The neighborhood I live in here in Chicago, well let’s just say it’s “up and coming” and it’s been “up and coming” for pretty much the entire 7 years that I’ve lived here.  During those years, it’s definitely been getting better and this year huge strides have been made with great new bars, restaurants and shops going in nearby including an upscale toy store!  The owner of the new toy store *Play, asked for my help picking out games for their target age group (8 and under).  Trying to pick …

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 …

A while back I wrote an article about taking games with you when you travel (see here) and Nate Scheidler, Organizer of Chicago Boardgames Meetup Group, said that he packs a game called Pickomino.  Well, at the time I’d never played Pickomino and although I’d heard of it, I hadn’t heard anything about it.  This is really the reason I started The Game Aisle; I know how hard it is to decide which game to purchase when all you’ve got to go on is the box art.  So when a …

Earlier this month I was at Richard Gottlieb’s “Future of the Industry” conference and someone brought up the issue of packaging.  Given that “green” is a trend; the absence of throwaway packaging is definitely an a-peel-ing part of Bananagrams.  (Couldn’t resist a good pun!)  While this game feels familiar to other crossword games like Pick Two, we all agreed that the adorable zippered banana sack and the hanging merchandiser helped make this item a standout.
The game itself?  I think it’s great!  (FYI – I really like quick word games.)  The …

Regardless of how you pronounce the name Rummy-CUBE, Roomi-CUBE, Rummy –CUB, if you’ve played it you probably like it.
Rummikub has to be my favorite two-player game and I’ll admit it took me a long, LONG time to learn to play it.  Wait…let me rephrase, I got it pretty quickly once I read the directions but back when I was young my sister got a copy for Christmas we never bothered learning to play it.  Why?  It’s filled with numbers and it looked like math was involved and after summers and …