Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Sketchy

Sketchy is a drawing and guessing game for 4-8 people from Fundex Games. It is cooperative, competitive, challenging, and laugh-provoking. It makes you feel closer to the people you play with. It can get very intense. And if you win, you not only feel good about your brilliance, but you also realize that it really didn't matter who won. Playing Sketchy was so much fun, that it's all the reward you needed.

The components are simple enough - 8 golf pencils, playing/scoring pads (ample enough for many replays), a deck of cards, a die, and a wonderfully annoying, batteries-included, electronic timer (the kind that ticks faster and faster every 15 seconds).

Each card has a list of six different categories. For example:

1. Kinds of soup
2. Sports where individuals compete
3. Items on a teacher's desk
4. New England US states
5. Foods that are eaten on a stick
6. U-pick
   

Each page of the drawing/scoring pad gives you room to draw up to seven examples of the randomly chosen (by the roll of a die) category. Imagine that a category has been called, and the timer started. Now imagine everyone furiously drawing what they hope will be vividly clear illustrations of things that fit the category. When the timer runs inexorably out, and the annoying buzzer of finality finally buzzes, you use the column to the right of your drawings to name each of the objects you hopefully illustrated.

When you're finished, you sit with your partner for that round and compare your answers, looking only at each others' drawings (you fold over the column with the verbal descriptions of the objects so that your partner can't see them, and you can't change your mind about what your drawings actually depict). The timer is once more started, and you and your partner pro-tem decide which drawings on the two answer sheets are describing the same item. You can't talk about what the items are. You must make your judgment solely on the drawings. And then you take score - 2 points for each item that appeared on both of your sheets, less one point for each item incorrectly selected. ("That was supposed to be chicken? I thought it was an artichoke!")

You determine your scores. Write them down on a sheet somewhere. Change partners. And begin the next round. So see, even though you only score when you see eye-to-eye, as it were, with your partner, your cumulative score reflects your performance as an individual.

Designed by Brian S. Spence, Garrett J. Donner and Michael S. Steer, Sketchy is, by every measure, Major FUN. It is everything you'd want to see in a party game - absorbing, challenging, creative, intelligent, easy to learn, easy on time (a whole game can be played in 20 minutes), bringing people together, making people laugh.

Labels: Party Games

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Monday, November 16, 2009

PitchCar

PitchCar is a puck-flicking, car-racing game of skill and cunning for people as young as six and as old as can still walk around a table. It can get as tense as the Indy 500 without ever getting too serious to laugh about. It can be played as a race against everybody or a race between teams, as a polite game of luck and skill or a cutthroat game of strategic blocking and violent crashing. And there are at least as many ways to build it as there are to play.

The building part is wonderfully easy, though it just as easily can become a studied, exacting, and creative exploration. The tracks fit together with ease, like large jig-saw pieces. Grooves on the sides of the tracks easily accommodate flexible plastic rails. The basic set consists of 16 pieces of track: ten curving and six straight, 16 "safety barriers" - lengths of plastic railing, and eight cars (wooden pucks), each of a different color. There is also a sticker sheet used to decorate the pucks and create the start/finish line. This is enough for you to create ten different "circuits," each a serious twelve-feet long. The "cars" are propelled by any appropriate finger-flick - though some may prefer a finger push or slide.

With a little imagination, and the select incorporation of pieces of cardboard, Popsicle sticks and other household miscellany, many different kinds of tracks can be build. And, if you can find any loose checker pieces or bottle caps, you can significantly expand the fleet. If you need a little more than your collective imagination has to offer, we'd strongly recommend that you consider the additional purchase of, say, PitchCar Extension 1.

Designed by Jean du Poël, PitchCar is what people call an "heirloom game" - a term frequently used to describe a game, the purchase of which approaches a serious investment, and the promise of which is generation-spanning. It is easy enough to build and play to prove of interest to most first-graders, yet it can just as easily be made complex and challenging enough to be taken quite seriously by the mature gamer.

The designer also suggests two variations. One, called "The Pursuit," is played by two players or two teams of players. One team starts ahead, the other tries to catch up. Another variant, "The Trash Variation," players can try to knock each others' cars off the track (in the standard game, you would lose a turn). These two variations hint at another dimension of the game that can be readily explored, namely, the rules. What if we played in teams of two, one player always trying to position their puck to block other players? What if we played in two different teams, started at the starting line, but each team driving in the opposite direction? How about if we each had two moves per turn? What would happen, wondered a few of our Tasters, if we had fashioned special sticks for puck propulsion. Could we become yet even more skilled, our control even that much more precise, the distance covered in a single turn even that much greater?

At a games party, PitchCar offers a welcome balance to the more serious and sedentary strategic entertainments. At the dining room table, it provides a rewarding after dinner, after homework opportunity for the whole family to relax and celebrate each other. Competitive without meaning anything important about anyone. Cooperation without becoming tedious. An invitation to experimentation and creativity. An opportunity for genuine, good-natured fun. Fun of just the right, as it were, pitch. Major FUN, that is.

Labels: Dexterity, Family Games, Kids Games, Party Games

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Monday, October 26, 2009

Truth be Told - "The Laugh out Loud Pretend to Know your Friends Game

Before we delve too deeply into the nature and wonders of Truth be Told," Buffalo Games' newest and perhaps most successful party game since Imaginiff, let me ask you to fill in this particular blank: "The most expensive thing I purchased last month was ____________ " And by "I", I mean "me," majorly speaking, fun himself. Given everything you know about me from all our years of virtual intimacy, what do you really think, honestly, was the most expensive thing I actually bought all last month? Wait, let me put it differently: what do you think I would admit, truthfully speaking, to be the most expensive thing, etc.? Got it? OK, now write it down, using one of the 8, write-on, wipe-off markers on one of those 8, thick, write-onable, wipe-offable cards so thoughtfully provided by those everso clever Buffalo Gamesters. Be sure you write your name on the top of the card in the assigned blank. OK, now put your card face-down and slide it over to me. Note, please, how I'm thoroughly mixing up everyone's cards, including mine.

Now, listen carefully as I read everyone's answers aloud - everyone's, including mine. Here they are, in no particular order:

A coffee pot
A subscription to the New Yorker
A pair of New Balance sneakers
A bag of marbles
A Panasonic TC - P50X1 - 50" plasma panel - 720p flatscreen TV

OK? Want me to read them again?

Now, on your paddle-like, write-on, wipe-offable, nicely thick True Answer Paddle cards, write the answer that you think was the one I gave. Remember, you get one point for everyone who votes for your answer. And one point if you vote for mine. (If you wrote down my answer, I find myself that much closer to you as well, insofar as I get a point too.) And now, one at a time, in sequential order, everyone, except me, of course, reveals their answers. I then, with great flourish and conceptual fanfare, reveal my "true" answer. Scores are recorded on the convenient, also write-on and wipe-offable scorekeeping card. And then, on to the next Truth Teller.

What actual fun! How comfortably unthreatening. How surprisingly well the scoring system works to keep the game light-hearted, fair and, uh, balanced. See, I want you to guess my answer, because it's a point for me, too. So I try to fill in my blank with something that's not only honest, but plausible, and predictable, even. And you really are thinking about me, reviewing everything you know about me, or can guess about me. The game is clearly not about trying to make me look bad, or you stupid, or trying to reveal something secret about me or yourself or anyone else who's playing, or trying to out-strategize anyone. It's not good for me or anybody to try to get you to guess wrong. When it's my turn, the game is all about me. Not about what you think of me. But about what you know of me, what you can guess about me. And then, when it's your turn, it's all about you.

There are a lot of party games that try to accomplish this "getting-to-know-each-other-better" experience. Few succeed like Truth be Told. Honestly.

Oh, by the way, it was a subscription to the New Yorker. Who knew?

Labels: Party Games, Tops for 2009

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Monday, October 19, 2009

Dixit - a party game of subtlety, sensitivity and creativity

Dixit is a surprisingly lovely and subtle party game in which players try to guess which image was selected by the "storyteller." The rules are simple enough to learn in a few minutes. The 84 large cards are beautifully and evocatively illustrated. And the whole game can be played in well under an hour.

The subtlety of the game comes from the scoring system and from a growing understanding of the art of being a successful storyteller - for art is what it is.

The game begins with each player receiving six cards, dealt randomly from the deck. One player is selected storyteller. Once the storyteller has selected a card, she can give any kind of clue she wants. After she has given her clue, the other players try to find a card that will fit the clue well enough to get voted for. The storyteller takes her card and the other players selections, and lays them out, face-up, in random order. Everyone uses their voting chips to select the one card they think belonged to the storyteller. Players get the most points by voting for the storyteller's card. They also gets points for every player who votes for their card. In addition to the cards, the game includes a race track scoring board, voting chips, and 6 wooden bunny-like playing pieces, each of a different color.

What makes the game so intriguingly subtle is the result how the storyteller scores. If her clue is so good that everyone votes for her card, or so vague that no one votes for it, she gets no points. So there's an art here. If you're the storyteller (you don't actually have to tell a story, you can sing a song, utter a poem, act, mime, whatever you think will communicate your choice to almost everyone), it pays not only to be subtle, but also to have a good feel for your audience.

The need for both subtlety and social awareness makes Dixit a true party game. Though children as young as 8 can understand the game, unless they are compassionate and theatrically gifted (like my granddaughter), they will have trouble playing it successfully with anyone other than their peers. Though it may remind you of other games (Balderdash, perhaps? Apples to Apples?), it proves to be impressively unique, and hence a valuable addition to your games collection. Designed by Jean-Louis Roubira, with art by Marie Cardouat, Dixit invites strategic thinking, sensitivity and, most importantly, creativity. And for people who possess all these strengths, Dixit proves to be Major FUN.

(thanks to Marc Gilutin for recommending Dixit so strongly - he was right again)

Labels: Party Games, Tops for 2009

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Sunday, August 16, 2009

Curses Again

We last discussed Curses on, to be needlessly precise, October 2, 2002. We, in fact, gave it a Keeper award, no less. The highest ranked, most Major award we have.

Recently, Curses has been "refreshed." Same package, same art, same basic gameplay as in the original Brian Tinsman design. The bell is maybe a little more modern-looking. The cards a little easier to shuffle. And some of the curses and challenges are new, and, of course, funny. But all in all the game isn't any more commercial-looking than it was then. Simple text graphics. Two decks of cards. A bell. And yet, it's as much of a Keeper now as it was then.

Because we're still playing it.

What we learn from all this, is that the Major FUN Awards, and especially the Keeper award, represent games that are unforgettably fun.

The original review is the same review I'd be writing for the game today. It follows:

Curses - a game of geometrically increasing silliness for 3-6 players, age 9 and up.

There are two decks of cards and a very nice hotel-type hit-the-top-and-it-rings bell. One deck of cards is called "Challenges," the other "Curses."

Let's start with the "Curses," which, of course, are the real challenges. A Curse is something silly that you have to do. For example, you might have the Curse of having to talk in a French accent, or having your wrists glued to your head (well, there's no real glue, but you have to pretend there is), or having to bow every time someone applauds. As the game progresses, you get more Curses. From other players, actually. Remembering two Curses is at least twice as difficult as remembering one. By the time you have three Curses you are at a conceptual point likened only to patting your tummy and rubbing your head while singing "Boat your row, row, row." In a French accent.

When you break a Curse, some observant player dutifully rings the bell. If you break enough Curses, you're kind of out. Kind of, because you still get to be a bell-ringer and cause of Curse-breaking.

The Challenges make the Curses evermore Curselike. You might have to ask someone else out to a school prom, or be in a TV commercial explaining why your deodorant is best or demonstrate how you celebrated your what you did when you scored the winning touchdown in the Superbowl. Each challenge takes on a very different light when you have to perform it under multiple Curses.

Curses radiates at least 120 Gigglewatts of pure Guffaw-power. It's can get very, very difficult to play, very quickly, and is challenging enough to occupy the most limber-minded of collegiates, whilst silly enough to keep even us over-the-hillsies laughing and coughing in glee.

The cards on the refreshed version pass the shuffle-test quite nicely. Their graphic design could make it a little easier to distinguish between the two kinds of cards. But that, compared to the sheer hysteria that this game catalyzes, is clearly, at most, a nano-niggle.

Labels: Keeper, Party Games

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Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Word on the Street

Take all your consonants except for the ridiculous ones like Q, X and Z. Put them on your satisfyingly hefty bakelite tiles. Now, make a long game board, like a 4-lane highway with a divider strip just wide enough and long enough to accommodate all of your happily hefty letter tiles. Next, get together a deck of 216, often surprisingly laugh-provoking, double-sided category cards, like: "The Brand of Clothing Worn by One of the Players," and "Something that is Wasted," and "Something Used by Scuba Divers," and "A Word that Describes a Car Crash," "A Title Used for Males but not for Females." Add a cardholder and sand timer. And those are all the ingredients needed for a new and notably Major FUN word game called "Word on the Street" from those frequently Major FUN game publishers, Out of the Box.

Everything, of course, except for the rules. And there in lies the tickle.

Designed by Jack Degnan to give a couple or a couple of teams of word-lovers ample opportunity to demonstrate their brilliance and/or befudlement, the game is a contest to see who, in 30 seconds, can think of a word that 1) fits the category, and 2) has as many as possible of the letters still in play, many of which are doubled - as in MISSISSIPPI which would allow us to move the M one lane closer to us, the P two lanes closer, and the S clear off the board, which would put us one letter ahead. Only 7 more to go and we win!

Though Mississippi would in deed be a coup, it would not be considered a valid response to the category "A Brand of Clothing Worn by One of the Players." To which the best I could do at this time is probably MAIDENFORM (getting to move M twice as well as a D, N, F and R once). Or would MASSIMO with its two M's and two S's be better?

As the game progresses, different letters, and hence different words become more desirable, offensively or defensively, so the challenge keeps on changing. The best word might not have the most double letters in it if some letters only one space away from us, or more enticing yet, one space away from the opponent's goal. The 30-second timer keeps the game moving apace. The cards keep the game surprising and funny. The tiles are large enough for all to read. The board works perfectly in directing player's attention to the strategically most valuable letters. All this makes the game absorbing and delightfully tense, from the moment the first card is read until one team finally manages to capture the eighth letter.

Recommended for 2 to 12 players old enough to appreciate each other's verbal mastery.

Labels: Party Games, Tops for 2009, Word Games

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Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Funny Business - funny in deed

The people at Gamewright call their Funny Business game "The Hilarious Game of Mismatched Mergers." And by golly, they're right!

Funny Business is a family game that engaged our particular family, ranging in age from just 12 to significantly 67, in verifiable moments of hilarious, helpless laughter.

You get a deck of very big "Business Cards." These are not your traditional business cards, they're cards that identify kinds of business - like "Bakery" and "Barber Shop" - 200 different businesses. Each card also has a list of 20 words associated with that business - like bread and doughnut and bangs and curls. Everybody gets a write-on-wipe-off naming card, a voting wheel, a marker (with write-on-wipe-offing eraser), and until the timer runs out to write down what you might call a, for example, Barber Shop and Bakery. You know, like Snips 'n Crumpets, and The Coiffed Bagel, and maybe Feed and Groom.

When time's up, one player reads all the answers on their naming cards. The cards, by the way, each have a different color border which in turn correspond to one of the colors on the voting wheel, all of which add to the ease and the fun of voting.

You get 2 points if you get the most votes, and 1 point if you vote for the winner.

If you tie - somehow two or more players become so attuned to each other and the underlying silliness of the game that they all write the same thing - both players get points if they get voted for, and if they vote for the winner. The fact that such ties occur a testimony to the kind of closeness this silly game engenders. We played all 6 rounds, and by the 3rd or 4th we started having ties, and by the 5th or 6th, we were still having ties.

A lot of the laughter is at yourself - in a very fun sort of way. From time to time you amaze yourself at your cleverness, or your ability to think of a name that's too, shall we say, personal to share, while simultaneously nothing short of genius. We kept score. But by the last round we were too tired from laughing to care who won.

The older folk spent the most time laughing. For the 12-year-old, much of the hilarious subtlety seemed other.

Designed by Jack Degnan for Gamewright, Funny Business proves to be a Major FUN party-like game, for friends or families of up to 8 players whose kids are in their teens or beyond.

Labels: Family Games, Keeper, Party Games

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Thursday, May 28, 2009

Captain Clueless - navigate your way to fun

Gather enough people so you can have 2 teams - at least 4, maybe 8. Kids, parents, friends, whoever feels like playing something that's a little like a team version of Pin the Tail on the Donkey, and maybe a little more like a team version of the Major FUN-award-winning Par Out Golf.

Let Team Two start for a change. They select one player. That player picks a Port Card, looks for where that port is on the board - a humorously drawn of a navigator's map of the Caribbean - checks one last time where it is relative to his team's home port, and then puts his blindfold on. Somebody from her team puts a marker in her hand, puts the point of the marker on the home port, while somebody else from the other team starts the 45 second timer, announcing the beginning of the turn with the proverbial "bon voyage." Her team can give her only one-word clues, how many clues depending on the destination number. The first port of call can get up to 5 clues, each subsequent port, one clue less, and the final voyage back to the home port has to be made with only 2 clues. According to the rules, if you are "able to draw a clear route and land your marker in the anchor icon of your chosen port of call, remove your blindfold and marvel at your achievement."

Designed by Ted Cheatham and published by Gamewright Games, Captain Clueless turns out to be Major FUN - for kids (as young as 8), for families (younger kids can do the drawing while the rest of the family helps with the directions), with anybody in a playful, party-like mood. You can easily change some of the rules to keep everyone in play - increasing the number of clue words per turn, opting to play without the timer, allowing only nautical-like clues (hard a-port!). Though it's possible to play the game with just two players, the teamplay aspect of the experience is what really distinguishes this game from anything you've ever played before. It's not Pin the Tail on the Donkey. You're not trying to succeed all by yourself. The other players aren't trying to confuse you or make things harder for you. You're being supported by your team. You're the Captain, and though you might be "clueless" you are most definitely not "crewless."

The board is large and fun to look at. It is finished so that it is very easy to erase. The markers are full-size, and, since you're not allowed to have any part of your body touch the board while you're sailing, help to keep the right distance from the board. The sailing fantasy reinforces the "adventure" feel of the game, conveying the tone as well as concept, adding humor, clarity, and an invitation to practice, or make up your own sailing jargon. It's very easy to learn, the rules are very clearly written (on one, thoughtfully laminated page), and it most definitely makes people laugh.

Labels: Family Games, Kids Games, Party Games

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Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Letter Roll® - a word game for just about everybody

It's a word game. It's a party game. It's a family game. It's even a kid's game. It's Letter Roll® - easy to learn, short, intense rounds (lasting one or two minutes each); easily adapted to different skill levels and play preferences, taking some of the best elements from some of the best word games (a little bit of Boggle, a little bit of Major FUN Keeper-award-winning PDQ).

Your Letter Roll® box contains seven, hefty, 20-sided (go ahead, count them) dice in three different colors. Two sand-timers (your orange one-minute and your blue two-minute timer), four commodious worksheet pads and four full-sized, sharpened pencils. The different colors of the dice identify the level of difficulty (letter frequency) each die introduces. The two white dice display frequently-used letters, the three blue dice less frequently-used letters, and the two orange dice the infrequently-used, and hence, the most challenging.

When it's your turn to roll, you select any four of the dice. This gives you some control over the level of challenge. Choose only blue and orange dice, and you have an extremely challenging round. Choose only white and blue dice for a refreshingly less challenging round. Just to keep power where it most comfortably belongs, an other player gets to eliminate one of your chosen dice, so that ultimately it's not totally your fault if the round turns out to be too easy or too challenging.

Once the final selection is revealed, the roller announces the letters rolled, and players race to write down as many unique words as they can think of that use all three letters. As long as each word uses all the letters, it doesn't matter what order the letters are in. (Having the roller announce the letters, by the way, is another welcome, controversy-avoiding touch - as determining which face of the 20-sided dice are actually showing can prove somewhat of a challenge.) Players race to write as many words as they can think of, knowing that at the end of the round they will only score for words that no other player has chosen. When the time is mercifully up, players take turns reading their lists while the rest of the players draw lines through any of the words on their list that get called out. This results in much, somewhat good-natured, but clearly mournful moaning as scoring potential gets graphically reduced. When all lists have been read, players announce and record their scores, getting one point for each unique word remaining on their lists. This encourages originality, cleverness and obscurity, all comfortably confused by a strong element of pure chance.

To further refine the intensity of the game, players can select either timer, the one- or two-minute sand timer, to be used during the duration of the game. The one-minute timer not only shortens the playing time, it also makes the search somewhat less excruciating. The less time you have to think, the easier it is for you to forgive your lexicographic lapses.

Designed by Tushar Gheewala, the challenge presented by Letter Roll is so wonderfully flexible that it can be played by kids as young as 7 or 8 (just reduce the number of dice) or by adults in the prime of their linguistic abilities (increase the number of dice, increase the number of letters required for each word). By allowing each player to determine which dice to be used, players can further refine the challenge as each round of the game is played. It's a great 2-player game, and, with only slight modification of the rules, you can have as many as 20 players happily engaged (team play takes the game to an hilarity-inducing level of collaboration and chaos). As with just about every game published by Out of the Box, the components are designed for years of play, the box for easy storage, the rules for clarity and durability.

Let those good times roll again. Letter Roll® is Major FUN.

Labels: Family Games, Kids Games, Party Games, Word Games

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Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Consensus®

Consensus® is a party game - the kind of party game to which you will eventually be comparing all other party games. If your kids are old enough, it's just that kind of family game - the kind you'd want your family to play. It's a game that makes people laugh, think, talk and listen to each other. Most of all, it's the kind of game that brings people together and keeps them together.

It's what you might call a "voting game," where "right" answer is the answer that receives the majority of votes. This shifts the focus from being "correct" to learning about the people you are playing with. Since players end up focusing on each other more so than on the actual content of the game, it creates the kind of fun that unites people, regardless of who wins or loses.

There are currently two versions of Consensus®, both of which function the same way.

In the Movie Edition, (the one we would recommend for adult groups) a "Movie Question Card" is read aloud. For example: "Which of the following movies best conveys the concept of: "Anything's Possible?" Ten "movie cards" are then arranged on the playing board, in the spaces numbered 1-10. For example: (Field of Dreams, Jurassic Park, Braveheart, Pretty Woman, Rocky, Back to the Future, The Shawshank Redemption, The Ten Commandments, E.T., The 40-Year-Old Virgin.) Using the "Voting Cards," each player privately votes for the movie title which he/she feels best answers the movie question. After all private votes are cast, the players reveal their answers. The majority answer is deemed the "correct" answer, and all players who chose that answer advance their pawns one space. The player who advances to the end of the scoring track first is the winner and is crowned "The Greatest Mind."

There are a total of 11 spaces to move before you can get crowned, so the game can take a while to play - especially if you're playing with the full complement of eight lovingly argumentative players. The game can be played with as few as three, but it's one of those definitely more-the-merrier kinds of party games.

The Original Edition (the one we would recommend for a broader audience, 12-Adult) uses the same mechanics as the Movie Edition, but the subject matter is far more generic. Here you try to select the "Noun Card" that most closely satisfies the "Adjective Card." And although Consensus® may share some aspects with the ever-so-deservedly popular Apples to Apples, you'd really be comparing apples to oranges here. Consensus® is a voting game. There are no judges. It's the majority that rules.

The Original Edition proves to be as much fun as the Movie Edition, and because the subject matter is even more subjective, so to speak, and more accessible, the game proves equally inviting to your pre-teens, who have probably watched even fewer movies than you, unless you're talking about cartoons, which, thankfully, the Movie Edition doesn't. Furthermore, in Consensus® each player is voting from a common set of nouns, which allows player to compare answers in a more discussion-worthy way.

There are many subtle aspects of the game play. The rules for determining what constitutes a Consensus (you don't score if everyone votes for the same or if everyone votes differently, or if there is a tie) encourage players to learn more about each other so they can better anticipate who might vote for what the next round. The "movie cards" or "noun cards" that receive no votes remain on the board for the next round. This accomplishes at least several goals: it keeps more cards available for subsequent rounds, it keeps good, but neglected possibilities still possible; and it gives players fewer new things to think about and more opportunity focus on the real fun of the game: each other.

All in all, our Tasters' consensus was that Consensus®, the game, is Major FUN.

Labels: Family Games, Party Games, Tops for 2009

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Sunday, April 19, 2009

PDQ earns KEEPER award

Every now and a Major Fun game proves to be the kind of game we want to keep in our permanent collection - something exemplary. PDQ is one of those games. Originally reviewed here, PDQ has proven itself to be just that kind of game: fun, flexible, easy to learn and teach, one of those games you just wouldn't want to be without. Here is the review again:

PDQ is a sweet little word game - easy to learn, quick (Pretty Darn Quick) as a matter of fact - a game you can play by yourself or with maybe one, or several or even many other people?

You get a deck of 78 letter cards - nice looking, good stock, big, easy-to-read letter cards. You deal out three at a time, face-up. And then you see who can make a word first, or, in case of a tie, who can come up with a longer word. TLP, for example. Tulip. Sure. Or perhaps Platitude. Platitude. Of course. Longer than Tulip. (Did I mention that you can use the letters backwards or forwards?) (Did I also mention that you can use any number of letters before, between or after the three letters that you draw?) (And, of course, the letters have to be in the same order?)

Designed by Jay Thompson to be played by kids as well as adults (kids use just two cards at a time, word game experts can try playing with four), PDQ is pretty darn close to everything you would want in a word game - 5-30 minutes of engaging, challenging, and frequently laugh-producing fun.

Labels: Family Games, Keeper, Kids Games, Party Games, Thinking Games, Top for 2007, Word Games

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Sunday, April 05, 2009

Scrabble Slam

Scrabble Slam is an easy-to-learn, quick-to-play word game for 2 to maybe 6 players of equal word-game-playing skill, and, yes, it's Major FUN.

OK, it's not Scrabble. It's more like a Word Ladder puzzle, only without the rungs. And played with cards, rather than paper and pencil. Two-sided cards, actually. 55 of them.

Players decide on a four-letter word, then find the 4 cards with the letters needed to spell that word. These cards are laid face-up on the table to spell the word. The rest of the deck is then distributed as evenly as possible between the rest of the players (in case you're concerned: since there are 55 cards, and 4 are played out, you can only get an even distribution with 3 players). If you want to make the game feel more fair, the stronger player should get the extra card. If you're playing as a family, the youngest player should get the fewest cards.

Once the target word is laid out, players race to change the word, one letter at a time, trying to be the first to use up all the cards in their hand. So, for example, if the chosen word were PLAY, and you had a card with an N on it, you could cover the Y and make PLAN. If you had an F you could make PLAN into FLAN. If you had a T you could make FLAN into FLAT. And so on, and so on, until someone has no more cards to play.

You don't take turns, so you are under significant pressure, especially if you're playing with equally-skilled players. This makes the game short, and very sweet - especially for the winner. Since the cards have two sides (the letters on the opposite side of a card are indicated by small letters in the corners), there's what one might consider a challenge to one's dexterity - not a big challenge, just big enough to add to the tension and provoke laughter.

And yes. There are blank cards, that act just like the blanks in Scrabble. On the other hand, Scrabble it is not. On yet another hand, fun it most definitely is.

Labels: Party Games, Word Games

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Wednesday, November 19, 2008

One Word

Quick, think of a word, one word, that is both a season and a type of guy. Did you say "fall"? Cute. You're right. Grab a Scoring Marker. OK. How about something you do with a pencil that is also a kind of bridge. "Draw." Prexactly. Grab another Scoring Marker. Quick now. And I mean really quick. Because as soon as the top stops spinning, your team's turn is over, what's one word that's both a unit of measurement and a kind of stone. Never mind. It's too late. The top stopped.

Well, it's not exactly a top. It's more like a large, plastic jack. But it spins - very sweetly in its special, concave spinning spot. And though one doesn't generally think of using a large plastic jack as a timer, this one works really well, and actually adds a most delicious modicum of fun to the game, and challenge to one's spinning dexterity.

Designed by Garrett J. Donner, Michael S. Steer, and Wendy L. Harris, and brought to by the fun people at Fundex, One Word is a Majorly FUN party game for two teams. It comes with 100, two-sided clue cards, each with 5 different puzzles; 5 Scoring Markers, which prove to be a significantly satisfying mechanism for making one's cleverness manifest; and, as advertised, a wacky jack-like Spin Timer, that somehow manages to makes a fun party game funner.

Labels: Party Games

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Monday, November 10, 2008

Partini

If variety were the spice of fun, Hasbro's Partini would be the paprika of play. Or maybe the garam masala of games.

Partini is a collection of 6 different party games. The key words here are "different" and "party games." For example, there's "Clay Smoothie" - a familiar party game, like Pictionary, only with something like Play Doh (oddly enough, all products of Hasbro), except your team has to figure out two out of three of your sculptures, all of which share a common (announced) property (e.g. "green"). And then there's Mime Twist, a charades-like game, similar to the "Star Performer" games in Cranium, which, perhaps not-so-coincidentally, is also manufactured by Hasbro. And then there's Hum Punch, in which, like in Cranium's Humdinger, the object is to get your team to identify the song you are humming. But then there are also the non-Cranium gamelets, Shooters (which turned out to be one of our favorites) - a game involving cups and balls and small variety of cup-and-ball-based challenges, and What Nots in which you try to describe something by saying what it isn't, and Straight-Up - a most party-like "familiarity" game in which players write something true or funny about a team mate (we were worried about this, because this is a game of an ilk that requires a certain amount of sensitivity - which can not always be counted on - yet the game proved well-enough structured to keep things safe, fun and funny). And, totally unlike Cranium, there's no board - just a bunch of coaster-like disks which determine what game you are to play, and act as score counters.

Hasbro has gone to great lengths to make this Partini as attractive as it is fun to play. It comes in a large, sturdy, suitcase-like box. There are 500 game cards - all well-made and attractively-illustrated; cups and balls, pencils and paper, and a special Straight-Up die. Designer Chris Nelson has made praiseworthy efforts to make the game fun, unpredictable, and elegant. The coaster scoring- and game-selection mechanic works brilliantly. The balance of games keeps everyone involved. Familiar enough to be easy to learn (especially for Cranium players). Different enough to be an valuable addition to any party for involving 4 or more adult-aged, but not too adult-like people.

Labels: Party Games

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Thursday, September 04, 2008

Backseat Drawing

Draw a rectangle. Wait. Draw it horizontally - you know, so it's wider than it is high. Make it a little smaller. Good. Now draw a kind of egg shape touching the upper right corner. Great. OK. Now make 4 straight lines, attached to the bottom of the rectangle, spread more or less evenly. Now draw a small arc, the bottom of the curve touching the top of the egg shape. Good. Good. Good. Still can't guess it? Try this: between the first and second of those lines you drew on the bottom of the rectangle, the lines on the left, draw smallish "W" shape. Feel free to guess what it is any time. No penalty for wrong answers. And if anything the other team draws or says helps, please, be my guest. What? Did you say "cow"?

Holy, mmm, cow, you're right! We get a card! Oh, the udder bovine bliss of it all!

The name of the game is Backseat Drawing. And, yes, in deed, it's Major FUN.

You need two teams of two or more players. Each team gets a dry-erase marker, board and eraser (the eraser comes in very, very handily). There's a deck of 168 "challenge" cards. The cards are two-sided. One side is easier. That's where you'll find "Cow." The other side is where you find words like "Soup," "Zipper," and, OMG, "Sea Horse." The cards fit into an open plastic box which also acts as a viewer - revealing the top card to the people who are directing while concealing it from the artists and their cohorts of fellow-guessers.

It takes maybe five minutes to learn. And a good 20-30 minutes before any team accumulates enough points to win. We played a couple rounds. In the second round, we changed partners and also tried the more challenging side of the Challenge Cards. We drew. We laughed. We lost.

The game is in four different languages (English, Spanish, French and German). There are four different rule cards, each in one of the aforementioned languages. The Challenge Cards are equally multi-lingual. What this means is that should one wish to elevate both the chaos and joylikeness of it all, one could conceivably backseat draw cross-culturally.

Labels: Family Games, Funnest for 2008, Keeper, Party Games

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Friday, August 29, 2008

Zenn

Zenn is a remarkably fun and inviting dexterity game for 2-4 players. What makes it remarkably inviting is how easy it is to play, even if you never read the rules. What makes it remarkably fun is how many different games there are to play.

Here are a few things you might want to notice: each corner of the playing field is at a 45-degree angle. This makes it possible for a player to achieve some remarkably impressive bank shots. Directly in front of each goal are two reflecting blocks. They are positioned just where you'd want them if you were trying to bank your chip off the corner into the cup. The space between these blocks is only slightly wider than a small poker chip. Thus, sliding a chip from one side of the board so that it passes between the two blocks on the opposite side (and into the goal cup) requires concentration and coordination that is, well, Zen-like. Then there are the various lines and numbers and letters - each of which lends itself to the formulation of yet further and more profound challenges.

Then of course there are the poker chips. Four each, of two different sizes and colors, inviting yet further possibilities of game-like engagement.

You might also notice that the instruction booklet that comes with your Zenn set describes exactly 101 different games you can play.

In sum, the game of Zenn is an invitation to chip-flicking at it's finest! Each different game described in the booklet takes advantage of some different aspect of the board and pieces. Each is an inspiration to invent your own.

This is what makes Zenn Major FUN - the elegance and subtlety of the design, the almost intuitive clarity of the goals, the many, many different ways to play; and the sheer delight of the game mechanics.

Yes, the rule booklet has a certain homemade look, and the poker chip pucks seem a little, well, common, but the game is anything but common, and the many different variations are positively inspirational, and the chip-pucks, available almost anywhere, slide and bounce ever so satisfyingly around the lifetime-guaranteed board (with added slipperiness provided by your readily available can of Pledge spray wax)(and a bag of replacement chips available for a nominal $1.75).

For kids, families, parties - like I said, Major FUN.

Labels: Dexterity, Family Games, Funnest for 2008, Keeper, Kids Games, Party Games

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Monday, July 21, 2008

Say Anything

North Star Games is one of those rare companies that places a high premium on quality over quantity. Although the company was founded in 2003, they have only published 3 games. Each of them has been Major FUN, and each production seems to be getting better than the previous one.

Say Anything, their latest creation, is a light-hearted party game that will get you and your friends talking and laughing in no time. Everything about the game reflects years of play testing, and finer and finer tuning. The rules are wonderfully easy to understand - clearly written and presented, every question answered. Everything fits in the box just so. The write-on, wipe-off boards (8 answer boards and a scoreboard) write on easily (golf-pencil-sized wipe-off-able markers included) and wipe off even more easily. The 400 Question Cards are pleasantly thick yet amply bendy. The little, graphic-and-color-coordinated Player Chips are non-bendy enough to be satisfyingly chip-like. And the state of the art SELECT-O-MATIC 5000...one can barely comment enough about the functionality, portability, and virtually cordless battery-freedom!

Of course, it's the fun that counts - even more than all the well-thought-out-edness of the packaging and game components. Let's start with a Say Anything card. There are 5 questions to choose from which means you’ll always be able to ask something that suits the people you’ve invited to your gathering. The question all have something to do with your right to, well, say, as it were, anything. Some of the questions solicit your pop culture opinions, some are about personal experiences, some are slightly serious, and a handful are seriously ridicules (designed just to make you laugh). If for example, we picked the question "What TV channel would be the hardest to live without?" Really, you could write anything on your Answer Board. I mean, you like what you like. Write anything. Say anything. What's to argue about?

So you write what you write (it can be non-sequitur if you want), and toss your Answer Board face-up on the table. She or He Who Holds the SELECT-O-MATIC 5000 (SoHWHtS-O-M5000) will read all the answers, and pick a favorite response. Any favorite response - for any reason. Because SoHWHtS-O-M5000 can, of course Select Anything.

Now everybody else tries to guess what answer was picked. It turns out that the SoHWHtS-O-M5000 gets a point for everyone who votes for His or Her chosen Answer Board (up to a maximum of 3 points). They guess by using their well-designed, chip-like, color-coordinated Player Chips. They each have two. Which means they can put both chips down on the same Answer Board, or select two Answer Boards to carry their personal Player Chip-ness. Ah, an opportunity to demonstrate something to everyone in attendance - two chips to manifest your personal certainty, or your clever covering of the bases, so to speak.

Finally SoHWHtS-O-M5000 reveals the chosen board, and players gain points accordingly, which the Holder of the Write-On Wipe-Off-able Score Board dutifully records. And in the mean time, much laughter tends to erupt. Much laughter. Because of the unexpected answers people come up with, the unpredictable perspicacity of their votes, the verifiable silliness of the task, and, for some, because of the score they get.

Say Anything is the very kind of game the Major Fun Award was designed for. It takes a few minutes to learn, a good half hour or so to play, and can be played with your basic 3-8 people. Maybe 16 if you play in teams. Probably 24, tops.

Labels: Funnest for 2008, Keeper, Party Games

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Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Go Nuts!

Have you ever seen anyone go crazy when playing a game? Go Nuts!, a new entry in Gamewright's 12-Minute Games series, certainly seems to encourage this in the title alone! The frenzied activities of the game add a level of wackiness and fun not often found in dice games, and the "push-your-luck" aspect will keep players on the edge of their seat for the few minutes this game takes to complete.

On a player's turn, they simply roll five dice that have squirrels, acorns, and cars on their faces. Each acorn a player rolls scores the player one point, while cars are placed out of play. Players are allowed to re-roll all dice with squirrels and/or nuts on them; but they can stop at any time, taking the sum of points they have accumulated. Continuing to roll presents a level of danger. Because if the player ever rolls all cars at one time, their turn ends immediately; and any points gained that turn are lost. If the player rolls all squirrels, pandemonium breaks out. The player shouts, "Go Nuts!", and starts rolling the dice as fast as they can, attempting to score as many points as they gather. All the other players roll one special die that has a dog picture on a single face. When another player rolls a dog, they scream out "Woof, woof, woof!" and the player whose turn it is tallies up their points and passes the dice to the next player.

To add an even spicier element to the game, a player who has only a single die remaining gets all five dice back if they roll an acorn. Since the chance of causing a "nutty" round or losing all the dice because of cars is high, players have to assess the risks of doing this, although it may allow a player to come back into the competition.

Whenever "Go Nuts!" is shouted, it's hilarious to watch everyone rolling dice as fast as they can, trying to stop the player from gaining any more points. Rapid-fire dice rolling is amazingly fun; and when added to the simple probability choices, it gives the game a most definitely Major FUN feeling. I've seen groups of people literally shrieking in fun as they tossed the dice at the table, trying desperately to get a dog before Uncle Bob scores any more points; and no one is ever out of competition until the game ends. Add the fact that the game takes less than 12 minutes to play to the mix, and you have a wonderful choice for families and parties.

Tom Vasel
"Real men play board games"
The Dice Tower

Labels: Family Games, Kids Games, Party Games

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Friday, April 18, 2008

Attribute

Attribute, another minor wonder of strategic silliness from Z-Man Games, is a word game inviting more than a bit of psycho-strategico contemplation.

There are two decks of cards: one deck of 60 sheep cards and another of 164 attribute cards. There are only two kinds of sheep in your cutely-illustrated sheep card deck - the green sheep card of topic matching and the red, out-of-topic sheep card. There are 164 kinds of attribute cards, indicated by words like: "spooky," "bleak," "wild," and "furry."

Each person gets 4 attribute cards and one sheep card. Let's say you have a red sheep card. You put that card face down, in front of you. One player, anyone, actually, makes up a topic. Really, literally, any topic. For example: crime. You are more or less in luck. At least one of your 4 cards clearly and obviously is unrelated to "crime." For example, "Furry." But perhaps less in luck than you might first have thought. Because if you put down your Furry card it will be fairly obvious to everyone that you are a red sheep. It might have been better to use your "spooky" card, or even the card called "wild." At least you might make someone hesitate.

Because, you see, when all is said and done, and everyone has put their sheep face down and an attribute face up, players then select (e.g. grab) any face down pair, the object being to have grabbed a green sheep, and not a red, don't you see. So when all the pairs are on the table, you have to think very, very quickly - is the attribute that's revealed enough like the category to be covering a green sheep? Or is it perhaps a ruse, or a rouge, by any other name?

Since Attribute can be played by as many as 8 people, it is definitely a party game. It might also succeed as a family game, depending on age of the youngest players. We'd recommend 10 and above for a mixed age group, and 8-10 for a kids' game.

Designed by Marcel-Andre Casasola Merkle, Attribute is a unique and engaging word game. Major FUN.

Labels: Funnest for 2008, Keeper, Party Games, Word Games

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Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Party Pooper

In the latest Out-of-the-Box card-(432 cards)-reading, personality-predicting, finger-pointing fun.

There's a die (the Party Cube). You roll the die. That tells you whether you are looking for the most or least likely person in the group who, for example, would join a bow-hunting safari. It says "Party Pooper," so you're looking for the person you think would be least likely to want to join that old bow-hunting safari. At the count of three, everybody points. Since it's you're turn to be the prime pointer (the "host"), you point to the person you think is the Pooper, while at the same time everyone points to the person they think would be the person you would point at. Get it? Not necessarily the "real" person. Just the person they think you would point at. Then everyone who pointed at the same person you pointed to gets points (chip) and gets to give you points (also a chip) ("gets" as in "has to"). Everybody else, the nay-pointers, as it were, gets nothing. And that's the game. And someone else gets to be the host. And the die is rolled. And a card is picked. And people point. And then they laugh.

And that's it, in brief. In sum, Party Pooper, the many-carded game with chips and pointing and laughing, is Major FUN. In a little more depth, I think you should know why this makers suggest that the game be played, yes, by as many as 8 players, in party-like fashion, as long as everyone's at least 12. Physically and emotionally. Because getting pointed at or not, as fun as it can be, is easy to take a little too personally. In fact, there might be people who have been categorized as adults, and yet might actually be prone to taking such playful pointings personally.

And there is an alternate set of rules, actually, that don't involve finger pointing, but rather thumbs-upping or -downing.

But you happen to be the kind of person who plays for fun. And regular-old Party Pooper happens to be just that kind of game, especially with all the pointing. A genuinely fun game. And the people you want to play with are also of that emotional age we consider to be at least 12. And it will be something definitely, deliciously fun, this game of Party Pooper. I promise, or my name is not Major Fun.

Labels: Funnest for 2008, Keeper, Party Games

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Thursday, April 10, 2008

Rage

It gives me great pleasure to introduce you to Rage. Being the mild-mannered Major you know me so well to be, it might strike you as uncharacteristic of me. But, you see, I'm talking about a game. A game called "Rage." A card game, for as few as 2, or as many as 8 players, all of whom know about trick-taking games. It will remind you, as a matter of fact, of that old trick-taking game, with the unfortunate, but evocative name "Oh Hell.

The Rage deck consists of 110 Cards of 6 suits of color cards each numbered 0-15. There are 14 "special" cards including: 2 Wild Rage cards, 4 Out Rage cards, 4 Change Rage cards, 2 Mad Rage Card. All those cards, and all those special cards might make you think of another card game. Not a trick-taking game at all, but the rather hilarious, and far less serious UNO game. Which makes sense, since the original publishers of UNO were in fact the same people who publish Rage. (In case you asked, Rage is now published by Fundex).

Trick-taking games. You know about those. The reason I am stressing that point is that we had one person in our Tasting who didn't know about trick-taking games, and it made the game less fun for all of us. If you know about trick-taking games, you can learn Rage in a few minutes.

First, there's the deal. The first deal, each player gets 10 cards, the next 9, the next 8, all the way down to the last round, with one card each. So each round is a little shorter, and the tension a little higher.

Then there's the bidding - everyone declares how many tricks she's going to win that round. Not bidding, really, since you're not trying to out bid anyone. More like, well, declaring.

Then there's the play. A card is thrown. You follow suit. If you can't, you throw anything, or throw trump. You know, like a trick-taking game.

Then there are the wild cards. There's Bonus Rage, which gives 5 points to whomever takes the trick. Mad Rage, which takes 5 points away from the she who took the trick. Out Rage, of course, there is no trump for the rest of the round. Change Rage, which lets you change trump to any color. And Wild Rage - allowing you to change the color of the suit being played.

So, no matter how card-countingly astute you are, anyone at any time can change pretty much everything. Which adds just that extra spice of fate-fickleness to make you laugh instead of scream.

Very Major FUN.

Labels: Family Games, Funnest for 2008, Keeper, Kids Games, Party Games

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Monday, April 07, 2008

Cheeky Monkey

Cheeky Monkey is what they call a "press your luck" game (similar in its pres-your-luckness to perhaps the archetype of all press your luckish games, the most significantly Major FUN Can't Stop, both of which, coincidentally, are published by Face 2 Face Games). It's easy to learn, and can be played with actually equal glee by both children (7 and up) and adults. Hence making it something like an ideal family game, but an equally good children's game and an even more equally recommended party game.

You get a collection of 52 poker-chip-like tokens, 8 "bonus tiles" (made of satisfyingly thick cardboard), and an even more satisfyingly thick cloth, drawstring bag. There are eight different animals depicted on the chips. Some animals are more numerous than others. For example, there are 10 monkeys but only 3 elephants. There is one tile for each animal, and the total number of of each kind of animal is indicated on the corresponding tile. The eight tiles are placed, face up on the table, and the chips placed in the bag.

On your turn, you pick and pick and pick chips from the bag, until you want to stop picking, or you pick an animal that you've already drawn. In the first case, you keep all the chips you drew. In the second, they go back into the bag - that's right, all of them. You are, of course, sorely tempted to keep on picking. Hence, the press-your-luckishness of the game.

When you have finished picking, you stack your chips, in any order you deem strategically beneficial. On your next turn, you add your winnings, again in any order, but you can't change the order of the chips you've already stacked. The relevance of stacking order becomes especially vivid during play, when you discover that if someone picks an animal that is currently on top of your stack, you must relinquish said animal to the aforementioned someone. This is a clearly less than desirable outcome for you, as the player with the most chips at the end of the game wins.

Then there are the monkeys, those cheeky critters, which, upon pickage, can also be swapped with any animal on top of anyone's stack.

As play progresses and stacks heighten, the strategic implications of stack order and animal distribution become ever more vivid. Seeing as there are only 3 elephants, for example, if you know that the other 2 elephants are already stacked, you can just about secure your stack if you place an elephant on top - that is, as long as no one picks a money and decides to employ it in a cheeky manner.

Yet another game by the prolific designer Reiner Knizia, Cheeky Monkey is further evidence of what good game design is all about. Major FUN.

Labels: Family Games, Kids Games, Party Games

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Tuesday, February 26, 2008

Incan Gold

Incan Gold is another "press your luck" game, different enough from all other "press your luck"-like games to be just as fun, and just as worthy of your seriously playworthy consideration.

It doesn't take long to learn, it takes only about 20 minutes to play, and the joyful luck-pressing can be shared by 3, or as many as 8 players. You do have to spend some time arranging the cards, but, after the first time you play, all that card arranging adds to the anticipation of a significantly fun experience of engaging each other in an intense exploration of the various wages of caution and greed.

The game is played in 5 rounds. A round begins by drawing a "Quest card" from the pile, turning it over, and placing it face-up next to one of the "Temple cards." The card that is revealed can either be a Treasure card, an Artifact, or a Hazard. If it is a Treasure, the players divide it between them, placing small plastic pieces in front of their personal treasuries (in front, and not inside, because the Treasure can't be claimed until someone has taken it safely out of the Temple). If it is an Artifact, it will be added to the treasury of the first player to remove it from the Temple. If it is a Hazard, there's no score. If a second Hazard of the same type is drawn later on in the round, all the potential treasures and artifacts are lost. All those little plastic, colored crystal-in-the-rough-shaped pieces... They go back. And nobody gets to keep them. Nobody. Not even you.

Once a card is placed on the table, players all have the option to go forward and reveal the next card, or to leave the Temple and collect the goodies indicated by the graphically rendered significance appearing on the card.

On the other hand, before the next Quest card can be revealed, you all, simultaneously, flash one of two cards on to the conceptual table. One card shows that you want to go forward, as it were, into the Temple, and seek greater fortune. The other, that you want to "leave the temple" immediately.

If one and only one of you flashes the card that symbolizes the decision to "leave the temple" already, that player, you, for example, get to take all the exposed Artifact Cards as your very own. Heh. Heh. Hey. If you're not the only one leaving, you and your fellow leavers share the pretty plastic pieces potentially accumulated and put them into a little tent you made out of a folded card. And nobody gets the Artifacts. Heh, hey. But you don't play any more for the rest of the round. Also hey, hey, hey.

Incan Gold is produced by Sunriver Games and is also available from Funagain. An earlier form of Incan Gold, Diamant, was published in Germany by Schmidt Speile, and was also was also available from Funagain.

Labels: Family Games, Party Games

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Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Imaginiff - the card game

You've undoubtedly read about the Major FUN-worthy game of Imaginiff, and made careful note of our unabashed enthusiasm for the aforementioned. This all should prove useful in helping you understand why we are so exceptionally delighted to introduce you to Buffalo Games most recent Imaginiff-like accomplishment: Imaginiff - the card game.

It's somewhat of a significant accomplishment, actually, for all playkind: For the designers, making a successful translation from the board game to a card game format. For the traveler, who needs games that are portable and can be played almost anywhere (restaurant, hotel lobby, ship deck, motel room). The mechanics are simple and efficient. You get a write-on/wipe-off card and marker (the marker even has an eraser on it - which comes in demarkably handy), a die, 68 question cards, and 6 voting cards. The write-on/wipe-off card is used for score keeping and to keep track of who gets to be the subject of the question. The die is determines who's going to get talked about. And the question cards ask things like: "Imaginiff ______ were a flying object. Which would he/she be: A Blimp, B Biplane, C Glider, D Lear jet, E Brick." Players vote, and those who agree each get a point. If the person who asks the question also agrees, s/he gets an additional point

A subtle, but very useful variable in both versions of the game: the six people who are to be the subjects of the Imaginiff questions can be anyone at all, real or fictional, the people you're playing with, or anybody else you all know. So, when you're playing with people you don't really know that well, and are maybe wisely concerned that someone might not share your sense of humor, you can choose to have all imaginary players, or athletes, or movie stars, or politicians, even.

Most assuredly Major FUN.

Labels: Party Games

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Monday, November 26, 2007

Gumball Rally

Ted Cheatham's Gumball Rally is another excellent card game from Z-Man Games. This one's especially for kids or for adults looking for a "filler game."

It's a race, all right, for up to 8 players. The game takes less than a half-hour to play, and probably less than half of that to learn. The manufacturers recommend it for kids 6 and up. We recommend it for kids who like playing race-type games, and especially for adults who enjoy playing light and quick.

You get 8 different Go Kart cards - that is, large, thick, well-illustrated, cardboard cards depicting different Go Karts. You also get a deck of playing cards - 4 different kinds of playing cards (Race cards - 4 suits, each numbered 1-10; Hazard cards (19 cards, no numbers), 10 point cards, and 8 small Go Kart cards to help you remember which Kart is yours. So there are several sorting moments required. And yet more sorting moments once you separate out all the Hazard cards: giving each player 3 cards, removing the Winner and two Checkpoint cards, shuffling the remaining cards, removing 4 cards and placing them in the box (without looking at the cards), taking 3 cards from the Hazard deck and shuffling them with the Winner card, then 3 more cards from the Hazard deck shuffled with one Winner card, and again - placing these all in a stack to form the bottom of the draw pile. All of which is very clever and logical once you actually play the game, because the Winner and Checkpoint cards, placed as they are near the bottom of the deck, force the game to some oft-delightful and generally timely conclusions. After the first game, all this shuffling and sorting seems to add both to the fun of the game and the fun of getting ready to have fun.

The large Go Kart cards are placed, in order of play, on the table - the first player in the first position, etc. Race cards determine which Go Kart is the fastest. If you play a Race card, and you are in, say, third position, and your card is higher than the Go Kart in the second position, then you move up one position. Then there are the Hazard cards which affect the Go Kart whose color matches the inner border of the Hazard card.

Oddly enough, despite all this apparent complexity, the game takes only about 15 minutes to learn and less than a half-hour to play. The pace is fast enough to keep everyone in play - even when there are 8 players. Which makes the game feel most race-like - especially as cars are constantly changing position, and even more especially when you pass the lead car.

The cards are vividly illustrated by John Donahue under the direction of jim pinto (who artistically spells his name in lower case).

A lot of big fun in this little game.

Labels: Family Games, Kids Games, Party Games

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Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Nacho Loco

Nacho Loco isn't exactly a card game, actually. It's more of a tile game, played with triangles (hence "Nacho"s), made out of cardboard. And yes, it could very well remind you of Triominoes, though it plays more like a, well, card game - a bit like, perhaps, UNO.

You get 94 cards. If they were thick and made of plastic, you'd think of them as tiles. But they're cardboard. And not thick enough to stand up. Just thick enough to be impossible to shuffle. So you put them face-down on the table, smush them around until they're satisfyingly mixed, and give 6 cards to each of up to 6 players.

Each card is divided into three equal triangular sections. Some are different colors. Some have words on them. Some are black, and marked with an X. To play one of your cards, you have to match one of the sections of your card with one of the sections of a card on the table. The X-marked black sections can't be matched, by anything, even by other X-marked black sections.

The sections with words say "Skip Next," or "Go Again," or "Opponent Draws 3." If you have an exact match, then either the next player gets skipped, or you get to play again, or you can tell any opponent to draw 3 additional card/tiles.

The object of the game is to get rid of your cards. As soon as someone has played her last card, she gets one point for each card remaining in the other players' hands. The first player to get 20 points wins. And that's about that.

Visually, the game is quite appealing. As it progresses, colorful, three-dimensional-like patterns are created. And the back of the cards look like, yes, nachos. Rounds are relatively short, and the game has a fast-enough pace to keep everyone involved for the duration. Easy to learn. Mildly strategic. Fun to play.

Fun for kids as young as 8, the game should appeal equally to everyone in the family. Nacho Loco comes to us from Buffalo Games, makers of the Major FUN award winning iMAgiNiff.

Labels: Family Games, Kids Games, Party Games

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Tuesday, October 23, 2007

Escalation!

Escalation!, despite the cartoon-enabled violence of its imagery, is actually a fun little card game from the prolific, multiple-award-winning Reiner Knizia.

There are 55 cards in the artfully illustrated deck. The cards are numbered 1-13. There are two special cards - the Neighborhood Watch and the wild cards.

Each player (from 2 to 6 players) is dealt 6 cards. On your turn, you must discard a card that is higher than the card(s) just played. I say "card(s)" because if you have two or more of the same rank, you can play as many of them as you want, raising the target number by the total of the numbers on the card(s) you play. So, if you have two 7s, and the current target number (the number last played) is 6, you can play one 7, raising the target number by one, or both 7s, raising the target number to 14.

The wild cards can be any number from 1-7. The "Neighborhood Watch" cards don't change the target number.

On your turn, if you can't play a card that is higher than the current target, you have to pick up all the cards played, and put them in a pile. You really don't want this pile, because every card you collect counts against you.

That's about it. The game takes about 5 minutes to learn and 10 minutes to play. Of course, you'll probably want to play it several times, perhaps several many.

Published by Z-Man Games, Escalation! is one of those somewhat mechanical games that require only some actual awareness, perhaps a little strategy, and yet prove to be a very welcome "filler" at any games gathering.

The game is nicely packaged in a well-made cardboard box (the kind with a lid). The rules are printed on one of the cards, so the whole thing gives you the feeling of something well- and thoughtfully-made, as if someone really cared about creating a game you could treasure.

Labels: Party Games

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Go Mental

Which of these doesn't belong?

guessing
challenge
knowledge
steal

Actually, if you're playing Go Mental from HL Games, they all belong. So that was a trick question, is what it was.

Go Mental is a trivia game. Not to trivialize it in any way. Because, despite what you think you know about trivia games, this one's unique. And it comes with 1000 questions. That's one thousand. On 500 cards. And that's a lot of cards. But it's what's on the cards, of course, that really counts.

Let me give you a better example. Not a trick question. A real one. From the actual game its veritable self. I begin:

?
Octopus
Squid
Scorpion
Spider

So, which of those things, as they frequently ask on Sesame Street, is not like the others? Did you say Octopus? Nope. Squid is the answer. Why? Because the other three have eight legs or tentacles. And the squid has, how many? That's right - ten.

Harder than you thought. And maybe you learned something, even.

The game is a race, like so many games of the trivia-type. And there's a race-track-like board. With 30 spaces. So you definitely get that race-like feeling - that sense of getting ahead and falling behind.

Then there are the Challenge Cards. Suppose you get a question, and you're not sure what the answer is. Or better yet, you get a question and you're pretty sure that a certain someone does not know the answer. So, you play a Challenge Card. If you're right about the other person, and he doesn't know the answer, he has to move backwards. Four spaces! O, the humanity! On the other hand, if he does in fact know the answer, he gets to move forward four spaces. Ha ha on you!

O, and the Steal Cards. Similar to the Challenge Cards in their card-likeness. But markedly different in drama and overall glee-potential. See, when it's someone else's turn, and you think you know the answer, and this someone else has not yet said anything answer-like, you may slap down one of your Steal cards, shout "Steal," and get to answer the question yourself. Now, when you Steal, you have to get both parts of the question right. That is, you have to not only identify which of the four items doesn't belong, but you also have to explain why. If you are correct on both counts, you get to move four spaces closer to the goal. Wrong? About either part? Guess what?

The Steal and Challenge cards are brilliant innovations in themselves, adding significantly to the excitement of the game, keeping everyone involved regardless of whose turn it is.

In theory, a game should last about a half-hour. The manufacturers even include a one-minute sand timer to use when people need the hint. There are enough pieces (little plastic brains, no less), to keep 6 players going, mentally speaking. You can also play in teams, which makes everything so much more party-like. Best thing about playing in teams, you don't have to take your own ignorance so personally.

Should you be so motivated and wish to include those of the younger persuasion (as young as 8), HL Games offers a supplemental deck of "Fundamental" questions, making it possible for the kids to Go Mental, so to speak, with or without you. O, the fun of it all!

Labels: Party Games, Thinking Games, Word Games

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Thursday, October 11, 2007

Halli Galli

Halli Galli is probably the fastest, easiest to learn, slap your hand down first kind of slap jack-like card game with a bell good enough for a concierge, in the world. And it's got that added, slightly arithmo-perceptuo challenge that makes you have to stop, look and count, and it's that very slight challenge that makes Halli Galli Major, I kid you not, FUN.

The hotel-worthy bell adds yet another je ne c'est qua to the mise en scene, as it were, so to speak. It's loud. Pleasantly, reveberationingly bell-like in tone. But loud. And the bell-dinger is, like the bell, made of metal, and it's small and round, and slapping it can honestly hurt. Especially when it's your hand, and you're a kid, and your father's very manlike hand is on top of yours in a nano-slap. And yet, it's a remarkably kid-worthy, and grown-up party-worthy game. Just, perhaps, not family-worthy, just because of the noise and sheer excitement and pain-potential of it all.

You get a deck of 56 cards. The cards have pictures of fruit on them. You know, fruit, like apples and bananas. Only some cards have like three apples on them and some have just one banana and some have two apples and a strawberry, too. You deal out all the cards. Everybody, at the same time, reveals their top card. If there happen to be, between all the players, exactly five of any fruit (I did say exactly), the first person to ring the bell wins all the face-up cards. And so you go, simulflipping, looking for exactly 5 of exactly the same, flipping again, more and more cards being added to the discard piles with every flip.

From AMIGO Spiel & Freizeit GmbH, and made available in the US by Rio Grande Games, Halli Galli can be played by 2-6 players, the more the crazier. You can play it with kids as young as six and with adults of all phases. It takes maybe 5 minutes to learn and 15 minutes to play a single round. And you will play many rounds.

Labels: Kids Games, Party Games

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Sunday, September 30, 2007

GiftTRAP, virtually yours

If you happened to find yourself in such a position, and you wished to express, materially, in a virtual-sort of way, your personal appreciation for my ongoing existence, you might very well wish to send me a gift of some sort - especially if it didn't cost you anything. The question remains, however, what to get me. I've narrowed it down to: Pottery Classes, a Digital Camcorder, and a dress-up outfit. As an added incentive, if you happen to choose the one I really, really, really wanted most in the world, given only those three choices, you'd get three thumbs-up points and so would I! So, see, I really do want you to guess the one I really want, because then we both gets thumbs-up points. So the game is about giving each other things, things that'd be nice to be able to give each other, virtual, no-cash-value gifts that nonetheless are genuine acts of thoughtfulness.

This is GiftTRAP Live, Virtual GiftTRAP, yes, the Major FUN award-winning GiftTRAP of that very same name. Only, it's online now, and it's all grown-up into a game for online social networks, if you know what I mean.

On the one hand, it's a kind of an eCard, so to speak, a nice virtual thing you can send people. Way more personal than a joke. Just as much fun. On the other hand, it's a great way to start that "what do you really want for your birthday, or holidays" conversation. So it's like Web 2.0, see, interpenetrating virtual and actual space.

Now that you know that I'd actually prefer the dress-up outfit, you know where to shop for me. And you can shop online, even. And it's like one of those Mass Multiplayer Online Games you sometimes read about, like Second Life, only the life on GiftTRAP's stage is kinder and gentler and more fun.

It behooves me to admit to a personal interest in this project. It was a comment I made back to the Nick from GiftTRAP that kicked off this whole project, and I've been lucky enough to kibitz on various iterations of this game as its evolved.

Which is why I get to be the first to blog about it going live.



from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Labels: Party Games, Virtual Toys

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Tuesday, September 25, 2007

In a Pickle

In a Pickle is something you can get easily into, in Gamewright's party-like, family-worthy card game from for 4-6 players, especially. Especially players who like to play with words, and, amongst those, the ones who care more about fun than about winning.

You get cards, many cards, 320 many. Every card has a word on it. Every word is a noun. So you give each player a handful of nouns, and you take 4 nouns, place them in the middle of the table, head to head, in a plus sign, arrows out.

Arrows. Arrows help you remember the direction of the "fit-into" - for that is the key criteria by which one evaluates one's options - something that fits into something else. In the direction of the arrows. So like, if you had CHICKEN on one of the cards and someone overlaps BALLOON upon CHICKEN, one might be reasonably implying that a CHICKEN can fit into a BALLOON. Similar things could be said about underlapping WHISTLE with CHICKEN because a WHISTLE can fit into a CHICKEN, much to the chagrin of the aforementioned.

The fun makes itself especially apparent during "Pickle Rounds" which are initiated as soon as one of the arms of the plus (the array of cards, face up, on the table) reaches 4. After that, players may ONLY play cards on that arm, the last player to successfully add a card winning all the cards in that arm. O, both goodie and glee! All the cards in an arm!!

The success of this game depends a lot on the light-heartedness of the players, in the first place. But if you're a small group of friends, or an actually healthy family, and you enjoy arguing (who doesn't?) you'll probably find it Major FUN

Labels: Family Games, Party Games, Word Games

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Thursday, August 23, 2007

Zobmondo!! "Would You Rather...?"

Zobmondo!! "Would You Rather...?" is the party game for three or more players that asks your basically unanswerable questions - questions like "Would you rather be the circus person that the knife thrower throws knives at, or the one who puts their head in the lion's mouth?" It's the "conundrum-likeness" of the questions that is key to the fun of the game. There really are no correct answers. But they're fun to think about, and talk about, and maybe even argue over.

Zobmondo!! "Would You Rather...?" game comes in several incarnations. There's a version for people ages 12 and up and another for people 16 and up. There's Zobmondo!! You Gotta Be Kidding, a version designed for people 7 and up. And a travel version for 12 and up.

We'll talk about the travel version last, primarily because the mechanics are a little different.

In all of its manifestations, the game centers on your ability to predict which of the two choices most people will select. Since the choices are equally questionable ("would you rather be able to walk on water forever or fly for three hours on three different occasions in your life?"), you're more or less intuiting (all right, guessing) what everyone will decide. The real fun for everyone else is in the discussion (debate? argument?) over which of the two answers make the more sense (given that neither is actually more sensible than the other). There's a board and die that help determine who is closer to winning (the most intuitive/luckiest) of the group, what the category of conundrum will be ("Pain - Fear, Discomfort," "Appearance, Embarrassment," "Ethics - Intellect," or "Random"), or whether the player must select a "Challenge" card. (The 16-plus version has an additional category: "Food - Ingestion.")

Even though the basic premise of the game - arguing over basically absurd choices - is fun enough, the challenge cards add a valuable dimension to the game: variety. Some challenges can be won by any player (e.g., the "Best Reason" card which asks all the players to "compose the most creative, thought provoking, and/or funniest reason for your choice"), and some, like the "Would You Do It" challenge, where you win the challenge only if you do things like "demonstrate a pickle mustache by holding a pickle between your upper lip and nose for one full turn."), won only by the player who selects the card.

Of the three versions, You Gotta Be Kidding, the game for the 7-ups, is clearly the silliest. There are no categories. You get questions like "Would you rather eat a hair sandwich or an earwax omelet?" You have a game board which is actually much easier to use (we did have some minor problems interpreting exactly how to move from track to track on the other versions). And you get this really neat electronic "Red Chili Pepper" thing. It's only used for some of the challenge cards, and works kind of like a hot potato. And changes the pace of the game just about perfectly.

Then there's the metal-tinned travel version that comes without a die, or a board, or playing pawns, and yet is inviting and fun enough to help you bridge significant distances - geographically and socially. The key is the artful use of a write-on, wipe-off board. There are four spaces on the board: Contender, Dead-Ender, Limbo, and the Prediction space. At the beginning of the game, everyone writes their initials in the Contender space. There are category chips. The first Contender picks a chip, then a "Would You Rather...?" card, and the game proceeds as usual - the chip determining which conundrum gets read, the Contender writing her prediction on the board, everyone else having a semi-serious, consensus-reaching discussion. Guess right, you are still a Contender, and you pass the board to the next player. Guess wrong, you are a Dead-Ender. For the rest of the game, when it's your turn, you have to make up a new conundrum. If your prediction is correct, you get to move anyone else into the Limbo zone, which, in itself, becomes a source of further contention. The last Contender wins.

All in all, the game, in each of its various manifestations, invites many happy hours of contemplation, conversation, significant silliness, and Major FUN.

Labels: Family Games, Party Games

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Thursday, July 19, 2007

Snatch

Snatch, based on the Victorian word game of anagrams, is a very portable and nicely executed word game from US Games Systems, Inc..

Anagrams, under any name, is a word game you should know about. It is elegantly simple, with very few rules, and yet can become remarkably absorbing, intense, and challenging for even the best of word game players. The look and feel of the tiles is an important contribution to an overall excellent game, hence, our most wholehearted endorsement of Snatch.

You begin with a pool of letter tiles, all turned face down. On your turn, you turn over any tile. Then it's the next player's turn. As soon as any player sees a word that can be made from the exposed tiles, that player calls the word out and wins the tiles for herself. She places the tiles in front of her, face-up, so that all players can see her word. The game continues, tiles turned over one per turn, so to speak. Now here is the excruciating part - if any player can add some exposed tiles to one of your words so as to change it into a different word, that player can claim your tiles. So: 1) you never really own anything until the very end of the game, and, 2) as the game progresses, there are more and more snatch-worthy words to contemplate. Especially those long words.

So Snatch, even though it is not in itself a new game, is clearly Major FUN. It is reasonably priced, attractive, well-executed, the plastic tiles are smooth to the touch and slide easily on tablecloth or tabletop as you rearrange them (which you do often) - all the things you want in a good game. Though it can be played by as many players as are interested, we've found that it's best in a smallish group (2-4) of people who are equally adept, word-wise, and equally competitive, reaction-time-wise.

Labels: Party Games, Thinking Games, Word Games

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Wednesday, July 18, 2007

What's Yours Like?

Today's conceptual gift is a remarkably simple, and deeply fun party game from Patch Products called "What's Yours Like?".

Pick a card. The card has a word on it. Show the card to everyone except the person guessing, who asks: "what's yours like." Take turns answering the question, being sure to be accurate, and subtle. Too clear a clue, and it will be guessed immediately. Too subtle, and, well, it's just not fair.

For example, suppose the card reads "washing machine." Legitimate answers to such an innocuous "what's yours like" question might be: "mine is white," "mine has a lot of knobs," "mine is noisy," etc. However, given the age and nature of the people playing, the answers could just as easily become rife with double meaning, and I mean rife, like, for example: "mine makes my underwear wet."

For us, that was really the charm of the game - how much of it was really up to us - to our collective cleverness and naughty nuanciness. Which means that the game will be different, depending on who's playing with whom. Different when playing with family than when playing with friends, different with teen-agers than with seniors. Which makes the game even that much more successful, and fascinating, and Major FUN-worthy.

There are 188 two-sided cards "guess word" cards. One side is recommended for older players because they might include things that kids don't have (in-laws, ulcers, jobs). There are two wipe-off clue boards with markers. The player in the "Hot Seat" uses one, writing down each clue as it is given (the fewer clues, the better the score). There are 95 Challenge cards. These cards allow the Hot Seated player to share the Hot Seat, as it were. That's when the other clue-writing board comes into play. Now the two players with the Hot Seats compete with each other, the first to guess the word correctly gets to take two points (points are bad) off her score.

What's Yours Like is a game for 4 or more players. With 4 players, it takes maybe 15 minutes for a round. Figure 3 rounds per game. The art of giving just the right response, of being clever, yet accurate, actually outweighs the accomplishment of guessing what was on the card. It's a game that will make you laugh, a lot, even without keeping score. Like I said, it's Major FUN.

Labels: Family Games, Party Games, Top for 2007

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Sunday, May 27, 2007

Twisted Pairs

Twisted Pairs is a party game, indeed it is. You need at least 4 players. But it is clearly of the more-the-merrier type.

No, it's not charades. I can see why you'd think it's like charades - you're trying to get people to guess something that you know (hopefully). And you're performing, more or less. Except it's not acting. It's spelling. I mean, what you're doing is spelling out a word or several words. Not with words, naturally. But with your bodies. Did I say "bodies"? As in more than one body? Indeed I did. As in two bodies. So, to make, for example, the letter "H," you and your partner might be standing facing each other, holding your arms down at your sides, but bending your elbows and holding hands, like the cross-bar of the "H" - know what I mean?

Which, of course, is the big question for everyone else - that is, do they know what letter you mean. Because as soon as someone does know that letter, or thinks she knows that letter, or thinks she wants everyone else to think she knows that letter, she simply says something like "got it." And then the two letter-makers go on to make the next letter. Got it? And on and on until someone guesses correctly, getting, so to speak, the point. As for those who didn't "get it," well, they're still very much in the game, guessing away at the next and the next letters, hoping to fill in the blanks, in retrospect. And when someone correctly yells out the entire phrase, then there's the race to be first to shout out the bonus answer and get a richly deserved for bonus point. And so can the spellers.

No, of course not, it's definitely not Twister, though you and your partner are twisting around each other's bodies in some bizarre, Twister-like ways. And it clearly has nothing to do with Trivial Pursuit either, unless the spinner happens to land on the Trivia Question. We'll talk about that later. But there's no Pursuit going on. Unless you count the pursuit of laughterness, which is just about what this game is all about.

The stuff of the game includes a box of cards. There are two sets of cards - one for questions relating to Pre-1990, the other, Post- (a thoughtful distinction for the younger player, as well as for those with short attention spans). Each card contains one of 5 different categories, 4 of which result in a word or phrase that the Spellers attempt to convey, bodily, letter-by-letter. The categories ("famous character," "famous quote," "song title," "song lyric") help the rest of the party figure out what the spellers are spelling. The fifth category is the Trivia Question. Here, the spellers are given only the question, and must rely on their collective wit to spell out the correct answer (written on the back of the card). And, should their wit be not well informed, well, at least it was fun watching them try.

All of which to say there are many levels of mental and physical calisthenics, combined with ongoingly merry mayhem resulting in an experience that is clearly Major FUN. Everyone involved, everyone thinking hard, everyone challenged at almost every level, and, surprisingly often, everyone laughing. Do you still need to know why we recommend this game with such enthusiasm? As the designers so pithily inquire: "do we have to spell it out for you?"

Labels: Party Games, Top for 2007

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Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Smart Ass

Smart Ass is a guessing game. Except you don't want to guess until you're more or less absolutely sure. Because you only get one per round.

There's a board. There are pieces. There are dice (two, nice, big dice). And there are question cards - 220 of them to be exact. Two-sided cards. So that's 440 questions. Which is more than enough for many hours of significant play.

It's the question cards that are most interesting. Because each card is a graduated list of hints - the first being the most general, the last, the most specific. Generally, by the time you hear the last hint, you pretty much know the answer. It's a little like a game of 20 questions, only it's 10 answers.

So that makes it a very different kind of guessing game. Since everybody can guess, it makes it also an unusually involving, and clearly Major FUN kind of guessing game - especially for teens.

If you guess correctly, you get to roll the numbered die and move that many spaces around the track. So, the sting of your victory is somewhat mollified by the balm of blind luck. There are three special spaces on the board, called, respectively (but definitely not respectfully) "Dumb Ass," "Hard Ass," and "Kick Ass." If you land on "Dumb Ass" you can't guess the next round. "Hard Ass" you get a bonus question. "Kick Ass" you have to move back three places.

All in all, there's just enough luck to keep the game open for everyone, just enough challenge to keep the game interesting, and just enough mayhem to keep the game fun.

Labels: Party Games

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Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Stack revisited

I am certain you recall that Stack received a Major Fun Award a little over 4 years ago. In fact, it was a recipient of several awards: the Party Games award, the Thinking Games award, the much-touted Keeper award, and even, oddly enough, it was found most Senior-Worthy. And you probably even recall why.

I, on the other hand, have been exploring the game in greater depth, especially recently as I work more and more with various groups of seniors hereabouts. And what I have been exploring, actually, is the, shall we say, "Super Stack" set - two different sets of the Stack game (the deluxe, jumbo, of course), each set having different color dice, thereby enabling me to play a game with 8 people.

The large dice that come with the deluxe version prove to be especially comforting for senior eyes and hands. Easy to read, even at a distance, enjoyable to hold because of their greater heft, and easier to stack because of their larger size. Having enough for eight people makes the game ideal for building a sense of community and friendship. Because the group is larger, people don't can play at a safe distance from each other (psychologically safe), but because they're all sharing the same set of dice, they feel connected. If we need to, we can easily divide into smaller, more intimate groups. But having all those dice means that each player has twice as many options to consider. On the one hand, it makes the beginning of the game that much easier and more inviting. On the other, it makes the endgame that much more dramatic. Stacks get built, options constantly get fewer and fewer, the need to play strategically gets more and more vivid.

Stack, even with only 4 colors, has never disappointed us as a game for almost all ages. But having twice as many dice turns out to be more than twice as flexible, twice as interesting, for at least twice as many people.

Labels: Family Games, Keeper, Party Games, Senior-Worthy, Thinking Games

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Friday, April 06, 2007

Cineplexity

What's the name of that movie? The one with a Native American, or maybe a Hawaiian. By a river, I think, or a lake or a stream of some sort? Oh, you know what I mean. Yeah, that's it, Blue Crush. Wait, there's another movie, also with a river or lake or stream, and there was a wheelchair, I think, or was it a crutch, no, a cane. Wait, could that be Cane River?

Is part or all of this conversation at all familiar? Have you now or ever engaged someone in a similar movie-related dialogue? Well, then, Cineplexity is, without doubt, the very game you should be playing at this very moment, verily.

We were actually amazed at how fun this game turned out to be. Sure, it reminded us of the oft-touted, trend-setting, Major FUN-award-winning, Out of the Box Publishing easy-to-learn party game Apples to Apples. As well it might, considering that it is published by the aforementioned themselves. But, you see, it looks so Apples-to-Apples-like with its many cards and simple rules and calling out for 4 to 10 players and stuff, that you'd assume it's pretty much another of those many Apples to Apples variants, only about movies. But you'd be wrong. It's a different game. Completely. Sure, there's a judge (cleverly called the "director"). And the Director doesn't actually play, because s/he has to do the, um, judging. But that's it, Apples-to-Apples-similarity-wise.


In Apples to Apples everything is relative, the actual degree of relativity determined by the judge. In Cineplexity, you have to come up with a "real" answer - a verifiable, actual movie including, beyond doubt, the actual scene or props, or belonging to the specified genre, whose characters have the certifiable characteristics depicted by two, or perhaps three, of 504 the randomly drawn Cineplexity cards. And, amazingly, there seems always to be at least one movie that usually at least one person knows that matches precisely.

Oh, the intensity. And oh, oh, the brain-wracking. And, ah hah hah, the laughter.

Cineplexity. Surprisingly different. Not so surprisingly fun.

Labels: Party Games, Top for 2007

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Balanko

Balanko is such a straightforward invitation to fun that you almost don't need to read the rules. There's a ball on a string. There's another ball that rides a curved track. There are pits of various score values - the center and widest pit being, naturally, both the easiest to get the ball into and of the lowest value. There are sliding scorekeepers to keep track of your achievements.

One player releases the rolling ball. The other player releases the swinging ball, hoping that the swinging ball will hit the rolling ball into a high scoring pit. The only other thing you might want to know, suggested-rule-wise, is that the ball-roller, sitting on the opposite side of the game, can try to catch the ball-swinger's, uh, ball. Which is actually a good idea, given that if she doesn't catch the swinging ball, and the rolling ball is still rolling, her opponent can try to catch it and again take yet another swing.

If nothing else happens, sooner or later the swinging ball is going to hit the rolling ball anyway. On the other hand, it could make the rolling ball go into either the ball-swinger's or the ball-roller's pit. So, if one player doesn't catch it, the other player might consider it strategically sound to grab for the swinging ball as soon as it's in range.

Setting it up is a bit less straightforward, but the instructions are clear, the steps few, and it is easy enough to do (once you rid yourself of certain expectations about how it "should" go together) that you won't mind having to take it apart and put it back together. Though you'll probably want to keep it assembled and ready to play with for-practically-ever.

We've given Balanko the coveted "Major Fun Family Game Award" because it is the kind of game that will be as much fun for kids as it will be for adults and probably even more fun for kids and adults together. For similar reasons, it's also getting a Party Games award, even though only two people can play it at a time. And, if that's not enough to interest you, you should know that it is being seriously considered a Keeper.

Labels: Dexterity, Family Games, Keeper, Kids Games, Party Games

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Thursday, April 05, 2007

Saboteur

Saboteur is a fun, party-worthy game - especially if you learn it from someone who has played it before. And even more especially if you're playing with 5-10 people (though you can play it with as few as 3).

The instructions, though well-written and not overly complex, require more patience than most Major Fun games - the path cards and the cards that blow up paths and the role cards and the goal cards and the gold cards and the action cards with tools and cards that break tools and, well, if you try to figure out what each card does before you start playing the game, you'll probably lose patience before you discover the sheer fun of it all.

So here's the gist. There are miners and there are saboteurs, maybe. Depending on how many people are playing and what role cards are drawn. Nobody knows for sure until the end of the game who's what. The miners are trying to build a path to the gold card. The saboteurs are trying to keep the miners from succeeding. Whoever succeeds, miners or saboteurs, get to share the wealth.

There are 110 cards - well-made, nicely illustrated. Players get 4-6 cards, depending on how many are playing. The three goal cards are placed, face down, on one end of the board. Only one of those cards has the big gold nugget. You won't know which unless you draw a card that allows you to sneak a peek. At the other end of the table, exactly seven card-widths away, is the start card. Players take turns playing path cards, face up, so that a path is made from the start card, ultimately, hopefully, to the gold card. There are cards that can blow up path cards - forcing the miners to create a different path. There are cards that can keep players from playing. Now, if you're a Saboteur, sooner or later you're going to want to blow something up, or play one of those bad cards on somebody or play a path card that creates a dead end. But if you do this too soon, tipping your hand, as it were, then the miners (a.k.a. "dwarves") will gang up on you. So there's this exciting tension that builds up, and sense of secrecy, and alliances, and, well, it gets more and more fun, until everyone knows who's who and what's where. And by then, the game's over.

It doesn't take long to play (10, maybe 20 minutes for a round). You're supposed to play three rounds. Which you probably will. Because, like I said, it's fun, it's a game you can play with as many as 10 people.

Labels: Party Games

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Monday, January 29, 2007

PDQ - a game for all reasons

PDQ is a sweet little word game - easy to learn, quick (Pretty Darn Quick) as a matter of fact - a game you can play by yourself or with maybe one, or several or even many other people?

You get a deck of 78 letter cards - nice looking, good stock, big, easy-to-read letter cards. You deal out three at a time, face-up. And then you see who can make a word first, or, in case of a tie, who can come up with a longer word. TLP, for example. Tulip. Sure. Or perhaps Platitude. Platitude. Of course. Longer than Tulip. (Did I mention that you can use the letters backwards or forwards?) (Did I also mention that you can use any number of letters before, between or after the three letters that you draw?) (And, of course, the letters have to be in the same order?)

Designed by Jay Thompson to be played by kids as well as adults (kids use just two cards at a time, word game experts can try playing with four), PDQ is pretty darn close to everything you would want in a word game - 5-30 minutes of engaging, challenging, and frequently laugh-producing fun.

Labels: Family Games, Kids Games, Party Games, Thinking Games, Top for 2007, Word Games

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Tuesday, January 23, 2007

ShakeDown

Shakedown is a dexterity game of clearly Major FUN proportions. Basically, you're balancing playing-like cards on top of a narrow platform, adding new cards with every turn. But that's only basically.

Let's start at the bottom. The bottom of the "tower" upon which the cards are balanced. The same bottom where all the cards are stored, and from which all the cards are drawn during play. Let's also take a moment to look at the tower itself, how it twists, as if to make it even more challenging to figure out exactly where the actual center of gravity might be. A lovely thing, actually. Colorful. Self-storing enough that you could throw the box away and take the game with you to every party and family gathering within which you find yourself and others. Note, further, that the cards, which are drawn one at a time from the base of the tower, are drawn from the base of the tower. The base. Whereupon the tower stands. Imagine therefore the increasingly precarious conundrum thereby imposed every time you attempt to extricate a card from the aforementioned - having to perhaps lift the tower upon whose top all those other cards are so cunningly balanced so that you can get your card and take your turn.

Let's continue to the deck itself. Some cards have different values. Other cards ask you to perform acts of evermore significant challenge, like "play cards with non-dominant hand" or "hold tower and spin around" or perhaps "previous player - blow once from 5 feet." And now, at last, to the top, considerably smaller than the base, and yet whereupon the cards are to be placed (two corners of each card not touching any other card).

All in all, an elegant, almost self-explanatory, somewhat Jenga-like game, requiring steady-hands, a willingness to fail, and just enough luck to keep you from taking it seriously.

Labels: Dexterity, Party Games, Top for 2007

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Monday, January 22, 2007

Whoonu

Whoonu? Good game. Good question. As in "who knew." Or, "who knew, out of a choice between goldfish, sand castles, climbing trees and fried chicken, you'd like climbing trees the best. Sure, sure, those people who don't know you from Adam wouldn't know such a thing. But even me, your best friend?"

You get 300 cards (a significant amount, but one can't help wonder if there are even more cards waiting to be expanded thereunto), six stacks of six chips, each stack worth one more point, and a small envelope in case you want to be extra certain that no one can see who thought what about you. So, on this turn, you're the one. Everybody else gets four cards. And sure, given that there are only four out of 300 cards, it's just as likely that there'll be something or nothing that you'll really like amongst the four. You remove the cards from the envelope of secrecy, contemplate them for a bit, and then place them, face-up on the table, in order of what you deem to be least to most favorite. Players then claim their cards, and you reward them with the corresponding chip - the highest scoring chip going to your favorite.

The game is just short enough to keep it light, just long enough to keep it involving. The game mechanic of the chips (when the chips are all used up, the round is over) makes the game that much easier to play.

And that's pretty much that. Simple, elegant, just enough luck to keep you from taking anything seriously, just enough to make you want to know as much about everybody as you can. For sure, you'll be learning a lot about each other. For also sure, you'll be laughing a lot, surprised a lot, feeling somehow closer to each other, having had just enough fun so that you don't really care who actually won - because just getting to play Whoonu together is already very much like winning.

Thanks to Kevin and delightful daughter Kelsey Eikenberry for introducing me to Whoonu. Feel free to thank me for introducing it to you.

Labels: Family Games, Party Games

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Acronymble

Acronymble is most definitely a party game, and most assuredly a game that will make you laugh. Hence, most probably, Major Fun.

MAJOR. As in More Active Jollies Organized Ridiculously, or, perhaps Mighty Attractive Jauntiness Of Ribaldry, or even Mellifluent Acronym Judging Oscillates Randomly.

Players compete (more or less) to create phrases or sentences (you get an additional point of your acronym is a sentence) from a collection of randomly drawn tiles. The number of tiles is determined by the draw of a card from the Length Deck. And what you have to do with them is determined by the draw of a card from the Composition deck. There are four different kinds of cards in the Composition deck: one tells you to also use a nonsense word, another to use only words that start with the same letter, and another to select any word starting with the chosen letter, and make an acronym from it. And the fourth kind of card tells you to do what you would have done anyway without the card.

Everyone but one player (the master of ceremonies for that round, a.k.a. the "NYMWIT") votes for a favorite. Votes are tallied. Players move the corresponding number of spaces on the board, et, obviously, cetera.

How long you have to think is determined by the throw of a die, which tells you how much time to set on a tension-inducingly noisesome kitchen-type timer.
The rules are written with enough humor and playfulness to keep people from taking the rules too seriously - there are constant invitations to make up your own rules, suggestions like "If a player doesn't finish in time, don't disqualify them (maybe drum your fingers or whistle a bit)." Whistle and drum we did. Laugh a lot we also did. Major FUN was most definitely had.

Labels: Party Games, Word Games

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Thursday, December 07, 2006

Quelf

Quelf is a silly game. For those of us who are mature enough to appreciate silliness as an art form, it is both a bench- and a watermark of wackiness.

If you find yourself unwilling to, for example, "suck your thumb in silence and start rolling the dice. When you roll a '3,' shout, 'Get off my land!' in your best chipmunk voice," mayhap Quelf is not exactly your kind of game.

There are five decks of cards, each a different color. There's a board. Each space on the board is a different color. Hence, each turn you must draw from one of the decks. Each turn. The decks? There's "Showbiz" (e.g. "You are now a professor of archeology with a lisp. Give us a dissertation on archaeological discoveries in your backyard during the last 10 years."), and Quizzle, (for another example, "How many fingers does a one-armed and thumbless woman have?), Scatterbrainz (everybody takes turns, trying, without repeating, to add to a list of answers for such questions as "Ways to get your leg out of a spring-loaded, steel bear trap."), Stuntz (see "suck your thumb," above), and the fortuitously Curses-like deck of "Roolz" ("For the remainder of the game, every sentence that you speak must end with the words 'Hear me, for I have spoken.' If you forget, pay the penalty.").

Then, on every card, there's also a "Quelf Effect" - additional rules, adding clarity sometimes, creating chaos others.

Quelf is the kind of game you'll want to devote most of the evening to. Not that it's complex or profound, but rather because the consequences of all those different decks become more apparent, and more hilarious as the game unfolds. It may take a while to manifest themselves. It takes a few rounds before you can truly grasp the implications of the various decks and the exacerbating joys of their Quelf Effects, but by that time you'll probably be laughing too much to notice.

Quelf is a masterpiece of silliness. Hence, Major FUN.

Labels: Party Games, Top for 2006

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Monday, November 06, 2006

In10sity

In10sity, you see, is Trivia-like in it's nature, but a kinder, gentler, and significantly Major Fun-worthy Trivia game.

In10sity is called that way, because all of the 700 trivia-like questions can be answered with a number, a relatively small number, between 1, and don't you see, 10. Which makes all the difference between the Trivia games of known Triviality, and this cleverly, but perhaps misleadingly Trivia-like game of In10sity. If it's numbers, you can just guess. And if you're right, it doesn't necessarily mean that you knew anything at all about the question in question - not as necessarily as it means that it could have been just dumb luck. Or perhaps some uncanny sensitivity, some ability to empathize to the point of... Nah. A lot of times, it's luck. I mean, how many Danny DiVito's do you think it would take to reach the top of a bamboo plant?

Funny, impossible, sometimes requiring actual knowledge, In10sity is party-worthy Trivia game, designed specifically for people who are more interested in testing their collective capacity for luck and laughter, than in demonstrating superior knowledge.

Everything included in the game, from the board to the "answer dials" and the three different dice - giving variable scoring potential each turn. Well thought-out, well-produced, worth playing again and more than likely again.

Labels: Party Games

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Monday, September 18, 2006

GiftTRAP - a kinder kind of party game

GiftTRAP is a party game about giving each other gifts. The better you are at giving people the things they really want, the better you do at the game.

How do you like that for a party game premise? giving each other presents.

Well, we loved it!

What fun to think about what other people might want for a present! What a fun thing to think about for a change! What a fun way to play with other people - giving presents to the very people you're trying to beat, winning because you're good at guessing what other people might want!

OK, so they're not, like, real presents. They're only photos. But in the world of GiftTRAP, they're real enough. So real enough that you actually get excited when people give you the gifts you really want. Really excited. Even though they get more points than you do. And you're just as excited when you give people the gifts they most really wanted. Because they get excited. And, just maybe because you get more points than they do.

GiftTRAP is masterfully packaged. The board, for example, is folded into a U-shape that fits everso well into the GiftTRAP box (well, cube, actually). Since each player has to use a lot of different pieces (2 scoring markers, 9 gift tokens, and 4 choice tokens), all of the player's chosen color; the pieces come in their own individual, appropriately colored organza drawstring bags. Then there are the many decks of cards - 640 of them. Just so you never run out of something new to give each other.

But it's the game itself that deserves the most attention, and praise. Praise, because it's probably the first and only party game in which empathy is a strategically valuable commodity, empathy and intuition, sensitivity and appreciation, even.

GiftTRAP is a new kind of party game. A kinder kind. A Major FUN kind.

Labels: Party Games, Top for 2006

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Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Luck of the Draw

Luck of the Draw is described as "a game for the artistically challenged." And I am happy to tell you that this turns out to be a remarkably accurate description of the very people who will have the most fun playing it: the people who don't like games that make them draw.

Which is exactly what Luck of the Draw does. It makes you draw. Things like: a monkey or a space shuttle or a bad hair day; a piranha, a used car or a dream date (there are three things to draw on each card, see, and the roll of the die tells you which one).

But the part of the game that makes the drawing actually fun and the fun actually Major, comes from another deck of cards, called "categories." Categories like: "most over the top," "most dramatic," "stands out like a sore thumb."

For it turns out that these cards, these "category" cards, serve as the criteria by which the drawings are judged, don't you know. So, pretty much despite my assiduous efforts at a 45-second 3-D rendering of the Eiffel Tower in perspective with enticing hints of a chiaroscoro-like Parisian dawn, if the category turns out to be "Best Example of Minimalism," I have no myopic critics to rail against, and nothing to show for my outstanding efforts but unrequited artistic angst. Whilst you, who only managed to draw a large, narrow, and somewhat crooked "A," bask in the applause of your peers.

And for those players who have professional artistic aspirations, Luck of the Draw is a preternaturally poignant experience, capturing, with unavoidable clarity, the famously fickle fortunes of those who stake their livelihood on the currentmost definitions of "good art."

Labels: Family Games, Party Games, Senior-Worthy, Top for 2006

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Friday, July 21, 2006

Combo King

Combo King is, from time to time, a game that makes you laugh. Sadly, what you are laughing at is someone else's failure.

A failure of very little significance in the scheme of things, mind you. Which, I believe, is precisely what makes this game as fun as it is.

You have these dice. A significant number, actually. Eight, to be precise. And you have these cards. And on these cards are somewhat Yahtzee-like tasks. A remarkable array of significantly different Yahtzee-like tasks. Like "Use three dice and up to three rolls to get a multiple of five." And if you succeed in this task as described on a card that was in your hand and is now on the table, you get to get rid of the card, and you get chips. You get more chips, wouldn't you know, depending on the odds, you see, against your success. The first player who is out of cards wins.

Amazing how different some of the cards are from each other, and how compelling it is to try to figure out the odds. Similarly intriguing is the fact that the chips you win can be used, don't you see, to purchase things like, say, another roll, or perhaps get another entire turn, or make one of your opponents pickup another card or trade a card with you or, well, you see, here you get to experience, in all its fullness, the "screw" if you'll excuse the expression, "you effect." Again, the oppressed oppress the oppress giving themselves totally over to luck and vindication. It's great fun.

Labels: Family Games, Party Games, Senior-Worthy

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Thursday, July 13, 2006

You Must Be an Idiot

You Must Be a Idiot. Not that I mean to demean you in any way by saying "You Must Be An Idiot." Please, don't take me seriously. It's a game, see. And the only reason I think you might be an idiot is because you picked a card from a deck of cards, and in that very deck are cards that tell you that you are in fact, for this round only, well, not exactly an Idiot in any perjurious sense of idiot-like, but rather that you are actually obliged to be wrong.

"You Must Be An Idiot" is the answer to the question: "What would happen if you mixed a game like To Tell the Truth with a game like Trivia?" The other answer is: "you'll probably laugh a lot."

True to trivia games, one player reads a question, the others write down, and then read their answers, and it is clearly pointworthy to have the correct answer. Two pointworthies, to be exact. Unless you're the idiot. After the right answers are scored, the game crosses into the To tell the Truth category. Any one of those wrong answers might have been wrong on purpose. On purpose? Precisely what you'd expect from an idiot. Of course, no one, other than the Idiot (or Idiots), knows if any of the wrong questions are purposefully wrong or just plain uninformed wrong. And so, while to identify the Idiot may be two-pointworthy, being the undiscovered Idiot is three!

A must for anyone either in or seriously considering public office.

Labels: Party Games

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Knowbody Knows

Knowbody Knows, for example, exactly how many hours Tom Hanks sleeps in a week. Probably not even Mr. Hanks knows that. So, OK, so you don't know. You can still guess.

Now, can you also guess what everybody else is going to guess? Can you guess if your guess will be, heaven forfend, highest or lowest? Actually, you can. Because, see, it's only a guess, and, as the designers of the game are so ready to remind us, Knowbody, actually, Knows.

Everybody gets a different pad of paper - each pad color-coordinated with the player's peg-like playing piece. Each sheet of each pad perforated to easily be torn into slips. Why do I go to such great lengths to describe a score pad? Because it's a devilishly clever way to make the game work as well as it does. See, that way, all you have to do is write down your guess (did I tell you that all the questions can be answered with numbers?) so all the answers are on different slips of paper, that can be sorted from highest to lowest, and you take off the highest and lowest and everybody can tell, at a glance, whose guesses are in the middle (and hence scoreworthy).

And not a negilgible bit of deviltry is added by the design of the question cards them very selves. Each question is framed with a blank, like: "How much would ____ pay for a pill that: A) Improves Memory Two-fold, B) Doubles the Power of Sleep, C) Eliminates Unwanted Hair Forever, D) You Pick." When it's your turn to read the question, you fill in the blank with the name (did I tell you about the list of 12 names, the one everyone makes at the beginning of the game, using their own names if they want, filling in the extra blanks with any name they think would be fun thinking about?) that is selected by the roll of a 12-sided die. This keeps the questions interesting and potentially open-ended. It also made us comment, separately and collectively, when discussing a particular answer and the significance thereof, "It really doesn't matter. Knowbody Knows."

We played. We laughed. We experienced the kind of fun the Major Fun award was designed to be awarded for.

Labels: Party Games, Senior-Worthy, Top for 2006

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Wednesday, June 28, 2006

Cluzzle

Cluzzle is a challenging guessing game that is as intriguing as it is light-hearted. The designer calls it "Twenty Questions with Clay." And, no, it's not Cranium. It's not Sculptionary either. It's Cluzzle. And it uses clay (well, something Play Doh-like in its clayishness). But it is unlike any other clay-using game you've ever played.

Take for example, this, as depicted on the manufacturer's Claytopia page of examples, brown clay-like shape resting appropriately in its section of the Cluzzle game board. What, you might wonder, is it:

* Is this a game? No.
* Would you find it in a house? No.
* Is it bigger than a microwave? Yes.
* Is it larger than a house? Yes.
* Would this thing normally be found in cities? Yes.
* Does it have more than one word in it? Yes.
* Are the little rectangle things mobile? Yes.

Now, imagine that you've only 4 questions that you can ask per round. Imagine further that everybody else also has 4 questions. Which means that it is actually possible for 20 questions (see above) to be asked in a single, 2-minute round, depending on how well-coordinated and fast-thinking the askers. (Note how much it benefits players to cooperate during the question rounds, even though each player is actually competing against the rest).

Oh, and if you're the Cluzzle-maker, it is at least fascinating to know that you get more points the longer it takes for your Cluzzle to be guessed, but you only score if your Cluzzle is guessed before the end of the game. Hmmm. The impliclations. You want your Cluzzle to be self-evident. But not too self-evident. The subtlety of it all.

A game of Cluzzle can take 3-6 puzzle-prone players maybe 20 minutes. In return, each of the three rounds of the game offers players thoroughly involving and enjoyable puzzles, round after round after round. We played. We laughed. We found it Major FUN.

Labels: Party Games

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Monday, May 22, 2006

Bonkers

"Bonkers," you ask? Yes, say I, Bonkers, the game. A word game, actually. Not, as you might think from all that trivia-sized box of little cards, a trivia game. But a word game, in deed. And a funny one, too.

First, let's look at a card. Any card will do. This one has the word "HOUSE" on the top. Below that are four answers, marked "A", "B", "C", etc. The answers here are, no, wait. I'll tell you in a minute. First you tell me. Four words. Each beginning with HOUSE. I'll get back to explaining the card in a minute.

Then there's a racetrack board. There are also 4 spots on the board, marked A, B, C, and so forth. Now, somebody, or some team, gets together and decides how likely it is that the otherbody or team will guess which. And then distribute playing chips on the 4 spots, appropriately - most chips on the word that the person/team thinks the other/s will least likely say.

Oh. The words on the HOUSE card? Housefly, for example.

There are different kinds of question cards. Some ask you to list 4 things, like countries, beginning with a letter, like H, or maybe two letters, like ME. Some ask you for words that rhymewith something. Some for words that end or start with other words (as in the above example of the HOUSE card.)

Did you figure out the HOUSE word? Housewarming? Which one did you think was the hardest to guess? Housebroken? I dunno. Housewife, maybe.

When you're the person or team reading the question, you've got to listen very, very hard. Because answers come as fast as the other person/team can think of them, and if you say that they didn't say what they said they said, well, things can border on the less-light-hearted. This requires the maturity, minimally, of a 12-year old.

But a party game it is. And it's not trivia. And it's Major FUN.

Labels: Party Games, Senior-Worthy, Word Games

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Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Wits & Wagers

Wits & Wagers combines trivia with betting to create a unique party game - one that can involve anywhere from 3 to 21 players in an evening or half-hour worth of relatively painless trivia questions and sometimes near-painful strategizing.

The trivia questions are all answered with numbers. e.g.: "How many times to the Beatles sing the word 'Yeah' in the song She Loves You?" and "According to July 2004 estimates, how many people live in the U.S.?" Players record their answers on write-on, wipe-off cards, with write-on, wipe-off markers (supplied). What makes this all somewhat kinder and gentler is that the likelihood of anyone knowing the actual answer is very low. So, it's more like a guessing game - anything from educated to wild will do. Which makes the whole game far more inviting and replete with jollitude than most exercises in trivia.

Then there's the betting. Answers are arranged numerically on the heavy duty vinyl betting mat (probably one of the thickest and most durable ever put into a game). The median answer has the lowest pay off because it is the most likely answer to be correct. Higher and lower answers have increasingly higher pay offs since they are riskier bets. Players bet their chips on which guess is the closest, without going over (what one might be tempted to call the "Price is Right" rule). Since you don't have to bet on your own guess, the betting round is like an exercise in second guessing, only with more information. Like what each player is willing to bet on which answer - especially since you can bet on two different answers. As your opinion tends to undergo massive changes once you see what all of your friends think, winning Wits & Wagers becomes less a demonstration of what you know than of how well you know the people you're playing with!

Designed by Dominic Crapuchettes, Wits & Wagers is a rare accomplishment - combining two ordinarily very different game concepts into something unique and uniquely playworthy.

Labels: Keeper, Party Games, Top for 2006

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Thursday, January 26, 2006

Shout About Movies

Shout About Movies 4 may not be the catchiest title in the world. But, if I know you, it'll probably be the highlight of you next party.

Now, before you get carried away to Amazon.com or your local retail outlet, let me help set an expectation or two. First, it's a consumable game. You can play it three times with the same group of people. And that's it. If you want to play it again, you're going to need a whole new group of people, none of whom has played it before. And that leaves you out. Unless you haven't played Shout About Movies 3, or Shout about Music or Shout About TV. And are willing to spend at least another $20.

In fact, the whole Shout About series is like that. Consumable. Which, in a way, is really quite innovational. In another way, the idea of a consumable game violates a very basic property of every other game we ever played. And I just don't like it one bit.

Except, it's really fun. It really works. The sheer entertainment of it all. The way the remote control is used and passed between teams. The score keeping. The variety. The timing and pace. It can keep a whole party-ful of people engaged for eight entire rounds per each of three games. With some snacks in between, you've got a whole evening's worth of significant and ultimately funny fun for everyone. Each round is different. Oh, it still deals with people's knowledge of movies or music or TV, depending on which of the series you've purchased, all right. But it's a different challenge. And each challenge gets people together, thinking hard, together, team vs. team, in intense, multi-media, animated, competition about knowing really trivial things.

Unless you happen not to know anything at all about, say, music of the 90s. Which explains why the games tend to be even more fun as the crowd gets larger. I and my wife, for example, and a goodly collection fellow Tasters, each of whom was at least 20 years newer to the world than we, tried one of the Music games. While everyone else was clearly having fun, loving the challenge of it, genuinely, but playfully engaged in trying to remember things first, we found ourselves wandering off to the refrigerator and getting snacks ready.

So there you have it. A consumable game, for goodness sake. Major FUN. By a unanimous decision.

Labels: Party Games

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Monday, January 09, 2006

Such&Such

Such&Such is a guessing game in which every question has two answers. As in: "In the Old Testament, Israel is referred to as the land of...." Two which you would answer Milk&Honey. Obviously. Or "Stars of Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf." Hmmm. Elizabeth, obviously, Taylor, and Richard, of course, Burton. Or "Passive & active car passenger restraints." Would that be seat belts and air bags? Why most definitely it would.

You need two teams, so you'll want at least 4 people. But the more, potentially, the merrier. When it's your team's turn, you select one of the 250, double-sided cards, turn the timer over, and go through each of the five different clues while your team frantically attempts to answer each with the appropriate Such&Such.

Now, given all this pressure, it's only natural that your team might want to pass on one clue, or several, in the hopes of getting back to them with some new infusion of knowledge before the timer runs out. Whatever they don't get back to is given to the other team to guess.

One of our favorite parts of the game came from a wonderfully silly piece of rule-making. The manufacturers suggest that the team that is keeping time should "make a joyful noise" when the timer runs out. Well, we took it seriously, and some of our joyful noises resulted in significantly mirthful mayhem.

Everything works well in this game: the questions, for the most part, are entertaining and challenging as well as often surprising and subtle. The scoring device (write-on/wipe-off board and 5 pawns to indicate which questions are passed over) both effective and adequate. And the timer is 40 seconds when turned this way and that.

Not to mention the coupon for free pizza.

Labels: Party Games

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Monday, October 31, 2005

Plext

Plext is a Boggle-ish word game that is unique and, consequently, uniquely fun. Designed by Chris Handy, who also designed the Major FUN Award-winning game "Handy," Plext features a set of 14 letter dice. The dice are rolled and then placed in a tray so they line up end-to-end. Players then compete to list the FEWEST ("fewest" is definitely a new idea for word games) words that contain ALL 14 letters, in the order in which those letters appear.

We had a little trouble initially understanding the full implication of FEWEST and "in order." So, here's the deal. It doesn't matter how many letters you add. All you have to do is use up all of the existing letters, in the order that they're, um, in, and in as few words as possible. Let's say that your letter array is: PFGBWOSMYHPCVD. A first word like "preferring" would use the P, F and G. For the next word, you try "worship" to get rid of the W, O, and S. That's two words and six letters. For your third word, you reach the veritable apogee of verbal verisimilitude and write "mythopoetic." Mythopoetic? Yes, indeed. In the dictionary and everything. Swallowing M, Y, H, P, and C! All that's left is a mere V and D. "Void" will work perfectly. As would "Valid" or even "Envisioned." So in four words, you use up all 14 letters.

We were surprised at how absorbing and fun, and unique, this little game proved to be. We were not, however, in the least bit surprised by the quality of the components and packaging. Like almost all the games manufactured by SimplyFun, Plext is lovingly packaged and presented, and the pieces well-finished and durable.

The game is recommended for 2-6 word-game players, ages 10 and up, with about 45 minutes to play.

Labels: Party Games, Word Games

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Wednesday, October 19, 2005

Handy

You gotta give a hand to the inventor of Handy. It's a hand game. Probably the only commercial hand game around, that goes hand-in-hand with games like "Cat's Cradle." On the other hand, when playing Handy, you use only one hand to play the game. And yet, you need a hand for your hand of cards. So it's not a one-hand game. Unless someone can spare a hand to turn your cards over.

It's a handy game to have whenever you have a handful of people. Hand-in-hand with this, it was designed by a man named "Handy." Chris Handy.

Games Taster Marc Gilutin said something like "this is one of those games that the Major FUN Award was invented for." Marc is a very handy person to have in a Games Tasting.

You turn over a card, and that tells you what finger to use. The next guy turns over his card, and that tells him what finger to use. And then you and the next guy simply hold a ball between those two fingers. And then, if there's, for example, only three of you playing, then the guy next to you and the gal next to him do the same thing - each pick a finger card and then hold a ball between them. And then she handily does the same thing with you. New fingers. New ball. New cards. Turn after turn after turn. One more ball. Two more fingers. And all you have to do is make sure you don't drop anything. Eventually, as marketing VP of SimplyFun so glibly informed me, ultimately it proves to be "more fun than you can handle."

Yup. Major FUN. Party Fun. Twister for the hands? Hmm. You could have something there....

Labels: Dexterity, Keeper, Party Games

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Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Linkity

Linkity is a fast-action word / card game from Simply Fun that is most definitely FUN in a Major kind of way.

The deck consists of 81 cards. Each card has a single letter on it, along with a cartoon of a letter-shaped bugs. Why bugs? According to the manufacturer, there is "no particular reason - we just liked the bugs." Players are dealt hands of 7 cards. After the first card is played, players compete to put the next card down - while saying a word that starts with the letter on the card, and is related to whatever word the previous player used. Let's say Tamara starts with the letter "A" and say "Apple." Let's say Rick throws down his "S" card and says "Slice." And then Celia, throwing down her "G" card says, naturally, "Golf." See, the word "Golf," though having nothing to do with the original word "Apple," can be demonstrably linked to the word "Slice." Hence the name of the game: Linkity.

Each player (3-8) begins a round with seven cards. Players don't take turns, they simply go as soon as they can think of a contextually appropriate word that starts with a letter that appears on one of their cards (though you can only put one card down per turn) and has something to do with the word just said. And yes, of course, players can challenge each other (greatly adding to the intrigue and potential silliness of play). The first player to use all her cards wins the round. The rest are penalized one point for each card remaining in their hands. A full game requires three rounds and takes maybe a half-hour.

Since there are no turns, you really have to think fast, and often creatively in order to win. It's this creativity-under-pressure that adds both to the hilarity and intensity of the game, and adds to the temptation to try words that aren't quite exactly, well, linked. Which adds correspondingly to the party-like spirit of the whole game.

When playing for the first time, disregard the first round. This gives everyone a chance to get a good understanding of the slightly subtle concept that a word needs only to relate to the immediately preceding word. The game works best when players are of roughly equal ability. So, if there are kids around, let them play their own game. They deserve it.

Labels: Party Games, Word Games

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Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Palabra

Palabra is a word game that is easily as deep as Scrabble®, more competitive, more challenging, and yet requires only a deck of cards. 120 cards, actually. Cards with letters on them. And colors. And some even with special symbols. And some more special than that.

It's not just a word game. It's also rummy-like. So, if you really can't find a word, but if it just so happens that you can make a "straight" with, say, the letters J, K, and L, well, go for it. Since a J is worth 9 points and a K 6 and an L 2, you got 17 points right there. And if they are all the same color, you'd double your score. And if some of the cards have stars on them, you might double or triple the score again!

The competitive part, and I mean, really competitive, comes with the "shaving" rule. On your turn, if you have cards that match those the person before you just played, you can use them to take points off his score and add them to yours. Kind of a delicious moment in the annals of legally mean things to do in the name of fun.

I know. It sounds just too complex to be fun. So many other things to think about that it could take away the joys of word-making. And yet, it turns out at least as interesting for the word game lover as Scrabble, with all the fun of a really good card game.

The deck has been recently refreshed - the cards are a bit thicker and the color key on the side of the cards has a different shape for each color - a great help for people who have difficulty telling colors apart. If you have the old set, it's still worth getting a newer version, because with 2 decks (yes, 240 cards!) you can play with up to 12 people.

Major FUN? You bet! Hmmm. Betting. As one might do in poker. Hmmmmm. And hmmmm again. Given the 28 variations currently described on the remarkably thorough and generous Palabra website (which includes resources like the inestimably valuable 2- and 3-letter word list, vowelless words, and Q-words not followed by a U), given, in particular, variations 13 (called "All Poker") and 24 ("Texas Hold 'em), poker, most definitely. And there's, for further example, a more Scrabble-like crosswords (variation 12), of course. And, should you enjoy playing with yourself, so to speak, a significantly amusing solitaire (variation 21), even.

Labels: Party Games, Thinking Games, Word Games

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Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Last Word and Faces - two more significantly playworthy party games

Buffalo Games, makers of the Major Fun Award-winning IMAgiNiff have come out with two new, note- and playworthy party games: Last Word and Faces.


Last Word might remind you of the kind of fun you get playing A to Z, but the game play is different enough to be worthy of any good party game collection. There's a deck of "Subject Cards" (e.g.: "Things Used by an Artist," "U. S. Cities," "All About Love"), and a deck of letter cards. When the letter and subject are revealed, an electronic timer is started (it's a random timer, so you never really know when it's going to go off, and when it does, it sounds like an air horn). Players say any word they think of that starts with the chosen letter and fits the selected category. The winning player is not, however, the one who is necessarily the cleverest or most informed, but the player who calls out the correct answer just before the timer sounds. Me, I happen to love games that ask me to be noisy, and I found having to balance my genius at trivia with my luck in timing added significnantly to my involvement and delight.

Faces is an Apples to Apples-type game, which is good and bad. The bad part of it is that it suffers from the comparison, the good part is that that is what makes it so party-appropriate. The main play element of the game is a deck of cards with vintage (turn of the 20th-century) images of men and women, and animals. Another deck provides characteristics, such as "the one who makes Christmas extra special" or "the one about to break some bad news." To play, six character cards are drawn from one of the decks, one of four pre-selected characteristic card is chosen and read, and players vote to guess which one the current player (the judge) might choose. A race track board is used to keep score. Every turn is followed by much discussion about who picked what why, which is what makes the game so party-worthy.

Labels: Party Games, Word Games

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Monday, June 06, 2005

Charoodles

Charoodles is a game of charades with props. Four props: a foam tube, a foam ball, a foam square and a plastic cup. This, along with a deck of cards with over 3000 different charades, a sand timer, and some scoring devices, is pretty much the whole game.

It's exactly the kind of game you want to play at a party, or just about any time with your family. It makes peopple think. It makes people laugh.

You need at least 4 people, and they should probably be older than 10, mentally, at least. You play in teams, as in the Major FUN-winning Catch Phrase.

It was, unquestionably, fun. No, it's not Pictionary nor is it Sculptionary, which is the whole point. Like it says, it's a charades game with props, and given the limited number of props, the game becomes a unique and enticing challenge to creativity and cleverness. Amazing what you can do with so little, and how much fun it can be.

Labels: Party Games

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Monday, May 09, 2005

Catch Phrase, Refreshed

Hasbro's Electronic Catch Phrase is probably one of the best electronic party games ever. A cross between password and hot potato, this exciting, engaging team word game can engage as many people as you want to play with in a good hour of competition and laughter. And now it's getting a second Major Fun award. The first was presented two-and-a-half years ago. Today, we have an improved Electronic Catch Phrase, just released, with new categories and words, making something like 10,000 in total.

This award goes primarily to Hasbro for having the intelligence and integrity that led to improving an already excellent game. This is all too rare an occurrence in the game industry. A successful game tends to get repackaged, and perhaps even rethemed, but rarely if ever fundamentally improved. The new version is simply easier to use. A back-lit LED screen is much easier to read. The digital score readout (replacing the cumbersome electronic voice), and the button size and placement all make for a friendlier, easier-to-control, more pleasant to play with device.

Most of the people at our Tasting who tried the game weren't familiar with Catch Phrase in any of its earlier incarnations - even the original mechanical and paper version released in the 90s. The main obstacle to their understanding the joys that awaited them was their other experiences of password-like games. See, that part, the guess-what-word-I'm-trying-to-make-you-say part, is so easy to understand that the other part, the hot potato part, completely escaped most people. Until we finally got to play the game. People kept on thinking that they should get a point when their team guessed the word. But that's not it at all. When your team guesses your word, you get to pass the device to a player on the other team. And points are kind of negative - awarded to your team when the timer goes off (hot potato-like) in the other team's hands. Despite the brevity and succinctness of the rules, this was the one real source of confusion that nothing short of a reworking of the rules (perhaps as a comic book) could have avoided.

On the other hand, as it were, once this rather inconsequential hurdle was cleared, delight was immediate and continuous. It really is one of the best electronic party games out there. And Catch Phrase, refreshed, is even better than its predecessor. At less than $25 retail, it's well-worth the purchase, even if you have the older version.

Labels: Party Games, Word Games

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Monday, April 04, 2005

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?

Labels: Family Games, Keeper, Kids Games, Party Games

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Monday, March 21, 2005

WaveLength

The topic is BUBBLE GUM. We've got a minute. List the first five kinds of bubble gum that you can think of. You make yours. I'll make mine. And when you're finished, rank them from 1-5. No, I don't know how you should rank them, by your favorites, by what you think is the most popular. Wait. Let me correct that. List the five kinds of bubble gum that you think I'll be able to think of. And then rank them the way you think I'll rank them. OK? Here goes. I got: 1. Dubble Bubble, 5. Skittles, 2. Bubblicious, 3. Bazooka and 4. Bubble Yum. We get one point for each gum. And an extra point for each gum we ranked the same. OK. OK. So maybe Skittles really isn't bubble gum. All that's really important is that we both think it is.

You know, for a trivia-style game, this was kind of different. It's about Pop culture, for one. For another, it's fun. A lot more fun. One might almost say, to coin a phrase, Major FUN. It's called WaveLength. What makes it so much more fun than your average trivia game? Three things: one, you're not working alone, against everyone else. It's you and your partner. Two: everybody plays, all the time. There's quite literally, "never a dull moment." And three, it's not so much trivia as it what you might call "Family Feud meets the Match Game." How "right" your answer is depends completely on what the other guy has to say. It's a trivia game (over a thousand questions), but you're all playing together, you're actually trying to get more connected, trying to think like what you think the other guy's thinking. It's got all the ingredients of a good trivia game. It's all about facts and memory. But it's even more about connecting to the other guy; getting on, what you might call, the same "wavelength," so to speak.

Major FUN-wise, Wavelength is what the award is all about.

Labels: Party Games

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Sunday, October 24, 2004

Snorta

Snorta is even simpler than the rules make it out to be. And more fun. There's a deck of 100 animal cards. The deck is divided equally between 4-8 players. Players take turns exposing the top card in their pile. When cards match, the first player to make the sound of the other player's animal wins.

Other player's animal? Well, see, there's a bag full of plastic animals. Really nicely sculpted and painted cartoonishly funny-looking animals that live in a cloth drawstring bag. Each player picks, and that becomes the player's animal. And that animal gets hidden in a similarly nicely sculpted barn-like, doghouse-looking thing. So you have to remember everybody's animal. Which isn't so easy - especially when you're looking at cards with other animals printed on them.

If you lose, you have to pick up all the cards that the other player has already turned over. Depending on how long it's been since a match has been drawn, that pile can get punishingly large. So the tension builds. And the excitement mounts. And the laughter frequently turns into something approximating hysteria.

And then there's these occasional "swap" cards hidden in the animal card deck, which let you draw a different animal from the animal sack. Just in case people actually get too good at remembering the animal you used to be.

The mechanics of the game are subtle enough to make you want to play again and again. Even though a match can only involve two players at a time, all players are engaged. If you're not one of the players involved in a match, your pile just grows one card larger - making the possibility of success next round even that much more enticing. If you have a match fight with someone with a large pile, and you lose, it makes the loss that much more punishing. Combine the visual and memory challenge with the sheer silliness of people making animal noises at each other, and you get Snorta - a Major FUN Award-winning party game that's competitive enough to take seriously, and silly enough not to care. Snorta is an ideal family game - one that adults can enjoy (our Tasting group ranged in age from 7-63, including a couple of advanced teens) as much as their kids.

Labels: Family Games, Kids Games, Party Games

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Friday, September 17, 2004

Time's Up

Games that we love are generally broken down in to two piles:
1. "Games that hurt our heads"
2. "Games that hurt our sides"

The first group is usually made up of the German Style 'designer games.' Puerto Rico, Euphrat and Tigris, and Power Grid come to mind. Abstract games like Chess, and Go fit here as well. These require lots of concentration and brainpower.

Then there are the games that hurt my sides.....from laughing too much. These would generally be called "party games". Former Major Fun Award winners Apples To Apples, and Malarky would be included here along with 'standards' like Cranium, Taboo....get the picture?

Wednesday nights with the usual suspects are generally reserved for the brain-burning Euro variety. (I consider myself so lucky to have found my own little group of board game freaks....they're fun to be with.....and they're very competitive -- like me, but smarter.) So when someone in the group suggested what looked like a party game, I was intrigued. What body part would this one hurt? My brain, my sides?

It would! It would!

Time's Up from R&R Games hurt my sides and my head (I nearly fell off my chair from laughing too hard).

The game is played with partners, sitting opposite each other if possible. So you need an even number of players. But understand this. The fact that your numbers must be even does not preclude your 'numbers' from being odd. Time's Up plays best with an 'even' number of 'odd' players. I'll give you an example a bit later.

Inside the box:

1. A large assortment of cards with celebrities' names on them. Figures out of history, sports, culture....from Michaelangelo to Michael Jordan, Elmer Gantry to Elmer Fudd. Each card has a blue name and a yellow name. Our group played the blues (insert favorite Muddy Waters joke here).

2. A timer....an evil little '30-seconds-isn't-nearly-enough' timer!

3. A Score Pad

Grab a handful of cards and deal 7 to each player.Everyone looks the cards over and discards 2....not to be used for that game. (There are lots of cards and several expansion kits available from the publisher.)

Round 1:

All the remaining cards are gathered together and given to whoever's unlucky enough to be going first. When player is ready, the timer's turned. He looks at one card and can give any clues he wants to his partner as long as he doesn't say the name or any part of it. This could include a definition, examples, sound effects, gestures, whatever. As soon as partner guesses correctly, the card is placed in front of player and he goes to the next card and does so again and again until the timer runs out. The clue giver also has the option to pass in this round if he feels he's not getting anywhere. When Time's Up, he then shuffles and passes all remaining cards to his left and the process starts all over again with that player reading to his partner. Round one continues until all (I said "ALL"!) of the names are guessed correctly by someone. Score is then tallied with teams being awarded one point for each card they have in front of them. All of the cards are then gathered back together and it's time for:

Round 2:

The same process happens all over again with the very same cards but THIS time, only one-word clue is permitted for each card and no passing. So paying attention to all the keywords your oppos have been using will definitely come in handy. Round 2 ends when all the names have been guessed. More scoring. Cards are again gathered together for: (you guessed it) Round 3.

This time, players may not give any verbal clues. Only gestures :-) This round can get very, very funny. Especially if players haven't been combining gestures with the words in earlier rounds.

OK. I told you I'd be defining 'odd'. I laughed, during my first game of TU harder than I'd remembered laughing in a very long time. Right near the beginning of the game, I got a card with "Ann Frank" as the subject. My clue to partner Ernie: "Deaf, dumb and blind." ("???", you may ask. I had confused two very powerful Patty Duke roles......this was really going to mess up my partner.....) His answer (you won't believe this) : "Ann Frank" (Ding, Ding, Ding!!!!!!!!) Apparently Ernie and I are on the same (very weird ) wavelength. Major Laughter ensued. (MAJOR!)

(About the gestures: One of our group who had played the game before kept warning us to use gestures in rounds 1 and 2 even though we were permitted to speak. He said it would come in handy later. Some of us didn't pay attention (ME?) ......which made the third round a bit 'longer' than it should have been.

What you're supposed to do in the first two rounds is work the gestures in with your verbal clues. That way, when you get to the "mum's the word' round, your partner already has some idea what you're trying to convey when you pull your ears in opposite directions to get him to say "Prince Charles". :-)

Crossed - Cultures: There were a couple of players in our group who, being from another country, missed some of the cultural references, which in itself proved mighty funny....especially when Deb did a perfect Richard Nixon immitation and her partner (a young Asian who shall remain nameless....Myo!) couldn't for the life of him get it.

You have to pay attention in TU even when it's not your turn. Any questions unanswered will be passed around to either you or your partner eventually. So you're remembering keywords that you think your partner will pick up on. It's also important to watch for gestures...since they will all come in handy in the 3rd round Time's Up was designed by Peter Sarrett, who's the publisher of Game Report.

So what happens to a game that both hurts the brain and provides side-splitting fun? In Times like these Times, it's Major FUN!

Marc Gilutin
Gamestaster

Labels: Party Games

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Saturday, March 27, 2004

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.

Labels: Family Games, Keeper, Party Games, Thinking Games, Word Games

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Sunday, December 21, 2003

MyCard

It's a small step for gameplayingkind, but a giant step for a game company. No, make that a giant step for gameplayingkind as well.

Major FUN-Award-winning Out of the Box Publishing, makers of the Major FUN-Award-winning card game Apples to Apples, has launched a product/service allowing players to extend their Apples-to-Apples game system by creating their own, customized cards. Now, we're not talking about offering some blank cards that people can write on, but rather an online service that allows you to create cards that look and feel almost exactly like the "official," manufacturer-approved cards.

This is close to unprecedented in field of commercial gaming. Bordering on capitalistic blasphemy. Giving players the tools to alter and personalize a game is almost like telling people that they know enough to make a game better, all by themselves, without the vasty expertise of professional game designers. Close to unprecedented, because the game already includes a few blank cards that players can write on or make up on the fly. Bordering, because in order to take full advantage of the opportunity, you will need to spend another $6.00 to get the five sheets of eight-per-page, pre-printed, micro-perforated, laser- or inkjet-printer-compatible cards.

This Customizable Cards concept is not just precedent-setting, more importantly, it's fun. It's fun to think up cards that include family members and friends, neighbors and coworkers, local politicians and personal nemeses. It's even more fun when you see the expression on people's faces when they first discover themselves literally part of the game. Naturally, you can include anyone and anything you can imagine: grandma's spaghetti, dad's first car, the neighbor's noisy dog. If you're playing for more than fun - say, you're a therapist or educator - you can create cards that evoke or provoke, test or exercise. And, if you're so minded, preparing for a game with like-minded so-and-sos, you can include the unmentionable.

The online tool works well, is easy to understand, and provides access to extensive libraries of cards that other users, and the manufacturers themselves, have created. If you haven't bought Apples to Apples yet, the MyCard concept alone should prove incentive enough.

As Major Fun, I find Out-of-the-Box's Customizable Cards to be a significant victory for us all.

Labels: Party Games

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Friday, August 22, 2003

Malarky

It happened almost as soon as we opened the box. Everybody brightened up, almost as if we knew that Malarky would prove to be just the kind of game we were looking for - easy to learn, fun, competitive, but just competitive enough to keep your attention. An intellectual game, but not so intellectual that you'd actually have to know anything. In other words, just the kind of game you'd want to bring to a party - or make a party out of.

My first exposure to anything Malarky-like was the parlor game called "Fictionary" - your basic bluffing game where the object is to be the one everyone thinks knows the "real" answer, even though you really made it up. Malarky isn't about word definitions, but rather about everyday life "factoids" like why laundry detergent boxes come in such odd weights.

But the real genius of the game is in the execution. You get this big deck of obscure but everyday factoid cards, as you'd expect. One player selects and reads the question, and everyone else has to think up an answer - again, as you'd expect. The problem that these games usually have is how to get from this point to the voting without enduring painful minutes of writing and deciphering. Normally, everyone writes something down. And then they pass their slips to the questioner, who also has to write the answer down. And then she has to read all the answers, one at a time, without fumbling or giving anything away. The designers of Malarky have come up with what they call "Concealing Folders." This simple device (a cardboard frame with a front and back cover) makes possible truly stunning acts of subterfuge and dissemblance. The reader puts the card in one of the folders, closes the folders, mixes them up, and then distributes the closed folders. Everyone takes turns, opening the folder and appearing to read the "real" answer. Of course, only one player actually has the question card.

This simple device, the cleverness of the questions, and the introduction of voting chips combine to create a game that takes an old parlor game to a new level - making Patch Product's Malarky a game that could only be called "Major FUN Award-worthy."

Labels: Party Games, Word Games

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Thursday, July 31, 2003

Blurt

It's a word game. It's a board game. It's the first word/board game I've found that makes the best of both. It's called, "BLURT!."

As a word game, it's simple enough. You read a definition. The first player to, um, Blurt! it out, so to speak, wins. This is fun, because the fact that you know what a word means often has little to do with the speed of your Blurt!

As a board game, it's a race, where you throw the die and move your pawn - a pawn that has the power to send others back. There's just enough chance to keep everyone guessing.

There's the "Showdown," or, as we called it, "Blurt-Off," when you land on somebody else and have to compete head to head for first correct Blurt! Failure sends you back - depending on the roll of the die.

And then there's the "Takeover." Land on a square that is the same color as your pawn and jump on anybody else, no matter how far down the track they are. Then comes the Blurt-Off, and the risk of being sent all the way back to the Takeover square.

The board game balances the challenge of the word game beautifully, creating an exciting social dynamic where everyone is involved and anyone can win, up until the very last play.http://www.playblurt.com/

Labels: Family Games, Party Games, Word Games

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Tuesday, June 24, 2003

Smart Mouth

Smart Mouth got the Major FUN Award almost before we started playing it. The design of the toy - I know, it's really a "game mechanism," but it's just so darn much fun to play with - makes a very simple word game concept into a genuinely fun, exciting challenge.

OK. The game first. It's a word game. You're given two letters. Your objective: to be the first to call out a word that begins with one and ends with the other. For example, S and T. You could call out "SIT," but you'd be wrong, because words have to be at least 5 letters. How about, um, let's see, "SMART"? Why yes, that's exactly right.

Easy to understand. Challenging to play. And there are variations, and more variations, so you can play it with the kids or with your friends or your parents, and everybody'll have fun.

Now to the toy part. There's a box on a base. The box has two sections - each rounded at the top, each holding 36 letter tiles, which are also rounded at the top, so they can only fit in their sections one way, which turns out to be exactly the way they need to be if they are to be displayed in the right direction. There are two different colored tiles (so that the letter combinations will all work), each color goes in its own section. Fill the box. Put its cover on. And slide it forwards. When you slide it back, you reveal the first two letters. Simultaneously. To all players. The first player to call out the correct word gets those tiles. Which is how score is kept.

Elegant. Easy to understand. A device that works so well you can actually throw out the nice, sturdy box the game came in. My only regret - I had so much fun playing with the toy that I had to be the judge for the whole game. Oh, well.

Labels: Party Games, Word Games

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Sunday, May 11, 2003

Paired Up

Paired Up is a party game, like Taboo, Password, Catchphrase, etc., where you try to get your partner to guess, well, you guessed it, pairs of words, like "salt and pepper," "rock and roll," "song and dance." A good premise for a party game. It gets people talking to each other. It's a challenge. It's for a small, party-like group of 3-6 people and your larger party-like groups can play in teams.

But what, you might ask, makes it so unique that it would merit the esteemed Major FUN Award? It's not just the way the words are paired up. It's the way the players are.

Included in the game are two, two-sided, write-on-wipe-off cards (for 3, 4, 5 or 6 players). The cards help determine who gives a clue to whom. There are 24 rounds, and in each round another combination of players is selected. For example, in the first round, the first player might be giving the clue to the second player. The next round, the third player to the fourth. The next round, the second to the third. Etc., etc., until every player has given or received a clue to or from every player, at least once. Though it sounds complicated, it's actually quite elegant. And it solves a problem that has haunted many a game designer, because it gives every player an opportunity to play with every other player.

There's a 45-second sand timer (I know, we don't really love sand timers). And a very pretty little die that determines how much a round is worth, and you'll swear is loaded until you realize that there are two 2's and two 3's. And a score pad. And 4 pencils, even. But the real treasure is how much fun the game is, and how well that pairing-up system works.

Labels: Party Games

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Wednesday, February 12, 2003

iMAgiNiff

Buffalo Games' iMAgiNiff wins this week's Major FUN Award for giving people a fun way to get personal, and interpersonal. It asks people to reveal what they think about each other in a way that, under other circumstances would border on intimidating, but the spirit and art of the game keeps it safely on this side of genuine hilarity.

There are a couple hundred Question Cards. Each card asks questions like: "If_____had to sing at a karaoke bar, which song would he/she be?" And then goes on to list six choices: "Blue Suede Shoes," "New York, New York," "Stand By Your Man," "Figaro" "I Honestly Love You" or "Stairway to Heaven." Imagine that you are the blank that everyone else is filling in. Now, ask yourself, could you get insulted if everyone thought that you would be any one of those?

In my official role as Defender of the Playful, that was my biggest concern with the whole premise of this game. And I'm glad to report that even the most sensitive among the eight of us found the game to be genuine, full-bodied fun, all the way through. The answers are ambiguous enough so that no one can really take them really personally. The scoring system (you get points if you vote according to the majority) also keeps the game on the happy side of tense. Which person gets to be subject of the each round is determined purely by chance. Finally, the names with which the blanks get filled really don't have to have anything to do with the people playing. They can be names of politicians or neighbors and the game is still as involving, and, psychologically, even safer.

We liked how the designers used a write-on, wipe-off marker to allow players to fill the board with whatever names they wanted to use for the game. It gave us a feeling that we were customizing the board, just for each other. Which added to the sense of ownership and fun. To vote, players pick a numbered card, which they put face down on the table, and then, simultaneously, reveal. This makes the game that much more exciting. Also, since there's always a minority, there's always something to argue about, and, since the arguments are about things that are clearly ridiculous - like why someone is more like Berlin than Mexico City - it all seems to further the fun.

Yes, score is kept. Winning players get to progress along a spiral track. But, as in all Major FUN Award-winning games, winning isn't really the point. Playing is.

For 3-8 players, 12 and up.

Labels: Party Games

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Friday, February 07, 2003

Pass the Bomb

Pass the Bomb is a fast-paced word game for two or more players 12 and over (a junior version is available for kids 5 and up...read on).

The "bomb" is an electronic, clock-battery-included, cartoonish-bomb-with-fuse-shaped timer that goes off randomly between 10 and 60 seconds after it is activated. I'm mentioning the bomb first because it is the first thing you see when you open the box, and it's fun all by itself. Especially the random going-off part.

However, the genius of the game is, as they say, in the cards. There are 110 of them. Printed on both sides. Each has two or a few letters on it. The game: start the bomb, turn the first card over, say a word that ends with (or starts, or contains) those letters. Then pass the bomb to the next player. Who must say a different word. Etc., etc., until the bomb goes off (through, conceivably, no fault of the player, since it's random).

Whether the letters have to be in the beginning end or middle of a word is determined by the throw of a die, which, because this game is international, is graphic. And, yes, the graphics aren't that immediately obvious. But here I niggle.

The game is engaging and elegant. The losing player keeps the card, so the cards are used to keep score. The game is fast, so everyone stays involved. The challenge steadily increases as time passes and the obvious solutions get used up, so the tension increases. The unpredictable timer, and the brevity of the time allowed are just the right touches to keep the game fun.

As for the Junior version - same bomb, but different cards, and challenge. The card set is a collection of cartoon drawings depicting different scenes. Players then have to name things that might belong in that scene. It turns out that this is easily as fun as the word game. Even if you don't have kids, Pass the Bomb Junior is most funworthy in deed.

Labels: Family Games, Party Games, Word Games

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Monday, January 27, 2003

Stack

Stack is a strategy game you play with dice. A lot of dice. 14 for each player.

First, you decide on what color you want. Then, you spill all the dice onto the table, and smoosh them around in noisy, and gleeful anticipation. Then you take turns stacking dice (hence the name of the game), one die at a time, on any die other than your own. A stack can be up to four dice high. The die that is on top of the stack determines who gets the points. The higher the number on the top die, the higher the value of the stack.That's about all you need to know in order to play the game. Except that you can, if so moved, roll a die instead of stacking it. The rest is strategy.

And a very absorbing strategy, in deed. A stack that is three-dice-high is what you might call "attractive." Especially if it's a stack of 5s or 6s. Insofar as the next player who has a matching die can claim that stack permanently - or at least until the 15-20 minute game is over and score is calculated. Did I mention that 1s are worth 10? Then there are the two-dice stacks, which will wind up scoring for the player with the top die, unless someone puts another die on top of them, which then makes them a three-dice stack, which, as mentioned above, become dangerously attractive. As the game progresses, and there are fewer and fewer dice to play, the strategy changes accordingly.

For such a simple concept (easy enough for a 6-year-old), the game becomes remarkably deep (more than deep enough for this 61-year-old). And, because you're all playing together, with this big pile of dice, there's something about the game that makes you feel more together, as friends and family.

Stack is distributed by Talicor. The set comes with four different colors. Which means that you can have up to four different players. (Talicor offers yet another set with four more different colors. So, if you're a family of eight, you can still play together.). If you have the wherewithal to buy the deluxe $30, one-inch-dice set, go for it. The big dice add heft and a certain deliciously preparatory noisesomeness. Oh, yeah, there's even a velvitish bag for storage and transport, which you will probably do, often.

Labels: Keeper, Party Games, Senior-Worthy, Thinking Games

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Thursday, December 19, 2002

Backround

BackRound (no, I didn't misspell it. It's not Background. It's BackRound) is another Major FUN Award-winning wordgame from the Coodju people.

Let's start with an example. If someone said "led-nack" to you, offering you the hint "don't burn out on this word," what would you answer. Why, obviously, "candle." Let's continue with another example. How about "top-eat," which, says the hint, "Blows its lid"? But of course, "teapot." Think you've got it? How about "ode-dees-cut?" Want a hint? "Formally speaking, you should have this."

A BackRound, the designers explain, is "a word pronounced backwards." Notice the emphasis. It's pretty much central to what makes this game so fascinatingly fun. Yeah, it's about backwards words. But not about the spelling. And all about the pronounciation.

There are 80 cards, each with 4 different puzzles (which makes for, count'em, 320 total). You need at least two people, so one can be the Reader. You can play with more. Many, many more. You can divide them into teams. You can play every-one-for-him/her-self. Scoring is easy. You solve it, you get the card. You have the most cards at the end of the game, you win.

Then there's the not-actually-obligatory timer, which you can use to add more tension, when more tension is needed. Which, in our case, given our collective obstinance, wasn't.

And there's even a cloth carry-this-game-everywhere bag, which, once you play it, you're more than likely to do.

Should you need further snish-kurt-sni, you'll find them clearly posted on their ties-behw.

Labels: Kids Games, Party Games, Thinking Games, Word Games

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Wednesday, December 18, 2002

Respond

Remember "Geography" - the game you probably played in the car or waiting at the restaurant with your family? You know the one. Someone says the name of a geographical location. Texas. Then the next player has to name another geographical location, starting with the last letter of the previous. Saskatchewan. Then the next: Nebraska. Et, basically, cetera. Remember how surprisingly long that game could last? And how genuinely challenging it could get? And how much fun it could be? Well, that should answer any questions you have about why Respond is so much fun. Because, basically, Respond begins where Geography leaves off.

First, there's the deck of category cards. We're not just talking Geography anymore. We're talking Vegetables, and Boys Names, and Bugs; Colors and Flowers, and Musical Instruments. Which might remind you of that game Categories. Remember? "Gonna Get (clap, clap) names of (clap clap) Candy..." Except you play with the Geography rule. And the categories change every turn. So now you have to be prepared to switch from context to context while figuring out what word starts with the last letter of the word before. Baseball. Larry. Umm. What bug starts with a "Y"? Oh. Yellowjacket.

Speaking of yellow, there are also these yellow-bordered "Lightning" category cards. When you play one, anybody, regardless of whose turn it is, can go next, if they answer correctly. Which adds a remarkably deep strategic pinch, because if you're not fast enough, you get skipped over. And if you are very fast, you can play a second card from your own hand before the timer runs out.

Speaking of which, there's a 20-second electronic timer that quietly blinks at you until you there are only five seconds left. And sedately beeps at you until you run out of time. And then blares a most conclusive siren in your personal face. Hitting it resets it. Not answering before the timer goes off means you have to draw an additional card. Which is not good, seeing as the goal of the game is to be the first player to run out of cards.

Respond is deliciously challenging. It can be played by kids old enough to read. It can be played by almost any number of people. Being based on games that almost everyone knows makes it that much easier to learn.

Everything works elegantly. The cards keep the game exciting. There's no need to keep score. It's easy to learn. Quick to play. If you lose the rules, you can find them online. Even batteries are included.

Labels: Party Games, Word Games

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Tuesday, December 17, 2002

Coodju

Who'd think that a spelling game could be interesting enough, fun enough, exciting enough, to make into a party? Well, Matt and Derry, two, young, entrepreneuring game designers, certainly did. Enough to build a whole game company around. And, after playing it for five minutes, I was as convinced as they were.

Coodju is the kind of game the Major FUN Award was invented for. It's innovative, unique, easy to learn, fast, challenging, funny fun - and it's all done with spelling! You (at least 4 of you over-twelve-years-old types) play more or less in teams. Your partner has a card with five words on it. She reads them to you one-at-a-time. All you have to do to win the card is spell the words correctly. Of course, depending on the roll of the die, you might have to spell the words backwards, or inside out, or spell every other letter, or only the vowels or consonants. And depending on the roll of the other die, you might have twice as much time, or get twice or three times as many points, or take away points from the other guys.

You can almost feel those braincells burning as you try to spell a word "outside-in." P-Y-A-T-R is obviously PARTY. But what, one might ask, is H-S-A-S-P-E-P-N-I?

We liked everything about this game. We liked the challenge. We liked the scoring. We liked the dice. We liked the portable, two-compartment card tray that made it so easy for the Reader to keep track of which cards have been used. We liked the box that had the rules printed right on it. We didn't especially like the scoring pad or sand timer. We appreciated having them. And what, after all, is especially to like about scoring pads and sand timers?

And we especially liked knowing that there was a Coodju Lite - a different package with words that seven-year-olds could spell, a spinner instead of dice, and no scorepad. Coodju Lite is an elegant adaptation of Coodju, reduced in complexity to appeal to the age-impaired, but not reduced in play value. In fact, we found that because the cards in Coodju lite were a different color, we could combine games so the whole family could play together. The designers even included a cloth bag, knowing that kids would cherish the game enough to want to take it everywhere.

As to the "we" - last Sunday's Game Tasting group included myself, my wife, Rocky; the amazing Ivory (a beloved, game-addicted regular), and the co-inventorsm them-very-selves. It just so happened that they lived a couple beaches north of us, and, despite my misgivings about undue influence, they turned out to be wonderful, fun people, who appreciated games as much as we did, and we delighted in their delight as much as ours. It was a rare opportunity, and fortunate in deed that they had such genuinely BERNIE-worthy games to share with us.

That inside-out word, for those of you who are still seeking: HAPPINESS.

Labels: Family Games, Kids Games, Party Games, Word Games

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Monday, December 09, 2002

Qwitch

Qwitch, the "Quick Switch" game, is a card game where speed is just about everything. The task seems simple enough. All you have to do is be the first person to get rid of your cards. And to do that, all you need is the card that is, depending on the roll of a die, either the same, or one greater, or one lesser in rank than the card just played.

The challenge lies in the design of the cards. Each card has both a letter (A-G) and a number (1-8). You can use either letter or number to determine which card to play. The effect of having this choice is similar to that of a mental Indian Burn (forgive the politically incorrect metaphor - an Indian Burn is what we used to give each other on our way out of boyhood by holding an arm with two hands and twisting in the opposite directions). Since there are no turns, and everybody races to be the next to slap down an appropriate card, you frequently find yourself with less than a split second to make your split decision about which of your cards has the right which, letter or number.

The special die that is used to determine whether to go up or down in sequence, or just to match the letter or number of the previous card, is an ingenious bit of game designery. Since the set is finite, beginning with the A-1 and ending with the H-8 cards, the die can be the only thing that can keep the game going. Rolling it gives you just long enough to catch your mental breath and reorient yourself to the new rule. And it's quite a delight to discover that matching can be just as consuming a challenge as continuing the sequence.

Qwitch is not a game for the contemplative or easily frustrated. Since there's no time for compassion, it's all too easy for the deliberative player to be, as they say, left holding the cards. The designers do suggest a version for the younger or fainter of mind in which, rather than playing simultaneously, players politely take turns. Needless to say, that variation was ruled out by us adult-types after about five seconds of play. If you find one or several of your playpals to be of the more deliberative type, you might consider a "level the playingfield" strategy, allowing each player to determine how many cards he or she will start with - the faster players taking more to "win with honor."

Though simple, the rules are a bit difficult to follow. Perhaps because of the layout of the rule sheet (which, as in all Out-of-the-Box games, is printed on much-appreciated card stock). Perhaps because a lot of very simple games prove remarkably difficult to describe. It's a minor obstacle, and the game is well-worth whatever slight efforts are needed to get started.

Qwitch is a fascinating, fast-paced game, similar to the Major FUN Award-winning, Out-of-the-Box game Blink. For 3-5 players, ages 7-adult, Qwitch is an energizing, and deliciously challenging card game that can be played in less than five very intense minutes.

Spit (a.k.a. Speed) is probably the closest of the traditional card games to match the speed and excrutiating joy of Qwitch. It's basically a double solitaire in which two players compete to play cards onto the same "tableaux" piles. The Qwitch-like aspect of the game is that no turns are taken, both players playing simultaneously. This causes endless opportunities for agony as one player beats the other to the piles. Since only two players are involved, it's a little less chaotic. But then again, Spit is for kids.

Labels: Party Games

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Monday, November 25, 2002

A to Z

There's nothing funny about A to Z, and yet, this game made us laugh, almost non-stop, for an entire hour. Each player or team gets an alphabet board. Dice are rolled. A category is selected from a card. And then that player or team has fifteen or thirty seconds (depending on the dice) to name items that fit the category. As soon as an item is named, its first letter gets covered on the alphabet board. Name as many items as possible within the time limit, each starting with a different letter, and then name more, in a different category, when it gets to be your turn again. The object is to be the first player or team to complete the alphabet. Transparent discs are used to mark which letters have been used.

There were eight of us, so we played it in teams. It turned out to be so much fun to play with a teammate that I'd recommend, even if there are exactly four players, that you play it in two teams. Some of the categories are excruciatingly difficult. Like, names of foreign newspapers, or famous military leaders. Others are delightfully easy, especially for us average American folk - like snack foods or fast food restaurants. So, you might think that success depends on the luck of the category drawn. And you'd continue thinking it until someone throws the dice and the hand symbol appears. Then, when naming items, instead of trying to find things that begin with one of the ever-dwindling assortment of available letters (like Q and Z), you select someone else's board, and remove their discs. Since the letters already covered tend to be those that are easiest to use, things have a way of evening out with depressing rapidity.

The mechanical timer ticks and flips noisily when the time limit is reached. It's a little difficult to see the fifteen second mark (there are only two time limits - either the full 30 seconds or the painfully brief fifteen), affording the opportunity for the only negative criticism I could find for this remarkably absorbing, unique, challenging, easy to understand, and genuinely fun word game.

Labels: Family Games, Keeper, Party Games, Senior-Worthy, Word Games

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Gavitt's Stock Exchange

Did you know that the stock trading game PIT was originally called Gavitt's Stock Exchange invented in Topeka, Kansas in 1903? Did you know that the original game was at least as fun as PIT and even simpler to play? Well, neither did I. But apparently someone did. Someone in halfway around the world. In Australia, no less, who saw in the game such high play value that he decided to reproduce it as faithfully as possible - well, more faithfully than possible, given that the cards are laminated thoroughly enough to take the kind of punishment that is the inevitable destiny of such a highly interactive, exciting, fast-action game.

This is the game where you try to trade cards (stocks) with other players - either one or two cards at a time - in the effort to corner the market and get all eight cards of one stock. Everybody trades simultaneously, and with enough people it really feels like your playing in the pit of a stock exchange. Though Gavitt's Stock Exchange can be played by two to six players, it's definitely a case of the more the merrier. We tried it with two, and it was kind of fun. And then with three, and it was more the kind of fun you'd call fun. But with with six it borders on pants-wetting fun. Especially if you more or less tacitly allow cheating.

There's something about playing with turn-of-the-century-looking cards that makes the game as charming to look at as it is fun to play. Fun enough to get a Major FUN Award. The rules are a little difficult to read because of the authentically small print. They are quaint, but unnecessarily complicated. Read enough to get started, and then get started. After a while, you can read more of the rules, for fun and authenticity.

Labels: Party Games

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Tuesday, November 05, 2002

Squint

If you've ever played Pictionary, you know how strangely cryptic, and yet amazingly effective drawings can become. As you get more familiar with the game and with each other, you reach a point where you can communicate remarkably abstract concepts with just a few lines.

Squint, from the consistently innovative and well-made games of Out of the Box Publishing is today's Major FUN Award-award winner.

Instead of drawing, you use any combination of Shape Cards to construct your clue.

Since it's so Pictionaryish, it's really easy to understand how to play. Until, that is, you actually try. And then it seems impossible. Until you keep trying. And, oddly enough, it is quite possible. Challenging, you bet. But surprisingly possible. As the game goes on, and people become more familiar with the shapes and what you can do with them (you can even "animate" them by sliding sections back and forth), it gets more and more intriguing. It definitely requires ingenuity, creativity and good imagination. Which makes the experience all that much more compelling.

There are three different words or phrases to try to guess on each of the 168 Squint cards (well, six if you count both sides). The role of a die determines which of the three you must use. (We decided not to use the die, and leave the choice up to the clue-giver. The challenge is deep enough at first, and, even though the three different choices are assigned different levels of difficulty - and point value - what may be difficult for one person to communicate can prove easier for the next.) The scoring is exceptionally compassionate. Both the guesser and guessee get points for a correct response.

Rounds are timed, so gameplay is fast and tense. The longer you play, the more adept you become at giving and interpreting clues. Eventually, you astonish each other with your collective brilliance.

We learned to use a ruler to indicate the bottom of the construct. We also seriously contemplated looking for a white surface upon which to arrange the cards. But, as the manufacturers so eponymously explain, squinting really helps.

Squint is a unique, brilliantly challenging guessing game that makes people feel good about their individual and collective genius. For 3-6 players, ages 12 and up.

Labels: Party Games

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Monday, November 04, 2002

Man Bites Dog

Man Bites Dog wins the Major FUN Award for its humor, its playability, its invitation to creativity, its quickness, and, most of all, it's fun.

It's a card game the object of which is to create high-scoring headlines. Each card contains a word or a phrase and a score value. Headlines can have such bizarre grammatical structures that players can, with a modicum of creativity, compose a headline out of almost any cluster of words. The key word here is "almost." Sometimes it's impossible. Sometimes you have to stretch your concept of linguistic clarity beyond the breaking point. Take, for example, the following hand: CONVICT, SUSPECT, UROLOGIST, BLONDE, DUMPS. Luckily, DUMPS is one of those words that can be a noun or a verb. Otherwise, you'd be lost (you can replace up to three cards). So, how about BLONDE UROLOGIST DUMPS CONVICT? That'd work. So would BLONDE UROLOGIST DUMPS SUSPECT. Well, more or less. But you'd get another 5 points if you could use CONVICT. You can't have a SUSPECT CONVICT, though. How about CONVICT UROLOGIST DUMPS BLONDE SUSPECT?

Well, you get the point. But to actually get the points, everyone else must agree that your headline actually makes sense. This keeps the game from getting too competitive, because ultimately everyone is working together to keep the game going.

The game play is fast - a hand takes maybe five minutes to play. Since the average hand scores from 50-150 points, and the game is over as soon as someone reaches 500, the whole game rarely takes more than a fun, comfortable 20 minutes. It feels a little poker-like (you get five cards and can exchange up to three), which invites the creation of a minor infinity of non-gambling poker-like variations.

Man Bites Dog is recommended for 2 to 6 players, ages 8 and up. And a very good recommendation it is.

Labels: Party Games, Word Games

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Sunday, October 27, 2002

Hoopla

Today's Major FUN Award goes to Hoopla, a guessing game that combines Pictionary ("Cloodle"), Charades ("Soundstage") with two original guessing game formats to create a challenging, collaborative, and high-gigglewatts experience of party-perfect fun - even for a party of two.

The two original guessing games are Tongue-Tied, where you have to use clues starting with the same letter, and Tweener, where your clues must be in the format: "It's bigger than....but smaller than...." Each is fun in itself. Each more effective depending on what you're trying to get everyone else to guess.

The things that you're trying to get each other to guess are determined by the cards drawn from a deck of 285 cards, each illustrated with a color photo. The category (an essential clue) is written on the back of each card. The game you play is decided by the toss of a novel ten-sided die. The fifth choice is called "Wild Hoopla" where you determine which of the four guessing formats you're going to use. Contrary to expectations, this choice can burn many delightfully agonizing seconds while you figure out which format is most appropriate to, say, "Microbrew" or "Elton John" or "PEZ."

Then there's a really well-designed mechanical timer that ticks the time away quietly, but thunderously enough to keep the pace, and players, well-nigh unto frantic. You start and stop the timer by hitting it - which, depending on the difficulty of the card, can prove a most satisfying vehicle for self-expression.

Given my bias towards cooperation, I was especially happy to discover that Hoopla is, in fact, a "Pointless" game. No scores are kept. The objective is for everyone to get everyone else to guess all the cards drawn in the alloted time - which is just short enough to make victory most definitely sweet.

All in all, from design and manufacture to playing the game, Hoopla proves itself a most Major Fun-worthy game.

Labels: Party Games

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Tuesday, October 08, 2002

Apples to Apples

Today's Major FUN Award goes to Apples to Apples. In fact, it goes not only to Apples to Apples, not only to the two editions of Apples to Apples Junior or the Apple to Apple Booster Kits, but also to the veritable makers and marketers of Apples to Apples, Out of the Box Publishing.

But first, let's talk Apples to Apples.

It's a party game - from a little party of four players to a significant party of ten. It's a card game. A lot of cards. 432 cards, by my count. Nicely made, highly-shufflable, plastic-coated, square-cornered cards. Well-designed, easy-to-read cards with cute commentaries. And a card tray to hold three stacks of 'em. And clear rules printed on stiff, coated paper. This is typical of Out of the Box products. Lots of consideration given to look and feel and longtime replay value.

But enough about how it looks. It's how it plays that makes it so Major FUN Award-worthy.

There are two different kinds of cards. The Green Apple cards describe characteristics, like: Influential, Wicked, Distinguished. The Red Apple cards are people, places and things. Each player gets seven Red Apple cards. One player, who gets to be the Judge for that particular turn, selects a Green Apple card. Then everyone else more or less races to play a Red Apple card or two that fits that characteristic. What constitutes a fit can get very iffy in deed. Given, for example, a Green Apple of INFLUENTIAL, which of these cards would you play: COCKROACHES, HOOLIGANS, JAMES BOND, WHEAT, ICEBERGS, GRAVITY, or THE UNIVERSE? Some are clearly iffier than others. One could say that THE UNIVERSE is more influential than HOOLIGANS. In fact, one could even say that GRAVITY is even more influential.

It turns out that that very iffiness is what makes the game such a delight to play. There are no right answers. It's up to the imagination of the players, the judgment of the judge, and whatever subtle pressures one puts on the other.

Because a different player plays Judge each turn, the iffiness gets spread around evenly enough to make the game as fair as it is fun.

As to its Gigglwattage, it varies in intensity. Generally, the game is about a 40-Gigglewatter. But, from time to time, it can get blindingly funny.

And then there's the Major FUN Award that goes to Out-of-the-Box itself. Every game I've looked at from them so far has that well-designed, carefully considered, made-for-easy-fun feeling. And they make good use of their website, going to the extent of offering downloadable rules for each of their games - just in case you need an extra copy.

A Major FUN Award for the game. A Major FUN Award for the company that makes it. O, the enthusiastic endorsement of it all!

Labels: Family Games, Keeper, Party Games, Senior-Worthy, Word Games

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Monday, October 07, 2002

Curses

Today's Major FUN Award goes to Curses - a game of geometrically increasing silliness for 3-6 players, age 12 and up.

There are two decks of cards and a very nice hotel-type hit-the-top-and-it-rings bell. One deck of cards is called "Challenges," the other "Curses."

Let's start with the "Curses," which, of course, are the real challenges. A Curse is something silly that you have to do. For example, you might have the Curse of having to talk in a French accent, or having your wrists glued to your head (well, there's no real glue, but you have to pretend there is), or having to bow every time someone applauds. As the game progresses, you get more Curses. From other players, actually. Remembering two Curses is at least twice as difficult as remembering one. By the time you have three Curses you are at a conceptual point likened only to patting your tummy and rubbing your head while singing "Boat your row, row, row." In a French accent.

When you break a Curse, some observant player dutifully rings the bell. If you break enough Curses, you're kind of out. Kind of, because you still get to be a bell-ringer and cause of Curse-breaking.

The Challenges make the Curses evermore Curselike. You might have to ask someone else out to a school prom, or be in a TV commercial explaining why your deodorant is best or demonstrate how you celebrated your what you did when you scored the winning touchdown in the Superbowl. Each challenge takes on a very different light when you have to perform it under multiple Curses.

Curses radiates at least 120 Gigglewatts of pure Guffaw-power. It's can get very, very difficult to play, very quickly, and is challenging enough to occupy the most limber-minded of collegiates, whilst silly enough to keep even us over-the-hillsies laughing and coughing in glee.

The only niggle I have is with the quality of the cards. They don't pass the shuffle test very easily. But that, compared to the sheer hysteria that this game catalyzes, is clearly, at most, a nano-niggle.

Labels: Keeper, Party Games

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Monday, September 30, 2002

Blink

Today's Major FUN Award goes to:



Blink is a card game for two, maybe three players. Since I especially games that tend to make people laugh, Blink is exactly the kind of game the Bernie Award is meant for.

The fun of it is similar to that of the double-solitaire game poetically referred to as "Spit." It's a game of speed and matching. But it's a special deck. And therein lies its, um, specialness.

There are three attributes to each card: color, number and shape. This is one more attribute than a standard deck of cards.

The deck is divided evenly between two players. Each player has a hand of three cards. Two starting cards are turned up. And the game begins. Players simultaneously place a matching card on either of the two starting cards and pick up a replacement from their deck. There's no turn-taking. So, while you're engaged in solemn deliberation as to which of your cards you should place on the card with three red triangles, I blithely slap down my one red star card.

The first player to have played all her cards wins.

The three different attributes are just enough to make potentially excessive demands on your mental powers. The simultaneous play is exactly what is needed to make the game engaging and o so delightfully tense. Which is why you so frequently find yourself laughing helplessly. Since any play can make it easier or more difficult for the other player, there's nothing to take personally. Except the fun.

Labels: Family Games, Kids Games, Party Games

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