When it comes to “Junior” or “Family” versions of games I usually feel that a game loses a little of the magic or gets watered down to make it age appropriate for the younger set, but I really enjoyed the family version of Wits & Wagers!  I thought the changes the folks at North Star Games made to the original game were well thought out and the game doesn’t lose any of it’s magic.

Just as in Wits & Wagers (read that review here), Wits & Wagers Family starts each round with a question where all of the answers will be numbers.  Each player writes down their best guess and then all of the answers cards are organized in a row from lowest to highest.  Simple enough.  Then players each take their two “Meeples” (people shaped movers, see above) and they place the large one and their small one on the answers they think are correct.  Just as in original Wits & Wagers, you can vote for your own but sometimes it’s best to look to someone who has more knowledge regarding the question and vote for their answer.  Once all of the votes are cast, the answer is read and the winning answer is the one that is closest without going over.  Players with a large Meeple on the correct answer get two points, whereas the small Meeple is worth one.  An additional point is awarded to the player who wrote down the correct answer as well.  Points are tallied on the wipe off scoreboard.

Overall, I thought their use of “Meeples” was a really clever way of omitting the not-so-kid-friendly betting tokens.  It’s also great for people who aren’t real gamers or are intimidated by the betting and odds aspect of Wits & Wagers.  My only concern with the game is that some of the questions were a little too easy.  (We all knew there were 8 crayons in the first box of Crayolas.)  I know I said something similar about Take 5, so it might be that my brain is filled with too much useless knowledge because of excessive game playing and trivia writing, which is distinctly possible.  But there is an easy solution if you agree with me, grab the box of cards from Wits & Wagers and just omit any inappropriate ones.  Otherwise, just skip the easy ones in the Family version; there are plenty of fun and interesting random tidbits within the cards.

Wits & Wagers Family Stats:

$15 to $20 at Amazon, Toys R Us, Barnes & Noble,  AreYouGame.com
3 -10 players
15-20 minutes
Ages 8 and up

Obviously, Order’s Up is a diner themed game and to kick off play, everyone selects two guest checks, which each have 6 food and/or beverage items on them.  To win you need to collect all of the items on two checks.   The game starts with 4 meal/beverage tiles in the center of table surrounding the bell.  On each turn, a player rolls the die and it either has a picture of a bell, a broken bell (which puts you “on break” until your next turn – ouch!), a Free Meal, an Order Mixup or an image that indicates you need to add two tiles to the play area.  If you roll a bell, the first player to ring the bell gets to select a meal or beverage from the play area that matches an image on one of their guest checks.  If there isn’t one that matches, they draw from the stack and take it if it matches or add it to the center if it doesn’t.  So this is really a speed game, which makes you think that anyone who doesn’t have the reflexes of a cat probably isn’t going to win.  WRONG!  The inventor of this game, Myles Christensen, added in some nice catch up factors for the quickness-challenged folks out there.  For example, if you roll a Free Meal, then you could be a super-slow three-toed sloth and still get to start filling your guest check by grabbing a tile from the center.  If you roll an Order Mixup, then you get to swap either one of your guest checks with anyone else’s (tiles included) – my suggestion, steal from the player with the roadrunner like speed.  They’ll catch up again, right?  (You just can’t swap for a completed card; those stay with the player that finished them.)

Order’s Up did a really great job of putting a couple of catch up factors into a cute themed speed game.  And it’s these details that make the game memorable because at times it’s feels more like you’re getting bamboozled than your slow-as-molasses opponent is getting a chance to catch up.  Then again, it could be the lightning fast person who is getting all of the Free Meals, but it only takes one Order Mixup to change all that.

Overall, all of the parts of Order’s Up work together nicely, kind of like how a milkshake, burger and fries make a great diner meal.  And besides, the game’s got a bell and who doesn’t like a game with a bell?

Order’s Up Stats:
~$15 at Amazon, FunAgainGames.com (**Comes out June 1st but you can pre-order it now!)
2-6 players
15 Minutes or less (depends on number of players)
Ages 6 and up

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

In EXCAPE each player has 2 special EXCAPE dice and a matching X-shaped mover.  While the goal of the game, getting your mover from start to finish, is pretty standard, how you get your piece to move is the fun part.  The EXCAPE dice are unique because each die has a 1, 2, 3 and X but then one die has 4 and 7 and the other 5 and 6.  On each turn, players try to get the highest number when the two dice are combined.  So if you roll a 4 and a 3 you’ve rolled a “43.”  Easy, right?  Once you’ve rolled you can either re-roll for a higher number OR you place your dice on the board (which I’ll get to in a second).  76 is the highest number possible and the Xs count as zeros on your first roll only.  If you roll and X after your first roll, you have to move your mover back one space and you’re turn is over so you don’t get to place your dice on the board.

Placing your dice on the board is how you get your mover to advance towards “finish.”  In the center of the board, there are spaces numbered 0-5 and if you’re dice stay on one of those spaces until your next turn, you get to advance your mover that number.  On your turn, you can place your dice on any one of those spaces provided your dice total isn’t less than a dice pair on a lower numbered space.  So if there is a 65 on space 2, you can’t place your 43 above it on space 3.  If, however, there is a 32 on space 4 and you place your 43 on the space below them, you get to remove those dice from the board because they are lower than you.  See how keeping your dice on the board can be somewhat of a challenge?  The dice placing requires a bit of strategy because you want to remove other players so you may choose a lower number, but you also need to advance your mover so you may what to leave your opponents on the board and go for the 5!

There are also a couple of fun catch up factors in EXCAPE like if you roll doubles (1, 2 or 3) you get to move that number of spaces forward automatically.  If you roll double Xs on your first roll, you wipe everyone from the centerboard and can place your dice wherever you choose.  If you roll two Xs after that, your mover goes back two spaces.  Ouch!

This is a great add to any dice-addict’s collection.  It’s not going to be easy to find, because it’s not published here in the US, but I was able to find my copy at Amazon.com.  (Don’t worry, the directions are in English.)  You can also look for it under the name “EXXTRA” but the box art isn’t quite as nice.

*Board Games With Scott is a great site because it has videos explaining how to play the games, but he focuses mostly on “German style” games (which typically take longer than the games reviewed at The Game Aisle).  Unfortunately Scott is currently on a hiatus and isn’t reviewing new games.

EXCAPE Stats:
~$25 at Amazon.com, Fun Again Games and possibly specialty retailers
3-6 Players (for 3 players you may want to omit center space 5)
10-30 Minutes (dependent on number of players)
Ages 8 and up

ChickyBoom is a balancing game in which you pile up hay bales, wagon wheels, and adorable wooden chickens on top of a long platform and once you’re all set, you carefully move the platform to the rocking perch.  That’s where the game begins.  One at a time, each player removes an object.  Hay bales are worth 3 points, wagon wheels are worth 1 and the chickens are 2-3 points depending on their size.   The goal is to have the highest number of points when the platform comes crashing down.  And as an additional stroke of bad luck, if you’re the player that caused the crash you lose 5 points from your total.

The rounds are quick and without the “you touched it, you must remove it rule” it’s a really satisfying game to play.  I think the only negative the game has is that it can be hard for little ones to get the platform onto the perch and then balanced once it’s stacked high with chicks and hay.  Still, that’s very minimal setup help from mom or dad!

Like many other Blue Orange products, ChickyBoom is a beautiful all-wood game that is durable and cute.  Blue Orange makes it a priority for their company to be “green” and plants two trees for ever one that is use to make their games.  And bonus to you parents who are always losing pieces rendering games unplayable they have a replacement piece shop on their website!  You can find that here: http://store.blueorangegames.com/repi.html

We here at The Game Aisle think that Blue Orange did a great job on this game and I’m sure this one will stay in our collection for a long time!

ChickyBoom Stats:
$20 – $25 at Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Target and some specialty retailers
2-4 Players
5-7 Minutes
Ages 4 and up

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

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 game junkie like Nate says that he takes Pickomino with him on a trip where he may be stuck playing it over and over, I took that as a pretty good sign.  Now I just had to get my hands on a copy!

Pickomino is a dice and tile game published by Rio Grande Games here in the US which has a knack for finding great German-style family strategy games and publishing them in English for the game-loving American public.  They work closely with the German publishers to ensure the essence of the game is carefully translated into English and have produce such games as Puerto Rico, Carcassonne and Lost Cities.  Haven’t heard of these?  You’ll probably only find them in specialty game stores or on the game shelf of your true “gamer” friends.  Personally, I’m not a huge fan of city building, area control or abstract strategy games and my attention usually wanes after about 20 minutes of playing a game so I’m not a big purchaser of Rio Grande Games (although I have a great deal of respect for what they do).  And from people who like these kinds of games – I hear that Puerto Rico and Lost Cities are AMAZING.  Just FYI.

Back to Pickomino, I don’t feel that it is a typical Rio Grande game EXCEPT its inventor is the prolific German game inventor Reiner Knizia (he also invented Easy Come, Easy Go).  And he’s done a great job of adding in a little strategy and some interesting twists to a familiar-feeling dice game.  The goal of Pickomino is to collect as many roast worms as possible (apparently they are all the rage amongst the chickens).  You do this by rolling eight dice and collecting the highest possible point total — without busting.  The eight dice are numbered 1-5 plus one red worm, which is worth five points.  You bust when you’ve used up all the dice and haven’t rolled at least one worm or you don’t roll any new numbers on your turn.  If you don’t bust on your turn, you collect the tile that is the same number, or the next available one down, from the total you’ve rolled.  (If you don’t roll a high enough number for an available tile, this is also considered a bust.)  The tile will have 1-4 worms on it and the winner is whoever has collected the most worms on their tiles at the end of the game!  There’s also a little bit of stealing and you have to return worms if you bust so there’s a bit going on but it’s easy to grasp and explain to others once you’ve sifted through the directions – which took us two reads, but was well worth the effort.

Ironically, I like this game but I’m terrible at it.  I have the worst rolling luck – yet with it’s great catch-up factor I was able to come back from a 12 worms deficit to win last night!  A little stellar rolling by me and some poor rolling by my opponent and I was back in the game!

The Game Aisle game testers found Pickomino fun with 2 players as well as 4-5 (we didn’t try more than that).   There is a bit of adding so this is a great game to play with kids so they learn quick addition without the assistance of their iPhone’s calculator function!

Pickomino Stats:
~$20-$25 at Amazon.com and specialty game retailers
2 – 7 Players
15-30 Minutes
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

When you have a hallway full of games there are often ones that you know you like but they just never get pulled out and played.  I really have no idea why this happens but I think it’s like certain movies.  You love them but you need to be in the right mood to watch them.  And then when you finally are in that mood you’re like I LOVE THIS MOVIE!  Well, that recently happened with TriBond.  We played a little bit at the bar during the Toy and Game Inventor’s Expo (TAGIE) and it put me in the mood to pull out the TriBond box and make an evening of it.  Who doesn’t like trying to find out how three items or images are related? It’s a great mental workout.

TriBond has been out for quite a while; in fact it was invented by college buddies Dave Yearick, Ed Muccini and Tim Walsh (inventor of BLURT!) more than two decades ago.  In 1983 they decided to invent a game after they saw the success of Trivial Pursuit, but it wasn’t until 1989 that Ed came up with the idea of a “Threezer” riddle.  Could they make a game based on the question “what do these three have in common?”  They could and they would.  Within weeks they created a prototype, named it TriBond and started a company called Big Fun a Go Go, Inc.

Now I wish I could say that it was an easy ride to success from there, but it rarely is for people starting up in the game industry.  For TriBond to become a success took a bit of time and a ton of effort.  In 1990, after publishing 48 copies of TriBond Dave, Ed and Tim showed it at New York Toy Fair and by the end of the show they had only sold 30 games.  Obviously, not the success they were looking for.  Stunned that their AMAZING game got so few orders they knew they had to do something to promote it.  So they entered TriBond into every game competition they could find and lo and behold – it won some of them!  Mensa chose it as “One of the top three new board games for 1990” and “One of the top five best new mind games for 1990.”  Slowly they got new orders, reorders and a couple more awards but they still weren’t making any money – in fact they were deeply in debt to a bunch of investors including Ed’s dad.  But in 1992 everything changed.  They got Patch to license the product and Tim joined the company as their Marketing Director to help them promote the game.  By 1993, you could find TriBond in mass-market stores everywhere and they sold almost 150,000 games before December 1 — a huge increase from less than 15,000 the year before.  Since then, TriBond has been translated into 9 languages, sold in 14 countries and in 2000 it was inducted into the Games Magazine Hall of Fame.

Fast forward to 2010, which is right around the corner.  TriBond will be celebrating its 20th anniversary.  Very impressive and congrats to Dave, Ed and Tim!

TriBond is great for large groups and can be played in teams.  I also like snagging the box of questions and taking it with me on long car rides and we play until our brains hurt!

TriBond Stats:
~$25 and up at Amazon.com
2 or More Players (large groups play in teams)
45-60 Minutes (I know this is a LONG game for me to be recommending but you can always figure out ways to shorten the game or just play with the cards – still fun!)
Ages 12 and up

You don’t really need to have a huge vocabulary to win – you just need to be quick.  You get 1 point for 3-4 letter words and more for longer words.  So if you come up with zillion 3-letter words, you can beat the person who found only a couple of crazy long ones.  And I must admit, my favorite part (besides winning) is when you get to the end of the round it’s really satisfying to see how many great words you have that no one else found.

I like Boggle so much that in the past I’ve been known to have paper, pencils and a mini dictionary crammed into the Boggle box so I could take it with me on trips.  But the bad thing was, the old Boggle game was designed so if you put the clear plastic cover on top of the dice tray, it wouldn’t fit in the box.  Annoying right?  Then Hasbro fixed that problem by giving the lid a new odd shape, but the dice didn’t shake as well in that one (and it felt kind of cheap) so I didn’t even bother purchasing it.  Well now they’ve completely redesigned the dice holder and it’s a very cool travel-friendly solution.  You twist it to shake the dice, then twist back to lock them in place.  So now, with the absence of a removable lid, you don’t have to worry about losing one of the dice.  And then to make it an all-in-one game, it’s got a timer built in.  Now all you have to do is hunt down some pencils and paper and you’re ready to roll!

Boggle’s been around since 1972 although it failed and was relaunched in 1976 after some revisions – including the addition of a shaker.  It was invented by Alan Turoff and as a fun bit of trivia the longest words that can be made are 17 letters long because the Q and U are on the same tile.  They are: inconsequentially, quadricentennials, and sesquicentennials.  Personally, I’ve never been able to get any of them.

Boggle Stats:
~ $15 at Wal-Mart, Target, Toys ‘R Us and pretty much everywhere that sells games
2 or More Players
~5 Minutes per round (including scoring) so it’s up to you
Ages 8 and up