Today's Major FUN Award goes to Hoopla, a guessing game that combines Pictionary ("Cloodle"), Charades ("Soundstage") with two original guessing game formats to create a challenging, collaborative, and high-gigglewatts experience of party-perfect fun - even for a party of two.

The two original guessing games are Tongue-Tied, where you have to use clues starting with the same letter, and Tweener, where your clues must be in the format: "It's bigger than....but smaller than...." Each is fun in itself. Each more effective depending on what you're trying to get everyone else to guess.

The things that you're trying to get each other to guess are determined by the cards drawn from a deck of 285 cards, each illustrated with a color photo. The category (an essential clue) is written on the back of each card. The game you play is decided by the toss of a novel ten-sided die. The fifth choice is called "Wild Hoopla" where you determine which of the four guessing formats you're going to use. Contrary to expectations, this choice can burn many delightfully agonizing seconds while you figure out which format is most appropriate to, say, "Microbrew" or "Elton John" or "PEZ."

Then there's a really well-designed mechanical timer that ticks the time away quietly, but thunderously enough to keep the pace, and players, well-nigh unto frantic. You start and stop the timer by hitting it - which, depending on the difficulty of the card, can prove a most satisfying vehicle for self-expression.

Given my bias towards cooperation, I was especially happy to discover that Hoopla is, in fact, a "Pointless" game. No scores are kept. The objective is for everyone to get everyone else to guess all the cards drawn in the alloted time - which is just short enough to make victory most definitely sweet.

All in all, from design and manufacture to playing the game, Hoopla proves itself a most Major Fun-worthy game.

Labels: Party Games

If you like games enough to want to expand your repertoire beyond the offerings of commercial conglomerates, or if you are an independent game producer hoping to get the word out, DiscoverGames.com could prove to be a major find.

Founder Mary Couzins explains:

I have been through the process having invented and produced five games myself including one licensing/consulting agreement with University Games. I started DiscoverGames.com to help other game inventors. There is strength in numbers. That was obvious the first time we went to Toy Fair as DiscoverGames.com. I had been there previously under Game Geste with my games. Many industry people (retailers, licensors, manufacturers) walk past your booth if you are a 1 or 2 game booth. As DiscoverGames.com we were jammed with people the last 5 years. In addition we receive over 250,000 page views per month. Hasbro, F X Schmidt, Mattel, University, as well as European and Australian game companies and many others all visit. They search for new product at our site because it is the only place Independents
can get together. Several of our members have received licensing agreements (both here and abroad) due to our services (including myself).

We do not review product. All games are welcome. We are here to help you promote your product by taking it to Toy Fair (the biggest industry show) in New York, in September your game would go to The Toy and Game Inventor Forum pn Las Vegas (where we are not only exhibitors, but I am a speaker on the Inventor Success Story Panel), in the summer possibly GenCon and Origins, promoting your game on our site, we do emailing to over 7,200 people in the industry, and you would be eligible to participate in our postal mailings to catalog (March), retail people (August) and our press release mailing in the summer/fall. Members also have available to them many industry lists, retailers who will carry their product, tips for saving money and have access to the private member bulletin board. In addition, I give out my home number and will try to help you in any way I can.

We are also working with game companies (Hasbro on down to our independents) to put on a huge consumer show set for Labor Day weekend on Chicago's Navy Pier next year. This type of show has been popular in Europe for some time. We think it is time it be done in the U.S. There will be life size games, game shows on the Skyline Stage, dockside inventor signings and much more. As I am sure you know, there are no game shows aimed to the family in the states (GenCon and Origins are a different segment of the game world). In Europe such shows are very popular.

I want people to rediscover game playing. Get to know your kids in a non-confrontational way. It is a good excuse to get together with your neighbors (or anyone).



For the huge collection of independent games, for the innovative, modestly priced service to independent game producers, for the vision, fortitude, and heart needed to produce a game show aimed at the family, DiscoverGames.com gets a Major FUN Award.

Labels: Defender of the Playful

Today's Major FUN Award goes to Apples to Apples. In fact, it goes not only to Apples to Apples, not only to the two editions of Apples to Apples Junior or the Apple to Apple Booster Kits, but also to the veritable makers and marketers of Apples to Apples, Out of the Box Publishing.

But first, let's talk Apples to Apples.

It's a party game - from a little party of four players to a significant party of ten. It's a card game. A lot of cards. 432 cards, by my count. Nicely made, highly-shufflable, plastic-coated, square-cornered cards. Well-designed, easy-to-read cards with cute commentaries. And a card tray to hold three stacks of 'em. And clear rules printed on stiff, coated paper. This is typical of Out of the Box products. Lots of consideration given to look and feel and longtime replay value.

But enough about how it looks. It's how it plays that makes it so Major FUN Award-worthy.

There are two different kinds of cards. The Green Apple cards describe characteristics, like: Influential, Wicked, Distinguished. The Red Apple cards are people, places and things. Each player gets seven Red Apple cards. One player, who gets to be the Judge for that particular turn, selects a Green Apple card. Then everyone else more or less races to play a Red Apple card or two that fits that characteristic. What constitutes a fit can get very iffy in deed. Given, for example, a Green Apple of INFLUENTIAL, which of these cards would you play: COCKROACHES, HOOLIGANS, JAMES BOND, WHEAT, ICEBERGS, GRAVITY, or THE UNIVERSE? Some are clearly iffier than others. One could say that THE UNIVERSE is more influential than HOOLIGANS. In fact, one could even say that GRAVITY is even more influential.

It turns out that that very iffiness is what makes the game such a delight to play. There are no right answers. It's up to the imagination of the players, the judgment of the judge, and whatever subtle pressures one puts on the other.

Because a different player plays Judge each turn, the iffiness gets spread around evenly enough to make the game as fair as it is fun.

As to its Gigglwattage, it varies in intensity. Generally, the game is about a 40-Gigglewatter. But, from time to time, it can get blindingly funny.

And then there's the Major FUN Award that goes to Out-of-the-Box itself. Every game I've looked at from them so far has that well-designed, carefully considered, made-for-easy-fun feeling. And they make good use of their website, going to the extent of offering downloadable rules for each of their games - just in case you need an extra copy.

A Major FUN Award for the game. A Major FUN Award for the company that makes it. O, the enthusiastic endorsement of it all!

Labels: Family Games, Keeper, Party Games, Senior-Worthy, Word Games

Today's Major FUN Award goes to Curses - a game of geometrically increasing silliness for 3-6 players, age 12 and up.

There are two decks of cards and a very nice hotel-type hit-the-top-and-it-rings bell. One deck of cards is called "Challenges," the other "Curses."

Let's start with the "Curses," which, of course, are the real challenges. A Curse is something silly that you have to do. For example, you might have the Curse of having to talk in a French accent, or having your wrists glued to your head (well, there's no real glue, but you have to pretend there is), or having to bow every time someone applauds. As the game progresses, you get more Curses. From other players, actually. Remembering two Curses is at least twice as difficult as remembering one. By the time you have three Curses you are at a conceptual point likened only to patting your tummy and rubbing your head while singing "Boat your row, row, row." In a French accent.

When you break a Curse, some observant player dutifully rings the bell. If you break enough Curses, you're kind of out. Kind of, because you still get to be a bell-ringer and cause of Curse-breaking.

The Challenges make the Curses evermore Curselike. You might have to ask someone else out to a school prom, or be in a TV commercial explaining why your deodorant is best or demonstrate how you celebrated your what you did when you scored the winning touchdown in the Superbowl. Each challenge takes on a very different light when you have to perform it under multiple Curses.

Curses radiates at least 120 Gigglewatts of pure Guffaw-power. It's can get very, very difficult to play, very quickly, and is challenging enough to occupy the most limber-minded of collegiates, whilst silly enough to keep even us over-the-hillsies laughing and coughing in glee.

The only niggle I have is with the quality of the cards. They don't pass the shuffle test very easily. But that, compared to the sheer hysteria that this game catalyzes, is clearly, at most, a nano-niggle.

Labels: Keeper, Party Games