You can learn how to play Timeline in, what, three minutes?

You’ve got some beautifully illustrated little cards on the table in front of you (109 0f them). Each card shows a different invention, like, you know, a transistor, a toothpaste tube, a laptop. The actual date when each item was invented is written on the other side of each card. Which is why your cards are on the table rather than in your hand – so you can’t see the dates. In the middle of the table is one card, date-side up. You take one of your cards, invention-side up, and slide it next to the date-side up card. If you put it on the left side, you are claiming that that particular invention took place before the date showing on the date card. And if you put it on the right side, after. And that’s just about it, rule-wise.

From then on, players take turns, trying to get rid of their cards by placing them in the correct position (sequence) in the growing time line. As the game progresses, it gets more difficult, because there are more dates, the timeline growing evermore finely graduated. So you really have to know increasingly more precisely when that thing was actually invented. If you are wrong, you put your card back into the box and take a new one from the deck. If you are right, often enough, you get rid of all your cards, and you, ha ha ha, win!

The whole game feels like something special – 109, small, unique, beautifully illustrated cards fitting ever so perfectly into the velvet-like-lined insert into the ever so metal case. So easy to learn and teach. And yet, so very challenging. In a good way.

It’s probably true that the more you play, the better you get. Unless your memory is like mine. If you suffer from near-eidetic memory, you will eventually run out of people who want to play with you. The only version of Timeline currently available is about Inventions. Fortunately, the next set, Discoveries, is scheduled to come out this Fall, so: 1) you won’t have to wait too long, and 2) you’ll be able to put both sets together and have 218 beautiful little cards with which to demonstrate your historic memory.

On the other hand, it only takes maybe 15 minutes to play. It’s not a game you’re going to take, like, seriously. But it’s seriously fun, and, for the rest of us, it’s a great opportunity to learn some things, surprise ourselves and each other with our knowledge and lack thereof, and it will occupy a welcome and happy place in your game collection even when you aren’t the one who gets to play.

Timeline can be played by 2-8 players. Though players can be as young as eight-years-old, it’ll probably be more fun for them if they play with kids of more or less the same age. For players of every age, the fun of Timeline is timeless.

Timeline was designed by Frédéric Henry. The original publishers are Hazgaard Editions. It’s available in the U.S. from Asmodee. (you can find them on Facebook, just in case)

Drawing games are often polarizing events because lots of people will say, “I’m not an artist. I can’t draw to save my life!” The games also turn the screws by putting a timer on the contestants. And then comes the sharing of the pictures: all that judgment and ridicule and justification that ensues.

Blue Orange’s elegant drawing game Sketch It! takes all of these frustrating aspects of other drawing games and doubles down on it all. Your pictures? They need to communicate specific items so that ANYONE at the table can identify your subject. Time limit? You have to be faster than the others to get the most points. The guessing process? Every single line will come under scrutiny and the inner workings of your mind will be laid bare.

Fun? Oh yeah.

The game is simple. Each player has a card with 6 items, a pencil, and a piece of paper. The game comes with 6 numbered chips (1-6) and these sit in the center of the table. Someone rolls a die and everyone sets to drawing the item that matches the rolled number. The first to finish grabs the highest numbered chip from the center of the table and the other players grab chips as they finish. The drawings are shuffled and passed out randomly so each player has a drawing made by someone else. They write what has been drawn and then reveal their guesses. If a player guesses correctly, the artist and guesser get the points on the artist’s chip. Incorrect guess means no points for either.

This mechanism of awarding the guesser and the artist works well to balance the game for those who do not feel so confident in their artistic skills. Being a good guesser is as important as being a good sketcher. The task of grabbing the numbered chips also adds a great deal of pressure to the better artists because they can’t keep their attention strictly on what they are drawing. A quick sketch that hints at the object can be more effective than a detailed depiction because the time for fine detail costs the artist the most valuable chips.

But part of the fun is the explanation and evaluation of the drawings created under such stressful conditions. How a creature with five legs, no ears, and a serious under bite (not over bite) can be a “donkey” is one funny conversation. That, more than the accumulation of points, is the aspect of Sketch It! that makes it Major Fun. I haven’t laughed so much at my own ineptitude as I did playing Sketch It!

3 – 6 players. Ages 10+

Sketch It! by Gregory Detrez. © 2011 Blue Orange Games.

So, it’s like this: there are two decks of cards, almost identical, except that one deck is square, the other round. And on each card, in each deck, there are John Kovalic’s gently humorous, cartoon-like drawings of bugs, each card a different bug, each bug in one deck having a corresponding bug in the other. Now, you’d think that matching a square card to an identical round card – one with exactly the same cartoon-like bug on precisely the same color background – would be mere child’s play. You’d, of course, be right. All except for the “mere” and the “child’s” parts.

Yes, yes, the game could easily be played by five-year-olds. The cards are just the right size for little hands. And, with a little patience, even littler hands. And, with a little more patience, big, clumsy-handed people as old as I am. Sure, there are only 36 different bugs to deal with, but as soon as the bug cards are all out on the table, and you find yourself frantically shuffling through your hand of square cards (the “leaf cards”) while everyone else is shuffling and scanning, covering the round cards (the “bug cards”) with the corresponding leaf cards, racing to be the first to get rid of all their cards – the challenge becomes vividly evident.

Bug Out is easy to learn (maybe 5 minutes) and very fast (easily less than 5 minutes). But you’re going to want to play it again and again. You can even keep score, if you’re that kind of player. Speaking of kinds of players, it’s true that Bug Out is as fun for little kids as it is for grown kids (sometimes known as “adults”), but when playing together, as a family, discrepancies in recognition and reaction time might prove to be a bit too unavoidable to keep everyone in play. However, as Gamestaster Erin was quick to point out, that can be easily ameliorated by adding a handicapping rule, like: the winning player gets extra cards the next round. Whether or not you decide to invent some kind of rule to keep everyone equally in play, it’s a good idea, as the designers are quick to note, to let the game continue until everyone has finished, just so all the players can experience something akin to satisfaction.

The designers and refiners (Brad Ross and the many wonderful folk at Out of the Box Games) also make a distinction between Bug Out and Big Bug Out. In the latter, the bug cards are placed on the floor. How widely the cards are spread out on said floor determines the amount of frenzied physicality you wish to engender. Needless to say, physical limitations and proclivities need to be taken into account. But the fun, o, the sheer, manic, major fun!

I think that it is fitting that my first review as Major Fun should be Zobmondo!!’s frantic party game Party Gras. While it is true that my Hoosier roots run almost 40 years deep, I have a special connection to and fondness for the Crescent City. I started my MFA with the University of New Orleans in the fall of 2007—just in time for Hurricane Katrina to crash the party and unmask some of the uglier faces of the body politic. Despite the devastation (both social and physical) New Orleans prevails and a healthy dose of that contagious, joyful spirit made its way into Party Gras.

The game consists of a big deck of cards and a whole mess’a beads in a colorful plastic case. Divide the beads evenly among all players. Look at those beads. Covet those beads. The winner of Party Gras is the player who has the most beads at the end of the round.

Like any great parade, Party Gras requires a Grand Marshall. This person determines how long the round will last (10 – 15 minutes is good). The Grand Marshall begins the party, plays like everyone else, but is also tasked with settling any disputes. The Grand Marshall shuffles the cards, deals two to each player, and makes a pile of the rest. The party is about to begin. Look at your cards. Choose your mission…

There are six kinds of missions—six ways to take beads from another player. In brief the missions are:

• Mind Control: make another player do the action on the card.
• Caught in the Act: Catch another player doing the listed action.
• Talk it Out: Find one player who matches the description on the card. You will need to talk to them and ask questions.
• Fashion Police: Find a player wearing the listed item.
• Go Crazy: Perform a crazy stunt and get rewarded.
• Challenge: Challenge another player to a crazy stunt.

Each card has three missions from which you may choose one. Most missions earn you one string of beads, but some earn you two. When you complete a mission, discard the card and pick another. You will always have 2 cards for a total of six possible choices. If the Grand Marshall thinks too many people are stuck, maybe you can draw a third. Or a fourth! Or trade ‘em all in keep playing. The Grand Marshall is in charge and better keep the party moving!!

The missions are a blast. Stuff like: “Make someone apologize for insulting you” and “Make someone refuse to kiss you” and “Find someone who likes tea better than coffee.” Everyone is talking at the same time. You never know if you are being tricked into something or asked a legitimate question. You can’t lie (otherwise Talk it Out doesn’t work) and you can’t refuse to do an action but refusing to do silly things in a party game means that someone is unclear on the concept of a party game!!

Party Gras is loud and fast and frustrating and MAJOR FUN!! There are plenty of Major Fun party games out there, but Party Gras brings the joy and releases it to the world in gales of laughter and ridiculous antics. All for a handful of beads.

Major Fun fo’ tru…

Party Gras is recommended for 4-12 players over the age of 13. It was designed by Greg Zima and is published under license by Zobmondo!! Entertainment LLC.

You will doubtless recall our unmitigated enthusiasm when we gave the Major Fun award to the original Reverse Charade. Today we are happy to extend that enthusiasm to the continued evolution of Reverse Charades, now appearing in French, Junior and App editions.

The Junior edition (like the newly updated original version) includes 360, 2-sided word cards. The packaging has improved – there is now an inner box, with its own lid, that allows you to carry your word cards around with you so you are always prepared to engage the world in a moment or many of major madcap merriment.

The main difference between the Junior and standard editions is, as you’d suspect, vocabulary. The majority of words are guessable even by a 6-year old – it might take longer, it might require a bit more histrionics, you might need to run the timer twice, but the fun will trump any difficulties. Older children, and even adult players shouldn’t let this child-friendly vocabulary fool them into premature complacency – the game is still challenging enough (how do you get someone to guess, for example, McDonalds, human pyramid, or bubble bath) to drive most of us into gleeful exhaustion.

Ultimately, the Junior Edition is best played by a mix of ages – kids, teens, adults, seniors. With a little compassionate rule-bending, the youngest will find themselves happily engaged, and the oldest driven to happy exhaustion.

In case you are still not familiar with the concept, I reiterate – the game is just like charades, except that it’s the team that’s frantically gesturing to one of their team members, who is guessing with equal franticity. Which makes all the difference – so much that the Junior Edition, just like the new App (for iPhone, -pod, or -pad), are each as award-worthy as the others.

The App, now that you ask, has, of course, its own timer. Extended vocabularies are available as well (in addition to the “original” and “junior” pack, you can also download packs for “sports fans” and those who still remember the “awesome 80s”), giving you an even more portable and extensive invitation to hours of merry mayhem.

Designed by Scott and Bryce Porter, Reverse Charades proves to be Major Fun in all of its current manifestations.

The fun of Trigger, the element that made us laugh every time we played, is in the revelation that our left hands and right hands are stupid. I mean bag of hammers, running-with-scissors, couple-shoes-short-of-a-pair stoopid. This is, after all, a game that presents true or false statements like: “You are related to at least one person at this table” and “You are married.”

In order to answer these outrageously obtuse questions, players race to be the first to slap a foam target (think of a round drink coaster) with their left or right hand. Left hand for False and right hand for True. Right is right. Left is false. How hard can it be?

Trouble is, when everyone is watching everyone else, it is really easy to mimic what someone else is about to do. The statement above about being related to a person at the table is a good example. I was looking at my daughter across the table and to my credit, I put out my right hand for True; however, before I could whack the target, I switched hands because one of the people next to me was putting out their left hand. So when we sorted the answers, I was stuck with this embarrassing FALSE answer to a question that is so obvious that it would be used to determine if I had suffered a concussion.

Trigger is Major Fun in a tiny round can. It comes with 60 cards, a foam target, and a concise set of rules. Each card is one of six colors on the front (orange, blue, red, violet, black, and green) and has six color coded questions on the back. Players receive 5 cards and one player starts as  the referee. The referee asks a question. The other players race to slap the target with the correct hand. Once you slap your hand down, you cannot move it. This results in a pile of hands covering the target which the referee must sort out. The player with the first correct answer (the correct hand at the bottom) wins and receives the card. That player becomes the referee and reads a question that matches the color of the card they just won. The player with the first wrong answer (the lowest wrong hand) loses a card.

The game ends when one contestant runs out of cards.

You could determine the winner by who has the most cards. You could determine the winner by who made the fewest embarrassing blunders. Or you could just embrace the absurdities of human psychology that drive us to make responses we know are wrong just because we are under pressure and looking at other people. We could have kept score but we were having too much fun.

Trigger was created by Julien Sentis. It is © 2011 by Blue Orange.

LEGO is an elemental media of play: stick, ball, box, and LEGO. It is impossible for me to think about my childhood without LEGO present. Colorful blocks. An ingenious locking mechanism. Simple pieces that can be combined into vast worlds. I am constantly amazed with the ways children can expand on the idea. I am also impressed with how the designers at LEGO suggest new and engaging ways for children and adults to think about this toy.

LEGO Champion adds another magnificent, Major Fun title to the company’s growing catalogue of board games AND it succeeds by utilizing the most basic piece of the LEGO universe: the 2×4 block.

Sometimes I get overwhelmed when I see all the different pieces that comprise the LEGO universe. Many are highly specialized pieces that were created for the themed sets. LEGO Champion eschews the custom pieces and delights the competitors with challenges that are based on only simple blocks. The game consists of a simple, rectangular game board; 8 LEGO people (each a different color); a LEGO Dice; and lots of 2×4 blocks (matching the colors of the LEGO people). The playing board must be constructed but it is very simple and clear instructions are included. Preparing the game for the first time didn’t take more than a few minutes.

Play moves clockwise. On his or her turn, each player rolls the LEGO Dice. Each face of the die is a solid color (red, yellow, purple, blue, orange, and green) that represents a type of challenge. When a color is rolled, that color of brick is placed on the game board, the player advances to that color, and a challenge ensues.

• If green is rolled, JUMP AHEAD.  The player simply advances to a green block and stops.
• If red is rolled, the game is ON TARGET. The LEGO Dice is placed on the table and each player throws one LEGO brick at it. Closest wins.
• Blue is CODEBREAKER. The roller puts three blocks together and the other players have to guess the order by asking only yes or no questions.
• BLUFFING BRICKS is on orange. Every player grabs three bricks WITHOUT looking at them. Players bid on how many of one color are held in the hands.
• Yellow TOPPLE TOWER was a big favorite. The roller places one brick on the table. The next person must snap together 2 bricks and balance them on the first. Play continues with each person snapping together one more block than the person before.
• But purple SPEED BUILDER stole the show. The roller creates a sculpture of 8 bricks (one of each color) while the other players close their eyes. When the sculpture is revealed, the other players race to be the first to copy the creation.

The game is wonderfully customizable and the directions (oh those elegant, well-organized directions!!) encourage players to make up new challenges. The LEGO Dice can be modified in many ways—the game comes with four other faces that can be swapped onto the die (the bowling challenge was a blast). We were coming up with all sorts of games and variations as we played. Some of ours might turn out to be duds, but LEGO provides so many Major Fun examples that given a little time, families and friends will begin to accumulate their own personal favorites.

LEGO Champion really takes me back to what makes LEGO so vital and fun in the first place. It’s the same principle that often makes the box more fun than the toy in which it was wrapped. People want to play, and all they need are a few versatile pieces and some suggestions. Once they get going, the fun endures and grows.

LEGO Champion was designed by Cephas Howard and Jesper Nielsen. It is © 2011 by LEGO.

One of the things that we look for when we grant a Major Fun award is how easy it is to figure out how to play the game – even without the rules. Learning time is always a problem with games – the more time it takes to learn (regardless of how wonderful the game is) the narrower the appeal. So, when we do find a game that is almost self-explanatory, and when it’s well-made, and when it’s fun enough for people to want to play again and again and yet again – we consider it a major find.

Today, we take great pleasure in introducing you to our current Major Fun major find – a little wooden game called Fastrack. Well, not totally wooden – there’s an elastic band on either side. And not so little – interior dimensions are 13″ by just about 8″. And there’s a drawstring bag, made out of something net-like, which is also not wooden.

Between the two elastic bands, spanning the middle of the board, there’s a wooden divider. In the middle of this divider, there’s a small hole – slightly larger than one checker-puck-width. On either side of the divider there’s just enough room to line-up five checker-pucks. And that, my friends, is all you need to know, pretty much.

It’s a two-player game. Each player begins with five wooden, let’s call them “disks.”  Checker-like, puckish things that get twanged from one side of the board, through the divider, to the other. Twanging is generally done with one finger on the disk, the disk pulled back against the elastic and then released, both players twanging simultaneously. The round ends, hopefully, when one player has no more disks to twang. I say “hopefully” because, though a round can take less than a couple minutes, equally matched players can drive each other to exhaustion – which is pretty much the whole point.

Though the rules are exceptionally brief, and the game can be played without them, there are some good reasons to read them. For example, you learn that if a disk is stuck in the slot, you can only move it by shooting another disk at it. Which makes sense insofar as there might be some potential finger damage from ongoing rapid-disk-propulsion. You also learn that if a disk jumps over the divider and lands on the other side of the board, it still counts. And that disks that fly off the board entirely are out of play for that round, which means that you only have to get the remainder on to the other side to win.

The game is easy to handicap – especially if you are playing with your kids. For example, they can let you start with three disks, while they take the remaining seven.

The concept for this game has been around for a while. But the execution makes Fastrack exceptional. The game looks as attractive as it plays. The race-flag checkerboard and red colors accentuate the experience of speed. The elastic bands have enough elasticity so that you can shoot your disks with significant twang, and, if you shoot a disk just right, it can bounce back and forth across the board several many, delightworthy times. The board and disks are scaled perfectly so that you get the same delightful action you might get from a larger version, yet the game itself is just the right size to carry with you effortlessly everywhere. The twang often leads to many satisfying bangs as the disks carom off the wooden divider and the wooden sides of the wooden board. It is a skill game. And you can get better. And that’s all you need to know.

The game was designed by Jean-Marie Albert of Ferti in France, who also designed the Major Fun award-winning Le Pass Trappe – which explains a lot.

You throw the five letter dice into the conveniently felt-lined dice-throwing area. The letters appear: U S R S R. Though you only need to use three letters, you come up with the awe-worthy “RHINOCEROUS” – which uses all 5 cubes (scoring bragging rights) and earns you the 10+ chip. Yes, it would have been even better had this been the second or so turn, and you had exactly that roll and the category had been “wildlife.” But that, clearly, is neither here, nor there.

You collect your chip. Turn it over. And reveal the “Home Sweet Home” category, which entitles you and your fellow players to “any word related to things you can do or find in your home.” Can do or find. A bit generous for your typical Home Sweet Home category. But all the more welcome, eh? You toss the dice. The letters appear: P R R F U. And the race is on.

“REFRIGERATOR” you say? Good enough. More than good enough, even though you didn’t use all five letter cubes, as its 12 delightful letters earn you the right to pick up that most valuable of all 10+ chip, and to be the category-giver and the dice-tosser for the next round.

And so it tensely goes, players displaying verbal uncanniness, gathering chips, chip-after-chip-after-chip, until all the chips are used, or some pre-arranged score is reached or until you all can’t wait any longer to decide who the winner really is.

And no, you don’t get any extra points for using all the cubes. And yes, you can make it the rule that some people have to use more cubes than others, like, for example, because they’re younger, or because they keep on winning. But no, all you really have to use is any three cubes. And further no, it doesn’t matter if your word is longer than someone else’s if that particular someone else has already declared her particular word.

You can run out of a certain kind of chip. In that case, the winning player can take any chip. This adds a strategic wrinkle, if you’re interested in wrinkled strategies. If you can exhaust even the lowest scoring, four-letter-word chips, all the four letter words you come up with after that can earn you the 10+ chip, or whatever highest value chip remains. What this means is that, given the circumstances, proving your personal brilliance might not be the smartest move. Ah, so much like life, eh?

In addition to the dice there are seven stacks of chips, each stack worth from 4 to 10 points (indicating how many letters the winning word must have), each chip showing the score value on one side, and the category on the other. There’s one “Create a Theme” category which adds the opportunity for much interpersonal introspection and the opportunity to play compassionately or competitively depending on your whim and/or wisdom.

There are several other ways, in addition to  your clever use of the “make a theme” category,  you can fine tune the game to match the needs and interests of the players. As described, you can increase the challenge by making it the rule that everyone, or just the winning player, has to use more cubes in their word. In like manner, you can decrease the challenge. You can be more lenient in your definition of what meets a particular category (OK, you can use fictional characters in solving the Famous People category), or you can be more, shall we say, literal (only Russian authors). You can make the game shorter (by playing for a specific score or number of chips) or longer (playing for two or more rounds). This kind of flexibility significantly increases your chance to have a good game with almost anyone. And yes, you can play in teams.

Spell it!, from Blue Orange Games, was designed by Thierry Denoual, who also designed, among many other games, the Major Fun award-winning Yamslam, which also uses a similarly ingeniously designed, self-contained tin container to house dice, felt-covered dice throwing area, and seven stacks of chips, and yet, even more ingeniously, turns out to be an equally award-worthy, yet completely different game, entirely.

Some of you might shy away from a card game that comes in a burlap sack. If so, for shame. You would be missing out on Fat Brain Toy Company’s newest card game Spud!. This is one wild and silly game of hot potato! And not just hot potato, as Major Fun himself notes, but hhhhoooooooooooot potato! Hotter than hot. Forget-the-foil-and-roll-your-hands-in-asbestos hot. This game should not come in a burlap sack but rather its own reaction chamber.

The game consists of two kinds of cards: Action Cards and Potato Cards. Once the game starts, players use the Action Cards to move around the Potato Cards. Getting stuck with a Potato Card is bad. When a player accumulates 5 Potato Cards that player is eliminated and the game continues until only one person remains.

There are, of course, a few complications. The Potato Cards and Action Cards are color coded so that blue Action Cards will only move blue Potato Cards. This means that if you receive a blue Potato but you only have green Action Cards, you are now stuck with this Potato Card. You only draw new cards when you have run out of Action Cards, so it is possible to get stuck with several potatoes in a row.

Action Cards tell you where you can pass the Potato Cards: to the right, to the left, two right, two left, back at you, anyone, etc… There are also 14 Spud! cards. When  a Spud! Card is revealed, the player draws a Potato Card and gives it to one of the other suckers… er… players. This is how the game starts and is also how new potatoes are circulated when no one can move any of the earlier Potato Cards. Many Potato Cards can be in play at one time, and this leads to some of the best, most chaotic moments, especially as several potatoes descend on one player.

Potato Cards add their own twists to the game. Some cards count as 2 potatoes and the Rotten Potato cannot be moved at all (ouch!) There are also some special Potato Cards that give instructions to the player that draws the card or to the entire group. Some require the player to draw 2 Potato Cards. Some let the player sneak an old potato back into play. Some tell all players to pass their Action Cards to the left or right.

Spud! is one of the few games that I have encountered where eliminating a player does not particularly diminish the fun of the game. The game is so fast and chaotic that those who have been eliminated will enjoy taking a breather to watch the mayhem. Mind you, it won’t be long. And if you don’t want to play elimination, it is easy enough to stop play when someone hits 5, keep track of how many potato cards each person accrued  and start over.

The game does a great job of taking the classic “hot potato” and ramping up the action until everyone is sweating and pounding the table and laughing because it’s all such Major Fun.

Like any good potato, Spud! does come in its own burlap sack. The Action Cards and Potato Cards are easily distinguishable from each other by their size and color. The rules fit comfortably on the front and back of a slim tri-fold insert. This economy of design makes Major Fun smile.

Spud! from Fat Brain Toy Co. was designed by Rebecca Bleau and Nicholas Cravotta of BlueMatter Games. (c) 2011.