PACKAGED PLAY | Americas MONOPOLY Game is a thoughtworthy site, exploring the game of Monopoly, not so much as a fun thing, but as a high-fidelity simulation of the American way. I can do little more than quote:

"Appearing in the game rules included in a standard set of Monopoly, the object states the 'plot' of the game. Yet it does not clearly establish the objective of the game. For that, consider this redefinition provided by Alan Axelrod in Everything I Know about Business I Learned from Monopoly:

"So here is your #1 rule. Under the heading 'Object': 'The object of the game is to buy, rent and sell property with sufficiently focused and ruthless skill to bankrupt the other players and thereby force them out of the game.' (117)

"So defined, the nature and goal of the game are unmistakable: to be the last one standing.

"Consider the monopoly giants of the Gilded Age, whose names continue to stand as formidable pillars in the industrial world, Andrew Carnegie and John Rockefeller. Their domination of steel and oil, respectively, provoked an outcry against laissez-faire practices of the time. These men conquered not by amassing wealth but by being the ones standing on top. As such, it would only seem logical that a game dedicated to the art of monopoly would proclaim the winner as one who solely dominated the board.

"Further evidence of the ruthless nature of the game may be discovered in a closer reading of the rules.

"Ever wonder why there were only 32 houses and 12 hotels? Well, the answer is provided under the section of frequently asked questions:

"To maintain a balance in the game, there have always been exactly 32 houses and 12 hotels in the Monopoly game. If it were possible to improve all the properties, it would be difficult to force opponents into bankruptcy.

"Building shortages are not merely a realistic aspect of the game, but also one intended to perpetuate the game's underlying, ruthless nature. A smart player will scramble to develop their properties, hiking up rents, and thus stripping their 'opponents' of the capital needed to develop their own color group. Camaraderie among players is further discouraged by the prohibition of favors.

May these reflections and profundities make your next game of Monopoly even more fun.

Thanks for the find go, as you might have guessed, to Pat Kane

Easy Come, Easy Go is a dice game that starts out as fun, and keeps on being fun until the very end. It's easy to understand, easy to play, and takes maybe an easy 5-10 minutes for a round. And it's easily one of the best dice games on the market.

It'll remind you of Yahtzee, but you'll be wrong. There are 4 dice, and yes, you try to roll them so that they get to a certain total or so they're two of a kind or all of a kind, in a most Yahtzee-like manner. Except that there are only 4 dice. And the dice are numbered from 0 to 5 instead of 1-6. And once you choose not to re-roll a die, you can't roll it again on the next turn. But that's not really what makes this little dice game so much fun.

It's the "prizes" (9 of them, printed on thick card stock). Each prize describes a different dice combination (like "7 exactly" or "3 of a kind, all dice odd".) Your goal is to get three of those prizes, and keep them until it is your turn again. Of course, all prizes remain in play, even though you've staked your claim to one or several. And therein lies the Easy Go, and the deliciously painful fun of watching someone else take one of your cards. So you really never know who wins until the very last moment. And because it's so easy to understand, it's Major FUN, especially for families.

Nice dice cup, too.

Labels: Family Games

If you were asked to design a game that would be perfect in a coffee shop, Fundex's Jumpin' Java would be the standard for the kind of game you might hope to create.

First, and most apparent, the packaging. Presented in a well-made wooden box with pieces that look like miniature cups and saucers and a board that looks like a string of coasters, the game is perfectly themed for coffee house consumption. The vacuum-formed packing holds each object in its place, making storage easy and self-guided (you know right away if you're missing a piece). Slide the lid off the box, look at the other side of it, and there are the rules, clearly written, and almost impossible to lose. Now that you see how well this game is packaged and designed, you realize that this, really, is how every game should be made. Every game design school and game designer should keep it on their shelves for reference.

As for the game play, it is a fast, compelling strategy game for two. Not too deep. And just long enough to play a couple times before you've finished your coffee. Which is, of course, precisely the kind of game you'd want to play, if playing a game in a coffee house was you wanted to do.

Rumis is a genuinely deep strategy game for 2-4 players brought to you by Educational Insights. "Educational Insights," you probably ask, in potentially reverse discrimination, "how could an educational game, recommended for kids first grade and older, be of any interest to my mature self?" (A painfully parallel question to teachers who voice similar concerns about games like Apples to Apples and Ten Days in the USA). Perhaps it will somewhat clarify issues when you take into account that these are the same people who brought us the very Major FUN-award winning Blokus.

Though the game can be played by 2-4 players, it works best with 4. Each player uses a set of 11 3-dimensional blocks. There's one shape made of two cubes, two shapes out of 3 cubes, and the remaining shapes are each permutations of 4 cubes. Players alternate turns laying setting blocks on the board (you can use any of 4 different boards), the rule being that, after the first round, each piece (called "stone") must be placed so that it touches at least one face of any stone of your color that you already played. You do have to stay within the perimeter of the board, and you can't stack stones above the height limitation (which differs, depending on which board you use.

The base is a turntable, which becomes increasingly appreciated as more and more pieces are placed, and the configuration becomes more complicated. When the game ends, you look at the structure from top down, scoring a point for every face of your color that you can see.

The concept is strategically deep enough to keep even veteran gamers challenged throughout the game. At the Tasting, we had two different teams of players who wanted to try it, and each team wanted to play it again and again with different boards. The only complaint was that maybe a little too much dexterity is required for precise piece placement. This could have something to do with the age of the players and the amount of coffee consumed.

Labels: Senior-Worthy, Thinking Games

This is a picture of Bruce Williamson, at 2 years of age, on his way to becoming author of The Certificate of the Right to Play. With this certificate, you, too, can become "A lifetime member in good standing of the Society of Childlike Grownups." It is a delightful thing, this significantly silly certificate, demonstrating a keen, honest, heartfelt understanding of what it should mean to be a grown-up.

It comes from a fellow named Bruce Williamson, whose remarkably mature understanding of the nature of childlike grownuphood is reflected with clarity and a certain hard-won innocence on his Society of Childlike Grownups chock-full-of-resources website. Devoted to teaching us how to become Childlike Grownups, the Society offers us a spare little website, and yet it presents a rare depth of playful wisdom which is evident just from the titles of its main pages:

• Remember the Child you Are
• Save The World
• Let Your Music Play
• Take Good Care Of Yourself
• Come Out & Play
• Make Stuff Up
• See Things Differently
• Wonder Around
• Color Outside The Lines
• Laugh For The Health Of It
• Restory Yourself
• Pick Up Your Toys
• Look On The Bright Side

Amazed that I hadn't encountered Bruce before, I called him up, only to discover that we had met at the Games Preserve more than 25 years ago. Though we haven't crossed paths again until now, Bruce is clearly a fellow traveler, and a gift to all of us who follow the Playful Path.

Labels: Defender of the Playful

A to Z Jr. is pretty much the same game as the Major FUN Award-winning A to Z. The only significant difference is the category cards. Which turns out to be significant enough to make it Major FUN Award-worthy in its own right.

Though A to Z Jr. uses easier categories, the game is just challenging enough to keep adults interested. Which makes it just about the prefect family game. You take turns rolling a die. The die determines what question you have to answer. The object is to fill your board, from A to Z, with responses to questions like "Things you can buy in a Supermarket." Every correct answer allows you to cover the corresponding letter with a red, transparent chip. As your board gets filled up, the game gets more and more difficult, because there are fewer correct choices. The delicious "vengeance is mine" rule that allows you to remove chips from your opponent's board keeps the game in balance, and adds greatly to the fun and anguish of it all.

Of course, depending on your children's resilience, it might be necessary to adjust the challenge here and there. The fact that it's so easy to make the game easier (or more challenging) is key to its success as a family game. If your child feels that she doesn't know the names of baseball teams or different seafood, she can roll again or choose a different card (perhaps while the timer's still running).

Both games (Junior and non-Junior) have been updated and repackaged. A new electronic timer (2 AAA batteries, not included - tiny Phillips screwdriver needed) graces both games. The 30 second timer ticks away with increasing speed as the time elapses, and a satisfyingly unthreatening male voice lets you know when time's up.

Labels: Keeper, Kids Games

Chairs is probably one of the most challenging and playworthy dexterity games I've encountered. And I've done a lot of encountering!

As you can see from the illustration, the goal is to stack as many chairs as you can. After several hours of play, our highest stack to date is 7. And that's out of 24 chairs!

The directions recommend two different ways to play - in one, you just take turns and lose points when you make the stack fall, in the other, you distribute the chairs equally and then take turns. The second choice proves the more funworthy. If you make the chairs fall, you add them all to your pile. The first player with no chairs wins. This way, you don't have to do any score keeping - your progress (or regress), being self-evident. You can also pre-determine how long you want to play - depending on how many chairs each player has in the beginning of the game.

Of the several fun-provoking features of Chairs, one of the most appreciated was that all chairs are not alike. There are 8 different styles. So far, my expertise has not increased sufficiently for me to tell you the subtle differences between styles and how they influence their stackability. But I can tell you that it makes the set as interesting to a two-year old as to a 63-year old.

I was so delighted to discover a game that has such a broad range of appeal that I found myself driven to create yet another Major Fun award - one specifically for families. I hope that I find many more games for this category. But I have a feeling that no matter how many more games I find, Chairs is going to prove unique.

Labels: Dexterity, Family Games, Keeper, Kids Games

You know the classic trading game Pit? The game where everyone is yelling out numbers and trading cards? Two. Two. Two. Two? Hold on to that thought. And while you're holding on, do you by any chance remember that equally classic card game called "Spoons"? You know, the one where you put a bunch of spoons or grabbable things in the middle of the table - one less than there are players - and everyone is kind of passing cards around and trying to get four of a kind and as soon as someone succeeds that person grabs a spoon and then everyone else grabs, and the player who doesn't get a spoon pretty much loses? Got it? Good. Because now you have a very good idea why Jurrasic Jumble is such a fun game.

The object of the game is more difficult than Spoons. There are nine cards that you're trying to assemble, and each card is of a different color. And, like Pit there are a couple of cards you really don't want to have at game end, so there's that to think about. And while you're doing all that thinking, there's the fact that someone else has already taken the spoon (actually, a large, rubbery plastic bone that you kinda want to chew), and if you don't notice in time, no matter how close you are to winning, you don't. Which is really what makes this game unique and uniquely playworthy. Especially for kids. It's a perfect combination of two very fun games.

Yes, it's about dinosaurs and bones and paleontology and stuff. But that really has very little to do with the fun of it all. For kids, like I said, especially. And though the manufacturer suggests that kids as young as 6 would like the game, we found that it was a little too much at first, even for an intelligent 7-year old. And though the manufacturer also suggests that the game is adultworthy, it's really a little, well, shallow for extended replay. But for kids, and families with kids who are 7ish or older, and, of course, for adults whose brains are slightly fogged, it's a great game. And as many as 9 people can play it. And it's one of those games that most definitely gets merrier as more people get involved.

Labels: Kids Games