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

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/yamodo/ http://www.thegameaisle.com/yamodo/#comments Fri, 29 Oct 2010 18:49:11 +0000 Kim Vandenbroucke http://www.thegameaisle.com/?p=1855

Yamodo! I have no idea how to pronounce it or what it even means, but I think that might be the point.  Originally, I ran across Yamodo! in the basement of Javits at Toy Fair and the people working their booth were very perky and forced me to stop and take a look.  At the time they were selling this sheets of paper with a crazy nonsense word at the top of each page, a haphazard line or two in the middle of the page, and “Is…” and a couple lines at the bottom of the page and they told me it was a game.  I was like “huh?!” Didn’t get that.

Yamodo! IS a fun brain exercise that you can do by yourself or a group.  Using the nonsense word at the top of the page, you create a drawing around or incorporating the random little lines on the page and then define it on the lines at the bottom.  I’ve found that it’s most enjoyable to start the drawing and definition, pass it to another person and go back and forth until it’s done.  It’s especially humorous when one person thinks that “doofax” is a fax that has arms so it can do extra work for you and the other person thinks that it scans poop and sends it as a prank.  Yuck.   There are now lots of different SKUs of little spiral Good To Go Yamodo! books including Magic & Mayhem…and after watching those hilarious insurance commercials with the character named “mayhem” I’m having a BLAST playing with that book!  But do the names of the books really matter?  No, it’s all what your brain can come up with and my brain is pretty funny if I do say so myself.  ha!

After enjoying some of the Yamodo! spirals, I still don’t get how they’re a game (I like having winners and losers).  But now they’ve come up with a REAL game called Yamodo! Party Time where the second line in the instructions says, “players compete to WIN…” YAY!

Now, if you are a regular Game Aisle reader, you know that I don’t really care for drawing games because I don’t like showing off my less-than-stellar sketching skills in public.  But I have to appreciate the creativity that this game promotes.  It’s got a bit of an Apples to Apples feel in that there is one person who judges each round and everyone else offers up a drawing that they can lobby the judge to select as the best.  The drawings are done on Yamodo! pages and everyone fills in the space for the  nonsense word at the top with the same word (from a deck) and then they get a tag line like “2 for 1” special from another deck to get their brains chugging.  Sheets get passed around and at the end of the round the judge selects a winner and whoever doodled on that sheet last wins the round.

A couple thoughts – sometimes the passing thing stinks because you added the funniest part of the drawing and you didn’t win because someone gave your hilarious monkey shaved like a French poodle a rhinestone banana necklace at the last minute.  So feel free to skip that part.  The other thing is that having the poor artists EXPLAIN what their drawings were supposed to be was HILARIOUS.  That thing that looked like an amoeba with feet…no, no that was actually a mailman in a wetsuit.

Regardless of skill, if you can dream up something fantastic you can still win Yamodo! Party Time.

Side note here – Yamodo! also has a 2-second (if that) spot in Toyland, the movie!  How cool is that?!

Yamodo! Stats:
$15 for the Original Yamodo! at bookstores, Amazon and ToysRUs.com
$10 for the Yamodo! Good To Go spiral skus including: Gizmos & Gadgets, Magic & Mayhem, and Monsters & Aliens at bookstores, Amazon and ToysRUs.com

Yamodo! Party Time Stats:
~$25 at Amazon, Toys R Us and Barnes & Noble
4 to 12 Players
~20-45 minutes
Ages 12 and Up

I first got to play with Scrabble Flash at the Hasbro showroom of New York Toy Fair this past February and I desperately wanted to take it home with me, but I’m pretty sure that the hoards of other people waiting to play would have noticed.  It’s just so cute and magical that it’s hard not to like it!  The game is made up of five small LCD square tiles that recognize when they are touching each other, which allows the tiles to identify if they are in the proper order to make a word.  This concept is the backbone of all three games you can play with your Scrabble Flash tiles.

When you turn all of the tiles on by pressing each of their buttons, the tiles give you a choice of games 1, 2 or 3.  Game 1 is a 1-player game in which you find as many 3, 4, and 5 letter words as you can from one set of letters before the little timers appear on the screens.  Every time you line up the tiles to make a word they flash to let you know that the word’s been counted.  In a way it feels a lot like the old Boggle handheld just with fewer letters to choose from.

Game 2 is also a 1-player game where you find as many 5-letter words as you can in the allotted time.  After you find a word, you get a new set of letters to unscramble.  The third game is the same as game 2, but it’s for multiple players.  Once you get a word you pass the tiles to the next player.  If time runs out while you’re looking for a word it will display OUT and you have to pass the tiles to the next player.  Last man standing wins.

The cute little tiles also score!  At the end of game 1 if you line up the 5 tiles your score will appear as well as how many words were possible.  At the end of game 2 it shows you not only the word you missed but also how many sets you were able to unscramble before time ran out.  The only downfall I see is that it doesn’t save scores so there’s no running high score that you’re constantly striving to beat.  But I will totally forgive that small shortcoming because it comes with a nice hard plastic travel case!  You get to toss out the big box you brought home from the store and instead everything – including the instructions – packs easily into a box that’s a little larger than 2 in. x 2 in. x 4 in.  How nice is that?!  And because it’s not intrusive, it’s been on my desk for weeks now – I use it as a mini-break every now and then.  Love it!

Scrabble Flash Stats:
$30 at Target, Toys ‘R Us, Kmart, Amazon and many others
1 or more players, most games are for 1-player
~3 minutes per round so it’s up to you
Ages 8 and Up (although some words might be difficult for an 8 year old)

On the very edge of the Chicago suburbs, right at the last exit that divides the bustling commuters from the nothingness that spans to westward to the Rockford oasis there is a Cabela’s store.  It outfits hikers, hunters and other people looking to venture away from the city.  This weekend I made the trek from Chicago proper to this oversized log cabin to return an ill-fitting Christmas gift.  As I wandered through the maze of camo and fishing gear, I spotted a game I knew, Find It.  It’s a charmingly simple game that can be enjoyed by a kid suffering through a fishing trip with their father, to an urban executive killing five minutes before an important conference call.  What a great find!

Find It is as simple as the name suggests.  Each tube contains 40-50 themed items surrounded by a zillion recycled plastic pellets.  The goal is to shake, twist and spin the tube until you find all of the stuff inside.  Each game comes with a tear-off pad with the list so you can cross them off as you go, but there is also a sticker on top that tells you what’s inside so you don’t have to bring the tally sheet with you.  I have the Find It Original, but when I was in Cabela’s I saw the “At the Zoo” and “Bird Watch” editions.  I know there are quite a few other versions including Find It Deluxe which has 70 items inside and a whole game built around it with cards and a spinner (that I have yet to play).

Find It is the brainchild of Bob Knight who I had the pleasure of meeting at ChiTag back in 2008.  He had an idea, prototyped it using plastic tubing and birdseed and with a lot of hard work and enthusiasm built a line of products that can be found in a wide variety of stores – including Cabela’s.  It appeals to almost everyone – old, young, gamers as well as those who aren’t – and you can play it for 2 minutes by yourself or pass it around a group until you find everything.  And for you parents out there, it’s a great way to keep the kids quiet during a car trip.

Find It Stats:
~$20 at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble and all sorts of specialty retailers (~$30 for the Deluxe Edition)
1 or more Players
As little or as long as you want
Ages 8 and up

Rush Hour is a great brain-teaser/puzzle.   The game consists of 15 cars and trucks that block your little red “fancy” car from getting off the grid.  To play you select one challenge card and set up a little traffic jam.  The goal is for you to get your car off the grid and it may take quite a bit of shuffling the other cars back and forth to make this happen.  The puzzles range from very easy to pretty challenging and the folks at ThinkFun were kind enough to include answers on the back of each card in case you are stumped.  There are also add-on packs that come with new cars, like a white stretched limo and a yellow taxi, that create all new puzzles so you have something to tackle after you’ve managed to conquer the forty it comes with!

Since it was released in 1996 more than 5 million copies of Rush Hour have been sold and it can be purchased in 32 countries! Rush Hour is used in schools to teach kids critical thinking skills including problem solving and strategy and this February ThinkFun is planning another Rush Hour iPhone Contest in which they will donate copies of Rush Hour to needy schools in the winner’s name!  (for more info: click here)

Rush Hour was invented by Nob Yoshigahara, a famous Japanese puzzle inventor who brought the concept to ThinkFun (then Binary Arts) back in 1995.  At the time is was called “Tokyo Parking” and instead of being a traffic jam, it was a hellish parking lot.  (Frankly, those seem pretty similar to me living in Chicago – our expressways at rush hour always look like one long parking lot!)  Anyway, ThinkFun improved upon Nob’s concept by placing it in a nice grid with cars that easily slid back and forth.  They also changed the name from Tokyo Parking to Rush Hour and insisted on keeping the message positive.  Instead of being angry at the terrible parking skills of the other cars, players see getting out of the tangled mess of rush hour traffic a challenge.  And with some of the more difficult cards – it really is!

In addition to the physical Rush Hour game, if you own an iPhone you can get the Rush Hour app that was released right before Christmas.  For less than a buck you can get over 2500 puzzles!  Quite a deal.  (And don’t be fooled by any of the similar apps – you really want the official Rush Hour one!)

So despite not really being a “game” this puzzle gets high marks with the game testers here at The Game Aisle.  It’s a great product to enjoy when no one wants to play any games against you!

Rush Hour Stats:
$15-$25 at Amazon.com, Barnes and Noble, Target.com, and many more.  Other versions like a Railroad, Safari and Junior are available.  Add-on packs will run you about $8 for 1 new car and 40 new challenges.
1 Player
Time depends on level and skill
Ages 8 and up