Growing up, it was good being the eldest child. My sister, 19 months my junior, worked hard to keep up. My parents have this distinct memory, one that seems to have epitomized our sibling bond, of my sister gripping the step-plate of a tricycle as I drug her all over the yard in an attempt to shake her loose. It was like a scene out of an Indiana Jones movie (one of the good ones…) To say we were competitive would be an understatement, but I liked that in my sister. She put up a good fight, and so I could feel good about winning. And I always won.

That was until Dutch Blitz.

Dutch Blitz is a card game. A speed card game in which players have a deck of 40 cards: four suits (blue, yellow, red, green) numbered 1 – 10. The game was developed in Pennsylvania Dutch country by Werner Ernst George Muller in the late 1950s. It is especially popular in northern states that have extensive German, Dutch, and Amish communities.

Blitz (German for lightning) is the operative word. Each player has a “Blitz” pile of 10 cards. The goal is to get rid of these 10 cards by playing them on piles of cards that sprout up in the middle of the table. Players may start a pile in the middle of the table, the “Dutch” piles, with the number 1. Once a “Dutch” pile is started, the other players may play their cards sequentially on that pile (2 goes on a 1, 3 goes on a 2, etc…) It is important to remember that the goal is to get rid of the “Blitz” pile. The first player to play all the cards of this “Blitz” pile shouts BLITZ!! and the round stops. The other players count up how many cards are left in their Blitz pile and multiply by two. These are negative points. Cards played to the Dutch piles are sorted (each deck has a different picture on the back) and counted. These are positive points. Each round is scored and the game ends when a player reaches 100 points.

The game is incredibly fast and is one of those games that should come with a stroke warning for people with blood pressure related illnesses. Because the Dutch piles in the middle are shared, collisions are common as players desperately try to move cards from their Blitz pile or just get out a few more points. This is not a game for leisurely conversation. At family reunions and holiday gatherings the most common phrase during play is “Can’t talk. Go ask your (insert other parent here)”

Blue and Yellow cards have an image of a boy while in the upper corners while the Red and Green cards have the image of a girl. This allows for a further complication of the game as players can also play cards on three piles in front of them (like Solitaire) as long as they alternate boy and girl cards.

When the Major Fun tasters played the game, I sat out many of the rounds. Experience is a definite advantage in speed games, and sure enough, when I finally played a few hands I won easily. But the others learned quickly and once the learning curve smoothed out, we had several tense, exciting rounds. Brought back memories.

My sister destroyed me in Dutch Blitz. I might win a round or two but she would dominate the game. I never wanted to give up—I remained competitive—but I can’t remember many times in which I got to 100 before my sister. A humbling moment in the sibling dynamic. But Major Fun for nearly four decades.

William Bain, Games Taster

Although you cannot buy Dutch Blitz from the parent website, the company does provide a list of distributors that will sell via the inter-tubes. Their list of online distributors is here: http://www.dutchblitz.com/webdistributors.htm

There is something intense about the sound of dice rattling in a cup. I believe that Parcheesi and Yahtzee have survived though the ages because of the anticipation and release that comes from rolling the dice from a resonant vessel. Ligretto Dice exploits and amplifies this primal emotion to great effect and, I believe, establishes itself among the aforementioned giants of the game world.

As its name indicates Ligretto Dice is a card game. Just testing. It’s a dice game. And a speed game. It is also a loud game. Imagine Yahtzee played by four people simultaneously, and everyone is racing to be done first.

There are 24 dice, 6 of each color (red, yellow, blue, green). These are evenly drawn from a cloth bag by the players (in a four player game, each player draws six). The object is to be the first to place all of your dice onto a game board that has 24 spaces, each space corresponding to the color and number of each face of the dice. For example: if you roll a green one, then you may place your die on that space. Spaces on each color must be filled sequentially so the green one must be filled by some player before another player can put a die on green two.

And it’s a game of speed so first come, first served. Someone took your spot? Try one of your other dice. Too slow again? Ohhhhh. So sorry. Better get rolling!!

If a player has nothing to play, the player must roll the remaining dice. If the player rolls any of the remaining dice the player must roll ALL of the remaining dice. No saving high numbers for later! The round ends when one player has placed all dice on the board. Each player starts the game with 100 points and points are deducted for each die left over at the end of the round. One point lost for each die. The round winner GAINS one point for each die that was not played.

Ligretto Dice is thunderous with four people. Dice crashing. Tumblers rumbling. Dice skittering across the table. Hands slapping. Hoots of triumph and growls of frustration. Lots of laughter. If there is silence it means someone just broke the bowl of chips in all the excitement. Maybe messy and loud, but always Major Fun.

Ligretto Dice game design by Inka and Markus Brand. © 2010 by Playroom Entertainment.

William Bain, Games Taster

Toppletree is another strategy game from Mindware that is deep enough to interest your mature thinker and yet enough of a toy to fascinate a 4-year-old.

As a dexterity game, the challenge is to try to fit all 72 pieces onto the base then on to each other without any of them falling off. As a strategy game, the object is to be the first to get 4 pieces of your color all in a row.

There are 4 sets of pieces, each in it’s own, bright color. There are 2 kinds of pieces – 12 of them are straight, 6 Y-shaped. The Y-shaped pieces are strategically the most interesting, and also cause the most trouble. As in tic-tac-toe, you succeed by giving yourself multiple ways to win.

Every Y-shaped piece gives you two possibilities. On the other hand, each branch on the Y-shaped piece creates an option that is a little more or less out of plumb, a little more or less likely to make the whole, increasingly unstable tree topple. Hence, the name of the game.

If the game is too difficult, and the tree keeps toppling before anyone can get four-in-a-row, then you make it the rule that the first player to get three-in-a-row wins. If it’s still too challenging, just take turns adding pieces – the first player to make the tree topple ending the game. If, because of the superior architectural skills of the players, it turns out to be too easy, then make for five- or even six-in-a-row. If there are only two players, and you think there’s still not enough action, have each player use two colors.

As much fun for two, three or four players, as much of a toy as a strategy game, Toppletree is a invitation to play for the whole family.

Toppletree was designed by Andrew Baker, of IQ Ideas, the same company that designed the Major Fun award-winning game MiQube.

Haba Technics

Some genius-level, child-wise engineers at Haba have come up with an innovative addition to your assortment of well-crafted Haba building blocks. An innovation that proves to be a most enticing invitation for your young (suggested ages 3-10), genius-level engineers. They call it Haba Technics.

As you can see from the illustration, it’s another set of wooden blocks, some of which look like your standard but always playworthy wooden blocks, others of which are more vehicular in appearance. As you can also see there’s a collection of plastic add-ons – wheels and connectors that allow kids to attach things to wooden blocks, and blocks to each other – securely enough to withstand gleeful abandon, yet not so sturdy at to prevent impressively sudden deconstruction upon impact.

In addition to the connectors for joining blocks, there are wheel sets that not only allow your child to transform blocks into smoothly-rolling wheeled vehicles of satisfyingly transporting capabilities, but also function as pulleys for the creation of things that whirl about as your child rolls her vehicle-like constructs from hither to yon. The two yellowish pieces you see attached to the wheel in their ready-to-spin-around configuration can also be used like trailer hitches, snapping on to the bottom of a wheel-and-axle set and connecting to a second wheelset.

There are enough wheels and blocks to make several different vehicles, firetrucks, race cars, impossibly fanciful rolling constructs which can be raced against each other or rolled into each other with sufficient ferocity to guarantee satisfying collisions.

Haba Technics is compatible with other Haba block sets, significantly extending the range of play activities possible in both sets. Even if a child already has every block set that Haba makes, or none, the Haba Technics set invites the exercise of new skills, adds new levels interest and encourages the development of new fantasies to explore.

If we haven’t yet made it clear, we found Haba Technics to be Major Fun, significantly and brilliantly.

Scrabble Flash is an electronic word-making game. It’s a good word game. It’s fun, absorbing, challenging. There are three different games, and each has one variation. In the first game, you try to make as many words as possible in the given time (75 seconds – with an extra 5 seconds added to the clock for every 5-letter word solved). In the second game, you have to use all the tiles (4 or 5 depending on how many you start with) to make one word; and, as soon as you do, you get your next set of letters, and so on. In the last, you play competitively, passing the tiles to another player as soon as you have succeeded in spelling a word using all the tiles. That player must accomplish the goal in ever diminishing time. If the timer expires, you’re out for that round.

The variation: you can use 4 or 5 tiles. If you use 4 tiles in the first game, you can spell 2-, 3, or 4 letter words. In the other games, all the words have 4 letters. If you use all 5 tiles, words have to be 3, 4 or 5 letters, and the other games require your using all 5 tiles. Whether you elect to use 4 or all 5 tiles, the games are equally challenging and inviting.

Whenever you finish a game (the time has run out), the tiles inform you how many words you were able to complete, and how many words you could have completed if you only thought harder and moved the tiles faster. This is really all the information you need to keep your ego in check. As you might guess, the game uses the official Scrabble dictionary. As you might conclude, many of the words you’ll need to know are, well, shall we say “obscure”?

Scrabble Flash is not just an electronic word-making game. You could download one of those to play on your iPod/pad/phone or computer. It’s the tiles, the 5, separate tiles, and the feel of them, and the challenge of moving them and lining them up as quickly as quick can be that makes Scrabble Flash as uniquely, and majorly fun as it turns out to be – no matter which variation you play, regardless of whether you’re playing by yourself or with friends or family.

If you’re over 10, it will take you a while to get over the sheer wonder of the technology you’re playing with. It’s truly amazing to discover how this thing works – how the tiles can function individually and collectively, how it “knows” how many letters you’re playing with, how the tiles communicate with each other. If you’re under 10, you’ll just enjoy playing the games, taking, as is your age-related privilege, the technology completely for granted.

You get 5 tiles and a storage case. The tiles are like Siftables – they are each battery-powered, they each have an LCD screen and a computer chip, and they “communicate” with each other via infrared transmitter/receivers housed in each tile. The batteries (watch-like), are included, bless them.

The whole package is so convenient, the little case so elegantly portable, the components so accountably few, that you’ll be taking the game with you pretty much everywhere. All of these factors also make it perfect for a library games collection, for a school library collection, for your own personal collection, to play at home, to play at restaurants, and, whenever possible, to flaunt shamelessly.

Staccabees is a surprisingly fun stacking game (as you might guess from the name).

There are three different sizes of hardwood cubes: the natural-wood-colored are the largest, the orange are next, and the white, the smallest. There’s a 4-sided top-like thing. You spin it. If, when it finally falls over, an S is on top, you take half of any of the three kinds (rounding up if the number is uneven) in your collection, and add them to the STAC. If a T is on top, you take the top cube off the STAC and add it to your stock. If an A is showing, you add all of any one kind of your blocks to the STAC. And if a C is revealed, you don’t do anything. Which, depending on how high the stack, can be a great relief.

There’s a total of 54 blocks. Each player gets 3 of each kind of block, which leaves enough for as many as 6 players. Players take turns spinning the top-like thing (which some scholars refer to as a teetotum, while others of a more ethnic bent think of as a driedel), following the directions, and hoping that they: a) don’t make the stack fall, and b) be the first to use up all their blocks.

Though the rules are simple (it may take a while to remember what each letter on the teetotum stands for, but after a few games, it’s not an issue), they are very cleverly designed. If you are unfortunate enough to have toppled the tower, when it’s your turn again, and you get something like A for all or S for half, you could very likely get rid of a lot of blocks, and, at the same time, radically increase the height of the tower (and it’s instability) for the next player.

This makes Staccabees remain fun until the very last spin. Even someone with only one block left can easily find herself still playing round after round after round. And if you seem to have gathered a great many blocks, there’s still the possibility that you can turn your fate completely around with a single spin.

There’s a delightfully growing tension to the game, which is even more delightfully balanced by at least an equal amount of laughter.

Everything is well made (all hardwood), and comes with a cloth, drawstring bag for easy transportation – which is something you’ll want to do a lot, take the game with you, just about everywhere.

Staccabees, designed by Daniel Singer and Bruce Kothmann, is as fun for kids as it is for the entire family. Major fun.

Bendaroos might very well remind you of another terrific art toy – one that also consists of lengths of wax-dipped yarn in a variety of colors. If you know of that particularly terrific art toy, you are already, no doubt, deeply enamored of all the many creative uses to which this construction toy can be so creatively put – the animals and vehicles and flowers and devices of many colors that one can make, without getting dirty or requiring much more than an inspiring illustration or two and a sufficient number and variety of color choices.

So why should you consider getting Bendaroos and not the other? Actually, there’s no reason at all. Except it’s good to know that there’s a choice, and that there are niggling comparisons to be made, and that no matter which one you buy, you will no doubt want to try the other, and you won’t be disappointed at all.

This review, therefore, will confine itself to the explication of a particular game we played with Bendaroos – the Megapack, of course, in which we found 42 red, yellow, green, blue, hot pink, neon yellow, neon blue, and neon green pieces, along with 41 each of white, black, orange, and neon red. That’s 12 different colors, which means that if you had as many as 12 people playing, there’d be a different color for each player, which would add significantly to the jolliness of it all.

We drew, so to speak, our inspiration from a famous Dada-type game called Exquisite Corpse, one version of which being most illustratively illustrated in the following video:

Exquisite Corpse Drawing from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo

We gave each player a different color. Simultaneously, we each made something (anything) out of our Bendaroo. After that, we each passed our creation to the player on our left (though we could have easily passed to the player on the right, but some arbitrary direction needed to be established for the duration of the game). We then added another piece to the figure we just received. And then passed the two joined pieces to the next player, again to the left. And on, and on, until we finally received the construction that included our original piece. We then each decided what to name the collectively created work of art, and took turns presenting the finished work to the group, in our best art-presentation-like manner. And we nearly Bendarooed over in laughter. In deed we nearly did.

All of which is to say that, given a bit of playful creativity, Bendaroos can provide many hours of Major Fun to pretty much everybody.

Island Cycling (via The Bit Block)

So, you finally buy yourself a Wii. And because you’ve been so good and so patient, you wind up with the Wii Plus. And you play. And you play some more. And you visit, virtually, every part of the virtual island. You fly, you bowl, you do it all. And great fun is had by all, precisely as promised. You are not disappointed. Even after you’ve acclimated yourself to the many Wii wonders – the controller that responds so responsively, that vibrates and even sings to you; the realistic, fully-rendered, 3-dimensional-looking ocean paradise (is that a whale? thar she blows!), populated by everyone you’ve played with and a cast of hundreds, who wave at you when you pass, and sometimes even cheer, while all the time accompanied by a richly detailed soundscape that further engages your senses: touch, sound, vision, humor.

And then you say to yourself, I think I’ll by me a Wii Fit Plus. Why? Because I want to, as the song says, put my whole self in.

So you buy it, even though it costs half as much as the Wii console, because you have dreams of the Wii taking you to places you’ve never played before.

Now, somewhere in the back of your copious intellect, you know that the Wii Fit Plus has something to do with fitness. And even though you just want to play, you silly person you, fitness is something that people take seriously, and the Wii Fit Plus is, of necessity, just as serious about helping you do precisely that. So you unpack it and set it up and find yourself sufficiently mollified by the intuitive ease of it all. And then you step up, as it were, on the Wii Balance Board, as instructed. And you continue to do as instructed, registering yourself, so to speak, informing the Wii Ones of your birthdate, your height, and other rather personally, but fortunately password-protectable details, and get informed of your BMI, and your balance (it is called a “Balance Board” don’t you know) and your body age. Your body age! Arggh! And, at last, unavoidably confronted by your precision-determined state of decrepitude, you meet your personal trainer.

All of which is to say that yes, if your goal is to become more fit, you can now, thanks to your purchase of the Wii Fit Plus, pursue that goal with ultimate seriousness.

On the other hand, you can also have fun. Actually, lots of fun. Fun that is so much fun you almost don’t realize how much actual exercise you’re having. Of course, the Wii Plus people take great pains to inform you of your progress in sometimes painful detail, and they use words like “failed” and “unbalanced” to make sure you know just where you stand, or didn’t. But, ultimately, it’s the fun that makes the whole thing worth our collective interest, and the fun is plentiful and varied.

The majority of the new and improved Wii Fit games are in their own section called “Training Games.” (Again, in order to keep with the seriousness of it all, they had to use the word “training.” Fact is, this is where the fun is, where, according to my playful way of viewing the world, the Wii Fit Plus becomes something very much like a paradigm for the whole fun-fitness connection.) There are 16 games in this section (others can be found in sections devoted to “strength,” “aerobics,” and “balance”).

Of those 16, Island Cycling is probably the best place to start. It demonstrates how the system can engage your whole body (you “steer” with your Wii controller and “pedal” by marching in place on the Balance Board), it’s relatively easy to master, and, most significantly, there’s no time pressure. So you can bike around the virtual island, both hither and yon, knocking flags down or not. Of course, the less time it takes you to find and knock down all the flags (a handy interactive map helps guide you), the higher your potential score. But if your goal is to get comfortable with the system whilst engaging your considerable self in a leisurely tour of the virtual environs, you will find Island Cycling fun and pleasant, even though you just happen to burn some calories in the process. And your pre-schooler will want to play it as much as you’ll let her.

Then there’s Bird’s-Eye Bull’s-Eye, which is clearly silly, and most obviously fun. Silly? First of all, you’re a chicken. And I mean that in the best possible way. You look like a chicken. You fly like a chicken if a chicken could fly. Second, you fly by flapping your arms. So yes, there you are, standing on your Wii Fit Plus Balance Board, actually flapping your personal arms. And there you also are (as faithfully rendered by your Mii avatar), on your TV, looking like a chicken. Lean left, right, forward or back to navigate. Don’t flap too hard or you fly too high. Find a target. Land on it. Get more points (time). Find the next. Try to land dead center for the most points.

As funny as it all is, it’s not a little kids game, by any measure. The controls, though intuitive, are engagingly complex. Keeping your body properly positioned while your arms are flapping at just the right speed requires a very fine-tuned sense of balance.

Here’s what I mean:

(one of many excellent instructional videos from WiiFolderJosh)

Major Fun-wise, the games included with Wii Fit Plus are worth the price, even worth suffering through the sometimes insufferable humorlessness of the whole “fitness” concept, because they so beautifully exemplify the fun-fitness connection.

Though the games may look childish, Wii Fit Plus is not just for children. Children already know how much fun it is to use their bodies, to test their physical limits, expand their abilities, engage themselves fully, physically, emotionally, mentally, and unconditionally in the world they are growing into. But for adolescents, adults and seniors, for the differently-abled and the significantly-abled, the games of Wii Fit Plus demonstrate, over and over again, the sheer joy of exercising our many abilities, all at the same time. Whether you’re cycling around the island, flying like a chicken, throwing and dodging snowballs, driving your Segway into beachballs, being a drum-major, keeping time,  leading the throngs, skateboarding, doing Kung Fu, navigating your bubble through a maze of waterways, running an obstacle course, or balancing on top of a ball while juggling – you will have so much fun you could almost (if only they didn’t constantly remind you) forget that you were exercising.

On the other hand, maybe all the reminders will help you remember that fun is, after all, the best exercise you can get.

Wii Sports Resort for the Wii is the first videogame  to receive a Major Fun award. Despite frequent urgings from some of our veteran Games Tasters, we’ve maintained a deliberately narrow focus on board and table games and puzzles that are easy to learn, generally take less than a half-hour to play, and, most importantly, invite laughter. There are few enough people who recognize the importance of such games, so we accepted it as our obligation to remain one of that particular few.

The Wii is a recent evolution of those computer-like machines that attach to your TV, first introduced in the 70s by Magnavox and Atari. Like the earlier machines, the Wii, introduced in late 2006, also attaches to your TV and accepts a variety of different controllers and special game discs. Its wireless, motion-sensing controllers, which allows players to interact much more physically with a wide range of games and activities, proved to be a significant evolution of game technology, especially for people who spend the majority of their time sitting (in front of a computer or TV), which covers most of our population. Even though you may only use the hand controller (though new kinds of physical controllers are introduced every year), your whole body follows. By engaging mind and body, the Wii invites a much healthier, more physically and mentally restoring kind of play. And, surprisingly, this proves true for a remarkably wide range of ages, the Wii becoming almost as ubiquitous in the senior center as it is in the youth center.

Since its introduction, the Wii has continued to evolve. The controllers further connect the player to the game by vibrating and making their own sounds as the player’s cursor moves about the playscape. They have become more responsive to a wider variety of physical motions. The console can connect to the Internet, wirelessly – further extending the capabilities of the machine and allowing players to interact remotely.

The current version is significantly fun – so inviting, so easy to set up and learn, so mentally, socially and physically engaging, that we were forced to accept that our consistent focus on games of the non-virtual kind was doing no one a service. Because it’s so entertaining, to play as well as to watch other people play, and so easy to understand, it can just as easily involve the whole family. Because it’s so attractive, it can become a welcome addition to any party – game, dance, food, for family and friends.

The package includes everything you need to play (except your Wifi station and TV): the console (in black or white), a Wii Remote^TM controller with a Wii Motion-Plus^TM accessory, a Nunchuk^TM controller, and two “games” – Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort.

For anyone new to the system (like we were), the technology is so impressive that it becomes difficult to suppress the giggles of awe long enough to appreciate the games themselves. But the games are the thing, so to speak, and of the two games included in the system, Wii Sports Resort is the one thing that led us not only to giving the system a Major Fun award, but to introducing a whole new category of games to our Major Fun repertoire.

To begin playing, you create your own Mii, an avatar that, despite the easy, menu-driven input, you can make look remarkably like yourself. For children especially, this interaction is so engaging that they can spend a half-hour or more creating their avatar in their own image. Once completed, the virtual stand-in can demonstrate its ever-increasing prowess in each of the 12 sport-like games. Wii Sports Resort introduces a veritable slew of sport-like activities to choose from, many of which can be played by as many as 4 players.

We highly recommend that you begin with a game called Island Flyover. It’s the easiest game to understand and play, the interface the most intuitive. You hold the Wii Remote very much like did when you were a kid, flying your hand outside the open window of a speeding car. As you fly over Wii Island, you encounter all the various environments used in other games in the Sports Resort package. Ambient sounds apparently coming from the landscape invite further exploration. Eventually, you discover targets which you attempt to fly through for score. You can, of course, ignore the targets, and just fly around for the sheer thrill of it all, twisting and turning your virtual plane, smashing into things only to be reborn, dangling from a parachute. The following video, courtesy of someone who actually calls him- or herself SonicPinhead, captures the game perfectly:

This is only one of three flying activities included in the Air Sports section (there’s also sky-diving and parachute jumping), and Air Sports is only one of 12 different sport-like games – each providing an engaging, yet light-hearted challenge, each appealing to children (as young as 3) and adults (older even than I am).

When you play a new game, you are taught how to play, either before the game in a special practice session, or during the game. In either event, the instructions are always clear, and never too complex. You learn how to do one thing, and then, when the time is right, introduced to yet another thing you can do. The individual games are all structured to invite repeated play. Every time you play one through, another variation becomes accessible. This gives you more and more choices (up to a certain limit for each game). Your progress is tracked, so that you can compete with, or simply admire yourself. When you achieve a perfect score or something of similar ilk, you get a special “stamp,” further validating your self-esteem. Curriculum development and text book authors could learn a great deal by studying the pedagogical architecture of the Wii.

In many ways, the opportunity to choose from so many different games, variations and levels of difficulty lends itself to exactly the kind of play experience I have so long championed – because the players determine what games are “good enough” for them to play again and again, rather than the games determining whether the player is good enough to play, the game remains an invitation to fun rather some arbitrary measure of your “excellence.”

We had a difficult time determining which game was our favorite – so difficult that we were ultimately forced to accept that the extensive variety of games appealed to an equally extensive variety of moods. Some times, especially after a day of less-than-fulfilling social interaction, the “Showdown” game (the third in the Swordplay game series, Showdown is revealed only after you’ve played Duel and Speed Slice) proves to be almost ecstatically fun. Basically, you get to hack your way through an increasing number of computer-generated opponents, who, after all, are trying to do the same to you. I know, I know, it seems, shall we say, violent, but it’s violence of a very cartoon-like kind, abstract, and bloodless. Other times, the graceful flow of Frisbee Golf (the third in the Frisbee series) provides unparalleled release.

The package also includes Wii Sports. A brief comparison between the two games, both technically excellent, illustrates perfectly how the system has evolved. Simply put, it has become much more playful; the narrative much funnier, the fun much more major.

PigzUp is a beautifully made, wooden stacking game for 2-4 children that looks like the fun it turns out to be. The set consists of 8 wooden pigs, a wooden die and a deck of 60 round cards.

The wooden Pigz all have soft, felt ears, large painted noses in one of 4 colors, and their tops and bottoms vary in width. The cards are numbered 1-4, and are also in 4 different colors. Some of the cards are in more than one color.

The cards are distributed, face-down, as evenly as possible to all the players. Players then flip over their top cards. If any of them match,  those players race to see who can be first to stack their Pigz. They have to stack as many Pigz as the number on their matching cards, and make sure that the Pigz on top of the stack are the same color as on the matching cards.

The player who succeeds can get rid of the cards she already played. The other player has to return his cards to the his stack. The first player to use up all the cards wins.

If they want to use the die (making the game more fun and more challenging), they can only touch their Pigz according to the roll of the die, either: using only a finger of each hand, only one hand, or only by the ears. Younger children (the game is recommended for ages 4 and up) might have enough difficulty just determining when a match is made, or stacking the Pigz (given that the tops are different sizes), so you might wait before you introduce the die. But once they are able to use the die, the game becomes much sillier, the added challenge making even losing fun.

PigzUp is recommended for 2-4 players, ages 4 and up. It was designed by Thierry Denoual and is available from Blue Orange Games.