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!

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/smartplay-playing-in-traffic/ http://www.thegameaisle.com/smartplay-playing-in-traffic/#comments Mon, 10 May 2010 22:45:31 +0000 Kim Vandenbroucke http://www.thegameaisle.com/?p=1182

This article was written for ThinkFun’s Smart Play Blog!  Find it and their other great articles: here

Recently I was on the ThinkFun website and saw the big ad for the iPad and iPhone Rush Hour apps saying “Now even more ways to play in traffic!”  This made me chuckle.  Why? Because I live in Chicago, where despite a state-wide ban, 80% of drivers are txting, emailing or talking on their cell phones while driving so really we don’t need more ways to “play in traffic.”  But you know who could use an app like that….our car mates.  Yes, the husbands, co-workers and friends who play backseat driver and insist they know a “better way” out of the gridlock by taking some crazy side street that has potholes large enough to swallow small children and Smart cars.

And youngsters aren’t much better.  Teens complain, kids get antsy; the longer the car ride is, the less pleasant it gets.  But I have a solution.  Fork over your iPhones.  Yes, that’s right, hand them over (since you shouldn’t be using them anyway).  This could be a win-win for all drivers and passengers.  Drivers get to listen to the music, talk radio or audio book they want without hearing how long the ride is or how the lane next to them is moving faster.  And while the drivers are focusing on the road, the passengers get to work their own magic and move the little red car from the impossible cluster of cars in the Rush Hour app.  And who knows, maybe the gridlock everyone is experiencing could bring us closer together.

To find out more about the new RushHour iPhone AND iPad apps, click here.

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

I’d bet that if you were in a room with a million people and asked “does anyone like reading directions?” not a single person would raise their hand.  Okay so no one in their right mind would take that bet, it would be like trying to win a raffle when you didn’t bother to buy a ticket.   Seriously though, directions are the necessary evil that comes before the fun.  Whether you’re learning how to use your new super-complex digital camera or learning the commands for your cool new Robosapien so you can tease your dog, directions stink.  I just want to get to the fun part.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who has come to this realization because there are games out there that have gotten you half the way with their name alone.  A great example is ZINGO.  From the –INGO you can guess that the game’s got some bingo in it, right?  But wait, there’s more, those smart cookies at ThinkFun even put pictures on the back of the packaging so when you open the box, there’s only about a paragraph of actual directions to read.  So 20 seconds of reading, 3 twist ties to remove and you’re ready to play!  Outstanding, right?

All of this would be for naught if the game wasn’t good, but it really is top notch.  And while the ZINGO box suggests it’s for 4-8 year old, I know a couple parents who don’t mind playing it over and over and over.  Sure beats some board games that leave you literally bored after a couple games.

So you’ve already got that it’s bingo, but it’s bingo with a zing.  (Actually their tag line, I ripped that off.)  Forget numbers and tokens, this bingo is played with little tiles adorned with pictures but the real “wow factor” is the extremely addictive mechanism that spits out the ZINGO tiles.  It’s kind of like the “chook chook” old credit card copying machines, but with each “chook-chook” it magically spits out two tiles.  It’s not the first time ThinkFun has used the “chook-chook” machine, it’s also in their fast-fire adult word game Smart Mouth which I also highly recommend to people looking for a fast-paced word game.  But back to ZINGO…

So now that you’ve spent the 90 seconds to read/view the directions, unpack the game and fall in love with the “chook-chook” machine, it’s time to play.  Once the machine has been “chook-chooked” and tiles have been spit out, players quickly scan their cards and yell out any matching objects.  The first person to holler out “frog,” “ghost” or whatever image is on both the tile and their board wins the tile and is one step closer to covering their board and winning.  Simple, right?

A nice added feature – as if ThinkFun hasn’t already done enough for us thus far – is that there are two levels of play, one for youngsters so it’s a little less competitive and one for older kids who want a more exciting game.  The ZINGO cards of the easier version have fewer duplicate images so there’s not as much of a rush to skim the images on your card for a tile-card match.  I will admit, the easy version is really for the kiddies and it’s the competitive version I’m a fan of, but the 4 year olds of the world will appreciate the extra time.  And either way, I appreciate that I can spend more time playing and less time reading the directions.

ZINGO stats:

• ~$15 at Target, Barnes and Noble and Amazon.com
• 2-4 players
• ~5 min.
• Ages 4-8 (parents might find it fun too)