For those of you who have been to ChiTAG in the past, you know that it’s a mix of mass-market games from larger manufacturers and mass-appeal specialty games from medium to very small manufacturers.  Overall, I’d say that the majority games appeal to casual gamers and families and here’s a small taste of what you’re going to see:

Educational Insights  

I’m so excited that they have a booth this year because they have so many fun games in beautiful packaging!  First there’s Buck Buck Moose by Mary Jo Reutter, who was last year’s TAGIE winner for Excellence in Game Design!  Buck Buck Moose is a speed game for kids 4+ and you lay out 4 stacks of colored Moose cards, which have the most adorable drawings.  Then players take turns pulling long skinny cards out of a cardboard holder – which will either be Buck, the ranger, or a Moose!  When a Moose card is pulled, players race to slap the matching colored Moose and they get to keep that card.  Player with the most cards wins!

They also have The Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel Game! (invented by their very own Riley Wilkinson) and I raved about this game’s adorable packaging right after New York Toy Fair. (see HERE)  Thankfully, it’s not just a cute box – it’s also a fun game for kids 3+!  Players use squirrel-shaped tweezers to grab and steal acorns to complete their stash.  There are just so many cute things about this game that I’d like to post a bunch of pictures, but instead I’m just going to say “go to their booth!”  After seeing it I’m sure you’ll FIND a 3-4 year old to buy it for!

I should mention that Educational Insights doesn’t do just children’s games – they also have games like KaBAM!, a word-building card game for players 7+. Flip over 2 cards and use this 2-letter combo to create a word.  So if the cards are A and C if I yell “ACROSS” before my opponent yells “PACK” then I would win the pair of cards.  There’s also a KaBAM! round that adds some variety to the game, but I want to give the folks at their booth something to talk about.

Buck Buck Moose Stats:
~$12 ChiTag, EducationalInsights.com, Amazon.com
3-6 players
~10 minutes
Ages 4-7

The Sneaky Snacky Squirrel Game Stats:
~$20 ChiTag, EducationalInsights.com, Amazon.com
2-4 players
~10 minutes
Ages 3-5

KaBAM! Stats:
~$13 ChiTag, EducationalInsights.com, Amazon.com
2-4 players (although I recommend at least 4)
~15-20 minutes (you decide how many rounds you want to play!)
Ages 7 and Up

MindWare

A new exhibitor this year, MindWare is a catalog company that creates “brainy toys for kids of all ages” and works with inventors like Peggy Brown and Susan McKinley Ross to create fun, puzzle-like games.  Susan, who is up against me for the TAGIE for Excellence in Game Design, invented MindWare’s best selling game Qwirkle.  Qwirkle is a family game where players create lines of tiles with matching colors or shapes similar to the crossword-style play of Scrabble.

My favorite MindWare game was invented by Peggy Brown, and it’s called Q-bitz (reviewed HERE).  Q-bitz is a game where you use patterned dice to solve visual challenges and there’s going to be an oversized version of the game at ChiTAG with cubes that are 1 foot by 1 foot!  This is definitely a booth to stop by!

Qwirkle Stats:
~$25 ChiTag, MindWare.com, Amazon.com
2-4 players
~30-45 minutes
Ages 6 and Up

North Star Games 

I’ve reviewed their Wits & Wagers and Wits & Wagers Family games (see HERE and HERE) but they’ve come out with an interesting new game called Crappy Birthday.  I’ll admit I haven’t played this one yet, but I know it’s going to give at least a couple good laughs because the game is about giving and receiving bad gifts — and who hasn’t gotten a bad gift they laugh about years later?!

Crappy Birthday Stats:
~$15 ChiTag, Amazon.com
2-4 players
~30 minutes (or so the box says…)
Ages 8 and Up

ThinkFun

I’m a big fan of their single-player challenge game Solitaire Chess (reviewed HERE) – especially the iPhone app.  ThinkFun also has a bunch of great games like Zingo (see HERE) and Smart Mouth, but personally I’m looking forward to trying out their new word-search, single-player challenge game, PathWords, in which you use see-through Tetris-like pieces to mark words by covering the letters on a grid.  Does that make sense?  Well one look at the picture and you get what I’m trying to say.  Worth a peek I’m sure!

PathWords Stats:
~$20 ChiTag, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and anywhere that sells ThinkFun products
1 players
Play as long as you’d like
Ages 12 and Up

Spin Master

Yes, they’re in the game business!  And I believe they’ll be showing games like Quelf, which is like Cranium on Red Bull, and it’s counterpart Quelf Junior which is a game of wacky stunts for kids which is funny for a little while but didn’t have as much variety as Quelf.  Spin Master is also the one manufacturing Greg Zima’s game Stomple, which I talked about last year and reviewed this spring (see HERE).  Greg is another inventor who is nominated for the TAGIE for Excellence in Game Design.  I hear that there might be an oversized Stomple game at ChiTag, which would be really cool!

Quelf Stats:
~$25 ChiTag, Amazon.com, Target, Toys R Us, Barnes & Noble
3-8 players
~30 minutes
Ages 12 and Up

and the best for last…..Top Trumps

If I had to give ONE reason to go this year, what’s going on at the Top Trumps booth is it.  Yes, they have the World Record challenge happening with the Girl Scouts – but that’s not it.  They’ve giving away FOR FREE the Toy & Game Guru Top Trumps decks – and they’ve scheduled almost all of the inventors in the deck to be at their booth (#603) signing their cards!!  Yes, I’m lucky enough to be in the deck, so PLEASE stop by sometime between 12pm-12:45 on Saturday to say hi and pick up your free deck!!   I can tell you right now that I’m REALLY exciting about getting my deck signed by some famous inventors that I will most definitely geek-out about meeting!

Top Trumps Toy & Game Guru Stats:
*FREE* at ChiTag — and it is ONLY available at Chitag
2-4 players
~10 minutes to play — hours of fun reading all the inventor bios!
Ages 6 and Up

Some other companies you’ll see at the fair (and I’ve gone nuts linking each to a review of one of their games): Endless Games, Bananagrams, Find-It Games, Fun Q Games, Out of the Box, Buffalo Games, Rio Grande Games, also Mayfair Games, Talicor, Zobmondo, Moosetache Games, Smirk and Dagger, HL Games, Griddly Games…and I’m sorry to anyone I might have missed!

Earlier this week I posted an interview with Mary Jo Reutter who won the TAGIE award for Excellence in Game Design in November of 2010 and you can see that article HERE.  But now it’s time to take a peek at some of her games and Mary Jo has AGAIN been nice enough to share some tidbits about how the games changed from her initial prototype – which is something I always find interesting!

First up, Laundry Jumble by Educational Insights.  While this game has roots in the 1967 game Feeley Meeley I think that the updated theme is adorable.  During the game players select a card with an image of an article of clothing on it.  They reach into the “dryer” and try to feel around to find the correct fabric item.  If they do, the player gets to keep the card.  If you pull the “Skunk’s Undies” you need to return a card you’ve already collected.  (ugh!)  Regardless, of whether you pull the correct item or not, it goes right back into the dryer so there’s always tons of stuff in there.

Mary Jo:

“When I pitched Laundry Jumble I called it “Tumble Jumble” (and I think some of the older cards even still say Tumble Bumble).  We loved the name Tumble Jumble, but it was taken, so Educational Insights had to make a change to “The Laundry Jumble Game”. The prototype had a spinning mechanism and also folded flat.  Originally the child was to roll a die to see how many times they’d turn the dryer before reaching in to find the item. Unfortunately this didn’t cost out low enough so we had to lose that feature. Fortunately the play was not compromised.  I’m very pleased that Educational Insights was able to keep the fabric for the construction of the dryer — one of the sweet subtleties of the fabric construction is that the dryer begins getting warm as your hand reaches around searching for the right piece of clothing.  And I’m also very pleased that they were able to get the small details in all of the clothing items. The Skunk’s Undies are a favorite!” (See Mary Jo’s prototype at left – wow that looks just about the same!)

Second is her mini-line of Flip-A-Longs with Fat Brain Toys.  There’s a train version called “Long Long Locomotive” and a medieval version called “Knights of the Long Table” but both play exactly the same.  It’s a matching game but instead of matching the same thing, players must match two halves of the same scene.  In the locomotive version each player starts with an engine and each time they get a match they add this new car to their train.  Obviously, the player with the longest train wins.

Mary Jo:

“The Flip-A-Long theme that was originally pitched was “Lenny’s Limo” — a long stretch limo with different sets of interesting passengers inside.  We changed that theme out for Knights of the Long Table, and Long Long Locomotive.  This game is much like a standard match game in that you can have a lot of different themes, and the twist of using your winning pieces to create a long scene.  The kids are much better at the memory and matching than most of the adults who play!  I like it when kids can genuinely beat their parents at a game.” (see Mary Jo’s prototype at left – it’s super cute!)

Even though the previous two have classic game play roots, I really enjoyed them both.  I thought that Mary Jo really improved upon Feeley Meeley (especially cute fabric instead of weird plastic tchotchkes, click HERE to find out more about Feeley Meeley if you have no idea what I’m talking about.) and making memory/matching play FAR more interesting and visually appealing.

The last game I’m going to review was probably my least favorite out of the three I’m reviewing here, but it definitely gets BIG points for cute!   (But note, that I’m not entirely sold on games action games like Rock’em Sock’em that are essentially toys with rules that are designed for kids — I’m sure skews my rankings.)  Sumo Ham Slam is a game about Sumo hamsters, which in itself is hilarious.  Players battle their hamsters using a wand that goes underneath the plastic board and magnetically attaches to their hamster.  It’s a battle of the bulge with each hamster trying to push the other out of the ring.  Along the way you earn food which are little white discs that adds to your hamster’s bulk when you shove it down their gullet.  The funny theme mixed with the cute characters really makes it a great birthday party gift for any kid 6-9.

Mary Jo:

“Sumo Ham Slam was originally called Masu Masu (which means More! More! in Japanese). The brilliant addition of the hamsters goes to Jason Schneider at Gamewright!  The game play and mechanisms stayed the same, and the hamsters and fantastic name just take it over the top in wacky.” (see her prototype at left, click to enlarge)

Thanks again to Mary Jo for all of her help and the great prototype pics she was awesome enough to send along!

Laundry Jumble Stats:

~$25 at Amazon, Target.com,  QVC, EducationalInsights.com, mom & pop retailers
2 to 4 players
~5-10 minutes
Ages 6 and Up

Flip-A-Longs Stats:

~$13 at Fat Brain Toys ONLY
2 to 4 players
~5-10 minutes
Ages 4 and Up

Sumo Ham Slam Stats:

~$20-25 at Amazon, Fun Again Games, mom & pop retailers
2 to 6 players
~10-15 minutes
Ages 6 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…)

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