If you happened to find yourself in such a position, and you wished to express, materially, in a virtual-sort of way, your personal appreciation for my ongoing existence, you might very well wish to send me a gift of some sort - especially if it didn't cost you anything. The question remains, however, what to get me. I've narrowed it down to: Pottery Classes, a Digital Camcorder, and a dress-up outfit. As an added incentive, if you happen to choose the one I really, really, really wanted most in the world, given only those three choices, you'd get three thumbs-up points and so would I! So, see, I really do want you to guess the one I really want, because then we both gets thumbs-up points. So the game is about giving each other things, things that'd be nice to be able to give each other, virtual, no-cash-value gifts that nonetheless are genuine acts of thoughtfulness.

This is GiftTRAP Live, Virtual GiftTRAP, yes, the Major FUN award-winning GiftTRAP of that very same name. Only, it's online now, and it's all grown-up into a game for online social networks, if you know what I mean.

On the one hand, it's a kind of an eCard, so to speak, a nice virtual thing you can send people. Way more personal than a joke. Just as much fun. On the other hand, it's a great way to start that "what do you really want for your birthday, or holidays" conversation. So it's like Web 2.0, see, interpenetrating virtual and actual space.

Now that you know that I'd actually prefer the dress-up outfit, you know where to shop for me. And you can shop online, even. And it's like one of those Mass Multiplayer Online Games you sometimes read about, like Second Life, only the life on GiftTRAP's stage is kinder and gentler and more fun.

It behooves me to admit to a personal interest in this project. It was a comment I made back to the Nick from GiftTRAP that kicked off this whole project, and I've been lucky enough to kibitz on various iterations of this game as its evolved.

Which is why I get to be the first to blog about it going live.



from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Labels: Party Games, Virtual Toys

Tunnelz is a 3-D, Twixt-like game with the elegance and simplicity of Tic-Tac-Toe. Your objective: make a connected line of your color pieces, stretching from side to side of the cube.

You get 8 blocks. Your opponent, 8 of a different color. You get a plastic cube, a 3-D matrix, 5-rows by 5-columns by 5-tunnelz deep. The blocks are one cell wide and high, and two cells deep. So, in fact, you only need three blocks (well, 2.5) to make a continuous, side-spanning line. Except, of course, you take turns, and your opponent has this annoying need to block you, so to speak, whist pursuing her orthogonally distinct line-making, side-spanning efforts.

The two two-cell depth of the blocks adds yet more interesting properties. Once you put a block into a Tunnel, it stays in that tunnel. If it were one-cell deep as well as wide and high, you could slide the block in any of eight directions, from row to row, column to column, level to level. But it's two. So you can't. So a piece positioned in any particular tunnel, blocks four other tunnelz. Very interesting. Interesting also that you can push a piece deeper into the game cube. You even get a pushing rod for that very purpose. Interesting that when you push your piece, you might very well be pushing another piece in that same tunnel, in such a way as not only to connect some of your blocks, but also to disconnect some of hers.

All in all, Tunnelz is an attractive, inviting, and unique two-player strategy game, simple enough for any tic-tac-toe-playing tot. Intriguing enough to merit more than a modicum of mature contemplation.

Labels: Kids Games, Thinking Games

In a Pickle is something you can get easily into, in Gamewright's party-like, family-worthy card game from for 4-6 players, especially. Especially players who like to play with words, and, amongst those, the ones who care more about fun than about winning.

You get cards, many cards, 320 many. Every card has a word on it. Every word is a noun. So you give each player a handful of nouns, and you take 4 nouns, place them in the middle of the table, head to head, in a plus sign, arrows out.

Arrows. Arrows help you remember the direction of the "fit-into" - for that is the key criteria by which one evaluates one's options - something that fits into something else. In the direction of the arrows. So like, if you had CHICKEN on one of the cards and someone overlaps BALLOON upon CHICKEN, one might be reasonably implying that a CHICKEN can fit into a BALLOON. Similar things could be said about underlapping WHISTLE with CHICKEN because a WHISTLE can fit into a CHICKEN, much to the chagrin of the aforementioned.

The fun makes itself especially apparent during "Pickle Rounds" which are initiated as soon as one of the arms of the plus (the array of cards, face up, on the table) reaches 4. After that, players may ONLY play cards on that arm, the last player to successfully add a card winning all the cards in that arm. O, both goodie and glee! All the cards in an arm!!

The success of this game depends a lot on the light-heartedness of the players, in the first place. But if you're a small group of friends, or an actually healthy family, and you enjoy arguing (who doesn't?) you'll probably find it Major FUN

Labels: Family Games, Party Games, Word Games

I began my world travels years ago, where I spent 10 thrill-filled days in Africa, and I recall, even now, remarking at how remarkable it all was, how much fun we were having learning about where Africa has all its countries. Even though that wasn't really the point of the game, as much as the delicious dialog between luck and logic that this game, like all good card games, seems to be all about.

It's a card game, really - a tile game, even, for 2-4 players, maybe 9 to certainly adult. Not a board game at all even though you spend a lot of time looking at the board. You never really play on the board. You play on card holders, two of them, actually, one numbered 1-5, the other 6-10. You pick a card and place it into any slot in your card holder. And then another, and then other. Planning, all the while, to place each card so that when all ten are assembled onto your card holders, they will be in the right order, each country card leading to another, geographically adjacent country card, unless it's a boat card and the boat card is the same color as the ocean you share with that country card, and even, after that, if you get another country card of a country that happens to be on the same ocean, then you can probably take the train to that country, which is, in turn, a non-stop plane-ride away from Vladivostok, as the saying goes.

But, of course, it never goes that way, and you wind up having to discard and pick and replace and let me tell you the planning, the heights and clarity of logic one can manifest, only to be felled by something as stupid as luck, argh, it's enough to make you have fun. Sizable fun. Major FUN.

Anyhow, that was then. And that was Africa. There's been USA and Europe. And now there's Asia. And what does that mean? It means it's a whole new game, one that you know how to play, but with O so many, many Asian countries. And the board, isn't it subtly, and everso welcomely larger? And what about trains? Isn't this the first of the 10 Day series to have trains? But it's another 10 Days game, all right. You're on a trek as fun as your Africa ever was, or USA or Europe, even, but in yet another part of the world called "Asia," with so many Asian-sounding countries to learn about, and with such a fun way to do it, while you're having so much fun playing, thanks to the cleverly globe-spanning people who made these trips possible.

Labels: Senior-Worthy, Thinking Games

TransAmerica is the first "track" game I've played. Good thing. We could actually understand the rules in about maybe 5 minutes. Its rules, but not exactly what they mean...

You play on a simplified map of the US. Nice, big board. There are cities. There are cards - one for each city on the board. Nice, little cards. Pretty. In 5 different colors. Then everybody takes one of each. And that way, you get your cities, scattered across the country, coast-to-veritable-coast.

You want to be the first to have all of your cities connected. You build tracks using little wooden sticks. Lots of little wooden sticks. Not fun for the feeble-fingered. You place them along a network of lines that connect hither to yon.

What's deliciously hard to remember, at first, is that you're not building your own separate railroad. So as the game continues, and you connect more tracks, you all take advantage of the connections that everyone else has already made. Kinda if you wait long enough, someone else might just as easily make the connection you need. And therein the strategic subtleties are at play.

The game doesn't take long to play, either. And you can honestly play it with 2 as well as with 3 as well as with 4,5, or 6. And it almost doesn't matter if someone joins in after the game has started, because, like I said: we're all on the same track.

Labels: Thinking Games