Tastes Like Chicken

Tastes Like Chicken is a new family card game from Patch Products. It's especially good for a family with a strong sense of humor and a propensity for shared silliness.

The large deck of 58 cards comes in a plastic case looking very much lke a ketchup bottle (I guess to make it taste better). Most of the cards are illustrated with hybrid critters, composed of two different animals: half cow, half snake, for example, or half snake, half shark, for another example. A cow/snake can be paired with any a cow/anything or a snake/anything. Which makes for what one might think of as the significant part of the cognitive challenge. But that only partially explains the fun of the game.

See, whenever you put a card down, you have to name the card, like, for example, "Cow-Snake." Out loud, of course. If you don't have a match, you have say "Tastes Like (whatever)" before you draw another card. The (whatever) being something sufficiently distasteful - the more agreeably distasteful you make it, the more fun. Then there are the special cards, like part-chickens, which, eponymously, not only tastes like chicken, but also make the next player draw a card and lose a turn. Then there are the part-pig-tasting cards and the wild rooster card, each of which adds yet another tasty wrinkle to this often hilarious game.

Easy to learn. Not in any way to be taken seriously. Different enough to be a welcome addition to your collection of playful pastimes. Perfect for family fun.

A Lesson in Game Design from the creator of Triagonal

I recently received an email from David Barnes, inventor of the Major FUN award-winning Triagonal, telling me about his new, free compilation of 40 different puzzles to explore with your Triagonal set.

With these puzzles, David offers more than a challenging and fascinating resource. He exemplifies a lesson for anyone who is contemplating designing a game: if you hope to make a successful game, you have to create a game that you are in love with.

Love? To what else can you attribute the years Dave has spent exploring the depths this one game concept, the almost heroic effort Dave has been putting in, not only in manufacturing and marketing his game concept, but to a deepening exploration of all things Triagonal (in addition to these puzzles, he's developed at least 12 different games to play with your Triagonal set)?

Everything about the game reflects his passion and devotion and faith in this one invention of his. Understandably so. Because he has created something significantly playworthy. Because, as with anyone who creates something fun, the only logical next step is to devote much of your life to sharing it with, basically, the known universe.

miQube

miQube is a lovely thing. All wood. Colorful. Sculptural. But that doesn't explain how playworthy it turns out to be.

Playworthy as in something fascinating, challenging, inviting. Like a puzzle, but like a game, too. Like a toy, even. Playworthy as in something that can be played with in enough different ways to make you want to make up your own. Playworthy as in something closely approaching Major FUN.

There are 13 different pieces, and a die. All but one of the pieces is a different combination of 5 cubes. Each is 6-sided, each has faces of different color, depending on orientation. The other piece is made out of 4 cubes. It also has 6 different colors. As does the die, which is made of one rounded-corner cube. All wood. All solid wood.

You don't have to use everything, but you can purportedly fit all 13 pieces into a cube with every face a different color. It's not quite as hard as solving a Rubik's Cube. And the instructions describe 4 different games you can play with your miQube and 1, 2 or even 3 friends. And once you've played all 4 different games and discovered their differences, you can't help thinking about making up a 5th game. Your own. Because of all the different ways you can play with the pieces.

Lovely, lovely thing. Most worthy of a position of honor on the family coffee table. Most conducive to several many hours of happily challenged playtime.

The Homemade Games Guru

Luanga Nuwame, the Homemade Games Guru, has dedicated considerable effort to teaching people how to make their own home made games. A professional game designer himself, Lue has produced a series of instructional videos on the design and production of personalized toys and games using only household materials. For example, a homemade beanbag toss, and, for another example, a set of magnetic refrigerator checkers.

For Lue, the making at home part of the homemade game, regardless of what game gets made or whether or not it's actually made at home, is key. Because, he explains, if you make a game, you can make it your own. You can embed pictures of family members or photos of last summer's vacation, making the game into a unique expression of the people for whom it is designed. The people at home. Yourself. Your extended family and friends.

Lue believes that making a personalized game helps people create something meaningful for them, personally. The "deep" fun part of it all, comes from people making the game together, for each other, and from the experience of seeing each other play a game that really reflects their lives together - experiences, favorite things, silly memories.

Making a game together helps create a closer family, explains Lue. "The fun of it lies in the interaction, conversation, contact with everyone. At the same time, making a game that allows you to express "you," means that every time you play the game, you are the star. Having something unique, that expresses me, uniquely, is deeply fun."

As a designer and instructor, Lue sees himself as being able to give families something that is really up to them to interpret, to personalize. He focuses on giving families the basics, knowing that with this kind of clarity, families and friends will provide their own content and ensuring it reflects their own selves. And therein, in the playful and personal connection between parent and child, friend and family, explains Lue, lies the fun.

Say Anything

North Star Games is one of those rare companies that places a high premium on quality over quantity. Although the company was founded in 2003, they have only published 3 games. Each of them has been Major FUN, and each production seems to be getting better than the previous one.

Say Anything, their latest creation, is a light-hearted party game that will get you and your friends talking and laughing in no time. Everything about the game reflects years of play testing, and finer and finer tuning. The rules are wonderfully easy to understand - clearly written and presented, every question answered. Everything fits in the box just so. The write-on, wipe-off boards (8 answer boards and a scoreboard) write on easily (golf-pencil-sized wipe-off-able markers included) and wipe off even more easily. The 400 Question Cards are pleasantly thick yet amply bendy. The little, graphic-and-color-coordinated Player Chips are non-bendy enough to be satisfyingly chip-like. And the state of the art SELECT-O-MATIC 5000...one can barely comment enough about the functionality, portability, and virtually cordless battery-freedom!

Of course, it's the fun that counts - even more than all the well-thought-out-edness of the packaging and game components. Let's start with a Say Anything card. There are 5 questions to choose from which means you’ll always be able to ask something that suits the people you’ve invited to your gathering. The question all have something to do with your right to, well, say, as it were, anything. Some of the questions solicit your pop culture opinions, some are about personal experiences, some are slightly serious, and a handful are seriously ridicules (designed just to make you laugh). If for example, we picked the question "What TV channel would be the hardest to live without?" Really, you could write anything on your Answer Board. I mean, you like what you like. Write anything. Say anything. What's to argue about?

So you write what you write (it can be non-sequitur if you want), and toss your Answer Board face-up on the table. She or He Who Holds the SELECT-O-MATIC 5000 (SoHWHtS-O-M5000) will read all the answers, and pick a favorite response. Any favorite response - for any reason. Because SoHWHtS-O-M5000 can, of course Select Anything.

Now everybody else tries to guess what answer was picked. It turns out that the SoHWHtS-O-M5000 gets a point for everyone who votes for His or Her chosen Answer Board (up to a maximum of 3 points). They guess by using their well-designed, chip-like, color-coordinated Player Chips. They each have two. Which means they can put both chips down on the same Answer Board, or select two Answer Boards to carry their personal Player Chip-ness. Ah, an opportunity to demonstrate something to everyone in attendance - two chips to manifest your personal certainty, or your clever covering of the bases, so to speak.

Finally SoHWHtS-O-M5000 reveals the chosen board, and players gain points accordingly, which the Holder of the Write-On Wipe-Off-able Score Board dutifully records. And in the mean time, much laughter tends to erupt. Much laughter. Because of the unexpected answers people come up with, the unpredictable perspicacity of their votes, the verifiable silliness of the task, and, for some, because of the score they get.

Say Anything is the very kind of game the Major Fun Award was designed for. It takes a few minutes to learn, a good half hour or so to play, and can be played with your basic 3-8 people. Maybe 16 if you play in teams. Probably 24, tops.

Jishaku

Jishaku is at least as much a toy as it is a game. At least. It is fun to play. It is even more fun to play with.

It's those 18, lovely, polished, irregularly-shaped, powerfully magnetic hematite pieces - in a velveteen drawstring bag, no less. And then there's that appropriately cushy yet egg-carton-looking-and-feeling piece of foam to try to put them into. They invite curiosity. Just putting the pieces into their foamy homes, watching them almost evilly turn towards the piece you're hoping to place near them. Watching what happens when you turn your piece over. Getting shocked into laughter at the almost electric sound of the pieces suddenly coming together, just when, of course, you didn't expect them to move, or be so numerous in their sudden commingling.

The designers give you three different games to play. We played them. We laughed, and then a few minutes later we had kind of enough. We played. We figured out. We played again. And then we went to the next, and then to the one after that.

And when we ran out of games and laughter, we made up our own.

And therein, apparently, lies the Major FUN-nitude of Jishaku. It's a game that is such a fun thing to play with that you can't really judge it by any set of rules - something (a game, a toy to make up games for) you can play with your kids and your parents, and vice-versa. Hence the Family Games category.

You can play by yourself. You can play in teams. You can play a round in 5 minutes or less. You can play with the board and pieces for hours.

Woodchuck, etc.

There's a Swedish game called Kubb , which is quite similar to the Karelian game of Kyykka and clearly connected to the Russo-Canadian game of Bunnock, which was originally played with the ankle bones of horses. There's also the Finnish game of Molkky, which is a relatively close relative, but different. Which brings us to Woodchuck - a faithful reproduction of the Swedish original, but played with 4 Woodchucks instead of 5, and 5 throwing batons instead of 6.

Since Woodchuck is moderately priced and readily available here in the US through Simply Fun, let's talk Woodchuck.

Woodchucks are made of wood, which, from the Kubb-perspective, is quite traditional. You can play on a lawn, or in the sand, or any nice flat area, 12-feet wide and 25-feet deep. Four Woodchucks are placed at one end of the playing field, spaced evenly apart, in a line. The other 4 are placed at the other end. The King Woodchuck is placed exactly in the middle of the field.

There are two teams, which, for the sake of clarity (which, even though the game is quite simple, will soon prove most valuable), let's call one team the Beavers and the other the Otters.

Teams don't have to have the same number of players. You could have 6 Beavers and only 4 Otters. Or even just 1 Otter if things turn out that way.

Let's say the Beavers go first. They throw their Throwing Batons, one at a time, underhanded, end-over-end, at the Otters' Woodchucks. It's like throwing horseshoes, the idea being to knock over all of the Otter's Woodchucks while being extremely careful not to knock over the King Woodchuck. And let's further say that the Beavers managed to hit 3 of the Otter's 4 Woodchucks.

Now it's the Otters' turn. Remember, they only have one standing Woodchuck. Oddly enough, before they can throw any of their Throwing Batons at the Beavers' Woodchucks, they first have to throw each of their fallen Woodchucks into the Beaver's half of the playing field. Then they stand each of those Field Woodchucks on their ends. Then they use their Throwing Batons to try to knock over their Field Woodchucks. And then, and only then, can they aim for the Beavers' Woodchucks. Know what I mean?

What makes this all so difficult to understand is that the game breaks a central convention of most sports. The Woodchucks are more obstacles than targets, and the obstacles get moved around as the game progresses. There is only one actual target - the King Woodchuck.

Anyhow, once a team has managed to knock over all the Woodchucks on the other team's side, then they can go for the King.

Clearly, from a Junkyard Sports perspective, this game can be played with almost anything that you can stand up and knock over. And you can use tennis balls or tuna cans as easily as you can use Throwing Batons. In fact, the article on Kyykka points out that students frequently make their own sets using:

• 80 empty 500ml beer cans (330ml soft drink cans work as well)
• Sand
• Duct tape
• Plastic/aluminium piping

And one more thing that makes it especially worthy of our collective consideration, found in the Wikipedia article, is the observation that "sportsmanship and a sense of fair play...is a trademark of this unique game."

Rules Rule

Blue Orange makes many beautiful games, beautifully made, beautiful to play. Specifically, recently, a game called Fundomino and another, Double Shutter. Both are available in last-forever plastic housed in life-long tins, as well as in an impressive selection of all-woody embodiments. And both are fun - uniquely, ingeniously, play-again-worthy fun.

Both are based on games of time-tested appeal. Fundomino is based on on Blue Orange's very successful Bendomio, which, in turn, is based on the even more successful and much older game of Dominoes. Double Shutter is based on a game known variously as Shut the Box, Tric Trac, Canoga, Batten Down the Hatches, or Card Sharks. But it's just different enough, because it adds, well, a whole new level, as it were, of things to flip.

If you don't quite understand what I mean by "things to flip" you'll understand why I decided, clearly, most reluctantly, not to give these games their rightful Major FUN due. It's the rules, see, of both games. See, if you don't know the games they are based on, the rules turn out to be just a little too subtle, which, in turn, turns out to be a little too frustrating. Like, for example, figuring out that you keep on rolling the dice, on your turn, over and over, until you can't roll them any more. And then it's the next player's turn. Simple, something everyone should know. O, it's in the rules, if you look hard enough, and you are ready for a radical change in assumptions. The same when you're playing Fundomino. Fun. Really. Until you try to figure out what connects to a Yellow Plus, for example.

But the games, in every way, are Major FUN. Really. And if you can't quite figure out the rules, you can make up your own. It's easy enough. And there's enough play value in the bended-dominoes-with-UNO-like-wild-tiles, or in the beautifully-crafted dice-box with two rows to, uh, shut.

Major FUN-wise, though, seal-givingly, if only the rules were just a tiny bit more obvious, written, illustrated a bit more directly for the casual American family gamer, the seal would be on both games, complete with the all the endorsement thereby implied.