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

Endless Games did a nice job of summing up the game play of their new board game, “Name 5,” in the title so this review was pretty short, but the game’s inventor, Brian Turtle, was nice enough to share how he came up with the game.  Here’s what he said:

“Yes, I thought I was a one-trick-pony after having initial success as an inventor with The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon and never writing a “sequel”.  But lo and behold, much like the Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, Name 5 is a parlor game that my friends and I would play while waiting for the bars to “get going” back in my young, single Jersey Shore days.  We would have a few Budweisers over rounds of “Name 5 movies with Kurt Russell”; “Name 5 songs by KISS”; “Name 5 actors from the TV show TAXI”… and so on.  The game was always there long after those summers were traded off in favor of fatherhood and “responsibility.”  Mike Gasser (Endless Games “el Presidente”), Kevin McNulty (VP of Sales), and I would challenge one another with Name 5 categories all the time until one day Mike finally chimed in with, ‘Guys, we play this game all the time. Why don’t we box it and sell it. We are a GAME COMPANY after all!’ So that’s what we did!”

Overall Name 5 is a fun listing game, but the testers felt that some of the topics were just too darn easy even with a 30 second time limit!  During the first test, each team only lost one Name 5 challenge each: “Bon Jovi Songs” and “NFL Hall of Famers.”  This made the game feel like winning was going to be determined by rolling high, winning “Flip Flops” (where two teams go back and forth – sometimes for quite a while) and it ended up being a battle to complete all five of the categories on a single card in 90 seconds at the end.  It wasn’t bad – sometimes it was just too easy, but the second go around we changed the rules slightly and allowed the card-reading player (or team) to PICK which topic they wanted to give their opponent (on wilds it was a choice between two topics).  With the change I felt like my brain got more of a workout and it added a nice element of “stump your neighbor” that everyone really liked.

I urge you to try Name 5 out.  It’s a fun party game that everyone can be good at —and if they’re too good, do what The Game Aisle testers did and stick ‘em with the hardest topic on the card!

Name 5 Stats:

~$25 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, AreYouGame.com right now and Toys ‘R Us in the fall
2 or more players
~30 minutes as long as someone can do that last card!
Ages 12 and up

Balderdash is based on a parlor game called “The Dictionary Game” or “Fictionary” which was around long before big bangs, even bell-bottoms.  The premise is simple, choose a word from the dictionary that isn’t in anyone’s vocabulary and ask everyone to make up a definition.  Then one person reads all of the made up definitions as well as the real one.  Players then guess which one they think is the real definition.  In Balderdash, if someone votes for your made-up answer, you get a point.  If you guess the correct definition you get two points.  Three points are awarded to the reader if no one guesses the real answer OR to a player if their made up definition is really close to the real definition, but with words like “sniggle” (to catch eels by throwing bait into their hiding places) and “fackeltanz” (a torchlight parade), that never really happens.

In the past couple decades, Balderdash has been with multiple companies including Parker Brothers and Mattel, who currently has the license.  Over that time Balderdash went from being just words, to having an expansion called “Beyond Bladerdash” that included people’s names, movie titles, funny laws and initials/acronyms in addition to the weird words.  This apparently was a success, because the current game of Balderdash includes all the fun bits from “Beyond Bladerdash.” Personally, I’m glad because the initials/acronyms are my favorites.  And just FYI, N.P.P.A. does not stand for “Nudist Petunia Planters Alliance” it actually is the “National Pickle Packers Association” but both of them make me laugh!

Anyway, if you haven’t played Balderdash find someone who has it and force them to host a game night.  It’s best to play with 4 or more people and it does make you think – I’d almost say “be creative” — but don’t let this scare you, some of the stupidest answers are the funniest.  There was one about a tabby cat alliance that caused tears there was so much laughing last time I played.

Balderdash Stats:
~$25 at Amazon, Target, Toys”R”Us, and many more
4 to 6 (it says 2 or more, but it’s not great unless you have 4 and you can add more movers to play with 8.)
30-45 Minutes or more (but you can easily shorten the game – pick a new “finish” on the board)
Ages 12 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…)

When you have a hallway full of games there are often ones that you know you like but they just never get pulled out and played.  I really have no idea why this happens but I think it’s like certain movies.  You love them but you need to be in the right mood to watch them.  And then when you finally are in that mood you’re like I LOVE THIS MOVIE!  Well, that recently happened with TriBond.  We played a little bit at the bar during the Toy and Game Inventor’s Expo (TAGIE) and it put me in the mood to pull out the TriBond box and make an evening of it.  Who doesn’t like trying to find out how three items or images are related? It’s a great mental workout.

TriBond has been out for quite a while; in fact it was invented by college buddies Dave Yearick, Ed Muccini and Tim Walsh (inventor of BLURT!) more than two decades ago.  In 1983 they decided to invent a game after they saw the success of Trivial Pursuit, but it wasn’t until 1989 that Ed came up with the idea of a “Threezer” riddle.  Could they make a game based on the question “what do these three have in common?”  They could and they would.  Within weeks they created a prototype, named it TriBond and started a company called Big Fun a Go Go, Inc.

Now I wish I could say that it was an easy ride to success from there, but it rarely is for people starting up in the game industry.  For TriBond to become a success took a bit of time and a ton of effort.  In 1990, after publishing 48 copies of TriBond Dave, Ed and Tim showed it at New York Toy Fair and by the end of the show they had only sold 30 games.  Obviously, not the success they were looking for.  Stunned that their AMAZING game got so few orders they knew they had to do something to promote it.  So they entered TriBond into every game competition they could find and lo and behold – it won some of them!  Mensa chose it as “One of the top three new board games for 1990” and “One of the top five best new mind games for 1990.”  Slowly they got new orders, reorders and a couple more awards but they still weren’t making any money – in fact they were deeply in debt to a bunch of investors including Ed’s dad.  But in 1992 everything changed.  They got Patch to license the product and Tim joined the company as their Marketing Director to help them promote the game.  By 1993, you could find TriBond in mass-market stores everywhere and they sold almost 150,000 games before December 1 — a huge increase from less than 15,000 the year before.  Since then, TriBond has been translated into 9 languages, sold in 14 countries and in 2000 it was inducted into the Games Magazine Hall of Fame.

Fast forward to 2010, which is right around the corner.  TriBond will be celebrating its 20th anniversary.  Very impressive and congrats to Dave, Ed and Tim!

TriBond is great for large groups and can be played in teams.  I also like snagging the box of questions and taking it with me on long car rides and we play until our brains hurt!

TriBond Stats:
~$25 and up at Amazon.com
2 or More Players (large groups play in teams)
45-60 Minutes (I know this is a LONG game for me to be recommending but you can always figure out ways to shorten the game or just play with the cards – still fun!)
Ages 12 and up

Since Black Friday is right round the corner and present buying is starting to trickle into everybody’s mind, this seems like the perfect time to review the game that is all about gift giving, GiftTRAP.  Its inventor, Nick Kellet, sent this game to me a couple months ago because he saw that I love party games.  So into the game night mix it went.  Unfortunately it didn’t play so well the first time – why?  Because some of the people didn’t know each other and had just met that night.  That is key for this game – know the people you’re playing with!  The second test was much better, we played with 5 people who were pretty close and it worked out great!

The game itself is like a gift; it comes in a nice box with pretty little fabric bags of pieces inside.  The game is all about being a good giver and a good receiver because you get points for both.  Each round, a bunch of gift cards are laid out on the board and then everyone privately decides which gift they want to give every other player.  You give a person a gift by giving them a tile that matches the number of the gift on the board.  Once gifts have been given, everybody votes which gift would want (or not want) to receive by placing small tokens on the gifts on the board.  Then the answers are revealed.  If you gave people something they wanted, you get points – if you didn’t you lose points.  Same for receiving – did you get something you wanted?  You get points.  Something you really didn’t, you lose points.  It’s really an easy concept to get after you play one round.  We also found it’s easiest to allow one player to play Vanna and to flip the voting tokens and advance (or move backward) the movers so there aren’t 5 pairs of hands moving stuff on the board at once.

After completing my review of the game I was really interested in hearing how Nick came up with the concept for GiftTRAP so I asked him.  This is what he said:

“The idea came from a question by my daughter then age six. She asked how Santa picks gifts for children. I did some research and found there had been no such game. We quickly identified the power of 2 scoring tracks (giving & getting) for exposing people’s true self.”

After more than two years in the development and production phase GiftTRAP made its debut in 2006.   Right now it’s in 8 languages and soon to be in 12 including Chinese and Greek and for those of you who are looking for games in other languages this English version is bilingual with both English and Spanish directions and card titles.

If you’re looking for a gift idea – either give GiftTRAP or play a little GiftTRAP and come up with some great gift ideas!

GiftTRAP Stats:
$35 (or less) at Amazon.com, Mom & Pop stores, and online game retailers like Funagain.com
3-8 or Players (I think 4-6 is probably best)
~45 Minutes (more if you don’t know people really well)
Ages 8 and up

Continuing the theme from my last article (travel games) this game may not be the easiest one to find, but if you do, it will make any road trip feel like a party.  ReFraze is a trivia game that takes movie, song and TV show titles and changes them (using synonyms) so you have to decipher what the names actually are.

Want to try one?  It’s a TV show:  “Carpet Mice”  Do you know what it is?  If not, there is one clue each card – for this it gives the genre, which is “Children’s Show.”  Now do you know?  (The answer is at the bottom of the article.)

The concept behind ReFraze is a pretty straightforward and it has a great brain teaser/trivia feel to it.  It was invented by Ann and Ron Fowler and this is what Ann had to say about it’s inception:

A few years ago, I was responsible for coming up with games for our annual Book Club Christmas party.  Along with a couple of other silly games, I took the names of Christmas songs and carols and “Refrazed” them.  Everyone loved it, and after a couple of different people asked for copies of what I had done, I had one of those ‘aha’ moments.  With Ron’s know-how, ReFraze was born.  (If it was only in my hands, I’d still be walking around with a bag full of slips of paper!)

Recently I took my copy of ReFraze: Movies 1986 to Present on a road trip with me.  There were four of us playing and we played it almost the entire trip!  The only downfall was that we plowed through about half of the 400 cards on our one-day journey, but did we enjoy it?  Absolutely!  Did it dull the pain from the never ending view of the flat Illinois countryside?  Oh my gosh yes!

I know there are people out there who like to do trivia on long road trips and I urge them to toss ReFraze into the mix.  As you can see there are plenty of different themes to choose from — I had a bunch of movie junkies with me so I stuck with something I knew they would love.  So go ahead and find one that will shorten your next long car ride – just be sure to grab paper and a pen if you want to keep score!

Oh and I also hear that there is an electronic game in the works…can’t wait for that!

A: Rugrats

ReFraze Stats:
~ $17 for Standard Editions and ~$15 for the Junior Edition and look here to find where it can be purchased near you.
2 or More Players (can be played in teams)
Play for as long as you want!
8 and Up for the Junior Edition (but closer to 12 or 15 and up for some of the other editions)

I know LOTS of people shy away from drawing games because often they think their drawings would be identical to that of a preschooler’s if instead of a marker they were using a bright green crayon.  I’ll admit it – I’m in that group.  I think I can hold my own pretty well but I avoid participating in any drawing contests if they include any of my designer friends.  I’m just not that great of an artist when it comes to sketching.

So then why would I give a good review (all reviews here are good reviews if you haven’t noticed) to a game with “drawing” in the title?  Because the person drawing isn’t really in control of what they’re doing so it can’t be their fault if it turns out looking like a four year old did it!

Backseat Drawing is a very simple game.  On each team there is an artist, a director and a bunch of guessers.  The director is the only one who knows what the word is and they instruct the artist what to draw.  They can only use words and phrases like circle, square, above, below, big, little, on an angle, etc.  So drawing something like a birdhouse isn’t that terrible whereas drawing a zipper can be outright hilarious since you can’t say something like “draw a pair of pants.”  All while the artist is drawing the artist and other teammates are guessing.  First team to guess correctly wins the round.

One of the inventors, Peggy Brown, is one of the funniest people in the toy industry and when I asked her how she came up with the idea for Backseat Drawing this is what she said:

“Backseat Drawing was invented in an Indian restaurant in Southport, Connecticut in the late 90s. While munching on nan bread and waiting for the mulligatawny soup to arrive, my buddy Catherine Rondeau and I began doodling on the backs of the paper placemats. Instead of, as many drawing games in the past have required, drawing things and getting the other player to guess what we were drawing, we decided to make the person who was doing the drawing have to guess what she, herself was drawing. That was it! A simple twist on a classic drawing game element was enough of a novel idea to make a really new and different, not to mention ridiculously silly and fun game. Because the player who gives the directions has absolutely no control of what gets drawn, we decided to call it Backseat Drawing. The name stuck, the simple play pattern and rules stuck, and that’s how Backseat Drawing was born. I can’t remember if we ordered the tandoori chicken, but I remember that as one of the most delicious meals I ever had!”

Amazing right?! All it took was a little bit of nan and Peggy and Catherine created this simple, but really fun game.  There is also a Junior version of the game out now, but I’ll be honest and say that I haven’t played the Junior version yet.  Still, I hear it’s doing well.

Backseat Drawing Stats:
~$20 at Target, Amazon.com
4-10 Players (the more the merrier)
~15-20 Minutes
Ages 6 and up

Since I just got back from a trip to beautiful Las Vegas, it seems like a great time to review a game with a gambling theme.  I’m talking about Wits & Wagers!

North Star Games was nice enough to send me a copy to review which I was thrilled about since it’s been on my “to buy and try” list for a very long time.  Truthfully, I’m not a big gambler; in fact I lost $4.52 in Vegas.  (I was playing the penny slots…but that’s 452 pennies!!  Thank god I don’t bet dollars!)

But enough about my issues, let’s talk about the game.  I loved it!  It’s trivia meets gambling and the best thing is you really don’t have to know much trivia to win.  Here’s the scoop.  Every round starts with a trivia question being read.  Each player (or team) scrawls an answer on their card.  Answers are always numbers their easily organized on the nice fabric mat in numerical order and then people place their bets.  The numbers that are at the extremes – the highest and the lowest – pay out at the highest odds, whereas the numbers in the middle of the pack will only pay out 2-1 or 3-1.  Regardless, you’re looking for the number closest to the correct answer.

Betting is really interesting in this game because numbers closer to the middle seem to indicate that they’re a safe bet, but  you also want to pay attention to who wrote the answer.  For example, one of the questions is “The record time for the Daytona 500 car race was set in 1980.  In miles per hour, what was the winner’s average speed?”  I’m probably not going to go with my sister’s answer because she doesn’t know much about cars.  Years ago she thought the coolant tank was where the windshield washer fluid went in her car, so of course I’d be much more likely to go with a gear-head friend who has a vague idea of what the answer might be.  And if the question was “In what year was the first G.I Joe action figure sold?” I’d go with my friend Scott because he probably has enough G.I. Joes to give one to each citizen of Rhode Island.  However, if it’s something that is completely off everyone’s radar like “How many feet of wire are in a flattened Slinky?” it may be time to rely on what ends up near the center of the board – or go for the big score if I think it’s one of the more extreme answers and worth higher odds.

In Wits & Wagers, all answers are closest without going over so it has a little bit of that classic Price is Right feel that we all love.  The only thing I didn’t like is that I have to get a big group of people together to play it.  While you can play it with 4 players, it is so much more fun when you have closer to 6 or 7 and it can be played with up to 20.

Overall Wits & Wagers is a trivia game that you really don’t need to be that great at trivia for.  It helps if you know your opponents but if you were a rock star at multiple-choice tests back in school, you’re golden.

Wits & Wagers Stats:
~$24-$30 at Target, Borders and Amazon.com
4-20 Players
~ 25 Minutes
Ages 8 and up

One thing that is absolutely essential for a successful game-night offering is easy to communicate directions and it took about a minute to explain how to play BLURT! before we dove in.  The premise is so easy – in fact, it almost seems too easy.  A player reads a definition and the first person to guess the word moves forward a certain number of spaces.  Well, even with quick definitions like “a person living in total solitude by choice” there was a flood of answers – right and wrong – all within a half second of each other.  (The correct answer is “hermit.”)   The quick, all-play nature of the game really went over well and I can only imagine it plays just as nicely with a group of kids and teens.  BLURT! includes directions for a more advanced play but also words for junior players ages 7-9.

Getting back to the inventor for a minute, Tim has been in the game industry for almost twenty years and you may know one of his previous hits, TriBond (love this puzzle game; it provides hours of good brain food.)  And a new Will Shortz edition of TriBond is out this fall.  He also is the author of Timeless Toys and WHAM-O Super·Book, which was released last year.  I’m looking forward to Tim’s upcoming documentary about the inventors and legends that made the toy industry what it is today.  It should provide a nice window into the very secretive “inventor community.”  And then of course, BLURT!  This is the 15th anniversary of the game that, funny enough, he invented with his girlfriend (now wife), a children’s dictionary and a classroom full of third graders.  Just goes to prove, you never know when great ideas will roll your way.

BLURT! stats:

• ~$20-25 at Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com
• 3-12 players (really, the more the merrier)
• ~15-20 min. (depending on the number of players)
• Ages 7 and up