Probe

Probe is an old (1964) Parker Brothers Game that is a kind of four player Hangman with various ornaments hung on it. What separates it from Hangman:

1. You can include "blanks" at the front and back of your word, to make things more difficult for your opponents.
2. It is up to four players, and on your turn, you can guess a letter from any of them. 
3. The slots you put your letters into have different point values, and you get points each time you guess a letter correctly. 
4. On each turn, you first draw an "activity card" which activates various random events "deduct 10 from your score", "opponent to your right exposes a letter", "add 25 to your score", "take an additional turn", etc. 
5. After your word has been guessed, you can continue to play and earn points. 

It would seem that Probe is trying to draft off the success of Scrabble "The 384 cards in this game provide more combinations of letters than any other word game." 

Our playing experience was kind of "meh." The drawn cards are kind of irritating, and much of the game is spent trying to remember what letters have already been guessed for each player... and you feel kind of dumb if you reguess one that you didn't remember. It also involves no new skill that Hangman didn't already have. Rounds are relatively short, and setup is kind of a hassle... so, in all, it wasn't something any of us wanted to play again. But if you *love* hangman, this is an interesting four player twist. 

7 Wonders

I'm not always a fan of points-building euro games... But I really like this one! Lots of fun choices, very little head-to-head competition, and relatively simple mechanics. Things I especially liked:

• Everyone plays at the same time, so there is little waiting on other players
• A fixed number of turns (18), so there are no game-suddenly-ended surprises, nor a worry that the game will go all night
• A three-act structure that allows for richer and more interesting things to happen late in the game
• Cumulative economy, so you can never find yourself bankrupt
• A simple system for trading with your neighbors, so who you sit next to really matters
• A very simple military system that never really feels cruel

In short, it is rich, and while it has some level of inherent complexity (military actions, scientific development, industry, building wonders) it all happens by playing simple cards, and so the complexity is wide, not deep, allowing for a lot of emergent gameplay because there are a lot of verbs, but the verbs are each simple and of the same form. I look forward to trying it again. No wonder this has so many awards -- it is very interesting and steamlined.

The Helpless Doorknob

Everyone loves Edward Gorey... how could I resist a deck of interactive story cards he created? They are silly, and kind of fun, but certainly not groundbreaking. For whatever reason, each one begins with the letter "A", and shows an event ("Agatha finished knitting a scarf for Augustus", "Angus inherited the grandfather clock from Aunt Ada", etc.). You lay these out to create an ostensible story. Figuring out cause and effect is up to the reader. Usually it doesn't work out too well, but once in a while something amusing occurs. It all just reinforces the idea that story is tricky. There is a reference to Novaya Zemyla, though, which won me over. And, naturally, none of the story events has anything to do with a doorknob.

They look nice on a coffee table, anyway.

Lords of Waterdeep

Wow -- I really like this game! It's one of these "worker placement" games, kind of like Agricola, but not as cutthroat, because you get to choose what quests you are going to pursue. The D&D theming is cute, but not really tied to the mechanics, because mostly it is a game about harvesting scarce resources to spend on even scarcer resources, but themed as "gathering a party" and "sending them on quests." But that doesn't hurt anything, it makes it kind of cute. I like all the choices, I like the game balance (it must have taken forever to get right), and I like all the different options that keep popping up during the game.

Hey, this is a good place for a side rant I've wanted to make for 30 years. I was a massive D&D fan in the eighties. It defined my life for a time, and it likely forged the career I have today. There were a lot of things that were exciting and revolutionary about D&D. But there is one thing I could never understand... why does the D&D story world suck so badly? In the beginning, it was a loose mishmash of Tolkein, Greek Myths, Elric, Conan, and King Arthur. That wasn't so bad -- it was all roll your own. but as the eighties proceeded, they started to make a sort of world. And it was terrible! B2, Keep on the Borderlands? Revoltingly bad and confusing, especially for new players. Some modules were amazing (I still see S1 in my dreams), some were not (C1, I'm looking at you, nor am I a fan of G123). But we didn't have a coherent world. So we were all so excited when the "World of Greyhawk" map appeared! And, while it looked cool, it sucked. It was way too big, with too many countries, and it was completely unclear how to use this as a DM. There was no connection between it and the Monster Manual, for example. Later, they stared writing various D&D novels to try and get some kind of concrete world in place, and so they seem to have something slightly more coherent now... but by the nineties they had lost me, and when I look at what they have now, I'm still not seeing a solid, Tolkeinesque world. Maybe it wouldn't have been possible? It bums me out that it was a massive missed opportunity. Anyway, I only mention it because I'm still feeling that today... "Lords of Waterdeep?" The theming and the story and even the box art raise no emotion in me.. not like this did. This is a world I wanted to be in. Anyway, maybe their "no solid world" strategy makes sense? Maybe it makes space for people to make their own things? I'm not sure. I guess I wish I was still moved emotionally by D&D like I was in the beginning.

Anyway, to sum up Lords of Waterdeep: Relatively simple, fun, not too cutthroat, and the right level of thinking. I'm sure some people would prefer a more competitive game -- but this one is just right for me. Well done, WotC!

Ticket to Ride: Europe

Ticket to Ride is an incredibly elegant and clever game that fully deserves the many accolades it has received. In many ways, I feel like it is the game that Monopoly is trying to be. Both games are abstractions of land ownership, both have a variety of territories with different values, both have a significant number of random events, both are simple enough for a family to play together. But Ticket to Ride wins in terms of simplicity and elegance. The number of rules is relatively small, and the number of actions is four. Everyone gets to play until the very end, and surprising reversals can happen, even near the end. The fact that players compete for territory, but each have different (secret) goals, and can sign up for extra goals at any time, allows for interesting flexibility, but unlike my unfavorite Settlers of Catan there is precious little backstabbing, since it is hard to know what your competitors' goals actually are, which I think makes for a much more friendly game.

The "Europe" edition has interesting variants on the basic edition, though I'm not completely sure they are all for the better. Other than a denser map (it is Europe, after all), there are three new elements in place: Some routes (ferries) require locomotives, some routes (tunnels) are variable cost, and players have a choice of adding "train stations" to make use of other players routes. These extra flourishes add to the decisions one makes, but I'm not sure they actually improve the game. If you are new to TtR, I'd suggest starting with the basic edition -- but, if you are an experienced player looking for a slightly more complex spin on an old favorite, you might want to check this one out.

Chupacabra: Survive the Night

Who wouldn't want to play a glow-in-the-dark dice game about Chupacabras? I liked this game at first because it is pretty simple. Players roll dice that either come up as farm animals or as chupacabras. Use your chupacabra dice to steal farm animals from other players. Whoever gets all the dice first wins. Pretty simple. Unfortunately, it feels out of balance. Often, you roll dice, and no one can steal anything, which is boring. Other times you can steal, but there are no interesting choices to make -- you just steal the most obviously valuable dice -- very few surprises. The coolest surprise (if you roll all chupacabras) is that you can steal a whole bunch of dice -- which can tip the whole game in your favor... and the fewer dice you have, the easier to roll all chupacabras! So... I like that part. My mind keeps working at how to fix this game. Partly, I think there should be two kinds of dice... the normal black ones, and also, say, red ones that have two chupacabras instead of one, but have no chickens, making them harder to steal. Then you'd have some interesting decisions to make! I'll probably try playtesting this sometime soon, with, uh, some stickers. Oh... and the glow-in-the-dark gimmick? Weak. Not only are the chupacabras invisible in the dark, but you can't even tell a chicken from a goat... so... playing in the dark doesn't make much sense. Idea of the day... a game where glow in the dark stuff really IS important... maybe featuring a UV charging light, to keep items bright! Maybe the glow serves as a literal cooldown! Put your dice in the charging box to charge 'em up, because when they get dim, you can't read what they say! Or... could you have warriors who are more powerful, they more they glow? Bright guy defeats dim guy! So you have to move dim guy to charging box, wait the right amount of time, get him out, and then get him to destination before he gets dim! Now this is a game I could get behind! I gotta try making a charging box... As usual Goethe is right: "Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward. They may be beaten, but they may start a winning game." Yeah, baby. I bring Goethe to the table when I write about glow-in-the-dark dice games. If you don't like it, GET OUT OF MY BLOG!

Splendor

I'm not always the biggest fan of competitive German board games... but I really, really like Splendor from Marc Andre (maybe because it's French?). You can see a picture of it here, in all it's... well, you know. It is a very simple game, centering on what I call the "Katamari" mechanic. That is, you start by collecting small things, which you use to collect medium things, which you use to collect big things and win the game. It has a simple "gemstone" theme, and no tortured story. Simply put, you get chips each turn (of your own choosing) which you use to buy cards, which are worth points, and some of which boost your buying power. That's it, really. The genius of the game is in the chip choosing mechanic. It is a multiple currency game (wait, what? Does this violate my patent? Good thing it's not a virtual world...), and each turn, you can either choose three different chips, two of the same chips, or one special wildcard chip. Or, you can forgo chip choosing, and buy a card on your turn. Anyway, it's a very simple game that takes a little thinking, but not too much. I like that you can play by gut, and there isn't too much backstabbing. Also, wow, the chips are nice to look at and pleasing to hold. They are weirdly heavy. Anyway, it's a wonderful game all around, and feels like it was specially designed for me.

Settlers of Catan

I've been meaning to write about Catan for what seems like forever. Is it an excellent game? Yes. Clever, replayable, well-balanced, simple? Yes. Do I like it? No. No, I really don't. I try to like it, I really do. But I just don't care for it. One problem -- I can never remember the rules. Every time I play is like the first time. I find the rules so weird and counterintuitive (oh yeah, villages have to be two spaces away from other villages... oh yeah, longest road is important... oh yeah, there are two phases of play) that I can never remember them. You know, maybe that's my biggest gripe with Catan. It is a very thoughtfully designed abstract game that is pretending to be a simulation of something. But it is no more a realistic simulation of land ownership than Monopoly is, and at least Monopoly has the decency to print the weirder rules on the board and cards. And the other thing I don't like -- I really don't care for games that are about repeatedly stabbing each other in the back and ruining each other's plans. In some games, ill-effects come at random. In Catan, most ill-effects are intentional, and often cruel.

I'm not saying it is a bad game. If you like well-designed abstract strategy games with a thin veneer of simulation and cutthroat gameplay, it's an excellent choice. I marvel at the elegance of the mechanics every time I play it. Personally, though, I prefer less backstabbing and more simulation in my games. Sometime soon I'll write about The New Science, which is exactly my cup of tea.

Maybe I'd like it more if I could remember the rules? But that would mean playing it more often, and... yeah, I never quite feel like it.

Water Bears

I'm so proud and excited about this new game we just released! Water Bears started out as Project GameGrid at the ETC, where it was funded by a grant from the MacArthur Foundation to create a systems thinking game. The student team worked with Kylie Peppler at Indiana University to create a pretty great prototype, that we were all pretty happy with. However, at the end of the semester, due to visa issues, the student team was unable to take it further. I was bummed to see such a promising game not get finished, so after the student team graduated, Schell Games made a deal with the students to acquire the game from them (it is ETC policy to let the students own their work). I had the idea that it could be both an educational game, but also a casual puzzle game, because it is so much fun! And we did just that. Under the able direction of Jason Pratt, and with a phenomenal team working on it, we turned it into Water Bears, and have released two different versions. First, the consumer edition, available for iPad in the appstore, but also the GlassLab edition which is integrated into the GlassLab system, which sells apps into schools. If you are a teacher who wants to use games in the classroom, you should definitely check that out. We'll see how this "dual app" strategy works -- but we are all really proud of how the game turned out. It's simple, colorful, and fun! And I hope it does well, because we have a ton of ideas for Water Bears 2!

Rack-o

Yeah, Rack-o! This is a deceptively simple game with a surprising amount of difficult decision making. Your goal is straightforward... dealt ten cards with various numbers on them from 1 to 60, your goal is to get them in order. BUT -- you aren't allowed to sort them! They must stay locked in place in their rack! So... how can you sort them? Well, on your turn, you are given a new number card, and you can decide to swap it out for one of your existing cards. Players take turns doing this, and the first one to get a set of ten cards in order wins. There are a surprising amount of decisions in this simple game...

1) Should I take the face up card (the devil I know) or draw a card (a mystery)?
2) Where should I insert the new card? Should I focus on eliminating cards badly out of order, or on expanding the gaps between numbers?
3) There are bonuses given for getting consecutive runs (34, 35, 36, etc.). Should I take the risk of trying to create runs? Or just be the first to call rack-o?
4) If I don't get rack-o, I still get points, based on how many cards, starting at my lowest, are in order. Should I prioritize getting my lower cards in order first?

It isn't the game of the century, exactly, but it does take a lot of thinking (though, not too much), and the bonus system makes for some exciting upsets. It's a simple, solid, well-designed game. I wish I knew who the inventor was -- he or she certainly had an eye for elegant design.

Super Smash Bros. Brawl

I've never really been into fighting games. I mean, it's fun to button mash, but actually trying to get good at them feels like boring work to me. My daughter was all into this one, though. I'd played the original, a million years ago, and I was kind of shocked at how intricate the rules are for controlling your character, and even for winning the game. But, the normal arena mode isn't what I want to talk about -- I want to talk about a transcendent experience I had playing the single player campaign.

I mentioned that my daughter was all into this game, and part of that involves a single player platforming adventure. I walked by and heard her cursing the game, and entering some kind of game induced delirium. I asked her how it was going, and she said, "I... I don't know. I've logged 12 hours playing this thing, and... I can't actually tell what's going on." This made me curious, and as she tried to show me the peculiar nature of "The Great Maze" section of the single player mode, I became fascinated. She brought up the map, which was a set of boxes, lines, flashing diamonds, and weird faces. I asked what it meant, and she had no idea. I said, "Well, what are the diamonds?" She stammered, "I... monsters? Treasures? I really don't know... there are green ones and pink ones and blue ones, and they do different things... and I..." Now I was really intrigued. We started to poke at it some more, and I realized that the normal rules of videogames did not apply here. Old school gamer that I am, I gleefully ran for pencil and paper, to try to make sense of this bizarre world. I had to explain to my daughter that in the old days, most games required you to make maps with paper. I'm pretty sure she didn't believe me. "Okay," I said, "bring up that game map again, so I can try to make sense of this." "I can't," she said. "You can only bring up the map in certain places." WHAT? Uh... okay... "But that's okay, I need to get back there, so I can get healed." "Oh, so the healing point is near where you can bring up the map?" "No," she explained, "the map heals you." Now I was in full-blown WTF mode. I can't remember feeling this way after 1989. It was very exciting! Gradually, I made a paper map, and through experimenting, we figured out what the faces where, and the diamonds, and how you can teleport, and where the monsters were hiding, etc., etc.... and it was the most videogame fun I'd had in years. I didn't realize how much I missed not actually understanding what was going on in a game, what was actually possible! It's got me wondering about a Lens of Mystery. But you know, there is something else. Part of what makes this thing work is the absence of anything like a sensible story. Why are 30+ Nintendo characters teaming up to fight some mysterious teleporting bald dude in a world that makes no sense? The game has no answer, and it left us to have to just decide for ourselves. And bit by bit, a little fantasy of us as adventurers with the ability to take on the roles of these characters, but trapped in a weird maze started to form... as we talked to each other, I found myself forgetting about us in the living room, and thinking of us more like movie characters, trapped in this strange world trying to decode its weird rules as we uncovered monsters and obstacles that got stranger and stranger. It worked so well because the characters had so very many options, and could do so very many things. Once we understood it, and beat it, I was pretty sad that it was over. I'll be thinking about how I can capture these feelings for my own games for a long time.

Aggravation

I was fortunate to be able to take a tour of the Hasbro factory, and I picked this up in the store. It was a game I had long wanted, but somehow never picked it up. I was surprised by the strange game mechanics it contains. It is a variation on Pachisi, or Sorry!, but with a strange two-level shortcut system in the middle. This system is what gives the game its decisions and strategy -- and when all the players are good at this part of it, it makes a very exciting game indeed! This edition is kind of cheap and cardboardy (it was only $6, so that's okay), but I may seek out an older, sturdier edition.

Kippit

This weird game is really fun, because it has a strange ruleset. I expected the goal was "add blocks, but don't make it tip!" But that's not it at all. To start, you split up the blocks between the two players. On your turn, you keep adding blocks until it does tip -- and your opponent gets any blocks that fall off! The winner is the first one to get rid of all their blocks. So, your goal is to make it tip as dramatically as possible -- which calls for a lot of thinking, experimentation, and some some surprising strategies. Definitely a quick, fun, different kind of game!

Scrabble Slam

I learned about this super cute card game after I got a chance to visit Hasbro. Apparently it's been a big seller for them. It's cute, fun, and really fast. Average game takes maybe five minutes to play. One player lays out a word, and the other players then, in a free-for-all, overlay that word with other letters that also make words -- turning "fern" into "tern" into "term", etc. The cards are weirdly two sided, so that you have more letters, and it makes for more frantic fun. Simple, cute, and a smart way to extend the scrabble brand.

Uno

Yeah, baby! It's Uno! Everyone loves Uno, right? The magic of Uno is hard to describe. I guess some of it is about the choice of who to harm, and some of it is is about the seemingly meaningless choice of which card to play, but the key part is having to say "Uno" when you have one card left -- building suspense in a weird way that I haven't seen in any other game.

I always love the story about how Merle Robbins created the game. The wikipedia article says he sold the 5000 decks he printed out of his Barber Shop, but that's just not possible, right? My understanding is he filled a van with them, and toured around to nursing homes and senior centers, demoing the game, and selling the decks, with a hook of, "Here's a game that you can play with your grandkids." Anyway, no publishers were interested when he started out, but after he'd sold 5000 decks on his own, he was able to get the attention of a publisher, and, well, the game's done alright.

Alien Hotshots

We've had this game a long time, but haven't played it for a while. It's an interesting variant of War, with special cards to do things like "capture any even card", as well as cards you can set aside to modify future cards. I think it's a great game for 8-10 year olds.

Family Fluxx

It's Fluxx, but, uh, for families! Our family played it, and it was fun -- definitely a nice adaptation of regular Fluxx. I would have simplified and clarified more rules, myself, but this was definitely playable. Hooray for Looney Labs!

Scrambled States of America

This is a really nice, fun game to get kids familiar with basic US geography. I'm reading a book about how cognitive psychology applies to learning, and one of it's basic points is that "people remember what they think about." Well, this game does a nice job making kids think about a variety of things -- which states are adjacent, which states are close to each other, state names and capitals. It's simple, fun, nicely balanced, and teaches the right things, I think. You go, Gamewright!

Bananagrams

This is an interesting variant on scrabble. It has no board, and players play independently, each trying to use all their letters to spell crossing words. It's lightweight and fun, a kind of race -- and the banana thing is a cute theme.

Snoopy, Come Home

Yeah, Snoopy, Come Home! Based on the movie of the same name, this is a board game from the early seventies. We saw it at the Schulz Museum, and Nyra mentioned how much she liked it when she was a girl, so I found a copy and gave it to her for Christmas. It's an interesting game. It has two phases -- first the players race to Snoopy, and when a player reaches him, then the game changes, and players try to steal Snoopy from each other on a race back to the start. It has a very unusual board structure -- it's overall very novel, with a lot of racing and chasing, and surprising reversals. It is more competitive than you would expect from the theme.