The game I want most:

…I apparently I can’t get it until spring.  I saw this item in the last 10 minutes of the show and fell in love.  The game’s inventor, David Hoyt, was signing cards with me at the Top Trumps booth earlier in the day and he showed me this product in the 30 seconds he had before meeting Mike Gray from Hasbro to play games for the evening.  It’s called Word Winder andi n this game you use Boggle-like rules to mark letters that form a word in hopes of creating a path from one side of the playing area to the other.  The board is made up of lots of 4×4 letter squares so you can organize them and reorganize them any way you’d like. I cannot wait to get my hands on this one!

Word Winder Stats:

not for sale yet (I hear Mid-March)

Some other games I liked (in no particular order):

Faux•Cabulary by Out of the Box

This is an odd, but fun word-creation party game.  One player draws a card with a definition like “The Synthetic Fur Used to Make Cold Weather Garments” and the other players select 3 dice at random.  The card is read and players roll their dice once and use the face-up word bits to create a word that best fits the definition.  You get results like “AfroPuffFuzz” and “SuperFunkGrub” and the card reader gets to select the winner.  As a quick side note, I played this game with some Mennonites at New York Toy Fair and we had a blast.

Faux•Cabulary Stats:

~$25, Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Fat Brain Toys, mom & pop stores

3-7 players

20-30 minutes

Ages 13 and Up

Sutakku by Smirk & Dagger Games

Curt Covert, inventor of Sutakku, stopped me at the fair because he knows I have an affinity for push-your-luck dice games and he was dying to show me Sutakku.  It’s exactly that, a quick-playing, push-your-luck dice game and the goal of each turn is to create a high scoring stack for the highest point total after 5 rounds.   The general rule is to you roll 3 dice and select 2 of them to start or add to your stack.  You always have to stack numbers that are equal or higher than the number on the top of your stack.  There are bonus points for stacking on a 5 of 6 because you’re really pushing your luck and you score by multiplying the number on the top of the stack by the number of dice in the stack.  The one interesting catch is that the dice don’t have regular numbers on them, but instead symbols which I haven’t decided if I love or hate yet.  You don’t get the quick – OH YEA! after you have a good roll, but if your opponent has had one too many beers they might think they busted when they didn’t.  So the jury is still out on the art – but I like the big dice, they feel good to roll (dice game lovers will understand that comment).

Sutakku Stats:

~$25 Amazon.com, mom & pop stores for a location near you: CHECK HERE

1 or more players

15 minutes

Ages 14 and Up

Blindside by Talicor ~$30

Aparently this game sold out on Saturday and while I’m not a huge fan of abstract strategy, I get the appeal of this game.  It’s like checkers mixed with chess on crack.  The board is made up of a bunch of hexagons and each player (max 2) has 7 hexagon movers that have little arrow inserts which dictate how far and which direction it can move.  The goal is to attack your opponent by jumping or landing on them and then removing their arrow(s) which depleates their mobility.  When one player gets all of the arrows, they win.  The board can also change shape so I see the hours of fun this could provide for someone who really digs abstract strategy games.

Blindside Stats:

~$30, Specialty Retailers and Amazon.com

2 players

25-30 minutes (so I’m told)

Ages 10 and Up

Oversight by Griddly Games

I saw this game last ChiTag when it was still in prototype form (another reason ChiTag is so cool!) and this year it was for sale!  This is another abstract strategy but it’s definitely “lite” abstract strategy.  You have a board with 49 tiles (7 rows by 7 columns) and each player has colored coins and their goal is to get 4 in a row.  On their turn, players may either place one of their coins on any tile (the tile colors don’t matter – they’re just to distract you) or shift one of the rows of tiles that has an arrow next to it.  You shift a row by pushing one tile in either end and this shifts all of the tiles and any tokens that are on those tiles.  It’s definitely easier to learn than it is to explain in an article and has a similar feel to Gobblet or X-Ceter-O where it takes some thinking to win. (pic includes Reisa Schwartzman, Oversight inventor)

Oversight  Stats:

~$16-25 Specialty Retailers and Amazon.com (now) and Marbles Stores (next year)

2-4 players

5-20 minutes (depending on how many players and how good they are)

Ages 7 and Up

Doggy Doo by Goliath

It’s a game about a dog that poops a compound (think Play-Doh) and it makes funny noises as the poop is working its way through the dog.  That’s it, that’s all you need to know.  But if you want to know more, kids get to feed the dog a “treat” (the compound) and then they roll a die to see how many times they get to pump the leash (which moves the compound through the dog).  If the dog poops on your turn, you get to clean it up.  The first player to get 3 pieces of poop on their shovel wins.  Wow.

As a side note, this game came from Chicago invention firm Lund and Company (of TMX Elmo fame) and it was invented 15 years ago but didn’t find a home until Goliath picked it up in 2009.  To read more about the game’s history, click HERE.

Doggie Doo  Stats:

~$20 Toys ‘R Us, Walmart, Target, Amazon, AreYouGame.com and more

2-4 players

~10-15 minutes

Ages 4 and Up

Pick Me by Tree Toys, not for sale yet

Plastic Barbie-like arms in a cup?  Yea – I didn’t care what this game was about, it already had me laughing!  You use little guitars to flick picks into the cup of arms and if you get one to stick you win!

I should also mention that this game was so popular with people walking by that most of the parts for the sample that was out were stolen.  While that must mean they like it, shame on fair goers for depriving other gamers from testing this one out!

Pick Me Stats:

not for sale yet

Some other notable games I feel I must mention:

GameChanger by Identity Games

This game has been all over the news and they had a huge, popular booth – which was probably also the best-looking one at the fair!  If you haven’t heard about GameChanger, it’s a game board that you use with your iPad (yep, you plug it into the board).  So now your board game has sound, video and is interactive.  Right now it retails for $80 which is pricey, but the game board is like an extension of your ipad and it recognizes were your mover is on the board.  The starter kit has 2 games and I hear there are going to be more game “skins” in the future so hopefully you’ll get a lot of mileage out of the $80 starter kit. (Pic taken by GameChanger — mine was blurry!)

Pajaggle by Pajaggle Inc.

I heard that the Pajaggle people had a great show and their product will soon have a much greater distribution.  Congrats to them!  Pajaggle is like a far more complex version of Perfection, just without the popping mechanism and annoying ticking timer.  The pieces are extremely intricate which makes it a little harder to find their home space and some pieces even nest inside of others.  The game play is pretty straightforward, race another person or race against yourself – it does come with a timer.  There are some other little games but sadly a bunch of them require two sets or more to play and at $30 a pop it can get really expensive so fingers crossed that their greater distribution will bring the price down.  UPDATE: Additional piece packs will be available soon for $12.99.

If you live here in the US, Memorial Day is this weekend; which means the kids will all have a truckload of extra energy – you know, the kind that comes from knowing that they don’t have school on Monday.  I don’t know why this occurs, but whether they’re your own children, your relatives, neighborhood kids or ones of questionable ownership that show up just in time to snag a hot dog fresh-off the grill, you’re going to need to find something to keep their salty potato-chip fingers off your garden gnomes, your vintage board games and the game of bags you and some of the other adults want to play during the requisite Memorial Day barbeque.  May I suggest grabbing a copy of Out of the Box’s new game Shake ‘N Take – it will keep them occupied and out of trouble, at least for a little while.

Shake ‘N Take is a fast-paced, frenzied game for up to 10 players, although you only need 2 to play.  Everyone gets a sheet of funny-shaped aliens and then one kid is selected to start with the dry-erase marker and shape die and the player to their right gets the egg with the alien die in it.  When the game starts, the kid with the marker rolls the die and starts circling aliens that match the shape on the die.  The kid next to them is shaking the egg hoping to get the alien face-up on the die inside.  Once the kid with the egg is successful, they grab the pen from the other kid and roll the die and start circling aliens on their own card.  Obviously the kid on their right is going to grab the egg and start shaking it feverishly so they can get a chance with the pen since the object of the game is to be the first player to circle everything on your sheet.  With 2-5 players you play with one pen and one egg but with 6-10 players you play with 2 pens and 2 eggs to make things a bit more exciting.  It’s a simple, fun and fast-paced game invented by Keith Meyers and since I know Keith, I thought I’d ask him how he came up with the idea.  Here’s what Keith said:

“I’ve always felt that to be a good inventor you need to be a good observer.  I think my development of the game Shake N Take is a good example of that.

Shake N Take was born from a game played at camp and in classrooms.  The original premise had the sheets filled with letters or numbers and you would be progressing down or up through the alphabet or counting down or up a string of numbers.

In watching the game play it was obvious the fun factor was there: lots of screaming and laughing amongst the kids and a certain palpable tension that made the game very exciting.  But in watching several groups play over time, I noticed a couple of core repeating issues that I thought detracted from the heart of the game.

First, the older kids, or at least the ones with better critical thinking skills, would spend time plotting out where their next batch of letter or numbers would be when they weren’t marking their sheets, while the younger kids were caught up watching the insanity revolving around the table.  Invariably, these methodical kids came out ahead, but also seemed to miss out on the fun and laughter surrounding them.  Changing the numbers and letters to symbols and adding a die that allowed you to mark them off, solved this issue nicely.  There was only so much planning you could do when it came down to dice rolling.

And the second issue was the tug-of-war that often ensued when one person was ‘stealing’ the pen from another person.  Someone would have a death grip on the pen, the other desperately trying to wrest it from the other.  While initially funny to watch, it did not help the play of the game, and it put younger players, again, at serious disadvantage. Some tinkering with pencil toppers and other concepts, yielded the workable, but ugly, design you see pictured (wooden spool with packaging tape).

These observations lead to my design of “On A Roll” which took another step forward in the capable hands of Out of the Box, who upped the quality of the components – like the awesome alien-egg shaker, and added spiffy alien-themed graphics to make this design out-of-this-world!”

Thanks to Keith for sharing the story behind Shake ‘N Take!  I should also mention that the sheets have 2 sides, one with aliens and the other with basic shapes so kids of all ages can play and the game is pretty even, so whether you are having just a couple kids or a small army at your house this weekend, I highly recommend you have a copy of Shake ‘N Take to keep them entertained.  And let’s face it, if kids are playing games, they probably aren’t causing any trouble – at least not any major trouble.

Shake ‘N Take Stats

• ~$29 Amazon.com, FatBrainToys.com, FunAgainGames.com and some mom & pop retailers
• 2-10 player
• Time completely depends on the number of players
• Ages 8 and up is what the box says…I say 6 and up

This past weekend was my one-year anniversary and for our honeymoon we went to Puerto Rico and Dominica for ten days.  So how odd is it that the game I’m reviewing this week happens to be 10 Days in the Americas by Out of the Box?  It is totally a coincidence, but makes for a great opening paragraph don’t you think?

10 Days in the Americas is the latest in a line of map-themed games invented by Alan Moon and Aaron Weissblum.  The series already includes: 10 Days in Africa (2003), 10 Days in Europe (2003), 10 Days in the USA (2003) and 10 Days in Asia (2007).  Each one of the games is about coordinating a 10-day trip throughout a particular area of the world.  Slightly similar to Rack-O, you need to be the first player to get your 10 tiles in a fluid order within your rack in order to claim victory!

In 10 Days in the Americas, your trip needs to start and end in a country, but all of the days in between can be a mixture of countries, cruises and plane rides.  At the start of the game, players fill their 10-day card racks by pulling tiles one-by-one and placing them in an open day slot.  Once a tile is place, it cannot be moved so there is a lot of strategy in how to organize your starting tiles.

When everyone has filled their racks, the game begins.  Through drawing, swapping and discarding tiles, players replace the tiles in their racks to organize a continuous trip.  From your starting country you can walk, fly or take a boat (if it’s on the water) to another country.  To “walk” to another country the two countries must be touching on the map (islands are connected by a dotted line) and the two tiles can be placed next to each other in your rack.  To fly to a country, your departure and destination countries must be the same color and you must place a plane of the same color in between the two of them.  Lastly, to take a boat from one country to another, you need to place a tile that matches the waterway your country is on and then after that you can place your destination tile (if the two countries are on the same waterway); if they’re further apart you need to place multiple waterway tiles to get you from one country to the other.  Most trips will be a combination of walking, flying and taking a boat from country to country, and in the end it’s whoever gets their 10 tiles in a fluid order first that wins!

The game is very easy to grasp and the more time you play the quicker you get at remembering which countries border which.  Yep, sounds a little educational but that’s okay right?  It’s kind of like hiding vegetables in other foods – as long as it’s yummy, who cares that it’s actually good for you?!

10 Days in the Americas Stats:
~$25 Amazon, Borders (coming soon), Barnes & Noble, FatBrainToys.com and local game stores
2-4 players
15-20 minutes
Ages 10 and up (although I think it’s fine for some 8 year olds)

This review of Word on the Street is SERIOUSLY over due and it’s all because one of my favorite playtesters doesn’t like the game.  Why?  Because I always annihilate him when the two of us play.  Heh heh heh.  Seriously though, Word on the Street is a great game for word game geeks.  In fact, it just won a Mensa award this year!  (congrats!)

The game is essentially a “tug of war” with letters.  There are 17 consonant tiles placed in a line down the center of the board, which is the “median” of the street.  On a turn you flip a category card and have 30 seconds to think of a word within that category that includes consonant tiles still on the board.  (Vowels are freebies)  For each letter in your word, you move that consonant tile one space closer to your “curb.”  Once a tile is moved off the board it’s yours to keep.  The first team to collect eight tiles wins the game.  It’s really an easy concept to grasp after playing one round.  I even helped the wonderful folks at Out of the Box demo the game to a buyer during Toy Fair.

Also at Toy Fair got to have dinner with a bunch of brilliant inventors, including the inventor of Word on the Street, Jack Degnan.  He was nice enough to send me a photo of his prototype (always cool to see) and tell me how he came up with the game.  In his own words…

Word on the Street was a game idea I had about five years ago.  The original thought was for this to be a card game.  Players would turn over a category and try to use the letter-cards in their hand to try to spell a word that fit the category. It was a little tough and not quite as fun as I thought it would be…but I knew the concept had some potential.  About three years later I pulled it off the shelf and decided to make a board game out of it. The first version was pushing letters toward a finish line and then the idea of tug-of-war ACROSS the board rather than DOWN the board came to me. I wanted to call it Tug-of-Words, but the name was taken so I came up with the street idea. The rest is history.

In truth Jack’s just moonlighting as game inventor, his real job is working at a clinic for HIV research in San Diego.  So success couldn’t have come to a nicer guy.  And to sweeten the deal, this year Out of the Box has introduced a Junior version of the game.  It is a little bit smaller and includes vowels too.   I was a little worried about this at first — what happens when someone captures the E and the A?!  But it wasn’t really an issue (except when some snot played “FREEZER” – and this time it wasn’t me.)

Word on the Street Stats:
~$25 at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble and Borders
2-10 Players
20-30 Minutes
Ages 12 and up

Word on the Street JUNIOR Stats:
~$20 at Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble
2-8 Players
20-30 Minutes (we omitted the use of the timer for this version game – too much pressure on the young ones)
Ages 8 and up

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

There’s just something addictive about throwing dice.  It’s the mixture of calculated odds and luck that makes you want to pick up a handful and get playing.  The best thing is there are lots of games beyond Yahtzee that are based around a handful – or cupful – of dice.  A good one is Easy Come, Easy Go.  It combines throwing four dice with collecting and stealing fantastic prize cards.  The game includes nine cards that can be earned (or stolen) by rolling a particular combination like “exactly 13” or “3 or less.”  And although rolling a “3 or less” sounds impossible when you’re playing with four dice, it’s not since the dice are numbered from 0-5 instead of the traditional 1-6.   What makes this game so great is that unlike Yahtzee where everyone is competing for a top score, you’re interacting with other players by stealing their cards so there’s quite a bit of competition and revenge.  It’s really a fun game to play with 3-4 other players.

Easy Come, Easy Go is the brainchild of the famous Reiner Knizia.  Haven’t heard of him?  Not many Americans outside of the game industry have.  He’s a very prolific game inventor who has licensed over 500 games so far.  So why then haven’t you heard of him?  Well, most of his titles are games that can only be found in Europe, but a couple have made their way to the United States via the Out of the Box game company which manufacturers Easy Come, Easy Go and also Reiner’s Fish Eat Fish and Tutankhamen.  Impressive, right?  I really want to know where he finds the time to invent so many games! (He probably doesn’t spend a chunk of time reviewing them – ha!)

Easy Come, Easy Go stats:

• ~$15, Amazon.com and online retailers
• 2-4 players (I think it’s best with 3-4)
• ~25-30 minutes (This maybe the biggest downfall of this game – it sometimes takes a little while for someone to win.)
• Ages 8 and up

Typically, all it takes to get a game lover interested in a new game is a glowing review from another game junkie – that’s it, they’re sold!  Earlier this year, I raved about Apples to Apples to my sister so she bought a copy and when it came time for her to buy a gift for my party game-loving aunt, she bought her a copy too.  Normally, I would expect excitement since this game was coming to her so highly recommended, but she didn’t seem excited.  Now, maybe it was the young sounding name or the bright red box that she didn’t immediately embrace, but we assured her it was a great game and awaited her review.

I love games and recommend a lot of games to friends and family, but it’s not like I’ve never met a game I didn’t like.  Sadly, I’ve come across far too many that I found painfully dull.  I give a pretty fair shake to any game that crosses my path; ones with weird names, dry themes, strange artwork – it’s all out there, but it’s the essence of the game that counts.  I have to WANT to play it – and once I’ve finished, I have to want to play it again.  And in that area, Apples to Apples gets very high marks.

So a couple months after Apples to Apples traveled from the Chicago birthday party back to my aunt’s home in Madison, I received a glowing review of the game in my inbox.  While I wondered why it had taken so long for her to play it, it was apparent it had immediately gained an important position on her game shelf.

For an adult with a circle of friends who love party games, I was astonished to hear that no one in the group had ever played it before.  For just about $25, it really is a party in a box – and a heavy box at that since the game is made up of pounds and pounds of cards.  Most of the cards are random words ranging from “Sunday Drivers” to “Angry Hornets” to “Televangelists” to “Loan Sharks” but a smaller number of cards are adjectives like “Industrious” and “Explosive.”

The game is simple: one player reads an adjective card like “Cuddly” and then players toss a word card from their hand that best fits the description into a pile.  Cards like “Napoleon Bonaparte,” “Meat Cleavers,” “Leeches” and “Firefighters” will be lobbed into the pile and then it’s up to the adjective reader to determine which card best fits the round’s adjective.  Personally, I don’t find meat cleavers cuddly at all, I wouldn’t want to cuddle with the diminutive military leader Napoleon Bonaparte and while leeches do cuddle up to you, my vote is still for firefighters since I’m dating one.

Part of the humor comes from the limited number of cards in your hand.  Because you’re only allowed five word cards at a time, you may have to decide whether to play “James Bond,” “Root Beer Floats” or “Stonehenge” for the adjective card “Legendary.”  Overall, it ends up being a hilarious mish mash of very literal to extremely funny interpretations of the adjective.  In the end, the winner is the player who has their word cards chosen the most times.

Forget strategy, calculating odds or an enormous lexicon, this game is easy for anyone to play – even those “non-game” friends.   And believe it or not, this game has been on the market long enough to sell over a million copies and proving that great games never die, Mattel just purchased it from the company that made it what it is today, Out of the Box games.  So this gem of a game will be on all mass market shelves for hopefully years to come, but definitely through this next holiday season.

And for all of you who want to know what took my aunt so long to play it – I asked – she said she was terrified by the number of cards.  Apparently, there was a bit of mental scarring after a five hour Trivial Pursuit marathon she experience just before she received the game.  Just goes to show you should never judge a game by its piece count!

Apples to Apples stats:

• ~$25 at any major retailer
• 4-10 players
• ~20-35 min. (depending on the number of players)
• Ages 12 and up (I say some smart 10 year olds can play too)