Tis the season

Ah, Christmas. Wait, what’s that? It’s only Thanksgiving? Well would someone please tell the stores so that they can stop playing that stupid Paul McCartney song?

Okay, so Thanksgiving. It might as well be Christmas because if your family was like mine growing up then you usually combined both holidays into one. My family was somewhat spread out so traveling two months in a row wasn’t the easiest thing to do, so every year we swapped between making Thanksgiving and Christmas the actual holiday. We’d all gather at the grandma and grandpa’s house and spend a day playing with toys, watching football, eating a lot of food and then playing games…and this was way before video games.

Actually, that’s a lie. I had my Nintendo and I usually took it with me to my grandparents because they lived out in the country and there wasn’t much else to do. But during the holidays the video games took a back seat because playing table top games with my cousins and family was far more enjoyable. It didn’t happen but once a year so you had to take advantage of having people around. Plus, with parents and even grandparents on hand it was the one time when we could all do something fun together. I’ll attribute these times as to why I love games so much…they really are the one thing everyone could enjoy, regardless what generation they were from.

But the real challenge every Thanksgiving evening was the debate over which game to play. Everybody had their favorite, I’m sure, and I did too but it really didn’t matter as long as we were all playing. Of course, then we had to all refresh ourselves on the rules, set up cards and boards, and just spend way too much time getting started. Some of the games were simple, others required a pencil a paper just to figure stuff out, but they were all fun and able to keep my family interested…which was somewhat of a chore in the first place.

So this holiday season, whether it be Thanksgiving, Christmas, or the popular Thankschristmas, don’t forget to turn off the television and put away the Wiimotes for some good old fashioned table top fun. Here are some games that are guaranteed to get your family laughing together.

Monopoly

The ultimate family game if for no other reason that up to eight people can play at the same time. We all know that Monopoly can last a long time, but when you’re playing with more than even four people the game speeds up quite a bit. Money is flying all over the place…houses are being placed and railroads are being bought up left and right. And if you played like my cousin, you bought everything you landed on and conned the rest of the family out of their money with fast-talking trades. One year we had to go dig through my LEGO bricks so he could build enough hotels and houses.

Just don't let grandma be the banker...she's shifty.

Rummy

Nothing beats a good card game. Board games are great but they often have a lot of parts and a lot of rules that just end up making things confusing. Card games like Rummy are hard to screw up but are just as fun. My grandparents taught me rummy and my grandmother would whoop up every year when we all played. You might be more into the euchre or hearts but the next time you have a few aunts and uncles hanging around, start up a quick game of rummy and you’ll probably learn something about them you didn’t know before.

Rummikub

So you think rummy as a card game is too easy? Try Rummikub and your mind will ache, partly just from reading the rules. At its core, Rummikub is the rummy card game just played with tiles instead. Each player tries to be the first to unload all their tiles by creating matching sequences and like-numbers. That might not sound like much but then throw in the part where you can rearrange the tiles on the table in any way you want and you’ll quickly find yourself spending way too long trying to get rid of more than just one tile. Rummikub is a spacial learner’s paradise with a healthy dose of number patterns. It might take a few rounds to get the hang of it but once you do you’ll want to play all night.

Rummikub. It will challenge your brain, your mind and your head.

Uno

A card game for the ages. And when I say Uno I mean straight up Uno. Not the fancy Attack Uno or Uno Dice or Uno Slam or any other of the bastard Uno games that have come out in past several years. Just tried and true Uno. All you need is a table with a person in every seat, no batteries required. Just like rummy, Uno is understood by everyone but I’ve found that Uno brings out the swearing a little more than rummy so beware.

Reverse!? And then a skip?! C'mon, man!

Pictionary

This was my personal favorite game to play during the holidays, but only because I loved to draw (and still do) so I thought I had a distinct advantage. However, I quickly realized that my skill at drawing Richard Nixon didn’t matter much when my teammates still couldn’t guess the answer, leaving it obvious for the opposing team. This is another game that will bring out the best vocabulary in people…and not just swearing but the things people would guess is hilarious. The laughs per minute when playing Pictionary is also off the charts, so make sure you have plenty of paper and pencils.

Cards and dice can save your holiday

In a time when everyone in your family has a smartphone and video games, it’s easy to forget how much fun “simple” games can be. I also know it’s tempting to just play the electronic versions of some of these games (even I can acknowledge the marvelousness that is Monopoly where you don’t have to make change) but playing these games at the table where they belong isn’t so much about the game itself but the people you’re playing with.

The time between Thanksgiving and Christmas is quite possibly the only time you’ll meet with extended family all year, so why not try to enjoy their company and have some fun? You don’t have to talk about your job, or school or your problems elsewhere in the world. You just need to have fun…and that’s easier than you might think, I don’t care how old you are.

Some assembly required.

When Star Wars could do no wrong

I was a Star Wars kid. Everything was either GI Joe or Star Wars, and I mean everything: movies, action figures, books, posters, toys and even games. Somewhere around first grade I got the Return of the Jedi Battle at Sarlacc’s Pit board game. It was awesome…in first grade. When you’re young anything with “Star Wars” tattooed on it is cool, but sometimes a bad game is just a bad game.

And when you knock Boba Fett in, it burps.

Better looking than a half-built Death Star

However, let’s first give credit where credit is due. This game looks cool. I mean, look at it! Jabba’s sail barge is sitting on top of the Sarlacc Pit. After you assemble the cardboard pieces you’ll find you have an actual pit that angles into the Sarlacc’s mouth, and it all looks awesome. Unfortunately, you can’t say the same thing about the game pieces. Sure, you have a fine selection of Han, Luke, Leia or Chewy (no Lando?) to take and beat up Jabba’s finest goons, but they all look horrible. The pieces are molded fairly well but it looks like they were painted by Nick Fury. I know the figures are small but come on, put some effort in to it, huh? I’ve painted mini-figures before and it’s not that hard…and this is Star Wars, show some respect. Yet even with these flaws, when the whole thing is put together it looks quite impressive sitting on your table. It just begs you to come play.

Wait, wasn't Leia wearing a slave girl outfit on Jabba's sail barge?

Less fun than a bacta tank

The game might get lots of style points but when it comes to game play, it fails worse than a ton-ton past the first marker. Playing the Sarlacc Pit game involves little more than moving your pieces next to each Gammorean guard and knocking them off the side into the pit. I know that sounds kind of cool, but there is absolutely no challenge or skill required to do so, and there’s barely any luck. You draw a card, move a few spaces and knock over the bad guy. There’s no way to really fail and that’s never a good thing. And before you start saying that I’m not analyzing this as a kid, think again, because I was a kid with this game and even back then it got boring because there was no challenge. You pretty much knew how the game was going to end before you even started. Even though the game manual makes the game sound quite complicated and interesting, it’s all just a Jedi mind trick.

The Sarlacc Pit game quickly became less of a board game and more of a Star Wars play set. Without any interesting rules, I would get out this game just to play with it like I would with any other toy. I would use my own action figures and vehicles, and it was a lot of fun. I don’t need rules or playing cards to have fun knocking Boba Fett, Nikto and Jabba into the Sarlacc Pit. Oh, and you might notice that Jabba is conspicuous by his absence in my photos. That’s because the Jabba game piece probably ended up being part of other action figure adventures, especially since I wasn’t lucky enough to have the actual Jabba play set.

Looks aren't everything, even a galaxy far, far away.

Yoda couldn’t even save this game

You wouldn’t think that playing on Jabba’s sail barge would ever be boring, but that’s what you get in the case of the Sarlacc Pit board game. This is just another example of something mediocre being disguised by the Star Wars name. The problem is, this game came out in 1983 along with the movie, well before Star Wars branched out into television, cartoons and home video games. I don’t think I’m alone when I say that I’m tired of all the Star Wars stuff out on the shelves right now, most of it just trying to cash in on the franchise, but this game proves this was always the case.

It’s easy to complain and talk about how good things were “back in the day” but not everything was better, even if it was something we loved like Star Wars. I wrote recently about some board games being nothing but a gimmick, all flash and no substance, and the Battle at Sarlacc’s Pit game is a perfect example, but even then it’s really cool to admire…and hey, it’s still Star Wars.

Check out more photos of this game and other toys on Flickr

The game of Life as I knew it...Art Linkletter approved.

The sweet Life

Like many of the games I had growing up, Life was another garage sale find my mother picked out, and surprisingly enough, the game was complete. I remember it being a huge box and when I got home discovered an equally massive game board…but this was no normal game board. Whereas Monopoly just had some simple, ordered squares on it, Life had mountains and buildings and a giant spinner! It was like the Wheel of Fortune was in my living room, only smaller. Better yet, every player drove a car, which means I wasn’t always arguing about being the car like I did when I played Monopoly. The board was a lot of fun, even though it looked like it was designed by Stevie Wonder, and the cars were cool, but better than all of that was the money.

The game of Life introduced me to denominations of cash I could never have imagined. I thought I was rolling big time with a $500 bill in Monopoly, but now I had $50,000 and $100,000 bills at my disposal, each with some old guys’ pictures on them. This was a step up from Uncle Pennybags…it felt more legit. Life felt like an adult game. It didn’t hurt that Life also had a few extras like promissory notes, fire insurance and life insurance, and you could even play the stock market. There was a lot going on and keeping track of everything was quite a chore for any child, but I liked that challenge. I liked that it demanded a little more responsibility…and I also learned what the heck a promissory note was.

Thankfully some things never change

Predicting the future

One thing I couldn’t have predicted was just how much the game of Life follows what the average person’s real life was really about. You start out pretty much poor and then go to college, then get married, then acquire some kids and then experience a bunch of random events that could pay off the first time and then bankrupt you the next time, eventually all leading you to a life of riches or (usually) a trip to the poor house with nothing more to show for it than a good story. Say what you want, but the game of Life lived up to its name. Life introduced me to the importance of insurance and showed me the stock market is always a gamble. It also showed me you never want to have more than two children and apparently you can buy yourself a nice yacht for a mere $36,000…not bad.

Of course, my whole experience with Life is based on the 1960s release of the game, which featured a whole-hearted endorsement by Art Linkletter on the box. To this day I couldn’t really tell you who Art Linkletter was or why his endorsement on Life made a difference, but every time I hear his name I just think of this game. Nonetheless, this version of the game felt and looked just like the time period. Even though I was playing the game in the 1980s, I knew it was older than that and that was part of the fun. I always liked learning about the history of the game and I loved thinking about my parents playing this same game when they were young. It felt special knowing we all have stories and memories about the same game.

I'm surprised they didn't increase the number of children you could have.

Life comes to an end

Unfortunately, like many of my toys and games, Life lost its attraction and became cannibalized for other purposes. In this case, that cause was Monopoly. I find it ironic that Life served as a replacement for Monopoly only to have Life be eaten alive by a Monopoly addiction later in life. My friends and I would play some hardcore Monopoly to the point where we needed more cash, houses and hotels. LEGObricks served as super hotels while the $20,000 and $50,000 bills from Life ultimately served as Monopoly money. You’ve never seen a free parking pot until you’ve seen a few $100,000 bills in it, each with Art Linkletter’s face on it. Thanks to Monopoly, my yard sale game of Life was slowly dismantled and eventually got so out of whack and missing parts that it was unplayable. I think my game of Life eventually ended up in the trash, although every now and then I find a random auto insurance policy in a box of old toys.

Life ain’t what it used to be

A few years ago while my wife and I were wandering the aisles of Target looking for something to do, we decided to buy the game of Life and relive a bit of our youth. Of course, what we found on the store shelf was not the big 1960s version I grew up with. No, this was an updated version with cartoon characters and smiling families all over the place. I was not amused and not impressed, but I was in for even more of a shock when we started to play with a few new rules and changes.

If only real pay days put 50s in my pocket.

It had been a while since I had played that original game of Life so my memory was a bit fuzzy, but as we played through the new version I started to notice quite a few differences that just kind of confused me. This modern game of Life introduced career cards and salary cards, as well as “Life” tokens that are redeemed at the end of the game for some extra money points. Apparently just meandering through the twists and turns of Life earning and spending money wasn’t enough. The career cards tie directly to the salary you command and help you quickly feel depressed about your luck before you even earn your first Pay Day. There’s nothing worse than seeing your friend get $80,000 being an athlete while you’re stuck with $30,000 as an artist. I feel like the original game of Life kept things a little more fair, at least to the point where your luck was limited to what square you landed on. However, the one way these new careers lend themselves to being a better game is that some “pay” squares on the board are tied directly to a career, so you’re not always paying the bank. If you land on a square that makes you buy a painting, your money goes to the player that is the artist rather than the bank. I admit that’s kind of fun, but only if you have more than two players, which in my case, isn’t that often.

Even though the new game of Life adds a few rules and concepts to the game, it’s entirely playable, but there’s one area where they just dropped the ball entirely – the design. Not unlike the card game Mille Bornes, the 1960s version of Life had a very simple and stylish design. It wasn’t adorned with a bunch of eye candy and it focused on what was important. The game board today is almost over done with cartoons and photos but even that I can forgive. What I can’t forgive is the complete un-design of the money. Life used to have some stylish bills that made you feel like you were playing with more than just fake money. The old Life money had very ornate designs with etched pictures of people and all the frills a real dollar bill has. This new game of Life dumped all that in favor of a more traditional Monopoly-like design that is little more than a color and a number and it no longer feels important. It doesn’t make you want to hold it and not let it go…it’s just, bad. On top of that, apparently they also felt things like fire insurance and promissory notes were too complicated. They dropped fire and life insurance entirely from the game and now we just have a basic “bank loan” rather than a beautiful, red IOU note. They even replaced the car tokens with an SUV. No longer can you take your family of six out on the town in your big, green Cadillac. Sorry, you’re stuck with the Durango.

Changes in car tokens, money designs and careers are one thing but when you change the end of the game you’re just asking for trouble. If you look hard enough at the game of Life you’ll notice that now you can’t really lose. Sure, one player will have more money than all the others but you can no longer end up in the “Poor Farm” as you could before. You’ll either go to the prominent “Millionaire Acres” or the less-classy “Countryside Acres,” which sounds more like assisted living. Either way, you never end up in a place that sounds too bad, which really isn’t how life always turns out is it?

Only one word can describe that money - boring.

A life to enjoy

Despite all this poo-pooing, the updated game of Life is still fun. It’s the same core game that I played when I was little, with just a few extras. However, it’s unfortunate that many of the additions don’t seem to add much to the game. Changes like these always make me wonder why Milton Bradley thought they were needed. I understand that Art Linkletter might not carry the same weight now that he did in 1962 but did the game really need a major overhaul? Lets just say that the modern version of the game of Life in my closet now doesn’t get played all that much, and I don’t think it’s just because I’m 20 years older. Although, I don’t care how old you are, throwing down a couple hundred grand on the board still feels good.

Now that's a board game cover to win over just about any child, am I right?

Flash back to my childhood years in the early 90’s for a moment, will you? I’m aware of the X-Men mostly through the Saturday morning cartoon featuring the X-Men costume designs made popular by Jim Lee, but other than that I’m nowhere near what you’d consider a master on the subject. I know the main X-Men and their powers, but that’s about it. Oh, and I know that the X-Men are stupidly awesome, but that’s a gimmie. Therefore, when I unwrapped a random box with the X-Men Under Siege game sitting in wait for me, I was elated. But that was before I actually tried playing the game.

I believe in the entire time I’ve had this game, somewhere in the ballpark of 15 years, I may have played a full game through once, possibly less. The largest reason behind this is the amount of dedication you have to have in order to understand even the slightest bit of the rules. The instruction manual for the game is 14 pages long. That’s 14, a double-digit number, for a board game aimed at kids. I reread it just before writing this article and I still don’t have a full grasp for how it’s played.

The gist is that while the X-Men are away from the mansion, a bunch of evil mutants infest it and force the X-Men to get a call that it is, as you may have assumed, under siege. Opening the box reveals one huge game board (more on that in a second), dozens of little pieces (more on those as well), and 18 X-Men figures.

Tranaslation: A whole lot of confusion.

Those figures were very obviously the highlight of the game for me as they didn’t require the game to be played to find enjoyment with them. Sure, they were just little gray chunks of plastic, none in any sort of dramatic pose, but they were still the X-Men and they were cool. Though, here’s an excerpt from the manual: “Each X-Men character has a superbly sculpted miniature figure…If you wish, you may paint your figure.”

First, I’m just astonished that the game had the gall to say the figures were “superbly sculpted.” Honestly, they were passable at best and lazy at worst. Secondly, don’t act like you’re allowing people to do what they wish with the contents of the game they just purchased and own. If I want to use the figures for Monopoly instead, then I’m totally allowed to do that, even if the game hasn’t specifically told me so.

Regardless of snootiness, the figures themselves were certainly more than you’d expect from a game like this, especially 18 of them. Normally, the best you could hope for were paper cutouts for each character, or at most maybe six individual figures, but 18 full pieces is at least something to be amazed by. Frequently, I’d pull the box out and just play with those, specifically Archangel as he had wings, and have my fun that way. But playing the game proper would be a whole new level of challenge, all because of the sheer amount of moving parts in play.

The game board was one reason for the complexity. For one, the game folded out the long way instead of just opening up into a square-shaped board. No, it opened up into a double-length board representing the X-Mansion and all the rooms. Each floor is stacked on top of the other, but I would have preferred some space to work with, specifically when talking about a table size. A smaller table works for the standard game board, but a double-length board requires a longer table and creates more of a headache that frankly isn’t needed.

No, the headache is plentifully supplied thanks to the illogical amount of game pieces littering the board and the play area. You’ll need damage counters for the X-Men themselves, damage counters for the evil mutants, room pieces for each room secured, blood tokens for specific damage done to enemies, cards used to move around the mansion and perform other actions, and even stat cards for the X-Men.

All of it just seems way more complicated than the typical kid will bother with.

Looking through the game and reading the instructions, what it seems like more than anything is that the game wanted to be a full-blown tabletop RPG but just wasn’t allowed to be. Every X-Man has a rating for combat (Wolverine is the highest with 7 by the way), plus a durability rating that says how many counters they can have, and an intelligence rating that says how many cards you can carry (Beast wins with 4). What draws the D & D connection is the X-tra Skill they all posses that lets them do something unique to them, like reroll a die if it lands wrong or heal quicker when not in battle.

Still, the choices of X-Men is somewhat strange. You’ve got Archangel, Banshee (who wasn’t that big at the time this game came out), Beast, Bishop, Cable, Cyclops, Gambit, Havok, Iceman, Jean Grey, Jubilee, Longshot (who I’ve never heard of, even after extensively reading Marvel comics), Maverick, Nightcrawler, Psylocke, Rogue, Storm, and Wolverine. In this lineup you have all the X-Men from the cartoon, plus the gang from the original lineup thanks to Archangel and Iceman. But where was Colossus? Where was Kitty Pryde? And if we’ve got these strange also-rans, why not replace Longshot with Forge or X-Man? Oh well, can’t win ‘em all.

Speaking of which, the conditions for winning were a little odd from my perspective as well. As you played through the game, you were supposed to check every room on a floor for evil mutants, then engage and capture them through battle. When enough rooms on a floor were secured, it was just assumed that the whole floor was secure as well. It’d be like beating Magneto and just assuming the attic was clear, even though Sabertooth was hiding behind some old mattresses, giggling and kicking his feet.

At least the game came with a survival guide to the mansion. That's cool, I guess.

Eventually, all the floors would be secured and the game would end, whereas each player would have to tally up his or her score. As you could guess, the player with the highest score would win. There were variations the game gave, such as just going until someone had a score of 30 or something, but that’s even worse. “Okay Professor, we got all the evil mutants.” “All of them?” “Yeah, we got a few. Looks like Longshot was the winner for some reason.” “Then why do I see the Brood making sandwiches in the kitchen?” “I dunno. Smell ya later.”

Despite the silliness, I still want to give the full game a playthrough with a group that knows what they’re doing. It looks like a heck of a lot of fun when done right. The trick is actually getting that magical group together. Did anyone out there ever receive this game as a kid? And even better, did anyone ever get through an entire game before just breaking down and assuming Cyclops blasted Beast through the attic? Leave a comment and let me know about your childhood memories. I mean, mine are Xtra Special, but I’d rather hear about yours now.

Want more obscure board games? Check these out:

-Forget-Me-Nots: The TMNT Pizza Power Board Game

-Video games as board games, the good and the bad

-Board Game Week: Spy Web Retrospective

One person’s trash…

My childhood was filled with board games, especially prior to fourth grade when I got my Nintendo. My mother was smart and bought most board games at garage sales, which meant our closet was full of all sorts of games, good and bad. However, without those yard sales, games like Pac-Man and Turbo wouldn’t have made it to our table.

Four Pac-Mans, two ghosts and a lot of marbles.

Woka, woka, woka, woka…

Pac-Man needs no introduction as a video game. The board game however might need a little more explanation. Like many children’s games, the Pac-Man board game made use of some moving parts so that there would be “something to do” while playing. Every one of the up to four players controls their own Pac-Man and moves around the board stomping on white marbles. The plastic Pacs actually pick up the marbles with each move; a neat mechanic that works pretty well. As a kid, I used the Pac-Mans to pick up other small things around the house, but it never quite worked.

Using the Pac-Man to eat marbles is most of the fun.

The goal of the Pac-Man board game is to eat the most marbles, but unlike the video game, eating ghosts doesn’t really serve much purpose. One interesting part of the game is that players get to move the ghosts in an effort to eat other Pac-Mans and block pathways. If you manage to eat a Pac-Man with a ghost, you not only send the player back to their starting position, but you also get two marbles from their stash. With more than two players I can see this gimmick working quite well, but with two players you end up just passing the same two marbles back and fourth. There are, of course, power pellets that give you the “Ghost Gobbler Privilege” and let you eat ghosts, but again, that doesn’t do much more for you but keep you out of trouble.

I remember loving to play Pac-Man when I was a kid. Moving the Pacs around and eating up marbles was a lot of fun. I’m not sure I ever played by the actual rules but it was fun all the same. However, even as a kid, I hated having to place all 72 marbles on the board just to take them off again. I’m not sure how else you would translate Pac-Man into a board game, but I think I’ll just wait until Pac-Man Battle Royale comes out and enjoy multiplayer Pac-Man where it is done best…on my TV screen.

It looks impressive, but looks can be deceiving.

Some video games should stay in the arcade

Pac-Man was a successful arcade game that probably deserved a board game. Turbo on the other hand, was not. Turbo was a Sega arcade game from 1981 that I only just played recently and I can tell you the video game is pretty bad. It has clunky controls, choppy graphics and just isn’t that much fun…and neither was the board game.

There are only a few redeeming values to Turbo the board game. One is the huge tri-fold board that unleashes a curving, four lane track. The game also uses spinners, which I thought were more fun than dice, and the game is about race cars, which I’ve always loved.

There’s not a lot of strategy or even thinking in Turbo. You just move your car around the track, hoping to be the first one across the finish line. Your success lies solely in the luck of the spinner. Even when I was a kid, Turbo wasn’t much fun. I used the board more as a race track for my Micro Machines than I did as a game. When my friends and I played Turbo, we just made up our own rules to make it…well, fun.

As you can clearly see, girls can enjoy turbo, too.

While the game itself stunk, the real value in Turbo is the game box. The box art on the front and on the board is great in that cheesy-awesome arcade kind of way, but what’s even better is the back of the box. As is common for board games, the back of the box shows children overly enjoying the game, and this box was no different. If only Turbo was a much fun as the fine feather-haired children made it look.

The curse of licensed games

Sometimes converting a video game to a board game can work, and other times it doesn’t. All licensed games like these rely on the player buying it because they know the source. That’s great when you start with a good source, like Pac-Man, but trying to turn a crappy video game into a good board game is probably not a good idea. As for an Angry Birds board game…if it involves me slingshotting birds across my living room, it can’t be that bad.

More photos of Pac-Man, Turbo and other toys

Want more articles on obscure board games? Check these out:

-Board Game Week: Spy Web Retrospective

-Because Sometimes Death Can Be Entertaining: A 13 Dead End Drive Retrospective

-Forget-Me-Nots: The TMNT Pizza Power Board Game

A classic game with a “Marvelous” twist. Get it?!

Boy does this bring back the memories. The original Chutes and Ladders has got to be one of the first board games I’ve ever played. Now, as I look back on it, a good 18+ years older, it begs a question: What kind of impact could a simple game like this possibly have that keeps it going for so long with so little changed to the actual game? Is it deep like Monopoly? No. Just spin the spinner and move your token. Does it require the development of any mental skill like Blokus? No. As long as you can count, you’re set. Is it addictive or appeal to a wide audience like Tetris, Yahtzee, or Connect 4? No, it doesn’t really do that either. Yet despite all this, or even because of it, I believe that Chutes and Ladders is the absolute perfect game for young children in their developing years.

The original Chutes and Ladders, as I remember it, casts you in the role of one of four everyday neighborhood kids who are in a race with each other on a 10×10 square grid that counts from one to a hundred, and the first one to reach the 100 spot wins. Why are they racing? No idea. How far does each square represent? Who knows? But as the race begins, we soon learn that Chutes and Ladders becomes less about the destination and more about what happens in between. If a player lands their character on a space that depicts a child performing a good deed like a chore or a selfless act, their character gets to climb a ladder, skipping ahead up the board to where it displays a reward for such behavior. If, however, their character lands on a space representing a reckless or naughty act, they must slide down the chute back down the board as punishment.

That’s right kids. If you save a cat from a tree, not only will you have a new loving pet, you will move up 56 blocks, whatever that means.

One of the reasons I feel this is the perfect game for preschool-aged children is the same reason why an older demographic might find it empty and downright boring. It is a game that relies completely and utterly 100% on chance. Don’t get me wrong, there are dozens of games in which your odds of wining are strictly swayed by the roll of the dice, or the spin of a spinner, or the turn of a card, but even games like Monopoly, Life, or Sorry require some semblance of a strategy and have complex rules that require attention. With Chutes and Ladders, it is completely unnecessary. All you can do is spin the spinner and hope for the best. This makes it perfect for children because it means that while playing it, they have just as much a chance at winning the game as their older, smarter parents. As kids, they deserve to play something where everyone has an even chance of winning, no matter how much experience you may or may not have. It teaches them to play fair.

Speaking of teaching, I believe there is another valuable lesson to be learned with this game. MB Games was very careful in how they crafted this game. The four character tokens you play as in the game are the same kids represented on the board performing the good/bad deeds that cause them to go up and down the board. Yet it’s also very careful not to be biased, as it shows all of them doing both good and bad deeds evenly. What this is trying to show us is that everyone is capable of good and bad. Ideally, Chutes and Ladders wants to teach kids a moral: In a perfect society, everyone starts their life off at the same place. As you go through life, you will be rewarded for your nobility and punished for your recklessness. Yet no matter how good or bad you are, how far you really succeed in life will still require some faith and a lot of luck. Yeah, it’s a cheesy kids’ moral, but it’s a moral for kids nonetheless.

Another great thing about this game? It’s versatile. There are so many ways to design this game. You can find so many versions of this game now in all kinds of franchises that really benefit the moral up and down system. There is a Chutes and Ladders edition with Sesame Street, Dora the Explorer, and even for Toy Story 3. The Marvel Super Hero Squad edition I saw in stores had eight playable Marvel heroes: Spider Man, Wolverine, Hulk, Iron Man, Thor, Captain America, Silver Surfer, and…the Phoenix? (Seriously, that’s the female character they choose to use? Why not Storm? Or Rogue?) Anyway, the board cleverly depicted the heroes doing the good deeds up the ladder, while having the villain characters like Venom, Dr. Doom, and Magneto performing the evil deeds down the chutes. Oh and let’s not forget the infamous “Snakes and Ladders” knock off.

What? What is this? This isn’t fun.

Okay, now to be fair, “Snakes and Ladders” was actually the original title of the game when it was first manifested in Ancient India. Back then, it was a game Hindu practitioners showed children to teach them about their moral beliefs and to seek the “ladder to salvation” and avoid vices. Using snakes in that game made sense, as they each represented one of twelve sins of Hindu culture that would inevitably lead a man’s rebirth in a lower life form.

So technically, “Snakes and Ladders” taught kids in India almost the exact same lesson hundreds of years ago that “Chutes and Ladders” continues to subconsciously teach kids around the world today. The biggest difference really is that it takes the whole religious element out of the game and replaces it with common do’s and do-not’s all human beings can relate to.

And that is why I think that Chutes and Ladders is a wonderful part of American culture that deserves to be remembered. It’s the game every kid wants to play. Easy to learn, colorful, and fair.

Just remember kids. Whatever you do, don’t play Eels and Escalators with Spongebob. He gets way too into it.

Want to find more board games? Have a look at these:

-Because Sometimes Death Can Be Entertaining: A 13 Dead End Drive Retrospective

-Forget-Me-Nots: The TMNT Pizza Power Board Game

-Victory Never Tasted So Sweet: A Candy Land Retrospective

Anyway, let’s talk about Pictionary while we’re here. Sound good? Good.

Anyone feel like playing with me?

Pictionary’s history isn’t anything incredibly exciting. It was developed by Robert Angel and published by Seattle Games Inc in 1985. That’s pretty much the whole story there. But like so many other games, Pictionary doesn’t need an elaborate backstory or an origin story as convoluted as, oh, let’s say Tetris (another day). Pictionary is a simple concept and it comes from humble beginnings. So let’s get into the rules!

The rules are equally as simplistic as any other game you could play. Players break off into teams and go around the game board, landing on various squares color-coded to the categories of what they’ll be drawing: Yellow for Person/Place/Animal, Blue for Object, Orange for Action, Green for Difficult (difficult is a thing, apparently), and Red for All Play, an instance where, as you may have guessed, everyone plays. Some versions have a Purple square that lets you pick what you’d like to do, but I’m not talking about these fancy editions or anything; I just want to draw already!

Okay, so as you get your card, let’s say you landed on a Yellow space, you’ll have to attempt to draw the word in the yellow for your team. Let’s also just say that the word is “Crocodile.” You have approximately one minute to draw something that makes them guess the word is “crocodile” without using letters or numbers or speaking. So really, it’s like charades for artists. I seriously can’t make the game sound more elaborate than that. It’s just that simple.

So how to you plan strategies for such an event? Assuming your family loves you enough to actually play Pictionary with you, they’ll probably also know who among them can draw and who can’t. Stacking a team with only artists is a good way to win, but not a fun way to draw unless you add more rules like “No Drawing Faces” or “No Right-Angles.” Then we learn who the real artists in the family are!

Letting the DVD draw for you is cheating!

As I’d mentioned a while ago in How To Beat Your Friends In Board Games, a perfectly great strategy is to have a shorthand code for just about every instance. Let’s say you get the word “Dollhouse.” Perhaps you and your partner already know that if you draw just the roof part (^), it means “House,” and a simple stick figure with round hands means “Doll.” You can draw a dollhouse far faster and have your partner know exactly what you’re attempting to draw, pretty much every time. This way takes a lot of clever planning beforehand, plus it sort of breaks the fun of the game, but if you want to win every time, there’s your strategy.

And that’s essentially everything there is to say about Pictionary. You can find a version in just about every department store or online at all the usual places. Me, I’m still hoping to convince my family to play sometime. Maybe someday they’ll love me enough.

Want more on board games? Check these articles out:

-Think While you Have Fun!: Yahtzee

-Starving For Entertainment: Hungry Hungry Hippos

-Like Capture The Flag With Bombs: A Stratego Retrospective

Of course you may have also come to another problem. Only immediately after completing my review did I realize that there are several different versions of the game now available. To make sure no one gets confused during their search for the perfect gift, I’m here to give a run down of all the spin-off’s that the Classic Blokus has inspired since its release.

This Retrospective will act as a sequel to The Classic Blokus Retrospective. If you have not yet read that one, please do so.

Blokus Duo

In which the two colors of the rainbow NOT in Classic Blokus take center stage.

Also known as “Travel Blokus”, Blokus Duo is a more personal, head-to-head take on the game. The basic rules are very similar to Blokus: Both players alternate turns placing their pieces on the board, advancing by touching the corners of their pervious pieces, until there is no more space for either of them to advance. Player with the most squares covered in their color at the end wins.

There are two main differences. First, to accommodate 2 players instead of 4, the board is smaller and has less space, shrinking from a 20×20 square grid to 14×14. Second, instead of starting at opposite corners as one familiar with the original might assume, Blokus Duo has two specifically marked squares near the center of the board in which both orange and purple players must place their beginning pieces. This is good, because it enforces confrontation right away without a lot of chance to play it safe or build up a defense. Unlike two players who would just start at opposite corners nowhere near each other, it’s less likely to become a stale mate.

Personally, Blokus Duo is a grey area for me. While on one hand, I understand it’s easier to find one friend to play with than three, and that it’s also travel size and can be taken anywhere, both of which make it more accessible. Yet at the same time, it’s like playing a one-on-one game of Super Smash Bros: while it may be compelling and competitive for hard core players, half the appeal is gone when the fun and chaos of four people fighting amongst each other all at once isn’t there.

Blokus Trigon

Don’t be fooled. It’s just as easy to learn as the rest.

The most unique thing about Blokus Trigon is how it looks. Instead of a Square grid, the board is a Hexagon-shaped triangle grid that looks more similar to Chinese checkers, and the pieces you play with look like shattered pieces of the triforce. That’s all that’s really different.

The game starts exactly like Blokus Duo with four players each starting on one of four designated marked spaces near the center, and then for the rest of the game it plays exactly like Classic Blokus. While I will not deny that this is a unique way to change the game up, I can’t help but thinking why they didn’t take advantage of the concept and change it up a little more. They could have easily made the board slightly bigger and turned Blokus Trigon into a 6-player game. Yeah that would make it even more difficult to get a full game started, but seeing as the board was already a hexagon, wouldn’t that have made more sense? Maybe the game would be too chaotic then? If it aint broke, don’t fix it I guess.

Blokus 3D

Okay, now even I’m a little confused.

Imagine Blokus Classic is Super Mario Bros. 3 for the NES. Blokus Duo would be Super Mario Bros on Gameboy (a shorter simplified version that can be played on the go), Blokus Trigon would be Super Mario World for the SNES (an almost completely identical game, just with different graphics), then Blokus 3D would be Super Mario 64. What I mean by this is that Blokus 3D, of all the iterations, feels the most like its own unique game.

The rules take a little longer to explain, yet are still simple enough to figure out once you’ve played through it. In all the previous games, the main objective was to place as much of your colored pieces on the board as possible, whereas in 3D, the main objective is to place as much of your colored pieces on the board that are visible from the top view of the structure. This is done by using a set of three-dimensional pieces that, this time, must advance while staying in contact with their respected color. The players predetermine what structure they will be building up to prior to beginning the game. Choices include either a tower, wall, staircase, or pyramid. Once all players have placed as much of their pieces possible within the compound of their structure, they count how many pieces of their color are visible from the top, minus any pieces they didn’t play. Player with the most points wins.

So there you have it. Four ways to experience the strategy game that, with your help, can define the future of strategy games, and I mean future quite literally. Seriously, even when you look at Blokus and see its square battleship-esque grid and polygonal shaped pieces with their bright see-through colors, it aspires a very futuristic almost sci-fi image. Imagine that fifty years in the future, myself and every other old person will gather around a park to play Blokus while reminiscing about the good old days when video games had controllers, Elijah Wood had an acting career, and America didn’t get bought out by China.

Want more articles on board games? Check these out:

-All Out War: A Risk Retrospective

-Victory Never Tasted So Sweet: A Candy Land Retrospective

-A Retrospective on Trivial Pursuit the Board Game

Think Risk, except replace dice and chance with Tetris pieces and actual strategy.

Blokus falls in the ‘simple to learn yet challenging to master’ category of board games. You can easily figure out everything by watching one play through, but here’s the run down: Each player chooses a color and takes a set of 21 pieces made of all variations of 1-5 squares. Players take turns placing pieces on the 20×20 square grid, each starting from the corner of their color.

Each new piece you place must touch one of your other pieces, but only at the corners. Pieces of the same color cannot be in contact along the sides. However, there are no restrictions to how your pieces touch other colors.

Your goal is to cover as much of the board with your pieces as possible, while blocking your opponents from expanding their own territory. The game ends when all players are blocked from laying down any more of their pieces. The player with the most squares placed on the grid (or easier to tally, the player with the least number of squares left unplaced) wins.

These are all the shapes you have to work with. Rule of Thumb: Start with the 5-square pieces early.

The game plays with 2 to 4 players. With 2, both players take two colors each and alternate between them. Unfortunately games played one-on-one can very easily be turned into stalemates. With 3, each player takes one color and alternates every turn playing for the remaining color. This is sort of interesting, but, to be honest with ourselves, the only real way to play is when you have 4 solid players. Half the challenge and fun of this game is having to micromanage between offensive and defensive approaches to 3 opponents at the same time.

What’s also nice about Blokus is that no matter how good you may get at it, the game never seems unfair or crippling to newcomers. In fact, get too good and all three players will easily single you out as a threat and start gunning toward you first. While it is fun to make alliances and pick out threats, toward the end of the game, all deals will be off as everyone will be scrambling for whatever little space is left.

In college, the name of this game was eventually changed to “Blok-Gus.”

In my opinion, Blokus is the ideal party game, and I’m probably not alone in this, seeing the several awards it has won since it’s creation, including the National Competition Winner by Mensa, the High HQ Society. It is the perfect combination of being very easy to pick up and learn how to play, while also making the players think. It doesn’t suck time or become monotonous like Monopoly or Sorry, and has incredible replay value. It’s also the perfect gift for that special strategist in your life, or anyone for that matter. Find it at your local retail toy section, or check it out online at their official sight. www.blokus.com.

Want more good family games? Check these articles out for tips:

-“Ain’t” Is Not a Word: A Scrabble Guide For The Lazy

-Mario: A Retrospective Part 7 (On Mario Party)

-How To Beat Your Friends In Board Games

-I Am Scattegories And You Can Too: A Scattegories Retrospective

Remember this game? Well you should.

Spy Web is a game I’d best describe as Battleship meets Guess Who? in as much as you try to outsmart your opponent via clever placement of your pieces and determining through simple questions how they’ve placed their pieces. Confused yet? I’ll get into the details, just hold on.

Researching Spy Web was a bit of a tricky task since the first thing that pops up in Google for “Spy Web” is naturally anti-spyware software. Also, don’t do a Google image-search for Spy Web, unless you have your preferences set to filter inappropriate content, because you will get a few pages full of very, VERY adult images. Even Wikipedia, my go-to for research, doesn’t list Spy Web as a thing. Dang, is this game really that obscure?

So the premise of Spy Web pits two factions of spies against each other, one with names based off sea creatures such as “Beluga” and “Manta,” and the other with names based off birds such as “Buzzard” and “Osprey.” Each side has nine spies to place in a 3-by-3 board very similar to the way you place ships in Battleship, i.e. hidden from the other player. The first player to accurately determine the other player’s spy arrangement wins the round.

Also, I love the colors here. Doesn't it look spy-like?

The way this is determined is through asking three questions: “Who is [character name] pointing at/looking at/listening to?” You know this because every character tile is either pointing in some direction, looking in some direction, or listening in some direction, sometimes all three at once.

For example, you could ask “Who is Buzzard pointing at?” and you might get an answer like “Buzzard is pointing at Vulture.” You’d then have to use this knowledge to determine where to start placing your enemy’s character tiles. Oh, and in case you were curious, unlike real spy tactics, lying is totally uncalled for here, otherwise the game doesn’t work.

Snazzy characters. Why didn't Guess Who? have spy gadgets in it?

The concept is fairly simple, I admit, but something about it resonated with me as a kid. I became mildly obsessed with creating the perfect, “uncrackable” combination of spies by looking for formations that resulted in a spy not being looked at, pointed to, or listened to by any other characters, or better yet, making it so that no spies connected to any other spies on the board. It’s set up so you can’t really do this, but it ‘s fun to try.

Adding the spy theme to the game really sold me as a kid. It could easily be a sort of board game version of “telephone” whereas the nine characters are just kids set up on the grid, but that would have been sort of lame. Spies are cool, and unlike zombies, they haven’t overstayed their welcome. I highly recommend giving Spy Web a look, though good luck sifting through the other “Spy Webs” in Google. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Apparently spies really don’t like to be found.

Want more about board games? Check these out:

-Apples to Apples, Dust to Dust: An Apples to Apples Retrospective

-Game Cards Do Not Actually Talk: A Guess Who? Retrospective

-Just Don’t Panic: A Retrospective on Catch Phrase

The box just makes it look so fun! Could that be a lie?

The year is 1993 (not really, but we’re on that memory-traveling trip here so pay attention), and Milton Bradley are doing what they always do, namely, producing board games. As a young and impressionable kid, easily swayed by commercials and the like, a TV ad for a new game called 13 Dead End Drive started playing, telling me that it was the end-all beat-all for board games and that I’d never be happy without it. Naturally, I ran right up to my mother and demanded it for Christmas.

Those unfamiliar with the game, I’d best describe it as Clue meets Mouse Trap. The premise is that a rich old woman named Aunt Agatha has died, leaving behind a massive fortune, and 12 other characters are potentially in line to inherit it all. The Mouse Trap aspect comes into play seeing as how there are moving parts to the game that are typically more fun than actually playing.

Since there are 12 characters vying for one ultimate prize, they each try to kill each other off using five different traps scattered throughout the board, shaped like a mansion more or less. Above the fireplace is a picture of Aunt Agatha, but 12 character portraits are shuffled and placed in the picture frame instead. Whichever character is displayed at any given time is the character favored to claim the money, meaning if they get out of the mansion alive, they win the game. All the while, a detective is walking up the front pathway during gameplay, and if he reaches the front door, whoever is displayed above the fireplace wins the game. The final way to win is to just kill everyone else.

Poor Aunt Agatha. If only she knew what her death has done to this group of people.

As a kid, the coolest parts of the game were springing the traps on people, of which there was one that tossed a character off some stairs, one that toppled them from a ladder, one that knocked a suit of armor on them, one that hurled them into the fireplace, and one that dropped a chandelier on their head. Setting everything up was a pain, but once the game was up and running, it was all about using the traps.

Players were randomly assigned anonymous character cards determining which characters they were hoping would win, but any player could move any character’s pawn around the board regardless of whether they owned the corresponding character card. This placed the key gameplay mechanic around the act of deception, though every game played by kids would devolve into placing pawns under the traps and killing them. I can’t remember a single time I actually saw the game end by traditional methods.

I’m a little surprised this game was around at all, especially by the mid 90’s. These days I feel parents would go nuts if they heard about a game coming out where the goal was to kill off other players to inherit a huge sum of money, but it could come down to the terminology the manual and commercials implemented to circumvent this stigma. Instead of saying that you “killed” the other players, it was referred to as “getting bumped off” by each other. This totally worked on my childhood mind because in pitching the sale to my mother I told her, “no, you don’t kill anyone, you just bump them off.” She told me that meant the same thing and my mind imploded because, duh, that was obvious to anyone but the brainwashed children watching the commercials.

Really, I just wanted to try dropping stuff on things. I hardly even knew their were rules until someone told me.

These days I don’t have the slightest inkling to break out 13 Dead End Drive, or even the spin-off 1313 Dead End Drive, for a game with my friends. We’ve got far better games to deal with that don’t involve killing off pretend pawns. Our games work far better when we kill each other off as we sit around the table playing Monopoly. At least, I assume they work better. I’ve never seen the end of a Monopoly game, either.

Want more articles about childhood memories? Check these out:

-Forget-Me-Nots: Halloween-Turned-Toys!

-Forget-Me-Nots: The TMNT Pizza Power Board Game

-Sweet Memories of Childhood Cars: A Matchbox Retrospective

Origins and Comparisons

The official game began as an activity aboard a Canadian couple’s yacht in 1954 (dubbed “the yacht game” and later amended to Yahtzee). They soon asked their friend Edwin Lowe (a toy enterpriser) to make some sets of the game that they could use as gifts. Lowe agreed, in exchange for the rights to the game. By 1956, Yahtzee was being marketed as a thinking-man’s dice game.

With such a simple concept, aren't you a little frustrated you didn't think of it first?

Yahtzee bears many resemblances to “Generala” and “Yacht,” dice games from different areas of the world. A consistently popular game for families, Yahtzee was owned by Lowe until Milton Bradley bought his company. Currently, Hasbro owns the game, and estimates 50 million sets sold each year.

So Many Dice

Ironically for me and my recent article, the concept of Yahtzee came from a type of “dice poker” game, and consists of five dice and a scorecard. Players attempt to roll a three-of-a-kind, four-of-a-kind, full house, straight, or a yahtzee (all five dice are the same amount) in order to score higher. The poker-themed combinations are recorded on the lower part of the scorecard, while the higher portion scores you on the sum of the dice. Sorry, no bluffing. That’s called Liar’s Dice.

And this is a wholesome game; there's no room for liars.

The best part of Yahtzee for mathematicians is the probabilities and score possibilities that come from the five dice, three-roll setup. The maximum score is 375, but if the players are using Yahtzee bonuses it can be as high as 1575 points. The lowest theoretical score is 5, but that would require some special strategies of the player.

Since every turn in Yahtzee is three rolls, the probability of a yahtzee (five of a kind) in one turn is 1 in 22 attempts. When thinking about specific yahtzees (like five 2’s), that extrapolates to 1 in 75.

My History with Yahtzee

As a small child, I had no idea such a game existed. I called it the Mickey game, because my family’s set was a Disney collector’s set with Mickey Mouse in his sorcerer getup all over it. In fact, the dice had Mickey in the sorcerer hat instead of 5’s. I didn’t really know the rules until later.

Math was never, and shall never, be my strong suit. But I do remember learning my multiplication tables on the dice from a Yahtzee set. First we would play a fun game, then my father would ask what 5 times 5 was. I initially answered, “It’s a yahtzee. I win!” But I got better.

Even ol' Spud Head seems to know the value of Yahtzee.

It was later still that I applied my mad Yahtzee skills to a casino table. Yep, that family-friendly game taught me the initial concepts of poker, as well as how to calculate the probabilities of craps. Essentially, craps is just Yahtzee with an unnecessarily complicated betting system.

Value of the Game

With all the substandard board games out there today (“Twilight Scene-It” anybody?), I still take comfort in two particular classics: Scrabble and Yahtzee. One teaches vocabulary and spelling, while the other is an entire class on statistical math.

Yahtzee is a game that kids will find fun because of the dice, but as they get older it will become more fun because they are thinking, and Lowe originally marketed Yahtzee as the “Fun Game that Makes Thinking Fun!”

Maybe Lowe should have played more Scrabble. Yahtzee sets go for $10 to $20 depending on the vender and the version. Look for my personal favorite, Elvis Yahtzee, and the elegant Super Mario Yahtzee.

Want some more about classic games? Check out these articles:

-“Ain’t” Is Not a Word: A Scrabble Guide For The Lazy

-Like Capture The Flag With Bombs: A Stratego Retrospective

-Computers Must Be Stopped: A Short Chess Retrospective

This counts for my daily fruit intake, right?

For a while in high school I had friends that became obsessed with the game Apples to Apples. It was the only game anyone would bring to parties anymore and the only game people would specifically ask for at said parties. In fact, people would plan parties around playing this game. So for me, I was hesitant to enjoy this game, assuming it was a fad. But was it? It still sells well to this very day. Let’s learn more.

Rules and Context

Apples to Apples came out in the significant year of 1999, famous for being the year everyone wanted to party like it was. It also managed to win a number of awards, such as Party Game of the Year and Mensa’s Mensa Select award. What did this mean to me in high school? Still not enough. I’d have to learn how this game was played first.

Apples to Apples is played with a group of 4-to-however many people all sitting in a circle. Each player is dealt seven red apple cards that have nouns, noun phrases, or gerunds written on them. No, don’t ask me, an English major, what a gerund is because I can’t tell you. You have to be in a special club to know what it means, probably called Mensa. The important thing to note is that these red apple cards will say something like “Rome,” “Bill Clinton,” or “Horseshoes.” One player designated the judge of that round draws a green apple card that has an adjective written on it like “Ridiculous” or “Amazing.” Players look through their red apple cards, pick one that they think best represents the adjective, and anonymously submit their card to the judge.

These are what the cards look like in case you weren't familiar with what cards look like.

Then comes the real fun. The judge reads all the red cards aloud and then decides whose card best fits the adjective. Now, the game can go in two ways here. Either the player picks the one that literally does match closest with no nonsense, also known as the “boring way to play,” or they correctly choose the most interesting card based on other players’ reactions of laughter. One of our personal best when playing was “Helen Keller” for “Lazy.” Politically correct? Nope. Hilarious? Absolutely.

There are tons of variations to this game by the way. Common variations include the judge selecting a red card at random and then seeing how ridiculous it is, awarding the point to the least likely red card, or having to judge from the point of view of someone else like Zack Effron or Barack Obama. I think all of these ways, the official way included, are boring. How do I play the game? I play it like Scattergories.

I learned this variation from my wife and her family. Instead of playing normally, everyone selects their red card and holds onto it, reading aloud their own choice and then making a case for why it is clearly the best. I find this way of playing to be far more entertaining because it places the importance of the humor on everyone in the round rather than just the judge and pretty much ensures that even if you have a dull judge for the round everyone is guaranteed a great show.

With both the official rules and my family’s variation, the most important aspect of play is not the actual box but rather the people you’re playing with. If you are playing in a group of people you either don’t know or aren’t completely comfortable with, everyone is more likely to play it safe and not take greater risks for the sake of comedy. And of course, there is the risk that there is that one boring person in your group that just can’t think of something really funny to submit for their turn. They are unfortunate, but this isn’t the game for them. They should go sit in the corner until everyone else is done having fun. But remember, it’s just a game. With that in mind, it’s only $17 on Amazon.

How can they still be so hungry? This is why America's kids are so obese.

Alright, we’re nearing the end of the week and I’ve talked about video games, Dragonball Z, and some random dude’s CD (albeit he is a talented dude). To round out the week, I should talk about board games, shouldn’t I? It’s all part of the new program my doctor placed me on in hopes that’d I’d enrich my diet. Hey, and how topical, because I figured I’d talk about Hungry, Hungry Hippos.

Our Childhood’s Eating Problem

So what kid hasn’t played Hungry Hungry Hippos at some point in their life? It was quite the publicized game on TV during cartoons and every kid had at least one friend or relative with the game, so it was easily accessible. Something about seeing those cartoon hippos dancing and singing just made the game look and sound amazing. Oh the shock we’d discover.

Hungry Hungry Hippos is one of those games with absolutely no strategy whatsoever. There is no way to outdo your friends short of luck and perseverance or just simply smacking them while playing. The entire game is played in the span of maybe a minute or two and consists of two to four players attempting to make their hippo characters gobble up more white pellets than the others. Whoever has the most pellets at the end of the game wins.

Hippos are fun, and eating is fun, so why is this game so boring?

Yeah, it was just that simple. You just slam on the back of the hippo as fast as your hands can muster without breaking the stupid plastic hippo and hope that you’re doing this motion faster than anyone else currently playing. Sure it’s possible to play by yourself, but you always win. I suppose you could place bets on which hand is going to win, but at that point you just need help. Or a friend. Maybe both.

Regardless, the game was and still is incredibly popular despite it’s simplicity and annoyance. You probably won’t find yourself hosting any Hungry Hungry Hippo tournaments any time soon, but I guarantee you’ll have to play it again when a younger relative, possibly your own child, decides they wish to play.

I myself didn’t have my own game. Rather, I got something similar but different one Christmas called Frog Soccer. It is exactly what it sounds like. Just instead of the game being hippos that eat pellets, you slam your dongle to make a frog smack a soccer ball into another frog’s goal. Whoever had the fewest balls in their goal would win, so pretty much it was the opposite of Hungry Hungry Hippos.

Did you know that the hippos actually have names? Lizzie, Henry, Homer, and Harry Hippo. Except every so often the names get changed. There are versions with Lizzie replaced with Happy Hippo and the newest version calls them Sweetie, Bottomless, Picky, and Veggie Potamus. Why the name changes? Well, you gotta do something with this product over the years to feel like you did something I guess. Lucky for you, the game doesn’t run you too much whenever your child decides it’s hippo time. You can find a version for under $20 on Amazon. As for me, I think I’m gonna go get a snack. I suddenly feel hungry for some reason.

This right here was the coolest game I had in my closet.

If you listened to yesterday’s episode of the Too Much Awesome Podcast, you’d currently be jittering with anticipation to learn what my favorite board game growing up happened to be. The time has come and the secret is out. My favorite childhood board game was…the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Pizza Power Board Game. Surprising? Not really. Awesome? You bet your sweet bippy it is. So let’s rock!

Sweet Memories of Pizza

I first got the Pizza Power Board Game during the height of the TMNT craze, or rather, the original craze separate from the more recent resurgence. The first cartoon, however, had a much more devastating force on merchandising all around though. There was literally a Ninja Turtles item for any occasion, so it really wasn’t all that strange when a personalized board game came along that included the Ninja Turtles in some way.

The rules were pretty simple, if I remember them correctly. You start by selecting one of the four Turtles to play as, then go around the board trying to get Good Guy Cards, cards that had one of the four Turtles, April, or Splinter on them. They had a rating to tell you how good they were when battling. That number was important because you’d also have to go around the board landing on Bad Guy Card spaces wherein you draw a card, selected one of your Good Guys to fight, and battled. Pretty simple.

Seriously, I need to find this again and play it right now.

The battle system was actually pretty creative for the time. You couldn’t just wander around the board without needing at least some level of skill when it comes to the battles. During a fight, you had a little blue flipper thing that you had to use. How? It had four slots in it; you’d place a die in the first slot, and then try and flip it into the other spaces, preferably the space that had a 3 in it. If you were fighting Shredder, you’d need to have a Turtle Good Guy Card, and then you’d still usually have to hit the 3 space to defeat him.

Now, I’ve been looking around the Internet a bit and I’m getting the sense that this battle flipper thing is what either made or broke the game for most people. Half of the time people think the flipper was really cool, an opinion I share, because it required at least a bit more skill beyond just rolling dice and hoping you got a higher number than the card. This way, you still have to work on getting the technique correct. Regardless, a lot of people hated the game purely because of this feature.

Anyway, dice flipper aside, you had to have defeated at least three Bad Guys and have at least four Good Guy Cards before you’re allowed to take on the Technodrome in the middle, which consisted of basically flipping the dice into each of the three spaces. Nothing too difficult, but nothing overly exciting I suppose. It still worked for my childhood needs just fine.

One thing I always found odd about the game has nothing to do with the way it’s played but rather how the Turtles looked. They looked awesome, and the artwork on the box and the board was really cool, but the color of Michelangelo got me every time. See, the Turtles are typically all the same green color except when they’re action figures. Each Turtle had a different shade of green with Donatello being a brown/olive color. However, the Pizza Power Board Game gave Mike the brown/olive color instead of Don. It wasn’t a big deal, and it never dawned on me until just recently, but it was always in the back of my mind when I played that something was wrong somewhere.

Is it the best game in the world? Nope, not by most people’s standards. But was it my favorite? Absolutely. I’d still play it to this very day if I could find it again. I think it’s somewhere buried in my parents garage, so we can only hope it’ll turn up again someday. Until then, I’ll just have to remember the good times and forget how much the battle flipper sucked.

So simple yet so wonderful. Perhaps the perfect kid's game.

When was the last time I covered a board game? Too long I’d bet. After much soul searching I decided it was time to talk about a game that was near and dear to my heart: Guess Who. Or rather, Guess Who?, as it was commonly spelled. I played this one quite frequently as a child, partly due to seeing the advertisements on TV. But I’ll get to that in due time. First, a light history lesson.

Your History Lesson for Today

The year is 1979 and the world is once more ready for a new board game to enter into circulation. At this time, Ora and Theo Coster decided it was their duty to invent something new yet incredibly simple. While they called themselves Theora Design, it was Milton Bradley that distributed their game in Great Britain as Guess Who?, a simple game of questions and answers. It wasn’t until 1982 that the US would get in on the action.

The Rules, I Guess

The standard version of Guess Who? consists of two tablets of character faces containing 24 faces each with single names under them. Players draw one card each from a pile containing the 24 faces and then take turns guessing which character the other player has. This is done by asking simple elimination questions like “Is your person a girl?” The original version had most characteristics breaking the 24 into groups of 5 and 19 such as 5 girls, 5 people with red hair, or 5 people wearing red shirts. There’s a whole mathematical equation to figure out your probability with each guess, but more recent editions make thing trickier by making the genders equal 12 to 12 or having the blue set all have blue shirts and the red set all have red shirts.

Also a good idea for hair designs in case you've been looking for something new. "Give me the Felix" you'd say to your barber. Happens all the time.

Most games of Guess Who? don’t last past seven questions or so. You can play ten rounds super fast, making this a good game to play with kids right before they have to go to bed. “Just one more game” isn’t too difficult a request to accept. Things can get very funny when playing against kids who don’t exactly understand the function of logic. This example involves my 8-year-old cousin Alex, last seen being tricked into giving me his copy of Pokemon Sapphire. I’d always win by one question because he’d ask, “Is your person a boy?” to which I’d say, “No.” He’d flick down all the boys and then ask, “Is your person a girl?” I’d say, “Yes” and he’d stop, look at his tiles, and say, “Okay, good.” He’s older now, so I doubt I could pull the same simple tricks, but it may be worth a try.

Apparently there are variations of the standard rules that allow you to guess assumptions based on personalities, such as, “Is your person a bad driver?” or “Is your person divorced?” While this way of playing is frowned upon for being offensive, it sounds like a whole lot of fun and a great way to change the game from being a kid’s game to an adult party game. Personally, I can’t wait to try that out for myself with Kyle.

When I was a kid I’d see the advertisements for Guess Who? on TV all the time where the cards talked to one another. I didn’t own the game yet, so when I went to my cousins’ house to play with them, I kept asking, “How do you make them talk?” They insisted that the cards don’t talk and I just assumed they were either lying to me or didn’t have a very good version of the game. That’d be why Milton Bradley had to start printing the disclaimer “Game cards do not actually talk.” Seems I wasn’t much better at age 8.

So how are you going to play from now on? Are you going to just play with your kids or younger relatives? Or are you going to try out the more adult version with the offensive rules? Either way, it’s not like the game costs too much. In fact, here’s the Amazon link where you can find a copy for under $20. Who could have guessed?

A simple concept sometimes goes a long way.

I’m a fan of good party games. You’ve caught on to this already being the intellectual readers that you are. I’m ready to talk about yet another fantastic game to break out when friends and family come to visit. Time for Catch Phrase.

You ever played Catch Phrase before? I’d be shocked if you hadn’t, since Catch Phrase is a fairly popular game among the masses as it’s simple to grasp, fun to play, and can require zero set-up if you have the electronic edition, as I’m about to recommend. If you choose to buy Catch Phrase, I recommend getting the electronic version (see, what did I just say?). Either way though, you’ll find yourself having a lot of fun, but there are a few catches (oh puns!). I’ll get into those later. For now, rule time.

How To Play The Fair Way

The rules are brutally simple: Teams are designated, usually no more than two, and the game starts once someone sets the timer from “Safe” to “OMG I Lost!” The first player grabs either the word disc (in the non-electronic version), or the whole Catch Phrase game (in the electronic version), and sees a word/phrase. This is the word he needs to get his teammates to guess. He’s allowed to use anything to get his teammates to say the word, including gestures and impressions and such, though using any part of the word is forbidden (no saying “It contains peanuts” if the word is “Peanut Butter”), as well as giving the first letter of the word, the number of syllables, or a word that rhymes with the word. I mean, come on, you have to have some challenge to the game, right?

Once the player gets his team to figure out the word without cheating, he passes it to a player on the other team where they are tasked with figuring out a new word. Play continues like this until the timer runs out and someone throws the Catch Phrase disc in terrified surprise. Whichever team isn’t holding the disc when the timer goes off gets a point. You can play to whatever you like, but 10 seems to be a fairly standard number even though I’d recommend taking the less-conformist path and playing ‘til 17, just because.

When playing Catch Phrase, you have got to remain cool and collected, otherwise you’ll look like a goober and no one will like you. Or maybe you’ll just flub through your turn and cost your team a point, but the important thing is that you look cool to other people, so take a deep breath and picture everyone in their underwear if that sort of things helps you to relax. If that doesn’t work, you might as well get down to your underpants to relieve the tension.

Don’t Lose Your Cool

If you aren’t remaining cool and collected, you’ll have a hard time getting your brain to think of the perfect connection to help your team guess that your ramblings are actually pointing them toward saying “Richard Nixon.” If you happen to be a teammate guessing, you have an equally important job to manage since you need to be synced up perfectly with the guy trying to get you to say the Catch Phrase. Do not, and I repeat DO NOT keep guessing the same thing if it was incorrect. It doesn’t matter how much you THINK the other player meant to be saying “Rutabaga,” it matters that he was actually trying to say “Jimmy Stewart.” You’ve got to keep calm as well, and in fact, you’ve got to be the one insuring that your teammate holding the Catch Phrase disc is relaxed, so throw in a joke here and there and generally be encouraging.

Chances are you're probably more familiar with this version, of which I recommend.

Now we get to the seedier part of my article here: Cheating, also known as Advanced Strategies, though some will probably call you on cheating unless you have the quick comeback of, “No YOUR face is dumb.” No one can recover from that one.

Childish insults aside, you need to be synced up with your teammates on a level deeper than I may have implied earlier. You guys need to basically have a mind-meld, otherwise you’ll have to rely on pure skill, and who has time to attain that in today’s age? You have got to know the exact thing that gets your teammates to guess the proper word or phrase. If your friends have an inside joke about Jell-O pudding and the word happens to get brought up, bust out your inside joke. Your group will instantly know what to guess, plus the connection adds to team morale and that in turn makes everyone play better while simultaneously making the other team wish they were as good of friends as you guys are. If you have more time than you need, go through the game with your friends and develop code words for each word or phrase so you already know that if “Circus Tent” shows up your first clue is to say “Elephant Surprise.” Is this cheating? That’s for the other team to decide.

So as I also mentioned, there’s some hiccups in playing the game to it’s fullest, and they come as a result of the people you’re playing with. I’ve been attacking this article from the angle that the people playing are all close friend, but in the very likely situation that you are forced to play the game with unknowns for one reason or another, you may find yourself and the others in dangerous risk of losing. Why? Because someone who’s afraid to take risks in front of strangers is going to have a very tough time when they’re up to bat. They stumble over words more, they can’t think of connections with phrases, and they spend too much time bypassing words or phrases they don’t think they can do, ultimately resulting in the timer flipping out from the awkwardness.

I can’t quite do much to advise in these situations as I typically have no problem making a fool of myself, but I’m not everyone. Public speaking can be straight up horrifying for some people and the only advice I can give is to, once again, take a deep breath and try to relax. Besides, it’s just a game. What’s the worst that could happen, other than people thinking you’re a goober? I rest my case.

You want to be as relaxed and successful as Rich Uncle Pennybags here? Follow my advice and you'll be closer than you think.

Okay, so you’ve been reading my articles about board games. You spend meticulous time reading and rereading any little bit you can about these games, only to then discover that when it comes ‘round to game time, you’re the one guy at odds with everyone else and treated as the whipping boy. Sounds to me like you could use some strategies to increase your skills. The good news is that I’m here to deliver just that. Pull out a pen and take notes here, ‘cause I’m gonna give you the rundown on how to beat your friends in board games.

There are really three sorts of board games here: strategy based games (Monopoly, Chess, Risk), creative based games (Scattegories, Cranium), and trivia based games (Scene-It, Trivial Pursuit). I can’t do much to give advice on games of chance such as Candy Land since it all depends on the luck of the draw, but I can tell you to always hang in there and never give up, because you never know what’ll be drawn next (though mathematically if you’re down going into the second half of the game, you aren’t winning that game). So let’s get started, eh?

Use Your Friends

First things first when it comes to games where there are multiple players in a free-for-all, such as Risk: Make allegiances. Risk is vital for this play strategy. You’ll never be able to hold onto the larger continents if you try to do it all alone. You need people to back you up. You need that extra rule that plays in your favor that the rulebook doesn’t mention. You need to coast on your friends’ good fortune and backstab like no tomorrow when the time presents itself. Take Risk, as I said. Find someone with some decent weight in the game and do something nice for them, such as attacking an army that’s putting pressure on them or purposefully leaving a territory with one army on it so that they can take it the next turn, pointing out it is a gift to them. Storm the world with your chum, then strike when you find the right chance.

Also, pick the black pieces. They look tougher than the rest.

Monopoly works well for alliances also as you can donate money to players, trade properties, and allow them to stay in certain hotels for free. Get them to trust you so you can eliminate other players, then suddenly stop giving your friends a break when it looks like it’ll soon be you and them left to battle it out. Just be careful that they don’t get you first.

Outsmart Your Friends

When it comes to creative games, you need to know your friends. If you’re playing a round of Scattegories and the letter is P for a City name, you should have a good idea whether you have any friends that are about to answer “Pittsburgh” instead of something more original. It can be possible to out-think your friends to the point that you’re confident none of them would try an answer so basic, so you are then able to get by with simple answers. Also, make alliances in Scattegories, too. They will come in so handy when those inevitable challenges come your way, so give points to other players even if you could out-argue them, because there’s a chance they’ll have to vote for or against you for one of your double and triple-word bonuses and you want to be on their good side when they do.

You'd better be in sync with your teammates, otherwise things will get real rough real fast.

Knowing your friends, as I said, is vital in these creative games. My review of The Game of Things was practically all about the difficulty of standing out too much, so put that into practice here as well. You need to know the people you’re playing against to hope to outsmart them, such as in Scattegories when you could put “Salisbury Steak” as either a “lunchroom food” or a “thing you’d find in a catalog.” You’ve got a double-word score on the line, so know which other friend would think of that and then where they’d think to place it. Plan accordingly.

Having certain words, phrases, or actions already in place before a game like Cranium or Pictionary start is borderline cheating but you’ll thank me later. Having inside jokes with friends makes things simpler to work with, creating a nice shorthand to work with. Did you draw Jim Carrey as an actor you have to silently impersonate in Cranium? You better know which reference is the best to get your friends to know instantly who you’re supposed to be, because if they haven’t seen The Grinch, there’s no way they’ll know you’re supposed to be Slunking to the icebox. Playing Taboo or Catchphrase and have a word that you need to describe? “Kyle’s favorite movie,” or “I ate twelve of these at 7-11” make for really quick references, plus the better mood you have your team in, the higher morale is and the quicker they’ll be able to think. Keep your team of friends limber and calm.

Fake Failure

Possibly the most important strategy that you can use is your friends’ inability to know when you’re a threat or not. This works even better with people you’ve never played with, but it’s vital to use to your advantage. Never let your opponents know just how smart you really are. You must lull them into a false sense of security by causing them to believe that you’re an idiot. I’ve become very good at it over the years.

Who would suspect this foolish creature could be so powerful in a board game setting?

Take Chess, for example. There is a four-move Checkmate that only the rookiest of players fall victim to. Always attempt this when you begin a Chess match, even if your opponent is extremely good. I beat the best kid in school in four moves because he thought I sucked and didn’t expect me to know what I was doing. Four moves. Checkmate. And it was for a qualifying match in a tournament. He beat me for sport in the very next round, but it didn’t count towards the tournament. The deed was done. What’s done could not be undone.

Here’s a perfect example of playing dumb: Ever play the game BS? Well, I’m not going to tell you what BS stands for since if you’ve played it in school, you already know. The point of the game is to place cards from your hand into the middle pile in sequence, hoping to be the first to empty your hand. If you see an eight, you can place down either a seven or a nine. If you have neither a seven nor a nine in your hand, you must lie and say you’re placing down a seven or a nine. If no one believes you, they say “BS!” and you get all the cards in the pile. I’ve found it works every time to trick them by saying you’ve never played the game before, forcing them to explain the rules. Stay inconspicuous about your lying for a while until the pile builds up to a ridiculous number, then ask in your most dumbfounded way, “Uh, what do I do if I don’t have a card I can put down?” This only works if you DO have a card though, otherwise you deserve any ridicule about to come your way. The other players will kindly explain that you’re supposed to lie, so when you place down a seven and say in your best false voice, “Seven,” everyone will be in a hurry to yell “BS!” When you flip the card over and they discover you’ve duped them, you instantly because the king of the game for all time.

When it comes to trivia, obviously playing dumb isn’t going to help you. You need to know what you’re talking about, otherwise you simply can’t win. If you’re playing Scene-It? and the version is one you’re unfamiliar with, always select the most diehard fan in the room to be on your team. You will now win. If you happen to be that diehard fan, you better know your stuff or else no one will want to be on your team ever again. If you’re caught in Trivial Pursuit without a real answer (which will happen frequently), fake it to the best of your knowledge. Heck, you might even get away with convincing your friends that the card was a misprint (“No I’m sorry, it was the ‘Moops.”’). You’ve just got to know your friends well enough to know if they’ll fall for it or not. Most won’t, but you need to know if they will.

Don't lose your nerve when it coms to that final push, either. Only rookies choke in the last leg.

If you haven’t figured out enough by now, my main piece of advice isn’t to play the game; it’s to play your friends. In Risk, make a big show about invading Asia, a generally foolish thing to do, while all the while building up an unstoppable force in Australia for a legendary blitzkrieg of the world (“You cheated!” “Nah, that’s fair dinkum mate”). Purposefully build hotels on the purple spaces in Monopoly to make your friends think you’re daft, but save some cash to royally ruin them when you’ve bought the blue spaces from under their noses. And then of course there’s the dropping of the die on the floor so that only you can see it, only to grab it and raise it up saying, “Oh hey look at that, double sixes!” Build the trust and then ruin it in epic fashion, such as trading false information for something of value in Clue or purposefully throwing people off in Stratego by pretending your Marshall is scared of an inferior piece.

Have you got some winning strategies I didn’t mention here? I want to know some of your secrets (it’s only fair since you just learned all of mine). Post a comment and let me know how sneaky and diabolical you can be when it comes to board games. I really want to know, fair dinkum.

I like to imagine world leaders looking like this man while they play Stretego.

So chess is a classic game of strategy and checkers is a classic game of “I Wish I Were Chess.” I was always good at chess (checkers, not so much), but there was another game I was addicted to beyond those two: Stratego. Have you played Stratego? You really should. Don’t believe me? Oh ye of little faith. Follow me then. It’s time for a history lesson.

A Cultured Past

Stratego as we know it was first a game called “Game of the Fighting Animals (“Dou Shou Qi!”), “Animal Chess,” or simply “Jungle,” and it came from China. The main difference between “Jungle” and “Stratego” was the in “Jungle” the identities of the pieces were known and the initial starting locations of everything were always the same. I haven’t gotten a chance to play “Jungle” for myself, but it sounds like a heck of a game, what with the pieces being animals rather than army personnel (“My Tiger attacks your Hippo for MAXIMUM DAMAGE!”).

Eventually a one Mademoiselle Hermance Edan decides to make the version of Stratego that we all know and love (unless you’re one of “those guys”). She patented her version at the end of the year 1908 with the year 1909 becoming the official first year of Stratego and 1910 being the first year it was sold all around under the name “L’Attaque,” which means, to my knowledge, probably “The Attack.” I don’t know, it’s French. I dropped French after a week and a half of feeling stupid. Oh right, we’re talking about Stratego. Well, that’s the short history. You can probably guess the rest.

Rules Shall Be Rules

Pretty basic yet so much fun.

Now that we’ve got the origins out of the way, let’s discuss the rules, shall we? You know the rules by now, but let’s go over them again in case you just don’t know yet. Stratego is all about deception and clever strategy. The game is played with two players as they set up their inconspicuous board of pieces. Each player gets 40 pieces to set up as they want (just don’t do it wrong) on their side of the 10-by-10 board. There are two lakes placed in the middle of the board, causing a funneling of pieces to make the game more dramatic. One of the pieces each player gets is a flag, the most important piece in the game. If it gets captured then the game is over.

The whole concept of the game revolves around the rank of the individual pieces. The pieces have a rank between 1 and 9, plus a Spy, the flag, and six bombs. The lower the number on the piece (number 1 is called the Marshall), the stronger it is. So if a 9 runs into a 5, the 5 wins and the 9 is removed from the game (he goes to “Number Heaven”). The Spy is a very special piece though as it’s the only one that can kill the Marshall, but only if the Spy is the one that attacks. Also important are the 8’s, called the Miners. They are the only pieces that can defuse bombs. And 9’s, called Scouts, are the only pieces that can move in as many spaces in one direction as they’d like (oh those crazy 9’s).

That’s basically the game there. Players take turns moving pieces, discovering what their opponent’s pieces are, and trying to find the all-important enemy flag. But you’ve got to use strategy. If you don’t, then what’s the point of playing a game called Stratego? Here’s a simply strategy I always use: Place your flag in the corner and surround it by bombs. Then all you’ve got to do is find your enemy’s Miners and it becomes impossible for them to win. Can’t get through bombs if all the Miners are in “Number Heaven.”

Ain't nobody getting to that flag.

Also, don’t give away the location of your Spy. You’ll need that sneaky little bugger for when your opponent is trouncing your troops with their Marshall. Keep your Spy hidden, but in a place that it can quickly rush out and assassinate Mr. Number One. After enough times playing against someone while using my “Flag in the Corner” strategy, I barricade a Scout in the corner and let my opponent kill themselves just to let him out. The classic look on their face when that happens makes it all worth it.

Yeah, you can find some variations of Stratego with all the usual brands, such as Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Transformers, and Marvel Comics (no Twilight version yet, but give it time). For me, it was all about the classic version though. You don’t even need to buy the game if you don’t want to as long as you have the time to make some cardboard pieces yourself. Just remember though that when you finally do get the flag, it’s important that you scream, “That’s Numberwang!” as loud as you can muster. You won’t understand why, but that’s probably because you just don’t appreciate Stratego like I do.

A deceptively conservative box. What could the contents include?

I’ll be downright honest here and let you in on a little secret: Before I got The Game Of Things for Christmas I had never heard of it before. Does that make me a bad person? Probably not. What it did manage to do is make me feel kind of stupid since there’s a pretty decent game here for parties with the right group of people. Let’s get into this review then.

Playing With Things

So how do you play this game? It’s actually rather simple. You’ll need at least four players (though I can see it working with a few as three, but honestly you want half a dozen or more, preferably). Everyone gets a slip of paper and someone reads a card that contains a thing, such as “Things you wouldn’t want to do in a cemetery” or “Things that annoy you.”

The players then scribble their response and pass them to the reader who in turn waits for all the slips to come in before reading them aloud, saying that the responses for “Things not to do in a hospital” are “Smoke,” “Hold up,” “Have an operation,” or “Look for dates.” It doesn’t matter the answer or how true it is because the next part is where the actual game comes into play.

The person to the left of the reader is the first to guess. They may say that “Chris said ‘Look for dates’ in a hospital,” and the reader would either confirm or deny this. If the person was right, they get a point and get to go again. However, Chris (that’d be me for this example) is out for the rest of that turn since he made it too simple for people to guess his answer. Play continues until all the slips are guessed, though you aren’t allowed to guess the reader’s answer since they don’t get a chance to get points in that round anyway. And basically that’s the game. Copy/paste, lather-rinse-repeat.

It’s a Party Game for a Reason

This is where I’m saying that more people are better. If you have a group of four playing, one person is automatically excluded from getting points that round since they are the reader. The person to their left has all the advantages in the world as long as they know the rest of the players really well. But even if they do, they can only get a total of two points that round since they can’t guess the reader’s response and it’d be counter-productive to guess their own. I played with a group of five people and the final score after ten rounds was ten to nine to eight to six to one. I…I had the one point for the following reason: I played the game like Scattergories and that’s a mistake.

This is all you need to get a night of deception going.

See, you don’t want to play this one like you would a lot of creative games where the most creative answers are the best. That actually works against you since you’ll give yourself away every time as it becomes pretty obvious who among your group is most likely to think of hilarious responses and who is most likely to be your father and trick everyone into believing down and out lies. Yeah, he won the game, but only because he cheated like every game he ever plays (except TrueQuest, because you can’t lie about history).

What you want to do is play things very conservatively, assuming you’re the only usual goofball in your group. If you have a whole band of off-the-wallers then you’re fine to make up the most random responses you can think of, but otherwise you’ll have to hold yourself back to vanilla answers to questions like “Things not to do while driving,” a question that could be something so awesome as “Juggle penguins” but should probably be “Put on make-up.” See? Boring. But that’s the trade-off you make when you want to win.

Overall The Game of Things is a good game. You’ll find a lot of fun in this wooden box, but to play it right you either have to have a whole group of rowdy creative types or a group of people that don’t exactly think outside the box.

I’m not saying that’s a bad thing having a non-out-of-the-boxers group, I’m just saying it’s required to play The Game of Things and not instantly lose because you’re the one person throwing waterfowl into every response you can.