the squares that say "Lose 20 on Play." Omigosh, you mean there are squares you don't want to cover? And the surprisingly many squares that say "Turn to Wild."

Which brings me to what may be the most clearly unSCRA*LE-like concept of "Wild" you'll ever encounter. A wild tile, indicated either by the * or by it's turned-overness, can be any string of consecutive letters. Not just any one letter. But any one or many letters. This change is radical. It's what makes WildWords into a unique word/board game. Uniquely profound. Uniquely challenging. Uniquely fun.

Then there's the whole thing about challenging another player - you know, when you think someone's spelling a word that isn't in the dictionary. That has also been most discerningly enwilded. First of all, with the possibility of a single wild tile standing for maybe seven letters, it's a lot harder to know whether or not there's a challengable word. Which makes it all the more inviting to bluff. Which makes it all the more necessary to challenge. But in WildWords, when one player challenges another, all the other players (SCRA*BLElikely, WildWords can be played by 2-4 players), must also agree or disagree. In either event, if they are wrong, they each lose 20 points. Harsh. In a beautiful kind of way.

Also, I gotta tell you, the tile holders are probably the best tile holders ever to hold a game tile. Smooth. Cool. Hefty. With wood-protectors, even. And the easy-to-read tiles are all packaged in a plastic bag inside a drawstring bag. With six extra tiles, just in case.

In sum, WildWords is the newest to receive the coveted Major FUN Award.

Rhino Toys

Rhino Toys, makers of the Major Funly Oball, have introduced the world at large to two new play-saving devices: The Skyblaster (on the left) and SkyO. After hours of fun testing, both in and out of the Fun Testing Lab, both were found to be Majorly Fun, and both herewith granted the esteemed Major FUN Award.

Let us begin with the perhaps subtler significance of the SkyO. It's a ring-shaped tossing thing, similar, in concept and function, to that which has been called the Flying Disc, and, of course, the Frisbee® of registered trademark fame. Only SkyO is easy to throw, and easy to catch. And this is a big, big gift to all of the sensitive of hand or weak of throwing arm. Which means it is a greater boon to the rest of us who like to throw and catch things that hover, because thanks to SkyO, there are so many games that so many more of us can play.

As for Skyblaster, the whistling, rubber-tipped dart that you launch with a self-contained rubber band, it is a direct path to many a flight of fancy. Almost soft enough to catch, with everso subtly bendable, path-guiding fins, and so easy to fly so far. However, let this be a lesson to you: use the finger. I tell you this despite the remarkably clear instuctions embossed on the underside of the dart head, because I tried to use my thumb as the launcher, over and over again. Using the finger, you can send SkyO soaring to remarkable heights, even if you are short.

I haven't yet made up any games for the Skyblaster, though I'm thinking a SkyO would make a wonderful Skyblaster target....

10 Days in the USA, or 15 maybe

The astute reader will all but immediately note that 10 Days in the USA is highly likely to be found Major FUN Award-worthy, given it's obvious similarity to the already Major FUN Awarded 10 Days in Africa.

What is of such noteworthy note, however, about the 10 Days in Africa and 10 Days in the USA similarity is that 10 Days in the USA is not actually identical to 10 Days in Africa. Of course, you may nod in your uninformed glibness, it is not actually identical to 10 Days in Africa. It's in the USA! But that, you see, is not the only difference. True, there are significant enough strategic differences necessitated by the immediately apparent differences in political geographies. But that is not all. There is, for example, the rule pertaining to Hawaii and Alaska and the color of the airports therein.

So noteworthy are the differences between these two sister games, that, for the first time in the history of the Major FUN Award, we find our royal selves recommending to those who have the therewithall: go ye and purchase either or both, 10 Days in Africa and 10 Days in the USA, because each is just different enough for each to be, separately, and together, found trans-globally Major FUN Award-worthy.

As to the 15 Day in Either Africa or USA variation, that, actually, applies to both, when only two people are playing, and gets our "Why Didn't We Think of That Ourselves" award.

This just in from an unamed source, purported to be the president and lead games designer of Out of the Box Publishing, distributors of the 10 Days series: "10 Days in Europe, 10 Days in Asia, and 10 Days in the Middle East are all in the works, and each will have unique features. Hint: a mode of water transportation."

Who can count the strategically geographic joys awaiting us?

Ze Frank, Prolific Player

Ze Frank receives the Major FUN Award for being perhaps one of the most prolifically playful presences on the web.

There are so many examples of his work that he is sharing, virtually for free, that it is difficult to select any as truly exemplary. Let's begin with this rather straightforward collection of virtual matchstick puzzles. Why? Because it's what you'd expect from a collection of virtual matchstick puzzles: clear, challenging, easy to use, fun to solve. Not particularly playful, but respectful of play and the needs of players. Now let's try just one more game-like experience. It's a Memory Game. All right, it's Concentration. But notice how each image is animated? Now it's truly a virtual game, not just translating a card game into the electronic medium, but transforming it.

Now take a look at Ze's Animated Snowflake. Not a game at all, but a unique bit of interactive delight. Technologically sophisticated. Easy to understand. Lovely to behold.

And here's one more, well, maybe two more examples of yet another gift of Ze's playfulness. It's called "Blow." It's an invitation. People are asked to send in a picture of themselves, blowing. Ze adds their picture to a growing blowing collage. It's, well, silly. It's also an invitation to fun and sharing and community. And here's one more: My Cat Annie. It's a statement, is what it is, of the further reaches of Ze's playfulness. And, for those of us who wonder whether this world can be made more fun, it's a reason for hope.

Balancing Act

Balancing Aliens never disappointed us. And we were already excited, just opening the box. And from there, it just got more and more exciting. Such an elegantly made instrument of fun, so finely tuned, so subtle, so strategic, so silly.

The kind of silly you have to watch very, very carefully, and think about alot. That you can expect to get when you have a round game board, with bowling pin shaped pieces, that sits on a big screw, that can be raised or lowered, for different skill-levels. A board that has two sides, each of which a totally different game, each just as obviously the only game possible.

I mean, you could play it with 7-year olds who could probably beat you. And the very steady-of-hand 80 year old. And those of the less-steady persuasion could direct others where to move and get just involved in the strategic implications of it all. And you could be each as strategic as you can possibly get, and still, anyone might win, might be drawn inexorably towards adding just one more alien, teetering on the very precipice of improbability. Until lured by both scoring and collective-admiration potential, you upset the delicate balance, and all fall down.

Though dexterity is a definite advantage, winning the game is all about intuiting its strategic and physical dynamics. Even if your hand is not steady enough, you can still direct some younger hand and feel fully engaged in play.

Balancing Aliens is a fun toy and a fun game. Major FUN. As in award-winning. It's a near perfect model for what a good family game should be like. Because it's based on physical as well as strategic properties, and because the strategic properties are so well expressed by the physical properties, the rules of each of the two balancing games are as apparent to kids as they are to grown-ups. Kids will play with kids. Grownups with grownups. Kids with grownups. Equals in skill and delight.

Ferry Hailm, Whimsymaster

The world of compter games, and, consequently, of computer game players, can get very harsh. Despite the endless possibilities of faster processor and more graphic glories and completely surrounding sound, most of our games are given over, as we are, to violence. Not that violence can't be fun. Not that there's anything wrong with violent games. Just that there are far too few respites. Ferry Halim is one of the few. A true respite.

Ferry Hallim demonstrates that all it takes to make something as interesting to play with as violence is a little applied whimsy.

Whimsy. Hallim is a master of it. His games are true diversions, invitations to worlds that simply don't take themselves very seriously. He is the creator of light-hearted games that are bouyant enough to lighten-up even the dark of desire and the heavy of heart - at least for a few minutes. Like the game Summer Walk, where you make three bird-like things hop into the good floating things, to the tune of the pleasant guitar. Or A Cupid's Day where you, as Cupid, shoot arrows into clouds.

Whimsy. What a powerful concept.

Ferry Hallim is the newest inductee to the Major FUN Hall of Fame.

Basari

Basari is a racing/bidding/bartering/strategy game for three, or better, four players. It is definitely one of your more complex games, involving, as it does: racing, bidding, bartering and strategizing. But it is not one of your more difficult games - and that's what makes it so noteworthy. That it's acutally possible for anyone over, say, ten to do all those things at more or less the same time. Not only possible, but fun.

The race is for score. In fact, the score board is a race track. The bidding and bartering is for jewels or points. You start with a showdown, all players choosing between one of three possible things they're interested in bidding and bartering for: position, points or jewels. If you're the only one choosing a particular action, well, then, you go right ahead and do it. If someone else has made the same choice, prepare to barter. You need jewels in order to barter. Which is precisely why you might not be the only one choosing jewels. Which makes it more of a gamble. Especially if three or more people also chose jewels.

On the other hand, it doesn't matter how many jewels you have if you don't win. Which is determined by how many points you have. Which is determined by your position on the inner race track. Which determines what everyone is bidding and bartering for.

OK. So it's going to take some time to learn the game. And no, it isn't like one of those elegant, perfect information, Japanese Go experiences. But it is fun. And often surprising. And not too challenging. And though you're competing, and though only one of you can win, there's just enough luck involved to keep you from taking it too seriously.