I moved 12 times in my first 6 years of marriage. Many of those were short skips across town as we jumped from one cramped box of graduate student housing to another, but they all involved packing and repacking all our belongings into a truck and then emptying said truck a few miles away. Under those conditions you either gain a knack for the packing process or you learn to save up for a professional.

We could never afford a professional.

Those skills came in quite handy as I went up against Major Fun in a friendly game of Quadefy.

Maranda Games has released several handsome abstract strategy games and Quadefy is their entry into the realm of three-dimensional tiling games. 2 players take turns placing their wooden blocks within a 4X4X4 cubic grid. The last player to make a legal move wins. Each player has 8 game pieces that resemble three-dimensional Tetris shapes. An illegal move is any placement of a piece that extends out of the 4X4X4 grid.

The pieces are composed of attractive, solid wooden blocks that are designed for play and display. All 16 pieces fit together to form a perfect cube which means Quadefy serves double duty as a competitive strategy game and an engaging solo puzzle. Like the other games in Maranda’s line-up, Quadefy is visually striking and is meant to be left out for guests to see and touch and covet.

Games are fast, even when some players are *AHEM* deliberative [significant look in the direction of Major Fun…], but there are so many ways to start that re-playability is high. Patience and spatial awareness are handy traits, but that goes for most games.

And as fun as the game is already, I heartily recommend an alternative condition suggested by Major Fun himself: play with your eyes closed. Try it as a solo puzzle and then in competition. It’s a great twist on an engaging and well designed game.

For 2 players, ages 6+

Quadefy game design by Mark Fuchs. © 2011 by Maranda Games.

There is an elegance of design to many Gigamic games that is impossible to ignore and Kabaleo keeps up the tradition. The conical pieces are simple, colorful, and they make a satisfying clack when stacked. This is not trivial because clacking and stacking are what you will do a lot in this game.

The elegance of the pieces underscores the elegance of the game. There are six colors. Each player has a different color, and the winner is the one whose color is on top of the most stacks once all the pieces are used.

So not only is the design of the pieces unique and striking, the design is also functional.

There are 24 Bases (cones with a single stripe of color) and 36 Pieces (cones with a double stripe). There are also 6 Target cones which are not colored on the outside but are colored INSIDE the cone. Players draw a Target at the beginning of the game and this becomes their color—a fact they keep secret during play. The number of colors with which you play is always two more than the number of participants. This makes it very difficult to guess exactly which color any player has.

Before play begins, the bases are scattered in the middle, and each player draws a certain number of Pieces from a bag. The Pieces may not be kept secret.

On each player’s turn, you take one of the Pieces and place it on a Base in the middle of the table. Pieces may not be placed on Bases of the same color, but you may place any Piece on top of any other Piece (say that 5 times fast). So a blue Piece could go on a pink Base and a green Piece could go on top of that blue Piece (making a 3 stack of cones). A green Piece could now be played on the previous green Piece BUT instead of stacking higher, you remove both green Pieces.

Different colors STACK. Same colors REMOVE. Piece on Base must be different colors.

That is some elegant game design.

Planning ahead is maddening. You don’t want to reveal your color so misdirection and blocking are good strategies; however as your opponents and you are running out of pieces, it becomes very important to free up your color in such a way that cripples an opponent.

Kabaleo is incredibly intuitive and gameplay is quick. The rules take up two very small pages in a rulebook that covers maybe 2 dozen languages. The rules also include wordless, pictorial directions that show what moves are allowed and what are not (especially handy for you anthropologists, semiologists, and sociologists studying cultures with no written or verbal language). Kabaleo is Major Fun because it feels fun to play and feels GOOD to play.

(Although I bet anyone of the Cold War generation who opens the box will think “Missile silo.” Go get the game and you’ll see what I mean.)

2 – 4 players. Ages 8+

Kabaleo concept by Jean Luc Renaud and is © 2010 by Gigamic.

Just when you think nobody could possibly invent a lawn or beach game that is at least as fun as bocce and horseshoes and games of that ilk, but actually, genuinely different, and as inviting to children as it is to adults, that can be played standing or sitting (on, for example, a wheelchair), that allows for genuine competition and yet has a friend-keeping element of luck, and doesn’t use rings or balls or bean bags or bolos, but instead, for the first time in lawn-and/or-beach game history, rolling wooden discs…

…along comes Matt Butler with his game of Rollors.

The game (conveniently packaged in a polyester/nylon zipper bag) is all wood (New Zealand Pine) with the exception of a measuring cord – but even that has a wood pin that fits perfectly into the top of the goal for convenient goal-proximity measuring and just loosely enough for a satisfying pull-out. There are two sets of 3 wooden Rollors. The Rollors are 5 inches wide and about an inch-and-a-quarter wide – wide enough so they can be rolled on their edges, and narrow enough so that sooner or later, they’ll probably fall on one of their faces (though you never know). In each set (red or blue), the Rollors are numbered, and there’s a different number on each side. One Rollor, for example, has a number 2 on one side, and a number 5 on the other. A second Rollor, for a second example, has a number 1 on one side and a number 6 on the other. And the third Rollor – we’ll just leave that to your mathematical ingenuity to figure out. And then there are two, beautifully wooden, pyramid-like goal-things that you set 25 feet away from each other – more or less.

The rules are very logical, comfortably brief and easy to learn. The object is to get your Rollor closest to the goal. If it falls over before it reaches the goal, you hope that it will fall so that it’s closer to the goal than any of your opponent’s Rollors, higher-scoring side face-up. If your Rollor makes it so close to the goal that it ends up actually leaning on the goal (a “leaner”), you hope that the number that is facing out is as high as it possibly can be, because that number gets doubled! And if your Rollor remains on its edge, and is closer to the goal than any of your opponent’s Rollors, you score the sum of both sides (which, not actually magically, is the same for all Rollors).

A bit like bocce, a bit like cornhole, a bit like horseshoes, but, not like any of them at all. The more you play, the more you can appreciate the intelligence behind the design, and the uniquely gentle, but focused fun it leads to.

Rollors are fun to roll – easier on arm and wrist than most rolling/pitching lawn games, more suitable to kids as well as adults, seniors as well as people of limited mobility. If you happen to have a 25-ft long carpeted hallway in your office or personal domain, you can develop remarkable skill and control and stuff. When you find yourself Rollor-ing on beach or lawn, you’ll have all the endless nuance of terrain to play with and against. In any of these environments, the game is fun and inviting. The nature of a rolling Rollor is such that it lends itself to some amazingly surprising feats of apparent skill – curving, spinning, potentially stopping without falling over, or falling over on the exact side you predict. As you gain confidence and competence, you will no doubt develop your own variations, specially designed to take advantage of terrain, your personal mastery, and your competitive instincts. Perhaps it would be fun to include a small hill in the Rollors court. Or some obstacles around which one might attempt to slalom. Or to play with three players on a team, all throwing simultaneously, on a golf course or bowling alley or in the dorm or in the woods (where the grass is short enough so you can still find your Rollors) or on a glacier….

Yes, indeed, the signs all point to Major Fun.

When it come to beautiful, well-made jigsaw puzzles, few companies have been able to match the quality of Ravensburger puzzles. The pieces are cleanly cut, unique, and made of thick, linen-finished, glare-free cardboard stock. The prints are vividly colored and in sharp focus. And the adult puzzle collection ranges from 300 to 32,000 pieces.

Ravensburger uses what it calls its “Softclick-Technology” to guarantee a “100% interlocking mechanism for the world’s most optimal fit of individually formed puzzle pieces, resulting in an absolutely smooth puzzle.” Instead of snapping together, pieces fit so well that they seem to glide into each other, effortlessly. And there’s no denying that the experience of putting a Ravensburger puzzle together is satisfying and rewarding.

But the fun of putting together a good jigsaw puzzle is only somewhat dependent on any of those factors. Often, the image itself – the detail, the complexity, the variety – is what determines how challenging the experience will be, and how fun.

The Vintage Flora puzzle is a very good example of a puzzle that is especially pleasing to solve, and just challenging enough to keep you going until you’ve placed the very last piece. Notice that the puzzle is divided into 24 squares, each (except for the last) devoted to a different letter of the alphabet, each with a different and highly textured background, each with its own border. For those of us who like to put the edges of a puzzle together before we fill in the rest, solving Vintage Flora is very close to an apotheosis.

Though we recommend Vintage Flora especially to the casual puzzle solver, the quality of the image and design makes it something that anyone who likes a good puzzle would appreciate.

“States,” you’re probably saying to yourself, and “Capitals? Ah, therefore, it’s an educational game, you know, for people who want to do things like that, learn States and capitals.”  You’d be part right. But only part. First of all, it’s Sequence – the Major Fun award-winning family game that’s as highly recommended for seniors as it is for families and kids. So the real reason, the best reason to play is the sheer fun of it all. Second, you don’t really have to know anything about what State has what capital, even though, after a few games, you probably will know all the capitals of all the States.

So here’s what you get: a well-made folding game board  showing each of the 50 States, twice, just the shapes, in different colors; a deck of 108 color-coded cards, each naming a capital, each showing the shape  and color of the State to which it belongs; and chips, 150 of them, 50 of each of 3 different colors, two-sided, embossed chips, one side with a white background; and game instructions, clearly-written, in English and Spanish.

You need at least 2 people to play. Each player gets one color of chips. If you have 3 people, then you use all three colors. If you have more (as many as 12), you play in teams, each team getting one color. Depending on how many players, each player gets from 8 to 3 cards. Your goal is to be the first player, or team, to get 5-in-a-row, twice.

The strategic part of the game is heightened by two features. First, since each State is on the board twice, you have to decide which occurrence of the State to cover with one of your chips – the one that opens the most possibilities for you, or the one that more effectively blocks one of your opponents. Second, there are two kinds of “special” cards – one that says “ADD” (letting you add a chip anywhere on the board), and another that says “REMOVE.” There are only four of each, so if you find one of those cards, you want to wait until the best possible moment to use it.

Other than that, the game is about luck, teamwork, and a lot of looking for the right State. The luck keeps the game fun and accessible to all. The teamwork greatly adds to the fun, and the looking around is what contributes so directly to the learning. The more you play, the more you begin to recognize the shapes of the States and their capitals. It’s as easy, and as fun as that.

It pays, strategically, to complete a 5-in-a-row as soon as you can. Once you do, none of those chips can be removed. Hence, just enough potential and pressure to keep you into the game until the very end. The colors are distinct enough, the chips large enough, the pace gentle enough for people of all ages. And if your goal is in deed educational, Sequence States & Capitals is probably one of the best models you’ll find for what an educational game should be – fun, engaging, and the learning, when it comes, comes gently and incidentally.

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.

The Ten Days… series continues. You’ve been through Africa and Asia and Europe. Now it’s time for some island hopping in the Caribbean, South American cruises, and flights that zigzag across the equator.

The game mechanics for 10 Days in the Americas haven’t changed much but there is a new twist. Cruise ships have been added which allow very long connections through the major ocean regions. You can string together more than one ocean liner so that circumnavigating the continents opens up a very wide variety of destinations. But much of the game is familiar. Gather and arrange your country tiles so that you can progress from one location to another over the course of ten days. Plan your strategy and then see how Lady Fortune makes hash of your itinerary.

If Out of the Box keeps putting out expansions to the series, we will soon be able to make a more literary adventure when we play Around the World in 80 Days…

Wherever you spend your ten days with Out of the Box, it’s Major Fun.

10 Days in the Americas was designed by Alan R. Moon and Aaron Weisblum. Illustration and graphic design by John Kovalic and Cathleen Quinn-Kinney. © 2010 Out of the Box Publishing Inc.

Will Bain, Games Taster

If you can kick a ball, you can play it. If you can roll a ball, throw a ball, bounce a ball, you can play it. You can play it in the sand. You can play it in the snow. You can play it in the dirt. You can play it like golf, you can play it like croquet, you can play it like both games simultaneously. You can play it with kids, you can play it with seniors, you can play it with kids and seniors and anybody who wants to play. You can create your own course. You can make it very hard. You can make it just easy enough to make you want to keep playing. You can play it seriously, you can play it for fun.

Wicketball Go! from Bob Zoller on Vimeo.

It’s Wicketball.

It’s not something to be taken lightly, this Wicketball game. Just ask the postman who delivered our set. 65 pounds! Designer/publisher Bob Zoller explains that each wicket weighs 6.5 pounds. And you get eight of them. And two soccer balls. And then there are the flags clips and flags, and the DVD and the rules and the list of 64 more ways you can play Wicketball.

See, these wickets are solid metal. They’re designed to be banged into the ground with a sledgehammer, to resist seriously kicked soccer balls, to last pretty much forever.

The thing about Wicketball is that it can be played anyway that’s fun for you. They’re an invitation to creativity as much as they are to fun. You want to bowl the balls instead of kicking them, sure, why not? You want to kick the balls backwards, play on your hands and knees, play at night, play with your eyes closed? You want to make the course cover a few acres? You want to play in the snow or sand? You want to play with kids, with the whole family, with seniors, with the whole community? You want to play it like golf or croquet or more like soccer?

Just like Bob Zoller says: “Just have fun. It’s Wicketball. It’s all good.” It’s Major Fun!

When Randy Nash first developed Tumblin’ Dice, he did what any game inventor would do – especially one who created a game that people really loved – he started his own company. Recently, the older/wiser Mr. Nash licensed his game to Fred Distribution – a company with a genuinely deep appreciation for really good games. And they honored his concept, and made it a little more attractive, and just as well-made, and just as much fun.

The game is called Tumblin’ Dice, which is exactly what it was called when we first gave it our highest award – the Keeper. I am happy to say, this renewed version is at least as much of a Keeper as it was then.

Think of it shuffleboard with dice. You’d be wrong, but you’d understand almost all you needed to know in order to start playing. There are four sets of dice, each a different colors (and lovely colors they are). Each set has four dice. Players take turns flick/slide/rolling their dice, starting on the top level, aiming towards one of the three platforms on the lowest levels. If your die reaches the third level, you get exactly as many points as are on the top of the die. If your die reaches the fourth level, you get twice as many points; the fifth level, three times as many, and if you reach the lowest level, you multiply the face of the die by four.

Since players are taking turns, there’s a good chance that someone will knock your high-scoring die off the board. So the game can get quite competitive. There’s a lot of opportunity to develop skill. But there’s enough chance (despite my desire to maintain the illusion, I don’t think it’s really possible to determine what face of the die will show up at the end of a roll) to keep things interesting, even for the poor-of-aim.

The turns are very short, and a whole round can take only a few minutes. So everyone stays involved even when there are four players. And as soon as one round is over, and all the points are scored, people are ready and eager to play again. It’s a perfect family game. For children who are still learning to add and multiply, it even has some educational value – not enough to spoil the fun, just enough to make their parents willing to let them play, too. If the multiplication is too hard, instead of multiplying you can just add extra points for dice that reach the scoring levels. Because of the skill required, and the competitiveness, adults can get intensely engaged. Because of the luck factor, anyone who can flick/slide/roll a die has a reasonable chance of winning. And, if you have some perverse need to make it even more challenging, you can try removing some or all of the pegs on the bottom two levels. I tried. I put them back.

Tumbln’ dice is a big game. Some assembly is required. But it’s easy and takes maybe 90 seconds the first time. And just as easily disassembled and snuggled back into its box, in maybe 45. Of course, somebody who hasn’t played it yet will probably come over shortly after you’ve finally put it away, and you’ll find yourself gleefully putting it back together again.

Tumblin’ Dice is an investment in long-lasting, generation-spanning fun. The payoff is Major FUN.