With MY vacation over it’s time to get back to reviewing some fun games!  (For those who are curious, yes, it was filled with all things important: beautiful scenery, leisure, games, good food, and nice people.)
I played Picture Carousel a few times before I took some time off, and found it to be quite a delightful children’s game!  While Picture Carousel isn’t exactly a new game, it is probably not well known by many people here in the US because it comes from Tactic, a Finnish company.  Marketed in Europe …

I’ll admit this feels like it should be a blog post I’m writing in November, but there really isn’t a “season for giving back” it should be something we do all year.   Recently, I had a project that touched of the idea of “giving” — something that feels like it has a slightly different meaning to a lot of different people. There’s no right way or wrong way to give, just as long as you’re doing it.
Last week I finished up working with a student thought a great program …

I love when my expectations are exceeded, especially when it comes to the quality of a game.  There are times I open boxes and cannot believe the sub-par quality of the game parts — granted that doesn’t mean the game is bad, but we definitely didn’t start off on the right foot.  The complete opposite happened when I opened Coconuts Crazy Monkey Dexterity Game from Mayday Games (aka just Coconuts).  I was WOWED and it wasn’t just me, my playtesters were impressed too!  The plastics were solid; the monkeys were …

There are lots of brands we get warm-fuzzy feelings about because we recall them from our childhood.  Some brands rely on the “warm-fuzzies” to drive sales and it makes sense: if I loved something when I was a kid, why wouldn’t I want to share that experience with my child?    But what happens if a toy or game is long forgotten?  Maybe it wasn’t a blockbuster or didn’t have a huge market presence – does that mean that it can’t benefit from the “warm-fuzzies?”
I recently saw the game Choco from Tactic.  I …

I saw the game Concept at Asmodee’s booth during Toy Fair and I was definitely intrigued.  I can’t compare it to anything out there, but it seemed like a game that was easy enough for my non-gamer friends to enjoy but different enough that my as my gamer friends wouldn’t mind playing (or at least it would be a welcome change to Cards Against Humanity and Apples to Apples which seem to be overly requested.) So I bought myself a copy and got some friends to try it out.
The game …

Despite a Fast Company article that refers to April 1st  as “the worst” day on the internet and calls for brands to “opt out,” I rather enjoy the fake products we see on April Fools day!  It’s one day a year that we can take a break from our regular seriousness and pushing product on social media to show our sense of humor.  Our industry is supposed to be clever and funny and so it seems that April Fools is a holiday we OWN. I know I slacked a bit …

I was at the Discover Games booth at New York Toy Fair when I got the 30-second Quartex pitch.  I’ll be honest, it had to be a quick sell because I’ve seen games like this before and I wasn’t really in the mood to hear about a game that I felt I’d seen a few times before – but this was worth it as its got a great twist.  CSE Games sent me a sample and the same thing happened when I introduced Quartex to my play testers; they moaned …