Maask

Maask is a lovely game - easy to learn and understand, easy to play, and, most remarkably, as the game continues, it gets even more interesting.

It's a well-made, wooden game, of the quality we've come to expect from Blue Orange Games. There are 12 wooden pegs that come in 6 different colors. These "jewels" are hidden in 12 wooden cylinders, all of the same color, and placed around a board that looks like a crown. A pair of six-sided dice determine which colors the player is trying to find.

At first, it seems like a simple memory game. If you can remember which color is where, chances are you'll be able to find the colors you roll. Then it gets a little more complex. Once a color is correctly identified, the peg and cylinder become the temporary property of the player who guessed it, who then arranges her prizes in a line in front of her. If you can remember which colors she has where, then you have a better chance of winning when it is your turn, because you can take anyone's "jewels." Of course, this means you have to forget where the colors were originally.

As the game continues, and "jewels" change hands and places, the challenge increases. This goes on until the last jewel is taken from the playing board crown. The rules even encourage the players to help each other, keeping in mind that it is always a strategic decision whom to help and why.

Having two dice to play is an act of compassion on the designer's part, because, with two colors, there's always the chance that you might know where the next one is. If you know where both colors are, you, most deservedly, get another turn.

Maask is a genuine family-worthy game, of interest to anyone who has a memory, fun for anyone who likes to play.

Heximoes

Heximoes are, as the name so clearly implies, hexagonal dominoes. 132 hexagonal dominoes, to be precise. Compared to your basic rectangular, 28-in-a-set, two-number dominoes, Heximoes are at least three times more complex. So the question is, are they, as the manufacturer suggests, six times more fun?

Though it is difficult to quantify fun, it is not at all difficult to experience the fun of Heximoes. They are every bit as fascinating as dominoes (see this for more about the many wonders of dominoes). And, because they are hexagons and each number is a different color, the games you can play with them tend to make much more appealing, geometric patterns. The challenge of placing tiles is also far more fascinating, since you have to match each adjacent tile (which can be as many as six!).

The manufacturer, Educational Insights, describes three different games, and a solitaire version, each of which is as inviting and challenging as any domino game you can think of. If you know dominoes, you'll understand how to play Heximoes almost immediately. On the other hand, the experience of playing with six-sided tiles is so clearly unique, that any comparison to traditional dominoes does little justice to the experience of play.

Heximoes are made of cardboard, so they can't compete with the look and feel of a traditional, ivory, wood or plastic game of dominoes. But they certainly can compete with the play value. All in all, Heximoes are Major FUN.

Gobblet, Jr.

It was more than two years ago when a game called "Gobblet" became the first strategy game to get a Major FUN Award. Today, it's Gobblet, Jr., a simpler version of Gobblet where the goal is to get three-, instead of four-in-a-row.

What makes the game so attractive is: 1) it's based on tic-tac-toe - so, if you know tic-tac-toe, you'll be able to understand how to play, pretty much immediately; and 2) it's way more interesting than tic-tac-toe. Way. Each player gets two sets of nesting cylinders. Players take turns placing any of their cylinders down anywhere on the board. And yes, if you have a larger cylinder, you can even put it on top of your opponent's cylinder. Which, you probably already see, has enough strategic implications to make playing the game utterly fascinating. OK. Maybe not as utterly as Gobblet, uh, Sr., where you have three sets of nesting cylinders and are playing on a 4x4 board on an even more woody box, but definitely utterly enough.

Though it's called "Gobblet, Jr," it's not getting a "Kids" award, or even a "Family" award, but a full-fledged, adult-worthy, Thinking games award, just like its bigger brother.

See, at the last Tasting, I didn't tell anyone about the other Gobblet. I showed them Gobblet, Jr., and I said, look, even though it looks like a kids' game, play around with it as if it were a big person's game, deserving of the best of your very adult selves. And they did. And it was. Even in its simpler, 3x3 version. A game to be taken most maturely. Even if kids like it, too.

Scoop's Surprises

Every now and then I come across a game so elegant, so simple, so well-designed and made, that I am reminded why I started this whole Major FUN Awards program. Scoop's Surprises is just that kind of game.

Though it will remind you of the "old shell game," it reminds you just enough to make the game easier to learn. Once you start playing, however, you'll rapidly discover that, compared to Scoop's Surprises, the old shell game is mere child's play.

There are four wooden "ice cream cones." Each of these houses three pegs. There are four sets of three different color pegs - vanilla, chocolate, strawberry and mint. The person playing Scoop first moves the cones around, exactly as in the shell game of yore. Depending on the age of the players, Scoop uses three or four (or maybe only two) of the wooden cones, and makes maybe only three or four or maybe five or more switches. Then, and here's where the game gets truly boggling, then Scoop tells you which flavor you have to find.

Having to keep track of not just one, but as many as four different "flavors," the mind basically melts. It can be extremely challenging. Or, with some loving simplification, easy enough for a five-year-old.

Scoop's Surprises is surprisingly easy to learn and even more surprisingly fun to play - for the entire family. Did I tell you Scoop gets to wear a special ice cream hat? And how that hat adds just the right sprinkle of humor to a remarkably well-made, well-conceived, and enduringly entertaining game?