The neighborhood I live in here in Chicago, well let’s just say it’s “up and coming” and it’s been “up and coming” for pretty much the entire 7 years that I’ve lived here.  During those years, it’s definitely been getting better and this year huge strides have been made with great new bars, restaurants and shops going in nearby including an upscale toy store!  The owner of the new toy store *Play, asked for my help picking out games for their target age group (8 and under).  Trying to pick out stuff that is fun and unique, one of the games I suggested was Chicken Cha Cha Cha – another game in the “Chicken Family of Zoch” which includes the previously reviewed Pickomino (see here).

Now, Chicken Cha Cha Cha isn’t the easiest game to find (it’s being re-released in October), and with a $30+ price tag it makes it even harder to cough up the money to buy it before trying it but I really thought it was a great purchase.  The game’s been around since 1998 and it was invented by Klaus Zoch (hence the “Chicken Family of Zoch”).  Unlike Pickomino, Chicken Cha Cha Cha is aimed at a younger crowd – 4 and up.  The game is simple, each player gets a beautiful wooden chicken with one tail feather that is placed on an egg shaped tile that is one of 24 laid out in a circle.  (Eggs, laid…get it?)  Inside the circle there are 12 octagonal tiles scattered about face down.  On your turn, you look at the egg space in front of you and try to flip over the tile in the middle that has the matching image.  Obviously in the beginning it’s all guessing, but as you get going it’s a great memory game!  If you flip a matching tile, you “cha cha” your chicken one space forward and your turn continues until you don’t flip over a matching tile.

The point of the game is to collect all of your opponents tail feathers.  To do that, you must catch up to, and then jump over another player.  After which you collect ALL of their tail feathers.  If the game has just started, they may only have their own feather but as things get going they could have collected a tail feather or two already.

Chicken Cha Cha Cha is definitely a fun twist on classic memory with exciting head-to-head play.  And while the $30 or more price tag is really steep for a kid’s game, it’s one that adults can definitely enjoy – even without the kids!  I also have to say that this game is amazingly well made.  The tiles are really thick and durable and the wooden chickens are something you won’t find in games at Target or Wal-Mart for sure

Chicken Cha Cha Cha Stats:

$30-$45 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble.com,  FunAgainGames.com
2-4 players
15-20 minutes
Ages 4 and up

When it comes to “Junior” or “Family” versions of games I usually feel that a game loses a little of the magic or gets watered down to make it age appropriate for the younger set, but I really enjoyed the family version of Wits & Wagers!  I thought the changes the folks at North Star Games made to the original game were well thought out and the game doesn’t lose any of it’s magic.

Just as in Wits & Wagers (read that review here), Wits & Wagers Family starts each round with a question where all of the answers will be numbers.  Each player writes down their best guess and then all of the answers cards are organized in a row from lowest to highest.  Simple enough.  Then players each take their two “Meeples” (people shaped movers, see above) and they place the large one and their small one on the answers they think are correct.  Just as in original Wits & Wagers, you can vote for your own but sometimes it’s best to look to someone who has more knowledge regarding the question and vote for their answer.  Once all of the votes are cast, the answer is read and the winning answer is the one that is closest without going over.  Players with a large Meeple on the correct answer get two points, whereas the small Meeple is worth one.  An additional point is awarded to the player who wrote down the correct answer as well.  Points are tallied on the wipe off scoreboard.

Overall, I thought their use of “Meeples” was a really clever way of omitting the not-so-kid-friendly betting tokens.  It’s also great for people who aren’t real gamers or are intimidated by the betting and odds aspect of Wits & Wagers.  My only concern with the game is that some of the questions were a little too easy.  (We all knew there were 8 crayons in the first box of Crayolas.)  I know I said something similar about Take 5, so it might be that my brain is filled with too much useless knowledge because of excessive game playing and trivia writing, which is distinctly possible.  But there is an easy solution if you agree with me, grab the box of cards from Wits & Wagers and just omit any inappropriate ones.  Otherwise, just skip the easy ones in the Family version; there are plenty of fun and interesting random tidbits within the cards.

Wits & Wagers Family Stats:

$15 to $20 at Amazon, Toys R Us, Barnes & Noble,  AreYouGame.com
3 -10 players
15-20 minutes
Ages 8 and up

Sometimes I think people are willing to cut games a little slack when they look really great but don’t play as well as they should.  Whereas I’m more likely to enjoy a game that is unattractive but that plays really well.  (What does that say about me?)   So when there is a good looking game that’s really fun to play I get downright excited!   (See my article on Pentago…I was drooling while playing that game!)  Anyway, Dweebies is just that kind of game.  I saw it at Gamewright’s booth at Toy Fair in February and have been dying to have a copy ever since.  The metal packaging is adorable but it’s the super cute Dweebies illustrations that I enjoy.  There are doctor Dweebies, yoga Dweebies, super Dweebies, foam-finger Dweebies and so on, and each one of them has been carefully illustrated for maximum cuteness!  (And yes, we name them as we play them!)

There are 54 Dweebies cards in the deck (27 different illustrations) and the goal is to collect as many of them as you can.  (And why wouldn’t you want to – they’re so CUTE!)  Players each starts with 5 cards in their hand and  replenishes as they play.  One by one players place Dweebies in a grid pattern in the center of the table by adding a Dweebie above, below or next to any other Dweebie.  To capture Dweebies you must create “bookends” of two of the same Dweebies and you collect all of the Dweebies in the middle.  Look at the the grainy illustration below  to get a better idea of what I mean by “bookends.”  Essentially, the two matching Dweebies must be on the ends.  Once you do this, you collect the two bookend Dweebies and any Dweebies in between them.

The other rule of the game is that apparently Dweebies don’t like to be lonely so if someone picks up a line of Dweebies and it creates some loner Dweebies or a couple of unconnected packs of Dweebies players must play cards to connect the Dweebies before adding cards elsewhere on the mass.  (Just FYI, the grainy image shows 2 game scenarios…I know that because someone couldn’t place a second bookend Dweebie until the two groups had been connected.)

It’s an easy overall concept for younger players to grasp, but there is another layer to this card game that makes it appealing to us older players as well.  Each Dweebie has a dot in the corner of the card.  This tells you how many of this particular Dweebie are in the deck.  The dots range from 1 to 4 and you’ll find that there is a strategy to playing the 1-dot “blocking” Dweebies and 4-dot Dweebies.   Obviously it’s very advantageous to count the cards, and it’s a great way to teach the younger crowd why card counting can be important in games.  Yep, that last sentence really solidifies it…. I’m a game geek.  But is that really wrong?

Dweebies Stats:
~$10 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, internet retailers and mom & pop game shops
2 to 6 (Never tested it with 5 or 6…sorry)
10 Minutes or less
Ages 8 and up

Obviously, Order’s Up is a diner themed game and to kick off play, everyone selects two guest checks, which each have 6 food and/or beverage items on them.  To win you need to collect all of the items on two checks.   The game starts with 4 meal/beverage tiles in the center of table surrounding the bell.  On each turn, a player rolls the die and it either has a picture of a bell, a broken bell (which puts you “on break” until your next turn – ouch!), a Free Meal, an Order Mixup or an image that indicates you need to add two tiles to the play area.  If you roll a bell, the first player to ring the bell gets to select a meal or beverage from the play area that matches an image on one of their guest checks.  If there isn’t one that matches, they draw from the stack and take it if it matches or add it to the center if it doesn’t.  So this is really a speed game, which makes you think that anyone who doesn’t have the reflexes of a cat probably isn’t going to win.  WRONG!  The inventor of this game, Myles Christensen, added in some nice catch up factors for the quickness-challenged folks out there.  For example, if you roll a Free Meal, then you could be a super-slow three-toed sloth and still get to start filling your guest check by grabbing a tile from the center.  If you roll an Order Mixup, then you get to swap either one of your guest checks with anyone else’s (tiles included) – my suggestion, steal from the player with the roadrunner like speed.  They’ll catch up again, right?  (You just can’t swap for a completed card; those stay with the player that finished them.)

Order’s Up did a really great job of putting a couple of catch up factors into a cute themed speed game.  And it’s these details that make the game memorable because at times it’s feels more like you’re getting bamboozled than your slow-as-molasses opponent is getting a chance to catch up.  Then again, it could be the lightning fast person who is getting all of the Free Meals, but it only takes one Order Mixup to change all that.

Overall, all of the parts of Order’s Up work together nicely, kind of like how a milkshake, burger and fries make a great diner meal.  And besides, the game’s got a bell and who doesn’t like a game with a bell?

Order’s Up Stats:
~$15 at Amazon, FunAgainGames.com (**Comes out June 1st but you can pre-order it now!)
2-6 players
15 Minutes or less (depends on number of players)
Ages 6 and up

Not far from my house there is a dive bar, with scary red lighting that hosts bingo on Monday nights.  It’s really not all that exciting; you win a brown paper lunch bag filled with random odd items.  I was lucky enough to win the first round Monday night and my winnings included some Cheez-It snacks, baby food, a bunny sucker and Chicklets.  By the end of the night our table had a skull candle, a bible card game and three colors of “fun dough.”  But before the bingo festivities began, we played quite a few rounds of the classic, but somehow not super well known, game Shut The Box.

Surprising to me, no one at my table had ever played Shut The Box before but by the end of the night everyone was addicted.  There are lots of variations of this game but traditionally it’s a box with tiles numbered 1-9 that you can flip forward and backward, which allows players to “check them off” as they use them.  The game is simple; you roll two standard dice and total them up.  Then you flip forward any available tile combination that equals the number you rolled.  So if you roll an 11 and it’s your first turn, you can flip forward a 9 and a 2 or a 1, 4 and 6.  It’s totally up to you, but once you flip forward a number you can’t use it again.  Your turn ends when you roll and you don’t have the right combination of tiles to equal your dice total.   You get your score for the round by totaling up the unused tiles.

There are a couple ways to score.  We played that whoever had the lowest number each round got one point.  You can then play until someone reaches a certain number of wins or until you run out of time.  Keeping a running tally of each player’s actual score is another way to play, just make sure you have a pencil and paper handy.  Play a certain number of rounds or until one player reaches a set number, and then the player with the lowest score is the winner.

Other versions of the game include boxes with tiles numbered 1-10 or 1-12.  There are also 2-player versions and 4-player versions.  Blue Orange games also has a game called Double Shutter that has two levels of tiles numbered 1-9 so you can flip two 5s if you roll a 10.  I also own a dice game named The Game of Chips by Jax that is essentially Shut The Box, with no box.  It uses poker chips numbered 1-10 and you flip them over as you use them.  This is a great low-priced travel alternative; it comes in a nice fabric pouch and can be purchased for ~$5.

Fun bit of trivia for you too, there was a TV show back in the mid-1970s called High Roller that was based on the game Shut The Box.  It was hosted by Alex Trebek and players answered “toss up” questions to gain control of the dice and the option of rolling or passing to their opponent.  It was on for a couple years and then again in the late 80s with Wink Martindale, but the new show wasn’t as successful.

Shut The Box stats:
$15 – $65+ at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Toys R Us,  some mass market retailers, specialty retailers
Shown at top: Melissa & Doug Shut The Box retails for ~$19-$25
Article preview: Front Porch Classics Shut the Box Signature Edition retails for ~$45-$53
1 or more players
Any amount of time
Ages 6 and up

Double Shutter stats:
~$19 at Amazon.com, Toys ‘R Us, Target, specialty retailers
1 or more players
Any amount of time
Ages 8 and up (it’s a bit more complex)

The Game of Chips stats:
~$5 Amazon.com, online game retailers, some specialty stores
1 or more players
Any amount of time, ~15 if you play by their rules
Ages 6 and up

In EXCAPE each player has 2 special EXCAPE dice and a matching X-shaped mover.  While the goal of the game, getting your mover from start to finish, is pretty standard, how you get your piece to move is the fun part.  The EXCAPE dice are unique because each die has a 1, 2, 3 and X but then one die has 4 and 7 and the other 5 and 6.  On each turn, players try to get the highest number when the two dice are combined.  So if you roll a 4 and a 3 you’ve rolled a “43.”  Easy, right?  Once you’ve rolled you can either re-roll for a higher number OR you place your dice on the board (which I’ll get to in a second).  76 is the highest number possible and the Xs count as zeros on your first roll only.  If you roll and X after your first roll, you have to move your mover back one space and you’re turn is over so you don’t get to place your dice on the board.

Placing your dice on the board is how you get your mover to advance towards “finish.”  In the center of the board, there are spaces numbered 0-5 and if you’re dice stay on one of those spaces until your next turn, you get to advance your mover that number.  On your turn, you can place your dice on any one of those spaces provided your dice total isn’t less than a dice pair on a lower numbered space.  So if there is a 65 on space 2, you can’t place your 43 above it on space 3.  If, however, there is a 32 on space 4 and you place your 43 on the space below them, you get to remove those dice from the board because they are lower than you.  See how keeping your dice on the board can be somewhat of a challenge?  The dice placing requires a bit of strategy because you want to remove other players so you may choose a lower number, but you also need to advance your mover so you may what to leave your opponents on the board and go for the 5!

There are also a couple of fun catch up factors in EXCAPE like if you roll doubles (1, 2 or 3) you get to move that number of spaces forward automatically.  If you roll double Xs on your first roll, you wipe everyone from the centerboard and can place your dice wherever you choose.  If you roll two Xs after that, your mover goes back two spaces.  Ouch!

This is a great add to any dice-addict’s collection.  It’s not going to be easy to find, because it’s not published here in the US, but I was able to find my copy at Amazon.com.  (Don’t worry, the directions are in English.)  You can also look for it under the name “EXXTRA” but the box art isn’t quite as nice.

*Board Games With Scott is a great site because it has videos explaining how to play the games, but he focuses mostly on “German style” games (which typically take longer than the games reviewed at The Game Aisle).  Unfortunately Scott is currently on a hiatus and isn’t reviewing new games.

EXCAPE Stats:
~$25 at Amazon.com, Fun Again Games and possibly specialty retailers
3-6 Players (for 3 players you may want to omit center space 5)
10-30 Minutes (dependent on number of players)
Ages 8 and up

A friend of mine was over recently and asked if I could recommend a card game that’s “like UNO, but not UNO, but is easy for non-game people to get, like UNO — oh and it also has to be fun for two players.”  Huh.  So we headed up to my hallway of games and I started pulling products out for him to look at.  He really wanted something simple, fun and that takes 2 seconds to learn.  Something “familiar.”

The game that really resounded with him was Ratuki by USAOPOLY.  This game has been through testing several times and has made it to my list of games to review, but it kept getting pushed down the list because it almost felt “too familiar” in my opinion.  All of the play testers really enjoyed playing the game, but EVERY ONE of them said “it feels like another game I’ve played with just cards.”  And they’re right, it does BUT it has one neat and unique feature that makes it different and those are the cards themselves.  Instead of all of the cards being numbered in the same fashion, they have five different ways of writing the numbers 1-5.  They use pips on a die, roman numerals, the word, a hand and the standard number.  (see the image above)  This little change makes all the difference – and makes the game worth owning.

Ratuki is all about speed and each round ends when a player runs out of cards.  During a round, there is the potential of three stacks in the center of the play area and everyone can play on those three stacks.  Using the deck of cards in front of them, players build on the center stacks by playing a number one above or below the top card on the stack.  The goal is to get play a five and capture the stack.  At the end of the round, players count up the cards they captured, subtract any cards of their own they were left with and that’s their score.  Play by rounds or play to a certain number – it’s up to you!

The game is fast and frenzied, and to reset for a new round is a snap because players have their own color cards.  My friend and I played one quick round of the game and he really enjoyed it.  Like the other game testers, he thought the game had a familiar “feeling,” which was exactly what he was looking for, a “comfort food” kind of game.

Also, if you don’t have time to read the directions – check out the nice graphic explanation at www.playratuki.com.

Ratuki Stats:
$10-$15 at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and Specialty Retailers
2-5 Players
3+ Minutes (totally depends on how many rounds you play or how many points you play up to)
Ages 7 and up

Before I even opened the Stix & Stones game box, something on the outside caught my eye: there’s a photo of the inventor.  No really – a photo of  Steve Ryan and his daughter Ali along with a little blurb about the game.  I was floored.  I LOVE this idea, not only does it do a great job of drawing attention to the invention community, it also humanizes the product.  I really don’t think that the American public realizes that the people who invent games aren’t employed by the game manufacturers.  That they’re regular people who have an idea or they’re people who are professional inventors whose job it is to invent games for a living.  Either way, the manufacturers do not employ them; they come up with games ideas and then pitch them to manufacturers in hopes of getting someone to license it from them.   And I just don’t think these brilliant folks get enough recognition, so I like this new idea!

So what kind of game did Ali and Steve come up with?  It’s a family game that was invented when Steve decided to have a little fun after trimming a 60-year-old ash tree in his back yard.  As the story goes, Steve was trimming his tree one day and looked down to see the trimmings creating recognizable patterns on the ground below.  He climbed down from his ladder and started moving the pieces to create pictures.  When his daughter, Ali, came home from school, the two of them started playing.  As Steve puts it, “I live by the motto…All work and no play makes Steve a dull boy (or something like that).” And Stix & Stones was born.

As you can somewhat decipher from the paragraph above, the game is about making pictures out of little plastic sticks and stones — and one red arrow.  Some of the words are easy like “Ferris Wheel” and “Peace Symbol” while others really make you think, like “Moby Dick.”  The game testers were a little skeptical about some of the words at first, but it’s amazing how much the little red arrow helps!  There is also a bidding aspect to the game.  Since there are two teams, when the word is selected at the beginning of the round the representative who will make the image bids how many pieces they think they’ll need to make their picture.  The team representative that bids the lowest number of pieces has one minute to create their picture.  If their team guesses correctly, they win the round.  If they don’t the other team has a chance to steal.  This “bidding” process was a little hard for some of the testers; they had a time even venturing a guess on how high, or low to start the bidding.  One of the groups omitted the bidding entirely and just let each team draw a card, make a picture during a shared one minute, and then guess and steal at the same time.   Regardless, the testing went well and everyone was amazed at how you could successfully make things like, “Abraham Lincoln,” out of sticks and stones.

Stix & Stones Stats:
$25 at Amazon.com and some specialty retailers
4 or More Players
15-20 Minutes
Ages 7 and up (although some of the words might be a little tough…)

There are times that you just know fate has a hand in things.  Like I swear fate pushed the toy/game industry on me.  There’s no way I would have pursued it on my own, and yet due to some events beyond my control here I am writing game reviews while taking a break from game inventing!

From the sound of it, the game In A Pickle ended up being invented as a result from a little push by fate too.  As told by one of the inventors, Colleen McCarthy-Evans, this is how she and Joyce
Johnson came up with the idea for their Gamewright hit:

“After we met at an Adult Education Class on game design, taught by Keith Meyers and Michael Stern, Joyce and I began tossing some game ideas around together. We were intrigued by one concept in particular, that had players wearing big silly hats and balancing objects on them. We both had other careers then, and all our precious design time was devoted to developing this game, along with a space-themed board game. Meanwhile, Keith Meyers was on his way to Nuremberg, and offered to represent us with any games we were ready to pitch to game companies. When we showed him the wacky hat game prototype (which was going to be a challenge to fit in a suitcase) he said something polite like, “Uh, didn’t you mention you had an idea for a nice little card game, where players are making sets of objects that can fit inside each other?” We temporarily abandoned the game that wouldn’t fit in Keith’s suitcase, and began to work on the card game idea we had all but forgotten, and called it “A Penguin in the Closet.”  While it was not a ‘fit’ for the companies Keith showed it to in Germany, Joyce and I continued to develop and test the game, and eventually sent it off to Gamewright.”

It’s a great story and I love how it’s the little things in life – like a lack of space in a suitcase – that alter our directions!  Also check out the photo of an early prototype to the right.

As for the game, it’s all about what fits in what.  It’s like the suitcase story all over again – only more outlandish!  Could you fit a giraffe in a taxi?  What about money in a test tube?  Granted – you may not want to DO either of these, but that’s not the game.  It’s could you, if you wanted to?  So this leaves a large space for hilarity and also player interpretation, which may cause some problems.  A teacher friend of mine played it with her gifted high school freshman and it was like WWIII was going to start.  They had their laptops out trying to prove each other’s moves impossible; it was a “train wreck.” So a word of caution, In A Pickle can be a lot of fun – when you’re not playing with the über competitive set.

And a note: this year Joyce and Colleen have another Gamewright game coming out called Sounds Like a Plan, which is all about giving wacky advice.

In A Pickle Stats:
$10 – $15 at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Target, Toys ‘R Us and some specialty retailers
2-6 Players
15-25 Minutes
Ages 10 and up

Like I said, backgammon is old.  Some estimate that it’s has been around close to 5000 years – at least in some form.  It has evolved over time, but by the early in the fourteenth century it looked much as it does today.  Check out this illustration from the Codex Manesse (at left, c. 1304).  The codex is a small illuminated manuscript of love poetry that was made in Zurich for the wealthy Manesse family and that looks identical to the backgammon sets of today!

Between the twelfth century and the sixteenth century views on backgammon changed a bit – in fact, the church even tried to ban the game a couple times.   (How many games can say that?!)  The last attempt was in the early sixteenth century right about the time Hieronymus Bosch completed his work, “The Garden of Earthy Delights. ” (at right, c. 1503)  If youlook at the right panel of the triptych, it depicts hell (whereas the left panel is heaven and the center is Earth – click to enlarge).   This right panel is brimming with people who have succumbed to temptations – like backgammon — and are facing eternal damnation for it.  You can see the backgammon board in the lower left corner of the panel being held up by some crazy looking creature. (below at right, click to enlarge)  It is similarly used in “The Triumph of Death” By Pieter Bruegel the Elder (below left, click to enlarge).   The board is in the lower right corner of the painting and it looks like a jester is stepping over it to hide under a table from the legions of dead that have invaded.

So it hasn’t always been an easy road for backgammon, but yet the game survived.  Guess that says something aboutits playability!

In much more modern times it came back into favor when Hugh Hefner started holding backgammon parties at the Playboy Mansion in the late 1960s and 70s.  (It’s rumored that Lucille Ball was a huge fan!) And actually there is a book called Playboy’s Book of Backgammon with the forward written by Hugh Hefner and backgammon was featured in the magazine from time to time.

But really, you don’t need a book to learn to play backgammon.  The game is simple, each player has fifteen “checkers” (also called “tokens,” “chips,” “pawns” and a ton of other things…) and the goal is to get all of their pieces back into their side of the board and then to remove them from the board.  To start, pieces are setup laid out in a specific form on the board and each player will be moving their checkers in a u-shape in the opposite direction of each other.  Using 2 dice, players roll and may move 1 or 2 checkers the numbers shown on the dice.  Rolling doubles gets you twice the amount shown on the dice!  You can’t land on a space occupied by 2 or more of your opponents checkers – but if there’s only one, you can land on them and move them to the “bar” which essentially means they are starting over from the section of the board furthest from their finish.   Once you successfully move all of your pieces into the area of the board closest to your finish, you can start to remove your pieces from the board.  This is called “bearing off” and it’s like the final race to the finish!

Games can be quick and fast – so unlike chess, there’s not a lot of mulling over your move.  There are also ways to bet and use a “doubling cube” to increase the dimensions of the game, but it’s not necessary to enjoy the game.  You also don’t need a fancy set to play.  If you have a set of checkers – or two colors of poker chips, you can draw your own board on a sheet of paper.  Sounds really low budget, but it’s how it was played during medieval times.  Players would have dice (made of bone) and stones and they’d draw a board in the dirt.  Guess you could call that the first “travel” version of the game!

Backgammon Stats:
From dirt cheap to very expensive
2 players
~5-15 minutes
Ages 8 and up