The people who've developed Chuckers like to call it a "family tossing game."

By "tossing game" they mean a game that involves, well, tossing things, as does, for example, horseshoes, and a variety of bean bag and target games, and of course washer toss, a game called, strangely enough, "cornhole," and most relevantly perhaps that quoits game where you throw rings around pegs.

So, in a way, if you know any one of these games, you'll know how to play Chuckers. In another way, because it combines different aspects of traditional games to result in a completely different, and, arguably, a far more majorly fun game - because it's a family game.

By "family" they mean a game that can be played by just about anybody - especially if you're kinda loose about the rules. Which you can be, easily. Because the game is almost self-explanatory. Because the game is so well made.

And because the game is as much luck as it is skill. Very interesting - how combining luck and skill, in just the right manner, so that you really half believe that you can master the thing, learn the right control, the precision positioning of finger and ring and foot and eye, while at the same time, you half know that it's really luck, not skill - sheer luck that your ring thing landed around the farthest peg or into the farthest target or wound up leaning on a peg, giving you exactly 21 points! Just enough luck so that anyone, regardless of skill, can win. Even you.

The rings you toss are made of rubber and steel. They've got, what you'd call, "heft." The things you toss them into are, however, way heftier. Thick, sturdy, and yes, what you could only call "industrial strength" plastic. They are connected by a rope which is exactly as long as the recommended distance between the two targets. It's a game you can leave out for a while, at a family party, in a playground, a park, a classroom...

Labels: Family Games

Blokus Trigon is a hexagonal version of the Major Fun awarded strategy game, Blokus, which you can now play online.

What's the difference between the hexagonal Trigon and the square Blokus? Well, there is an extra piece (22 vs. 21) in Trigon, and the shapes, though similar in variety to pentominoes, are built of triangles as opposed to squares.

But the rules are basically the same. And the play is basically the same. And both games have variations for 1-4 players (yes, solitaire versions, of significantly enticing challenge, I might add).

I can only think of one significant difference - a purely visual one, which, my friend, is more than significant enough. Since so much of playing Blokus depends on the ability to perceive shapes, changing from a square to a triangular unit makes all the difference. Even for a Blokus master, Blokus Trigon is a whole new game.

Labels: Family Games, Kids Games, Thinking Games

Sudoku Challenge is prolific game designer Reiner Knizia's answer to the widely distributed (and I mean widely), and often excessively-challenging Sudoku puzzle. And it turns out to be a surprisingly fun answer, even for people who don't know or especially like Sudoku.

After the board (a traditional 9x9 Sudoku matrix) is seeded (in something similar to the traditional Sudoku manner), players take turns drawing and placing number tiles on the Sudoku grid. Following the Sudoku puzzle rule, you can't put a tile in the same row or column or region (traditional Sudoku matrices are divided, tic-tac-toe-like, into 9 regions) where the same tile has already been played.

Your score (and hence the challenge) is determined by how many tiles are in the same row, column and region. As you can so clearly imagine, the potential to score higher on each turn, or to run out of legal moves, increases as the available spaces become fewer and fewer.

We found the game less demanding, and more fun than a Sudoku puzzle. Maybe because it's a lot easier to play with movable tiles than with pen or pencil. Maybe because it's more fun to play together than alone.

Speaking of together, if you have school age kids, turn the board over. It's Zoodoku, a children's version of the game using a set of animal tiles. More visually demanding, but a smaller matrix, with fewer intersections, and gentler rules.

Labels: Thinking Games

Luck of the Draw is described as "a game for the artistically challenged." And I am happy to tell you that this turns out to be a remarkably accurate description of the very people who will have the most fun playing it: the people who don't like games that make them draw.

Which is exactly what Luck of the Draw does. It makes you draw. Things like: a monkey or a space shuttle or a bad hair day; a piranha, a used car or a dream date (there are three things to draw on each card, see, and the roll of the die tells you which one).

But the part of the game that makes the drawing actually fun and the fun actually Major, comes from another deck of cards, called "categories." Categories like: "most over the top," "most dramatic," "stands out like a sore thumb."

For it turns out that these cards, these "category" cards, serve as the criteria by which the drawings are judged, don't you know. So, pretty much despite my assiduous efforts at a 45-second 3-D rendering of the Eiffel Tower in perspective with enticing hints of a chiaroscoro-like Parisian dawn, if the category turns out to be "Best Example of Minimalism," I have no myopic critics to rail against, and nothing to show for my outstanding efforts but unrequited artistic angst. Whilst you, who only managed to draw a large, narrow, and somewhat crooked "A," bask in the applause of your peers.

And for those players who have professional artistic aspirations, Luck of the Draw is a preternaturally poignant experience, capturing, with unavoidable clarity, the famously fickle fortunes of those who stake their livelihood on the currentmost definitions of "good art."

Labels: Family Games, Party Games, Senior-Worthy, Top for 2006

Ringgz is a strategy game for two, three or four players. And yes, it is as strategically interesting with three as it is with two or four.

The object of the game is to occupy the most territory. You do this by putting a ring (wooden, of course) around the chosen point of territory. There are different size rings - three of different diameters, and one, solid, cylindrical core. You can put a larger ring around a smaller ring, or a smaller ring inside a larger ring. You can put a ring around any point of territory orthogonally adjacent to any other place you have put your ring. The player who gains a territory is the one who has the majority of rings around a point. Since there are a total of four concentric layers, you can easily tie. On the other hand, if yours is the only ring, at the end of the game, that point of territory is also yours. And then there are the large solid discs that you can play - not to gain territory, but to open up the opportunity (so you can claim a vertically or horizontally adjacent point next turn).

Rife, rife I say with strategic implications, each all subtle and delicious, revealing themselves at different times during the game, and still other times when you play again.

It's not the kind of game that makes you laugh, unless you think it's funny when you do stupid things. Which you will, and it is.

The pieces are made of wood. The board is made of wood. It's a game well-worth the care with which it was designed and produced.

Labels: Thinking Games