Back in the summer of 2009 I wrote an article on one of my FAVORITE dice games: Can’t Stop by Sid Sackson.  In this article I mentioned that I got my copy back in 2007 and it wasn’t going to be the easiest game to find — but good news for all, NOW IT IS!

You can scroll down to read my original review, but before that I’d like to rave about it’s new design.  The new Gryphon Games version is on the right and the older Face2Face games version is on the left in the pictures below. (*there are many older versions of Can’t Stop, this just happens to be my older copy.)

The games looks pretty similar but there are several improvements that I really appreciate.   First and by far the most important, the movers are so much easier to hold.  Maybe it’s the Industrial Designer in me, but the old game’s movers irked me — but since I loved the game so much I overlooked that they were small and really hard to hold.  When I heard that Gryphon Games was redoing Can’t Stop I was praying they redid the movers — and they did!  The new movers are taller and don’t nest as well but that actually makes it easier to see whose piece is stacked underneath. (see picture at the top of the page for the new version, and scroll down to see the old pieces in action.)  I also appreciate the built in cups in the plastic box insert — they’re not necessary, but boy are they handy!  And when you lift the board up the insert has a spot for the dice and the “runners” which is nice too.  Overall, the only negative I could find is that the new version is a tad bit larger box (13×13) — now, in all fairness, it was already a large game box (12×12) so does the extra inch of height and width make a difference?  Not really.  So go, buy, enjoy and win!  (Updated game stats are listed after the 2009 review below.)

My July 2009 Review:

Today’s pick is Can’t Stop by Sid Sackson.  Currently this dice games tops tall the others because I’m just so addicted to it and it’s an oldie but a goodie.  It was originally published in 1980 by Parker Brothers but was reprinted by Face 2 Face games back in 2007 and that’s when I got my copy.

The game is so easy to learn and play.  You’re trying to move your pieces from the bottom of the board to the top in columns numbered 2-12.  There are only 3 spaces in the 2 and 12 columns and 13 in the 7 column and since 7s are the easiest to roll using a pair of standard dice, it makes sense. The board is shaped like a giant stop sign which is a little ugly, but the shape easily lends itself to the bell curve that defines the odds in rolling dice.  So on a turn, you get 4 dice to roll and once rolled, you choose how to pair up the dice so it’s most advantageous to you.  Then you use 3 “runners” to move your pieces up the columns towards the top of the board.  And since there are only 3 runners you can only attempt 3 columns per turn.  The “Can’t Stop” part of the game comes in when you are holding the dice saying “I can roll just one more time, just once more, I can get a 2,7 or 9…then I’ll stop.”  You end up saying the same thing turn after turn until you gain some willpower to actually stop and move your pieces to where your runners are or you bust and don’t roll a 2,7,9 and the runners are removed from the board and without any advancement of your pieces, you pass the four dice to the next player and say “why did I keep going?!”

As the game progresses people who are really lucky or have the “slow and steady” mentality start to close out columns by reaching the top first.  Once a player closes out a pre-determined number of columns they win.  (The number of columns depends on the number of players.)

The thing about this game that I love isn’t that I have to fight my dice addiction to have a chance of winning – no, it’s that there is some luck mixed with a little mental game too.  The question becomes, how far in the lead do I have to be in a column before I should start working in other columns?  It kind of depends on how if your opponents are lucky, but also how gutsy they are.  It really makes me kind of antsy for my turn – and if I lose I want to play again…right away…because I just can’t stop playing.

So I guess Sid Sackson knew what he was doing when he created this game.  Addictive + fun is always a good combination in my mind.  Somewhere I read a quote from Sid that said something like “games should be easy to learn, give lots of strategic possibilities, include interaction amongst players and be played within 90 minutes.”  He had me until the last part.  I hate long games (which is why you won’t find a review for Monopoly on this site).  I think games should be played in 30 minutes or less and then if I have time to play it again, great.  Besides, it keeps people who want…er need… to win interested in the game even if they are getting killed because they know they have a chance of starting over in a couple minutes.  Ha!

So if you can find it get, yourself a copy of Can’t Stop.  It may be a bit of a hunt to find – try little mom & pop online retailers and eBay, though why someone would want to give up their copy of this classic is beyond me.  Maybe they don’t know what kind of fun they’re missing.

UPDATED Can’t Stop stats:
~$30 Amazon, FunAgain Games, some mom & pop stores
2-4 players
~15-30 minutes
Ages 7 and up (but I think the box says 9)

As my regular readers know, here at The Game Aisle I tend to review mass-market, mass-appeal games and steer clear of games that appeal to more serious gamers.  Mostly because I, like a lot of casual gamers out there, don’t like reading long instruction books and I don’t like to spend more than 30 minutes on one game.  So when Gryphon Games asked if I’d like to try their game Incan Gold I was pretty sure it was going to be outside the scope of games I review – but oh my gosh it’s not!

Incan Gold looks a little like a German-style board game and for those in the know, it says on the box that it was invented by Alan Moon and Bruno Faidutti.  Over his career Alan Moon has worked for Avalon Hill (maker of war & strategy board games) and invents for Ravensburger and Days of Wonder (publisher which specializes in German-style board games maybe most famous for Ticket to Ride invented by Alan Moon).  To me, this was not a great sign – but I agreed to try it out.

As it turns out, Incan Gold is a great press-your-luck game.  The story goes that everyone is an adventurer and you’re looking for jewels in an ancient Incan temple and on each turn you must decide if you want to keep hunting for treasure or return to camp with your haul.  That’s it…that’s the WHOLE game.

The game is played in 5 rounds so you have 5 opportunities to score.  On a turn a card is flipped and if it’s a Treasure card, the number of jewels it shows are split amongst the players who are still in the temple (which is everyone at the start of the game).  The jewels are actually little plastic jewels with the turquoise jewels being worth 1 point, the black or “obsidian” ones worth 5 and the gold are worth 20.  Like I said, the jewels are split equally amongst the players and then each player has to decide if they’re going to stay or go.  Players use one of two cards to blindly vote on whether they’re going to stay and keep “looking” for treasure or go.  When everyone reveals what they’ve decided, those who have decided to leave get to put the jewels they’ve collected under this cute paper tent and they’re yours to keep for the rest of the game, but you’re out for the rest of the round.  The players that stay in flip the next card and continue to split any treasure that comes their way.  There are also artifact cards that give out extra points but those can only be collected if you are the ONLY person to leave the temple on a turn (which takes a keen guess) but artifacts can get you a bunch of extra points.

There are also hazard cards in the deck like Giant Spiders, but they don’t matter until a hazard that matches one that’s already been played is pulled.  So when the first Giant Spider card is flipped over, it doesn’t matter.  It’s when the SECOND Giant Spider card is pulled that the round is over.  Anyone who is still in the temple loses all of the jewels they’ve collected and the round is over.  The round also ends when there are no adventurers still in the temple – but that’s pretty obvious.  Once a round is over the deck is shuffled and the round restarts with everyone back in the temple.  At the end of the 5^th round, players lift their paper tents and total up their jewels to see who can claim victory!

The game is easy to grasp once you’ve played it.  I’ve done a pretty good job of explaining the basics here, but the directions are a little long so I’d advise you check out an online explanation of the instruction, like The Dice Tower’s:

I also would agree with Tom from The Dice Tower that Incan Gold plays better with more players.  The box says 3-8 (and the directions say 3-5) but I’d say at least 4-5 players to make it interesting.  So good luck and happy treasure hunting!

Incan Gold Stats:

• ~$15-20 Amazon.com, FunAgainGames.com, some mom & pop retailers
• 3-8 players — but I’d say 4/5-8
• ~15-20 minutes maybe a bit longer if people are very lucky!
• Ages 8 and up

Father’s Day is like a week and a half away — I know, I feel like I was JUST writing about giving your moms Chocolate Fix for Mother’s Day.  Anyway, instead of getting your father another tie or some funny covers for his golf clubs – why not get him an awesome outdoor game?  Yes, I know everyone and their brother has a game of bags (or “cornhole” depending on what part of the US you come from) and they probably have bocce, Jarts, washers, croquet or horseshoes lying around too.  But those games are old, tired and everyone has them.  Rollors is new, different and isn’t solely based on skill.

In my world, we don’t play bags anymore since my husband and his firefighting buddies starting playing on their off time at work and now I lose every stinking game.  And they aren’t close games either!  But that won’t happen with Rollors because there are two different numbers on the side of each puck which means it’s skill AND luck.  Rollors is similar to other outdoor games because there are two targets laid out across the lawn from each other and you take turns rolling (not throwing) your three pucks at the targets.  The cool part of the game is the scoring.  Like I said each puck has a different number on each side, and whichever side ends facing up is what you’ll score if your puck is the closest to the target.  Each team has a puck with a 6 on one side and a 1 on the other, also a 5 & 2 puck and a 3 & 4 puck.  Once all of the pucks are rolled, you determine which puck is the closest and that player scores the number facing up on that puck.  If another one of their pucks is the second closest, they get to score that one too and same goes for their third.  The game is played until someone reaches 21 and wins by at least 2 points.  And if there are augments about which puck is the closest, there’s a handy string that attaches to the targets that can help you measure.

Another factor that makes the game interesting is the surface you’re playing on.  You can’t play Rollors on cement, you need to play on grass or sand and at my house…the grass isn’t that smooth.  It made for some pretty interesting rolls and players had to avoid the “potholes” and “yard moguls” but it was all in good fun.  My guess is if we had played at my father’s house the rolls would have been spot-on, but there’s some joy in heckling your opponent when he can’t seem to avoid the giant grass outcrop in the middle of the playing area.  (You know who you are!)

And a quick note about the inventor: Air Force Officer Matt Butler (pic at right) came up with the idea for Rollors while he was serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Like many Air Force personnel, he was daydreaming about hanging out in his backyard with his family, playing lawn games.  These daydreams lead to the game you play today.  He made the prototype in his garage and tested with with family and friends; and now his daydream is a reality.

Rollors Stats:

• ~$27 QVC.com, Amazon.com, Meijer, Menards, and MC Sports
• 2 players or in teams
• ~10-20 minutes
• Ages 4 and up (although I’d say 6 and up)

Two weeks in a row we’re going to discuss games I came across for the first time at ChiTag (the Chicago Toy and Game Fair) – it’s unintentional, but pretty interesting. When I first saw FlipOut it was called Patchwork and the inventor/self-manufacturer, Daniel Weaver, had a booth with just this one game, but when you saw it you just kind of got it.  I love games that you “get” when you see them – I gives you that “well duh, why didn’t I think of that, okay let’s play” feeling.

As you can see from the photo, FlipOut is all about patterns.  Each card has a pattern on both sides – not necessarily the same pattern – and each player has 6 cards in their holder.  Now only you can see one side of your cards, and the other players can see the other side.  The goal of the game is to collect as many cards as possible.  You collect cards by getting 4, 5, or 6 cards of the same pattern in a row either in your cards facing you or on the visible-to-you side of your opponent’s cards.

On your turn you get to make any two of the following moves (and they can be made to the cards in your holder or in any opponent’s):

1. Flip: Turn any card around in its holder
2. Switch: Switch the positions of any two cards
3. Swap: Trade one of your cards for one from an opponent (keep the same side facing you)
4. Swap 2: Trade two adjacent, same-color cards from your holder with two adjacent, same-color cards in an opponent’s holder
5. Score: Collect a set of 4-6 adjacent same-color cards from your holder
6. Swipe: Collect a set of 4-6 cards from an opponent’s holder — BUT you must give them one card (kind of as payment for stealing their cards)

You play until you run out of cards and then everyone counts up how many they’ve collected and the person who has the most wins.  Simple as pie.

I asked Daniel Weaver how he came up with this pretty unique game and here’s what he said,

“I discovered FlipOut where many great American inventions are discovered – in the shower!  The previous evening, I had played poker with friends and while shampooing my hair I started thinking “what have I never seen before in games?”  I was visualizing the previous evening’s poker game and realized that the backs of playing cards are never used!  By the time I was done drying off, FlipOut existed in my head almost exactly as it is today.”

You can see that not much has changed since Gamewright has licensed the concept – the game play is the same, the cards have the same patterns (although the colors look brighter) but the biggest difference is the packaging.  The old Patchwork version of the game didn’t have a box that visually “popped” and I think FlipOut has a “fresher” feeling to it.  The one thing I do miss?  The beautiful wooden cardholders – they made me drool.  But in the end, it’s always easier to convince friends to play a game in a pretty box.

FlipOut Stats:

• ~$20 Amazon.com, Fat Brain Toys, Barnes & Noble (starting in July) and some mom & pop retailers
• 2-5 player
• ~15 Minutes
• Ages 8 and up

As many of my regular readers know, I’m not really a fan of abstract strategy games.  They’re just not my thing, but every once in a while I come across one that I can’t help but love.  I first played Stomple at the 2010 Chicago Toy and Game Fair and included it in my “ChiTAG picks” article (See HERE).  And now that I’ve had a chance to subject some of my play testers to it, I think it deserves it’s own article complete with great inventor story!

To remind you quickly how to play (if you didn’t read the ChiTAG Picks article), the board is a 7×7 grid of marbles and players use “Stompers” to push the different colored marbles through holes in the board.  On your turn you push down or “stomp” a marble adjacent to your Stomper’s position on the board.  If there is a marble of the same color adjacent to the one you just stomped you must do that one too until there are no marbles of the same color next your stomper.  At anytime you may move to another part of the board by jumping to and stomping a marble that matches the color of your Stomper.  This is particularly useful when you find your Stomper with no marbles around you since you MUST stomp a marble on each turn.  If you can’t stomp a marble on your turn you must remove you Stomper from the board and you’re done for the round.  But if your Stomper is the last one on the board you get 1 point for each marble left and 3 points for special red cat’s eye marbles.

Greg Zima, of GaZima Games, is the inventor of Stomple – although he initially called it “Stomp.”  He came up with the idea of stomping marbles through a board and thought it was a fun, toy-esque concept but the game play didn’t come together right away.  At first he thought of stomping things around a track but really, it just wasn’t right.  So he did what a lot of inventors do when they’re stumped.  He tossed it on the backburner and let it simmer in the back of his brain for a while.  About 18 months later he had the “ah ha!” moment he was waiting for.  The game play was developed in just a couple days and his business partner Stefan Maroudis put together a prototype and they play tested it until they thought it was pretty close to perfect. (See pic of prototype above, courtesy of Greg Zima)

Stomple is manufactured by Spin Master and first time the game was shown to them, they weren’t interested because they weren’t doing games.  The second time, however, was a totally different story.  In Greg’s words:

Stefan and I were at the licensing show and we always bring a couple of games with us even if we don’t have meetings – just in case.  We called Ben Dermer (Spin Master) and asked him if we could meet and he said ‘meet me in 5 minutes’ and we literally had to run, in our suits and dress shoes, across the conference center all the way up do Ben’s room — it had to have been about a mile!  When we got there we were out of breath, but we showed him the game.  He LOVED it and pretty much optioned it on the spot!

Fast-forward to now, Stomple was just named one of the Mensa Select award winners earlier this spring, which is extremely cool!  I asked Greg if he found it difficult to license an abstract strategy game and he admitted that earlier on they tried to add some faces to the marbles to give it a theme and some artwork, but he said,

“Really you just have to remind [inventor relations people] that there are other very successful abstract strategy games out there like Tetris and Blokus.  But it helped that our game also incorporated the toy-esque stomping.”

I agree that the stomp is super-satisfying to the point that I kind of don’t mind if I’m losing because it’s so enjoyable to stomp marbles on every turn.  I also like that the games are quick so if I happen to lose, we can play again right and way and I can regain my position as supreme stomper.

Stomple Stats:

• ~$30 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and many others
• 2-5 Players
• ~5 minutes per round
• Ages 8 and Up

Is it me or is Easter REALLY close to Mother’s Day this year?  And because they’re so close you really can’t get your mother flowers and candy since the Easter Bunny delivered those two weeks ago.  So what are you going to do?!  Sounds like the perfect time to give Think Fun’s Chocolate Fix!

I know – a lot of you out there don’t consider 1-player puzzle things “games” but we’re going to ignore that just like we did for the Rush Hour and Solitaire Chess reviews.

Chocolate Fix has been out for a little while, but the folks at Think Fun just issued all new puzzles so it seems like a good time to do this review.  (Side note: you can tell the new ones because they have the blue chocolates, not the pink ones) The game is well loved by many because it’s so easy to jump right into a challenge when you’ve got some spare minutes.  The challenges are bound in a cute little spiral notebook and they give you hints on where to put the chocolates so the right color and shape end up in the correct position.  Sometimes the hint will say what color needs to go in a particular spot, sometimes it only gives you the shape.  Other hints may tell you what colors or shapes go near each other.  You can see an example of what this looks like in the pic at the right.  It may look a wee bit complicated but you will pick it up really quickly.  For example – look at #5; this means that you will need to have a pink, dark chocolate and light chocolate in one of the three rows in that order.  And #7 tells you that in the upper right hand corner it will DEFINITELY be a triangular dark chocolate.  So from #7 you now know that the row shown in #5 is NOT the top row.  Get it?  You will.

Like all Think Fun puzzles, Chocolate Fix comes with challenges that range from “a monkey-can-do-it” easy to my “brain’s-really-flexing” hard.  And it all fits neatly into a little nylon bag for easy travel and storage.  It’s cute, it’s sweet and Mom will thank you for not breaking her diet!

Chocolate Fix Stats:

• ~$18 Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and pretty much any store that sells Think Fun products (*It’s $14 right now at Amazon!)
• 1 player
• as long as you’d like to spend playing it!
• Ages 8 and up

To write about or not to write about – sometimes that’s the question.  Games come across my desk all the time and we play them and typically it’s love at first play or not so much (yet I still give them a second chance).  But once in a while there’s a game that didn’t go well in the first play but I have a feeling it was just with the wrong group of people.  You’ve Been Sentenced completely fits into that category.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with this game, it’s all about creating a sentence out of the ten 5-sided cards in your hand.  Each side of the card has either a different word or phrase – they can be the same type of word (like a bunch of names or colors), a different form of a word (like: dream, dreamer, dreaming, dreams, dreamt), or a series of little words (like: and, of, the, to, a).  Each side of the card also has a point value ranging from 0 (wilds) to 20 points.  On each turn you get as much time as you want to concoct the highest scoring sentence possible (you don’t have to use all your cards).  Once someone thinks they’ve got a great sentence, they flip the timer and the countdown begins.  When time is up everyone reads their sentence – and some can be very absurd. For example:

Weird-O • George Washington • Secretly • Shaped • The Study • Of • Squeezing • Springy  • Squash.

If the group okays your creation, you total up your points adding a bonus of 10 points if you were the player to flip the timer and/or if you used all 10 cards in your hand.   The first player to 200 wins.

So what went wrong with the first play test?  I played with competitive people.  The sentences were a tad past absurd and there were far too many arguments on what should be allowed, which inhibited the game from being fun.  The second group was more laid back – maybe it was the wine – but the timer stopped but people still got a couple extra seconds to perfect their sentences because they were going to come up with the “best one yet” and no one really cared.  Players were striving to craft a sentence that was going to make the group laugh versus trying to win by putting together point-heavy arguably nonsensical string of words.  The other thing that I believe made a difference…having a tabletop.  The first group of players were strewn about out over a couch and chairs which makes it almost impossible to spread out your cards to see what you had.

Overall, You’ve Been Sentenced can be a great game if you’re playing with the RIGHT group of people – and potentially disastrous if you’re not.  So find some nice, friendly, non-competitive winos and gather around the table.  The game also has add-on decks so you can play with words that are more topic-specific such as: Pop Culture, Sports Highlights, Sci-Fi and Fantasy, the Reader’s Digest National Word Power Challenge (vocab) and out any day now NASA Space Terminology.  I personally enjoyed the Gourmet Cuisine deck because sauce, sauced, sausage, Big Boy and Colonel Sanders make for funny sentences.

You’ve Been Sentenced Stats:

• ~$25 for the main game, $8 for add on decks (you MUST have the main game to play!) at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, AreYouGame.com, and many others
• 3-10 players
• 30-45 min. (depends on how long it takes your players to perfect their sentences)
• Ages 8 and up

If you follow The Game Aisle on Facebook then you already know that I won the Wonder Woman in Toys award for Social Media given by Women in Toys during Toy Fair last month— and you’re probably sick of hearing about it!  But give me 2 more seconds on the topic.

Obviously I never set out hoping to win an award – I spend time on facebook and twitter simply because I like sharing stories about the industry and meeting new people.  I work at home, with a dog that snores and have found that facebook and twitter provide a “water cooler” to chat with other industry folks around.  It also helps me keep up on what’s new and fun so I can pass it along to you, my wonderful readers!  I bring this up because the game I’m reviewing in this article came to me via Twitter.  I tweeted using #ChiTag back during the show and the @Mental_Floss people asked if I was still at the show and wanted to give me a copy of their new game, Split Decision.   And now because of that one tweet – I’m going to tell you about a very fun adult social game…

Split Decision is dubbed “The Hilarious Game of Improbable Pairings” which is pretty much on the mark.  Players get to mark off one letter in the phrase “I MADE THE ULTIMATE SPLIT DECISION” for each correct answer and players take turns reading the A or B trivia to the rest of the players each round.  The catch is the trivia is totally absurd.  At random, I’ve chosen a couple cards from the deck.  The first one is “Who said it Valdimir Lenin (A) or John Lennon (B)?” the other is “New Jersey Town (A) or Moon of Jupiter (B)?” There are three questions on each card with answers that will be either A or B and as you read them everyone has an A card and a B card which they place face-down in front of them to answer.

Want to try one?  The question is “Broadway Musical (A) or Aftershave Scent (B)?”

1. Wild Country

2. Beyond Paradise

3. Ambassador

The answers are at the bottom of this already-too-long article.

The game is really funny – and ALL PLAY so you don’t have to sit through turns and turns of people mulling over their answers.  There are also challenge cards that don’t have an A or B choice, but you have to omit them when there are only 2 players.  Most of the cards have fun tidbits explaining some of the trivia answers.  Like did you know that Wild Country is by Avon and “the company claims the bergamot and coriander scent should help ‘Unleash his wild side.’” Wow.

The only negative for this game is that you blow through the trivia at mach 10 speeds, but then again since you’re answering so many bizarre questions, how many are you really going to remember?

Answers: 1. B, 2. B, 3. A

Split Decision Stats:

• $25 at MentalFloss.com, Borders, Books-A-Million, Marbles (The Brain Store) and mom & pop shops
• 2-8 players (must omit challenge cards with 2 players so 3-8 is better)
• ~15-20 min.
• Ages 12 and up

I mentioned the ThinkFun game Solitaire Chess in my 2010 Picks article and said I needed to play it some more.  Well I got to play it some more during the holidays and I really enjoy it….to the point I leave it on my desk in case I have some down time.  (which I don’t ever, but it motivates me to try to make some!)  Before I tell you about Solitaire Chess, we’re going to do a little flashback to the late 1980s…

When I was in grammar school I was lucky enough to be pulled out of class a couple times a week and put into what my school called “challenge.”  We played board games, did logic puzzles, played with tangrams, learned advanced problem solving techniques.  At the time I truly had no idea why I was being pulled out of class and to this day I’m convinced it was just so I didn’t end up totally disenchanted with school because I was unhappy or bored when I wasn’t in “challenge.”  Maybe this is why I invent games, regardless I think that veering away from the traditional math/English/social studies/science made my school experience far more enjoyable and I wish every kid got a “brain recess” a couple times a week!

Sadly, most schools out there that don’t have anything similar to a “challenge” program but I think every kid — and adult — should get a “Brain Recess.”  I guess I should specify that “Brain Recess” is not when students’ brains take a time out – we have TV for that – instead it’s when students get a break from the math equations and science terms that they are bombarded with all day and have the opportunity to let their brains play!  Luckliy, there are plenty of products out on the market today that can be fun, challenging and can be enjoyed solo.  Personally, I’m a fan of tangrams, pentominoes, logic grid puzzles, edge-matching puzzles and of course products that come from ThinkFun (which was called “Binary Arts” back when I was a kid!).  They have the fantastic Rush Hour puzzle series which has been out since 1996  (read my review of that HERE) and now I’m totally geeked about their newest puzzle product, Solitaire Chess!

I’ll admit I’m not a huge chess player, mostly because I don’t have the time to play and study it enough to be a decent player, but I love the idea that different pieces can move in different ways and this is what Solitaire Chess capitolizes on.  It’s a logic puzzle with 60 challenge cards that dictate which of the pieces you’ll be using and where they go on the 4×4 grid.  Then it’s up to you to find out how to knock off all of the pieces so only one piece remains on the board (you must knock a piece off every move you make).  If you get stuck there’s a booklet that will give you hints like which piece should remain on the board and which is the first piece you should move, so it’s not horrible to people who give up easily when they’re stuck.  I’ve really enjoyed playing with my copy of Solitaire Chess and I think it would have been something we would have had in our “challenge” room if it existed in the mid-80s.

Last Thursday the folks at ThinkFun released the Solitaire Chess app!  (awesome)  Try it now:

And a funny video about Solitaire Chess…(not by me.)

Solitaire Chess Stats:

$17-$20 at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Fat Brain Toys, and mom & pop stores
1 Player
How long do you want to play for?
Ages 8 and up

]]> http://www.thegameaisle.com/solitaire-chess/feed/ 9 http://www.thegameaisle.com/scattergories-categories/ http://www.thegameaisle.com/scattergories-categories/#comments Tue, 07 Dec 2010 04:39:21 +0000 Kim Vandenbroucke http://www.thegameaisle.com/?p=2099

I know that there are plenty of toy and game inventors that read this site so and I’m sure they’ve had similar experiences – but there’s no feeling in the world quite like seeing your game on the shelf!  It makes all of the hard work and late nights worth it, and dulls the pain of all of the rejection letters that go with being in the business.  My big game this year is Scattergories Categories manufactured by Winning Moves.  Now, I don’t entirely think it’s fair that I review my own game, but then again this is my site…and I like this game – A LOT.  So I’ve decided to compromise a bit and I’ll explain a little of the history of the game, then I’ll have some outside folks toss their two cents in.

I’d like to say I knew Scattergories Categories was exactly what it was when I came up with the idea, but I didn’t.  I didn’t think the idea of having a vertical category word with players trying to come up with words horizontally that start with the letters in the vertical category word was enough to stand on it’s own, so it ended up being a mini-game in another game.  Luckily, Mike Gray remarked that the little mini-game was an interesting idea and that feedback got the Scatttergories Categories ball rolling.  After making it a game on it’s own it was obvious that it was a great line extension for the Scattergories brand (sketch at right).  Unique answers get you points just like in the classic version, but  it solved the one thing I disliked about Scattergories, which is you play the same 12 cards over and over.  This new method solves the “repeat” problem so easily because you get a new category every round thus you never feel like you’re playing the same questions over and over with different letters.   Thankfully, Winning Moves agreed, licensed it and asked me to write the content!  (Yipee – I LOVE writing content!)

I will admit that coming up with enough category phrases/words was a little more difficult than I had expected.  Scattergories Categories not like other category games where you come up with a category and boom – it’s done!  In Scattergories Categories the vertical word or phrase needed to have a minimal number of vowels, virtually no Is, Us, Xs,Ys, Zs or any other weird consonants.  For example: if I wanted the topic to be “Bubble Gum Brands and Flavors” BUBBLE GUM seems like the obvious choice especially since there are a ton of answers for B like: Big League Chew, banana, Berry Blast, Big Red, Bazooka, etc. but what flavor starts with U?!  Ugli fruit?  I’d veto that.  So the vertical word became BEST CHEW because it still includes the B and limits the vowels to only two Es which have a bunch of answers: Eclipse, Extra, Excel Extreme, euclyptus (although not common flavor it’s one of my favorites) just to name a few.  So coming up with words turned out to be more of a science than I expected!  But after two weeks and almost 1.5 inches of paper I was done and was more certain than ever that the game rocked – mostly because after essentially playing for 2 weeks straight, I wished I had to do more!

Like I said earlier, reviewing my own game may not be the most believable thing I could do (although I must ask, have I steared you wrong in the past?), so here are some other people who gave me their reviews:

Lauren Rizzo, Teen Programming Librarian at Indian Trails Public Library · Addison, IL

(Lauren got introduced to the game when I brought an advance copy to her library “Meet the Inventor, Play the Game” program back in June.)

“If you want great fun, Scattergories Categories definitely the way to go.  This game is a fun twist on the original game (Scattergories), and, I think, gives the game an additional level of strategy.  Players are given a word that describes a category – it is then up to the players to come up with words that start with each of the letters in the original describing word – a deeper level of play.  The fun begins when the timer starts, and you’ve got 2 minutes to think of something that will (1) fit into the category, (2) start with the correct letter, (3) be unique (in that no one else will write it as their own).  Example—Carnival: C = cotton candy, A = acrobats, R = rats, etc.   This can get very creative and you’ll get answers you would’ve never expected.  Especially if you’re playing with my mom who tends to “cheat” – somehow if there’s a letter D in the original word, the answer will always be “dirt.”  The rules do allow for people to challenge another player’s answers, which adds another hysterical dynamic to the fun-for-all-ages game.  My mom’s defense to any challenges?  Dirt is everywhere.  And it’s hard to say no to that!”

Suzette Soukup-Oko, Private Investigator · Westmont, IL

“It’s now my favorite game to play.  I like it because I am a light-weight (drinker) and you can play it when you are drinking and it seems like the answers we come up with get funnier and funnier!  It’s easy, relaxing and fun to play with a lot of people or just 3 people. Even though there is thinking involved, the unique questions that are asked of us on the cards really seem to stimulate thoughts and are answer-able when intoxicated!  It’s easy to set-up, easy to explain to a new-comer, and the time really flies when playing it.  Nobody ever seems like they are ready to stop playing the game.  It’s great because both young people and old people can play it.  It brings out a lot of laughter from the group!”

Josh Gorman, Program Assistant at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History · Washington DC

“I found [the game] before thanksgiving and pulled it out a couple times with my family and [my wife’s]. It was great – a huge improvement over the original.  More letters makes it only slightly easier and tons more inventive (and thus more fun in my book).”

Chung Liang, Design Manager at Learning Curve Brands · Chicago, IL

“The categories are funny and people’s answers are likely to spark lively debate.  Also, the odds of having similar answers are more likely so there’s some strategy in how you fill in the answers for words with 2 of the same letters.”

Nicole Flores, Northside Prep High School Math Teacher · Chicago, IL

“I love Scattergories Categories!  Having a love of Scattergories and board games in general, I was naturally drawn to this new hit game.  What I enjoyed the most is having the category provided and then different letters as opposed to rolling a die and using one letter the whole time.  I think this offers more diversity in answers and more playing fun!  I have played Scattergories Categories with family, friends and even students.  This is definitely a game I will continue to play.”

Nina Kult, Public Relations Executive · St. Louis, MO

“I love the challenge of Scattergories Categories, taking the original Scattergories concept one step further. It forces you to think fast and be creative in attempt to outsmart your fellow players.”

Tracy Lopata, Manager at Lopata & Company · Naperville, IL

“I loved Scattergories Categories.  It was better than the original.  A wonderful game to play with a group of friends.  We had silly, warmhearted fun and laughter playing this game.”

Scott Slimmer, Post-Doctoral Student University of Illinois · Champaign, IL

“I’ve always enjoyed the original Scattergories, but I love the way that Scattergories Categories breathes new life into a familiar game with one simple yet elegant twist.  The combination of intriguing categories with playfully worded clue phrases also serves to infuse the game with the kind of unpredictable fun that brings to mind one of my all-time favorite game shows, Pyramid.  Scattergories Categories is definitely going into heavy rotation in my family’s game repertoire.”

Bonnie Olszewski, Public Relations Specialist · Joilet, IL

“I enjoyed it because of the wide variety of categories. It was harder than I thought to come up with answers for some of the letters, and tons of fun to hear what everyone came up with and for them to defend their words that were kind of a stretch.”

Lindsey Smith, Museum Curator, Archivist and Exhibit Developer · Des Moines, IO

“Scattergories Categories is the perfect game for anyone who wants to be a little creative and have a lot of fun!”

Jack Degnan, Board Game Inventor, San Diego, CA

“Very fun, easy, contagious!”

Laurie Wojtko, Scientist · Palatine, IL

“It’s a fantastic challenge and provided for lively conversation and competition.”

Emily Vandenbroucke, Pharmacology Doctoral Candidate · Chicago, IL

(yea, so we’re related…we grew up playing games together so if she likes it, it’s probably good.)

“Really creative take on the original Scattergories- still a ton of fun to play in groups or with just 2, but now with a new twist that makes you think just a little differently than before.”

Scattergories Categories Stats:

~$20 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and lots of mom & pop stores
2 or more players (it says 4 but we’ve played with 10+)
~4 minutes per round, ~20-30 minutes for a game to 25
Ages 12 and Up

What did YOU think of Scattergories Categories?