Yura Yura Penguin

02/26/202102/26/2021 - Stephen Conway

Yura Yura Penguin

Designer: Ryoko Yabuchi
Artist: Ryoko Yabuchi
Publisher: Ryoko Yabuchi
2-6 players 10-15 minutes ages 7+ MSRP $28
Time to teach & learn: 2-3 minutes

An iceberg has melted and a whole village of penguins needs a new home! Can you stack together enough ice to build them a place to stay? The wind (or other players…) might make it wobble, so it will take a steady hand to find the right balance to place each level and find a perfect spot for each bird.

Yura Yura Penguin is a charming and clever card-based dexterity game where players build an uneven tower higher and higher, placing blocks of ice and penguins on different levels. Be the first to play all your ice cards and avoid making the tower topple to win the game.

Every part of Yura Yura Penguin greets you with a sense of artistic and whimsical beauty. The box sparkles, the rulebook has cartoon penguins to guide you through the instructions. And the pieces you play with… they practically beg you to set the game up.

There are 48 round ice cards, each one flecked with sparkly reflective bits. The cards come in three colors: white, light blue and dark blue. Each card has an icon in the center, describing it’s action. There are a few tri-colored Aurora cards which serve as wild cards and contain special icons. The back of each card has a lovely stylized illustration of ocean waves.

There are 14 cardstock icebergs. The icebergs are scored so they can be folded to form a u-shape. They are flat along their base and jagged along the top.

There are 18 jewel-like ice crystals, large translucent and faceted. They come in three colors that match the colors of the ice cards.

Last but not least are the adorable wooden penguins. The base game comes with four lovely basic birds.

I would highly encourage you to seek out the deluxe version which features 13 additional different painted penguins! These birdies are beyond cute. Each one depicts a different shape, size, or species of penguin.

You’ll find tiny white flippered penguins, banded and crested ones, ones with brush tails or yellow eyes, emperors and babies, and one giant (now extinct)!

In addition to the rulebook, there’s a wonderfully detailed booklet allowing you to get to know each species as well as general information about penguins.

To set up, spread out the ice cards face down in a rough circle to form “the sea.” Each player draws a hand of cards from the sea based on the number of people playing. A thick coaster-like start card is placed in the middle of the sea to form the foundation of the iceberg tower you’re going to build. Keep the penguins and ice crystals handy, because now you’re ready to play!

Yura Yura Penguin is a card stacking dexterity game with a dash of strategy and an emphasis on balance.

Players take turns in clockwise order, taking an action and then playing a card, creating a gloriously teetering tower of ice.

On your turn you will look at the icon on the card played prior to you. The icon shown gives you a set of instructions to follow. This is your action for the turn. Some icons make you build the tower higher. Others make you place items in the tower (an ice crystal or two, maybe even a penguin). Special icons on the tri-colored Aurora cards add an Uno element to the game, forcing you to draw cards, reverse the order of play or skip a turn.

When building higher, you stack a u-shaped iceberg card to form a new level.

Ice crystals placed in the tower are placed on the 2nd highest tier with the least number of crystals. This can be a tricky little puzzle to tease out.

Penguins placed in the tower are always placed on the 2nd highest platform.

Note you’re never adding pieces on the topmost level of the tower, always the 2nd highest level or lower.

If all the pieces have already been placed in the tower, then your job gets even more challenging. You will have to take an existing piece from the tower and move it to a higher position!

Once you have followed the instructions on the prior card, it’s time to place a card from your hand onto the tower. The new card you play must match either the color or the icon on the prior card.

So if the prior card played was dark blue with an iceberg icon, I would first place a new iceberg card on the tower and then have my choice to play a dark blue card or a card with an iceberg icon on top of the iceberg to form a new level to the tower.

The card you select is always played to the top level of the tower.

It could happen that you do not have a card that matches the color or icon of the previous card. In this case, you’ll draw a card from the sea. If that card plays, great. If not, add that card to your hand and your turn is over.

The goal in Yura Yura Penguin is to play all the cards in your hand. The first player to accomplish this wins OR… if one player causes the iceberg to break or fall the game ends immediately.

Now, let’s be serious. The joy and the fun at the heart of the game comes from building the ice tower higher and higher, only to see it come crashing down.

Each card you add to the tower can and often will make it more wobbly. And each card you play will dictate a set of instructions for the next player. As the tower starts to sway a little more, maybe you decide to play a card with a penguin icon, forcing the next player to place a wooden bird on a higher level, tipping the balance even more.

If you manage to rid yourself of all your cards to claim victory, you will probably get a polite round of applause.

BUT you’re even more likely to receive cheers and high fives from bringing the tower down. It’s a special kind of game that finds a way to celebrate defeat as much or more than victory.

What the game really builds toward is an explosion of laughter and delight as one too many cards or birds or ice crystals causes the tower to collapse in a heap.

If only a few small pieces take a tumble, or even a single card falls from the tower on your turn, you are allowed to try and recover and rebuild. But if even two cards fall free, the iceberg is considered broken, and the game ends.

The basic game offers a wonderful experience to players who are young and young at heart. The deluxe edition of Yura Yura Penguin, however, makes the game remarkable in ways that are not only about adding fancier components.

The 13 new penguin tokens change the game in dramatic and devilishly fun ways. Instead of the generic penguins, players can agree on a specific set to use for the game OR each player can select a penguin of their own to try and move up through the tower.

My personal favorite, though, adds a delicious element of brinksmanship to each penguin card played. When you are forced to place a penguin in the tower, the player prior to you gets to select any penguin from the supply for you to place!

Now you might take it easy on someone, giving them a reasonable sized penguin to add to the tower, hoping they will do the same for you later. BUT as the cards stack higher and higher, the GIANT wooden penguin always looms as a threat. And in most games it will be a matter of when and not if this chunky fellow finds a spot to roost adding even more tension and fun to see if the tower will hold.

If this was not enough, the deluxe edition includes a wooden polar bear token that adds yet another way to play. When one of two polar bear cards is added to the tower, the rules of the game change completely.

The polar bear will be placed on the top level of the ice tower and from this point forward all cards and tokens in the game are played on the top level of the tower for the rest of the game. Suddenly the tower builds out instead of up and gets very crowded! You will have to learn an entirely new set of skills to do well and keep the tower from falling.

The flexible and expandable rules provided by the deluxe edition nudge us to see the true fun of the Yura Yura Penguin comes from the many different ways we can enjoy and create a more thrilling wobbly tower.

From engaging gameplay to the look and feel of the cards and tokens, there is a quiet and remarkable artful attention to every aspect of the Yura Yura Penguin. Each of these many small decisions has an important impact on the game. Even the title helps set the scene. Yura Yura is a word in Japanese that describes the sound of something swaying in the wind and waves.

Collectively the result of these small but artful decisions is an invitation to play that is nearly impossible to refuse. There’s a fun world waiting for you inside this small box – a simple promise to make but never an easy one to fulfill.

Simple joys like this are often the best and most lasting, i think, because we can lose ourselves in them over and over, regardless of age.

That is what Yura Yura Penguin provides – an open door to Major Fun.

***

Written by: Stephen Conway

Cupcake Academy

02/08/202102/08/2021 - Stephen Conway Leave a comment

Cupcake Academy

Blue Orange Games | BGG

Designer: Erwan Morin
Artist: Stephane Escapa
Publisher: Blue Orange Games
2-4 players 10 minutes ages 8+ MSRP $22
Time to teach & learn: 3 minutes

Seven minutes separate you and your team of pastry chefs from enrolling at the world famous Cupcake Academy. How many assignments can you complete, exchanging and stacking colored cups on plates, readying them for the kitchen? Be quick, but be careful. The judges are very picky, so each order has to be just right for everyone to move on. Complete all the assignments before time is up and you’ll enjoy the sweet taste of victory!

The components in Cupcake Academy are colorful and charming and help set the mood.

There are 20 hard plastic cupcake cups in five different sizes and bright colors. The cups nest nicely into each other whether right side up or upside down.

Each player has a set of three personal plate tiles. This is where you’ll stack your cups. The team also shares one large plate tile. This is where you’ll swap cups.

A deck of 60 assignment cards will define your challenges each game. The assignment cards are color coded for two, three, or four players.

A seven minute sand timer drives Cupcake Academy and keeps players on their toes.

To play, shuffle and create a stack of assignment cards based on the number of players. Each player arranges their cups in a single stack on their center personal plate. Place the shared plate within each reach of everyone. When the team is ready, flip the timer, the first assignment card, and the game begins!

Cupcake Academy is a cooperative stacking and pattern matching game driven by logic. The goal is to complete all the assignment cards within the allotted time.

An assignment card shows a specific arrangement of cups for each player. The color and size of the cups shown is important.

The position of the cups on the plates, though, doesn’t matter. So, if I need to have my big green cup on a plate, it doesn’t matter which one of my plates it is on.

In order to complete an assignment, every player must create a layout with the right number and color of cups to match the goal. The shared plate must also be empty.

When complete, flip the next assignment and continue until you complete the stack of assignment cards or run out of time. If you finish all the cards, huzzah! Your group becomes the next class of students at the Cupcake Academy. If you run out of time, not to worry, there’s always next semester (or the next game).

A collective logic puzzle is the sweet gooey center of Cupcake Academy.

On the surface, the goal to be accomplished seems so simple. What could be hard about placing the right color and size cup on a plate?

First, remember each player has five cups to begin the round, nested like Russian dolls, with the large pink cup covering the rest. Using only one hand for the whole game, you’ll be unstacking and restacking your cups to try and match the pattern.

If the assignment shown asks for you to have a blue cup and an orange cup showing on your plates, the remainder of your cups are going to have to go somewhere else. This means you are going to have to hide the others by nesting them OR send your cups along to another player. But here’s the thing…

The chefs running the Academy are a tricksy bunch. You cannot simply give or take cups from another player’s plate. You must use the shared plate to transfer cups AND, to make matters worse, there can only be one cup on the shared plate at a time.

The challenge and fun of Cupcake Academy comes from learning when and how to unstack and restack your cups so that you can keep the ones you need, hide others underneath, and send the rest on to your teammates.

You need to understand your own needs, but the game forces you to look at the whole assignment, to factor in the needs of your teammates, too. Together, you have to puzzle out how to pass cups in the right order via the shared plate so that everyone can create the right combination.

Communication is key to success and will almost certainly create hilarious moments of failure, too. It’s almost inevitable that at some point your team will have to scramble to undo an entire chain of swapped cups in order to fix a problem in the pattern.

Cupcake Academy is a series of interconnected puzzles that blossom into a fun and challenging game. Time pressure and teamwork create a sometimes thoughtful and sometimes frantic experience that requires focus and contributions from everyone. The better you communicate, the more you’ll accomplish.

Cupcake Academy is a surprising and wonderful blend. It manages to evoke the old world charm of a slide puzzle (shift pieces, make a pattern) while drawing inspiration from video game culture. What was once a solitaire experience is now gamified – a layered puzzle with multi-player co-op mode unlocked. It even comes with a checklist of achievements you can unlock as you ramp up the difficulty of the game.

Cupcake Academy can speak to a lot of people, spanning generations. It’s a mash-up of thinky and dexterity elements that feels fresh and different. It is clever enough to engage the brain but hectic enough to unlock the simple magic of Major Fun.

***

Written by: Stephen Conway

Slide Quest

02/04/202002/04/2020 - Stephen Conway

Slide Quest

Blue Orange Game s| BGG

Designer: Jean-François Rochas, Nicolas Bourgoin
Publisher: Blue Orange Art: Stéphane Escapa
1-4 players 15-30 minutes ages 7+
MSRP $23
Time to teach & learn: 5 minutes

Your kingdom has problems. From the coast, to the mountains, to the castle at the center of the realm, villains have taken over! It’s up to you and your team to guide one brave night along a perilous path to reclaim the land for your king!

Slide Quest is a cooperative dexterity game that draws equal parts inspiration from video games and a wooden toy from a bygone era.

Slide Quest uses the game box in a fun way – as a point of balance for four plastic lever arms. You place one arm in a notch along each edge, sort of like a teeter-totter. The arms that extend into the box are used to hold up the maps representing different areas of the kingdom: the coast, the mountains, the castle grounds and the castle itself.

When each lever is depressed, the map will float, suspended above the box. This is the game board!

Each of the twenty map boards shows a path for the knight and a variety of obstacles: holes, stones, arches, fences, even sticks of dynamite. These obstacles are represented by 3-D tokens you’ll place on the map.

There are also guard and villain tokens you’ll have to defeat!

Our hero in Slide Quest is a big blue knight figure with a ball bearing instead of feet, so he will roll around the board. There’s also a life level meter with a marker that sets the difficulty and tracks your successes or failures on each map.

The goal in Slide Quest is to guide the knight across each map along a path, avoiding obstacles and defeating enemies along the way.

You chose a realm (five map boards in total) and the game will end if you manage to maneuver the knight through all five boards.

You do this as a team. You play together, each person controlling one of the lever arms along the side of the box. This causes the map board to tilt to and fro, making the knight slide around the board.

It takes coordination and communication between everyone to keep the knight on the path. And each level presents a new set of challenges. Sometimes the game is about finesse, sliding through arches or carefully avoiding sticks of dynamite. Other times, it’s a game of combat, pushing enemies into pits. The game can go from tense and delicate to loud and frenetic, all after one wrong flick of the wrist!

Pits, explosions, enemies, even just falling over can cost you lives. Run out of lives and you’ll have to start all over.

Slide Quest is a creative union of low and high tech game elements.

On the low tech side, Slide Quest is a modern cousin to a classic toy from the 1940s: Labyrinth. Labyrinth is a solitaire dexterity puzzle where one player uses rotating knobs to tilt a wooden maze trying to guide a ball to the finish line. It’s engaging and can be peaceful and frustrating in equal measure!

Slide Quest captures the essence of the original. By making it a cooperative experience, the game changes its focus from the ball to the players around the box. It’s this collective sense of accomplishment or abject failure that makes the game so fun!

On the high tech side, Slide Quest is built around a video game framework. There are five levels to beat. The levels build in difficulty and end with a boss battle. You lose lives when you fail and if you lose too many, you start over from the beginning. You can even play the game in campaign mode, trying to defeat all twenty in one go!

These high and low tech elements are a language that any modern game player understands on an almost instinctual level. Through them, Slide Quest speaks to a very wide audience of players. There are no barriers to laughter and teamwork in Slide Quest, only more bridges to Major Fun.

Written by: Stephen Conway

Special Note:

This review appears in the Spring 2020 issue of Casual Game Insider Magazine.

CGI publishes a wonderful selection of articles and reviews on a quarterly basis. In 2020, a Major Fun review will be featured in each issue!

The Spiel, Major Fun and CGI share a common goal: opening doors to the wider world of play. We hope this cross promotion will invite more people into the game community.

Maki Stack

10/02/201810/02/2018 - Stephen Conway Leave a comment

Release: 10/2/2018	Download: Enhanced \| MP3
Run Time: 89 min	Subscribe: Enhanced \| MP3 \| RSS

Mom told you, don’t play with your food. Maki Stack says forget that. Sushi isn’t just delicious ; it’s fun to build towers with it, too! Using your fingers like chopsticks, listen close and see if you can stack your wooden maki faster than the other team. Then try it blindfolded! So much Major Fun packed into a simple set of blocks and cards. Listen in for a full review and discussion. Maki Stack BGG \| Blue Orange \| Buy Designer: Jeff Lai Artist: Stéphane Escapa Publisher: Blue Orange 2-6 players 10-15 minutes ages 7+ MSRP $25 For info on the Game Night Grab Bag segments featured on the show, check out the show notes at The Spiel! * Music credits include: Black Room by Jun Mayuzumi \| the song Ye Ye by Shuri Eiko \| the song *

Drop It

09/26/201809/26/2018 - Stephen Conway Leave a comment

Drop It Kosmos | Kosmos & Thames | BGG | Buy

Designer: Bernhard Lach, Uwe Rapp
Publisher: Kosmos, Thames & Kosmos
2-4 players 20 minutes ages 8+
MSRP $30

The name says it all. Gravity is your friend and enemy in this game. Take turns dropping wooden pieces between two clear panes. Some areas you want to avoid; others, you’ll cash in for big points. The player best able to bend the laws of physics to his or her service will win the game.

Even from across the room, Drop It makes an impression.

It becomes a beautiful mosaic of shapes and colors as you play. The main component of the game is a vertical game board which stands over 12” tall.

The board is two panes of clear plastic with a gap wide enough to accommodate the 36 colorful wooden player pieces. Slanted lines separate the plastic panes into distinct areas (drop zones) and each drop zone has a semi-opaque dot. There are additional slots on the sides and at the bottom for double sided landing zone boards.

Each player begins with 9 wooden pieces in bright primary colors: 3 circles, 2 squares, 2 diamonds and 2 triangles.

There’s also a score board and markers for each player color.

Pick a piece and drop it into the game board. If all goes well, that piece will score. That’s what you’ll do each turn. Do this alternating between each player until all pieces have been played and the player with the highest score wins.

It’s hard to overstate the simple joy of watching the pieces drop into the board and cause others to slide and shift (sometimes even vault!) to new locations in ways you might not expect. There will be a lot of laughs as the board builds in new and crazy ways.

And on one level Drop It really is that simple.

BUT…

Deciding which piece to select and where to drop it is heart of the game.

There are some basic restrictions that will determine whether or not the piece you drop will score points.

Your piece cannot come to rest on a piece with the same shape. So no squares touching other squares.

Your piece cannot come to rest on a piece with your color. So, if you’re blue, no blue pieces touching other blue pieces.

Also, as you stack pieces higher and higher, no piece can extend above the edge of the board.

Any time a piece you drop breaks one of these rules, tough luck! That piece will not score points.

If you manage to avoid these restrictions, then your piece will score points based on the highest drop zone it lands in. The lowest zone is 1 point, the next is 2 points and so on until you get to 8 points at the top. This means if most of a piece is in the 5 point zone but a small corner of your piece is poking over into the six point zone, you score 6 points.

There’s also a bonus dot in each drop zone. If any part of your piece overlaps with a dot you score bonus points. The dots come in three sizes: large medium and small. Large dots are 1 point, medium 2 points and small dots are worth 3.

The shape and color restrictions make Drop It a vertical logic puzzle. There’s a meaningful decision to make not just a feat of dexterity to perform.

The side and bottom landing zone boards really make Drop It shine.

In addition to the basic restrictions, which apply anywhere, the bottom edge and sides of the board now have restrictions based on the landing zone boards you agreed to use at the beginning of the game.

The landing zones make edges off limits based on specific shape and color.

One bottom landing zone board, for instance, is divided equally between the four shapes in the game. If I drop a circle piece and it lands so it touches the circle landing zone… wah wah! No points for me.

Same goes for the sides. If your piece slides over to touch the landing zone side with a forbidden color or shape, no points for you.

This means on any given turn you have to consider what shape and color piece can land on any other already in play AND what shape and color piece can land against the edge of the board.

Each turn provides players with a chance to make a meaningful strategic decision. And this is the wonderful surprise waiting for you in the game.

The simple joys of playing with gravity paired with puzzle logic makes Drop It a rewarding surprise full of many different flavors of Major Fun.

There are rules and variants to dial down the challenge for younger players and for more experienced droppers, the landing zone boards could be mixed and matched to create even more challenging restrictions.

The game gives on many levels – from the tactile joy of manipulating the pieces and watching them tumble and click into place – to the satisfaction and mischeivous glee of selecting the perfect piece to avoid any restrictions AND make life a little bit more challenging for your opponents.

Perhaps we should turn to Sir Isaac Newton since we’re talking about a game with gravity.

He said:

“Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.”

Drop It needs no embellishment. Its simple truth comes from a set of basic wooden shapes and a small set of restrictions. And within that simplicity we find layers and levels of fun that are rewarding in unexpected ways. What more could you ask of any game that’s Major Fun?

***

Boom, Bang, Gold!

06/04/201806/04/2018 - Stephen Conway Leave a comment

Boom, Bang, Gold! HABA | BGG | Buy

Designer: Alexandre Emerit
Artist: Timo Grubing
Publisher: HABA
2-4 players 20 minutes ages 7+
MSRP $30

Things have never been the same since they found gold in the old mine at the edge of this frontier town. Prospectors, hunters, even the undertaker and the cook at the hotel are trying to get in on the action by tossing sticks of dynamite down the mine shaft and sifting through the rubble. Be careful, though, there are critters – bats, rats, snakes, and ghosts – lurking around and looking to cause trouble. When the dust settles, can you avoid the sheriff and collect the most gold in a day?

Boom, Bang, Gold! has some outstanding and unique components. The box bottom is the gold mine. Inside the bottom of the box is a cardstock floor insert to make it springy.

There are 160 round tokens. Some have gold, some have fool’s gold, a few have critters, a few have tools, but MOST of the tokens are just rubble. Over half, in fact, (82) have rubble printed on both sides.

There are four characters in the game. Each character has a cool 3D treasure chest where you will bank your gold. Each character also has a flat shelf where you will place the gold and tools you collect during the game.

Hank the Hat, a Prospector,

Alma Anderson, hotel cook,

Tombstone Tony, the undertaker,

and Rattlesnake Ruby, a hunter.

There’s a pocket watch you’ll use to keep track of turns. And last but not least are four wooden sticks of dynamite, complete with string fuses! Each stick measures 3.5” long. They are hefty, bright, and just plain fun to hold and throw.

Setting up the game is really simple. Place all the tokens in the mine face down and shake them up a bit. Each player grabs a character with treasure chest, a shelf, and a stick of dynamite. Now you’re ready to play!

Boom, Bang Gold! is a dexterity game for players with sharp eyes, quick hands, and ears that are always on alert.

There are 12 rounds in the game. Each round begins with the group (or one player) saying “Boom, Bang, Gold!”

Then, immediately and all at once, everyone tosses their dynamite into the mine. The goal is to throw your stick hard enough that it causes the spring loaded floor to bounce and flip over lots of tokens in the mine. You don’t need to be gentle but you don’t want to throw too hard either – no dents in the mine-box (or another player’s noggin!).

Once all the dynamite lands with a clatter and the tokens flip, it’s an all out race to collect gold from the mine. Only a face up gold token, fool’s gold, or tool can be collected onto your shelf, BUT…. There are a few basic rules every prospector must pledge to obey before grabbing their first nugget

You can only use one hand to grab.

You can only grab one token at a time.

You have to place the token you grab onto your shelf before grabbing another one.

First player to touch a token, gets it.

You cannot turn over tokens in the mine.

Do NOT collect critter tokens!

(We’ll come back to the critters in a second)

When all face up gold and tool tokens have been collected, we check to see if anyone has collected a tool token. If there are no tool tokens in play, then everyone gets to stash their gold (EVEN the fool’s gold!) in their treasure chest. Each gold nugget in your chest will be worth 1 point at the end of the game.

The mad scramble for tokens as the dynamite bounces into the box is hilarious and frenetic fun. On its own without any other tweaks, this throw and grab routine provides a lot of enjoyment for all ages. But Boom, Bang, Gold! doesn’t stop there…

Tools and critters make Boom, Bang, Gold! more than just another knuckle-busting speed game.

There are four types of tool tokens: a pickaxe, a stick of dynamite, a sheriff’s badge and a revolver.

After everyone has caught their breath from a round of grabbing gold, if anyone has a tool, he or she will get a bonus based on which tool was found. If you’re really lucky, you might have found more than one tool, in which case you’d get more than one bonus.

The bonuses are handed out in a particular order which is printed on each character’s treasure chest.

First is the pickaxe. The bonus for the pickaxe is you get to flip over 5 rubble tokens in the mine. If you find any gold, you get to keep it!

Second, is the dynamite. You get to pick up a stick of dynamite and throw it into the mine again, but only you get to pick up gold tokens that flip face up.

Third is the Sheriff’s badge. Other players will groan if you get this one. The Sheriff can tell the difference between real gold and fool’s gold. All other players must put any fool’s gold tokens on their shelves back into the mine. The Sheriff is also a bit corrupt as well. The player who collected the badge get’s to keep the fool’s gold he or she collects.

NOTE: any fool’s gold already in your chest is safe. Only the fool’s gold you just collected this round is at risk of being caught by the Sheriff!

Fourth is the Revolver. You get to challenge another player to a duel. That player selects two gold tokens from his or her shelf and hides either one in each hand or two in one hand and none in the other. Then the owner of the revolver chooses a hand and gets to keep any gold he or she finds.

Each tool adds a fun wrinkle and added level of excitement to the game. And after one round, you’ll have the bonuses memorized, most likely.

The critter tokens, though, really make the game shine.

When flipped over by the dynamite, critter tokens are not collected. Instead, you need to warn your fellow miners about the dangerous critter your character is good at spotting. Alma Anderson is good at finding rats. You’ll see she has rats on her treasure chest.

If you are playing Alma and you see a rat in the mine, call out, “Watch out, a rat!”

All other players must immediately stop collecting tokens, place both hands on their head and shout, “Help!” Since you issued the warning, you may continue to collect tokens while the others are shouting for help.

This adds an extra level of silliness to the game that gets even better when you add the variations listed at the end of the rules.

Instead of a generic “Help!” when a warning is issued, there’s a specific gesture and phrase for each type of critter.

If I shout, “Watch out a bat!” You wave your hands around your head and say, “Go away!”

If I shout, “Watch out, a rat!” You put your hands behind your back and you say, “Squeak!”

If I shout, “Watch out, a snake!” You clap your hands together and you “Hissssss!”

If I shout, “Watch out, a ghost!” You cover your eyes and say, “OoooOOOoooo!”

Suddenly you have to be on the lookout for your own critter, you have to be ready to gesture and say the right thing if someone warns you, AND you have to be focused on collecting gold each round.

It’s hard to overstate the laughs and level of silliness this game can climb to when you play with the critters and all their gestures.

Boom, Bang, Gold! is a game almost anyone can play and thorougly enjoy. You can start with just throwing dynamite and grabbing gold, add in the tools, then the critters with “Help!” and then critters with gestures and sounds. You can adjust it according to the age or experience of the crowd.

The game feels complete and full of the most laughs and silliness when you throw all these elements together. By the end, you’ll have players waving and clapping and squeaking and Ooooing… sometimes when they’re supposed to and many times when they’re not.

And winning? Yes, someone will end up with a lot of gold and other’s won’t. But no one will care.

That’s what makes Boom, Bang, Gold! both special and Major Fun.

***

Rhino Hero: Super Battle

12/01/201712/01/2017 - Stephen Conway Leave a comment

Rhino Hero: Super Battle Official Site | BGG

Designer: Scott Frisco, Steven Strumpf
Publisher: HABA
2-4 players 20 min. ages 5+ MSRP $30

The big city can be a dangerous place. It’s a good thing your new high rise apartment building has its own team of superheroes to protect it! Rhino Hero and super friends Giraffe Boy, Big E and Batguin are on patrol as the building goes up, trying to reach the highest floor. Build with a steady hand and roll well in your battles and your hero will fly high!

Rhino Hero: Super Battle is a mega-scale stacking game. Using folded cards, players build a cardstock skyscraper and hope to move their wooden superhero token toward the top of the structure. When two heroes meet on the same level, a dice battle occurs knocking one to a lower floor. The hero at the highest level when the building comes crashing down wins the game.

This game has a lot of really fun components! There are 48 wall cards, 24 short and 24 tall ones. These cards are heavy duty cardstock. Each wall folds in half to make an L-shape.

There are 30 floor cards, also heavy duty cardstock. They are slender and rectangular. The front side of each floor has game icons.

There are three square base tiles. You’ll start your building using these.

The four wooden hero tokens are by far the most charming parts of the game.

Four pesky spider monkey tokens will make life difficult for you as you build.

And last but not least, there are 3 dice. Two are used for battles. One used for climbing the building.

The whimsical artwork by Thies Schwartz really helps establish the world of the game. There are animal characters living their wacky lives inside each apartment. The art also has a very nostalgic quality, the style is very reminiscent of art from old Little Golden Books.

To play, lay out the three base tiles together, separate the walls into two stacks and shuffle the floor cards and deal three floors to each player. Then flip three floor cards face up. Each player selects a wooden hero and you’re ready to play!

Each turn in the game goes like this: build, climb, battle, draw.

To build, you select one of the floor cards in your hand and play it. Each floor card has icons showing short walls, tall walls and possibly a monkey. Look at the icons on the floor card you play and select those walls from the supply. These are your building supplies for the turn.

Building must go in a specific order: first walls, then the floor, then monkeys. The first few wall cards will be placed on the base tiles. Some part of the wall must touch the yellow circles on the tile. Once you are building on higher floors, you can place your walls wherever you like – just remember you dont want the building to fall on your turn!

Now here’s the tricky part. You must place your floor on top of the walls you just placed. The floor must be flat. No angles or slides allowed! This can be especially tricky if you play a floor card that forces you to place walls of two different sizes. The tall walls are exactly twice the height of the short walls so as the building goes up, you will have opportunities to stack short walls on top of each other to form a level that is even with a tall wall.

If there’s a monkey on your floor, you take a monkey from the supply and hang it from the edge of your floor. There are only 4 monkeys in the game, so as the building goes up, you may have to move a monkey from one floor in the buiilding to a new one.

After building, you climb! Roll the light blue die to see where your hero lands. Based on the roll, move your hero up (or down) that number of floors in the building. Count each distinct level with a floor, then place your hero in the building.

If your hero lands on a level with no other heroes, you draw a replacement floor from the face up floor cards or from the top of the deck.

If your hero lands on a level occupied by another hero, a super battle occurs!

These battles give the game an added dimension of strategy, luck and fun.

The crazy building you and your fellow players create will become a sprawling structure which means there may be multiple floors at the same height. Any time you move your hero to a new floor, you want to take a moment to look closely and make sure there are no heros on floors at the same height.

The battle is a simple fast dice-off. The attacker is the new hero just arriving on the level. He or she rolls the red die. The defender rolls the blue die. The high roller stays on the level, the low roller must move down one level. No ties are possible in the game since the dice are not standard. The red die has all even numbers 2-4-6 and the blue die all odds 1-3-5. With those odds, it pays to be the attacker!

The hero that moves down after the battle does another level check. If there’s a hero on this level, you guessed it… another battle occurs! This means a single move by a hero can result in two or three battles as they careen down the building. It also means everyone is invested and involved on every turn, since you never know when you could be called to battle.

When the dust settles one hero will remain higher than any other in the building. That player gets the gold medal. Your outlook on the game changes the minute you get this medal. If another player causes the building to collapse, you win! But beware! If you cause the building to collapse while you have the medal, everyone else wins!

The battles are random, no doubt, but this element gives the game great balance. It’s not just the player who has the steadiest hand who is destined to win like most other stacking games. Your choices of what floor to use and where to build certainly have a big impact on the outcome of the game. But, timing and luck are just as important. You need to work your way to the top before hoping to see the cards come crashing down. And since there are so many battles, almost every game will lead to a sprawling crazy structure as players are forced to build higher and higher.

HABA’s first title in the series, Super Rhino (inexplicably renamed Rhino Hero in later editions), is simpler. Build a single tower up and up, moving Super Rhino higher and higher, trying to play all your roof cards before the structure falls. It’s an amazing, lovely and much beloved game. I have played it hundreds of times.

When I heard HABA was working on a follow up to Super Rhino, I was excited but also a bit worried.

It’s a risk to mess with that level of success. Make too many changes and you’ll lose the essence of the original. Too few changes, and you’ll wonder why they didn’t just do a reprint of the original.

Rhino Hero Super Battle is more ambitious. The scale is grand. And there are certainly more variables to consider on any given turn. But the essence of the original is alive and well.

Will this house of cards stand or fall?

Rhino Hero: Super Battle gives us a second question to ask:

Will my hero climb higher before the building falls?

At its core the game combines King of the Hill with the simple joy of building a crazy house of cards.

Super Battle’s ambition is rewarded with extra layers of tension and laughter.

Bigger than the original? Yep. You betcha. But not better. This isn’t a contest. Rhino Hero: Super Battle offers us a different flavor of Major Fun.

With any luck, you’ll get a chance to assemble your superfriends for a card climbing extravaganza and see for yourself.

December 2017

***

Bonk

10/30/201710/30/2017 - Stephen Conway Leave a comment

Bonk Official Site | BGG | Buy

Designer: David Harvey
Publisher: Competo , Marektoy
2-4 players 10 min. ages 8+ MSRP $60

Bonk is a fast paced game of dexterity and daring feats of physics. Using a rotating wooden slide and a few little metal balls, your team’s goal is to knock a wooden ball from its perch in the center of the board into the opposing team’s goal.

Bonk feels like a pub game from a bygone era. The game itself is a beautiful wooden box with four angled areas marked with wooden barriers. Two angled areas at each end point toward a goal, which is a gap containing a small wooden ‘nose’ a small arrow shaped block that will guide the scoring ball to the edge of the board.

Each angled area has a hole in the board. This hole is for the large wooden slide each player will use to play the game. The slides are tall and black and remind me of a part of a roller coaster, the part where you are just coming down the hill and screaming your head off. They also remind me of the big water slides or blanket slides you see at county fairs. The slide has a groove for the metal balls to whizz down and onto the board. The base of the slide is round and there’s a peg that you’ll place into the hole in one of the angled areas so that you can rotate the slide in all directions.

There are 12 metal balls, 6 for each team and one larger wooden ball, the ball you’ll try to hit during the game.

Bonk is played over a series of rounds. Each round, you and your teammate slide metal balls down your wooden slides attempting to knock a wooden ball into the goal on the other side of the board. When one team scores, you get a point and reset. The first team to five wins.

To begin, everyone high fives and all balls are left on the edge of the board. Once the high fives are done (some might want to shout BONK !) then the mayhem begins !

Pick up a ball, place it at the top of your slide, rotate your slide to aim, and whoosh let the ball roll down and into play. Hopefully it will knock into the ball but very often you will miss, so it’s lather rinse and repeat. The problem is you have a very limited number of balls, so if you go for the rapid fire approach, you may end up giving all the balls to the other team. If you go to slow, you may lose before you have your first shot lined up. Each round is a bit of glorious controlled chaos that is the essence of silly fun. You might be laughing too much or watching the ball bounce around and even forget to keep shooting.

The sheer novelty and creativity of Bonk certainly sets it apart from most games. Not often you get to hone your skills at rolling balls down a slide hoping to nail a target and make it move.

But that’s just the start. There’s one element I have forgotten to mention.

The wooden game board, the playing surface itself is not flat ! It is curved, meaning the board is basically a small hill. The crest of the hill is the center of the board (where the wooden ball starts) so t he board slowly slopes downward toward each team’s goal.

This means the wooden ball just needs the slightest nudge to start rolling downhill toward a goal and the angled beams that defined each players slide area serve a second purpose, they will guide the ball down toward the goal like a funnel.

You might think this means the first team to even touch the ball will score. Not so ! The board is big enough that you have time to react at least once or twice unless the shot has perfect aim.

Bonk is definitely a game where the more your practice and play with the slides, the better you get and the more you’ll see the potential for crazy angled shots.

Without the time pressure the curved board provides, a game round in Bonk could drag on with players chasing the ball from corner to corner without scoring. With the curved board and angled beams toward the goal, each round is a frenzy of activity leaving you wanting to set up and try again.

Bonk is engaging. Just seeing it on a table makes you want to play.

It just looks fun! And it delivers on that promise again and again.

There’s no barrier to entry with Bonk. Anyone can play. And that unlocks a special kind of fun you can share with everyone. And there certainly are not enough great games that do this.

Just sit down and give it a go. Whether or not you knock the ball around on your first try or your fifteenth, just the act of sending the balls down the slide is reward enough to make you want to keep playing.

This makes Bonk Major Fun of the highest and simplest order. Fun you can share with anyone, any time. The only winning that really matters with Bonk is that you play. You win any time you play, whether you ever score a point.

***

Boom Blast Stix

09/26/2017 - Stephen Conway Leave a comment

Boom Blast Stix Official Site | BGG | Buy

Designer: uncredited
Publisher: Moose Toys
2+ players 5-10 min. ages 6+ MSRP $15

Boom Blast Stix is a spring loaded trap. 32 springs and 32 traps to be precise. Your goal is to set one of these mini traps, place it on the pedestal and hope you don’t set the pile of springs sproinging off in every direction!

The game comes in a large plastic tube used to store the 32 plastic stix, ingeniously engineered little yellow springs.

Each of the stix is a triangular spring. There’s a flat tab one side which makes it easy to hold. The other two sides are sort of like a ball and socket joint. There’s a nubby round end and a hollowed out end sort of like a glove. To set the spring, you bend the nubby round end so that it fits into the glove with a satisfying little click.

The lid to the tube is a red pedestal, the actual playing surface for the game. The top of the lid is concave, so the stix will nestle down into it as the first few are placed. If you want some height, you can leave the lid on and play on top of the tube. You can also take the lid off and place it directly on the table.

Scatter the springs around the table so everyone has some within easy reach, place the pedestal (high or low) on the table and you’re ready to play !

It’s worth noting that very young kids should only play Boom Blast Stix with supervision. The springs are not dangerous so long as you stay a reasonable distance from the pedestal as you are placing the springs. The stix will click and pop when they go off and fly around which will cause a great commotion but their bark is much worse than their bite.

There are two easy steps to Boom Blast Stix.

Step one : pick a stix from the pile and set the spring.

Step two : gently place your stix on the red pedestal.

Now what you want to happen is… nothing. As long as the pile of stix doesn’t explode, you heave a sigh of relief and it’s the next player’s turn.

If the stack of stix explodes. BOOOM! The springs wil go flying in every direction with shouts and screams and laughs soon to follow.

If for some reason you knock any stix off without making everything explode, you have to replace the stix you dislodged, making it even more likely you’ll be the one to set off the springs !

Two things set Boom Blast Stix apart. One is obvious. One not so much.

The obvious thing is the stix, the springs themselves. They are wonderfully engineered to feel balanced and they snap together with a very satisfying feeling and click that makes them seem like they will hold on for a good while. Notice I said seem… because the truth is sometimes you can just look at or barely breathe on a spring and… SPROING it will go off ! The whole game is built around these springs and if they were not fun to set and set off, the whole game would crash and burn. These little gems are fun to set and sproing even when you’re not playing the game. I may have spent as much time flipping and dropping the springs just for fun as I have actually playing the game.

The non obvious thing is this. Boom Blast Stix reminds us that losing is actually winning with some games. Technically, you lose if you detonate the pile, but, really, who are we kidding? The whole hope of the group is to see the pile of stix go off. So, really, you’ve just giving everyone what they want – an excuse to laugh and shout… and a reason to set it up and try again. You want to keep going as long as you can, of course, and the tension mounts the more stix there are in the stack. But the person who triggers the explosion is the one who gets to experience the heart and soul of the game. You don’t feel like the loser of anything. You gain. Everyone does. A scream, A raucous laugh. A smile. A dive for cover. And most important – a memory of that crazy moment that could last far beyond the game or even the night.

It sounds a little dippy I know, but trust me, Major Fun knows about such things. Boom Blast Stix reminds us that losing can sometimes be the best way to win when you really know how to play.

Dumb fun can be the absolute best kind of fun. And that’s the kind of fun you find in Boom Blast Stix.

It’s a visceral reaction, almost instinctual when we encounter it. It takes no forethought or strategy to recognize. It simply is. We all have this ability as children and as adults it can easily get lost or obscured by the pressures and stresses of the daily world and routine. What makes Boom Blast Stix unequivocally Major Fun is the fact that it can trigger or even reawaken that innate sense of mindless fun present in every one of us. We don’t have to question it – simply give into the moment and enjoy what it offers – that small moment of risk and joy we all know, we all remember and we all cherish.

***

Twangled

08/30/201708/31/2017 - Bernie DeKoven Leave a comment

Twangled Mindware | Buy

Designer: uncredited
Publisher: Mindware
4-8 players 5-15 min. ages 6+ MSRP $25

To those of us who like party games, especially party games that make people laugh, in particular party games like Knots, have we got a game for you!

It’s called Twangled. It would remind you mightily of the traditional, classic, puzzling, physical and often hilarious game Knots if it weren’t for: a set of eight elastic bands, in four different colors, with a loop at each end; and a spinner you kick. Which, aside from reading the rules and playing the game itself, is how you know that it’s not Knots. No. Not knots at all.I explicate by cleverly quoting the rules thus: “Players grab a colored band – making sure that at least one band of each color is taken before doubling up any colors. Players stand in a circle facing inward – making sure not to stand next to someone with the same band color. Place the kick spinner in the center of Get Twangled! Determine a player to go first. On your turn, kick the spinner and perform the action as indicated without letting go of the bands. For example, if a player spins ‘Under Green,; that player must move his or her entire body underneath a green band. The player may have to do other necessary moves to get under the green band, such as step over a yellow band. If using more than one of a band color, you must perform your action on the band furthest from you. Once a player has completed the action, play passes to the person on the left, who then kicks the spinner and performs his or her required action. Now it is time to get unTwangled. Without ever letting go of the bands, players work together to figure out how to return to the starting formation. Communication is key as players direct each other to move over and under bands.”

On the other hand, you don’t really need to know the rules to figure out how to play. It’s just about intuitive. And the parts that aren’t don’t matter. And if you know how to play Knots, you already know more than enough to figure the rest out.

Much of the not-Knots quality of the game can be traced to the stretchiness of the bands, which can be compared to and contrasted with the unstretchiness of the human arm. And then there’s the spinner, which is not part of the traditional game of Knots and yet functions admirably well as a novel device for causing people to become Twangled, in deed. Speaking of whom, Twangle is designed to be played by four to eight players, ages six to decrepit.

Yet another surprising and oft-delightful differentiation caused by the stretchiness factor: the aftergame. So hilariously logical is this aftergame that I fear I would spoil it should I say more. I suppose, if you don’t discover the hilarious logic of the aftergame yourself, you could write and ask us. To give you fair warning, it’s an undocumented feature that apparently appears serendipitously. I shall say no more other than: Major Fun. In deed!

Release: 10/2/2018	Download: Enhanced \| MP3
Run Time: 89 min	Subscribe: Enhanced \| MP3 \| RSS

Mom told you, don’t play with your food. Maki Stack says forget that. Sushi isn’t just delicious ; it’s fun to build towers with it, too! Using your fingers like chopsticks, listen close and see if you can stack your wooden maki faster than the other team. Then try it blindfolded! So much Major Fun packed into a simple set of blocks and cards. Listen in for a full review and discussion. Maki Stack BGG \| Blue Orange \| Buy Designer: Jeff Lai Artist: Stéphane Escapa Publisher: Blue Orange 2-6 players 10-15 minutes ages 7+ MSRP $25 For info on the Game Night Grab Bag segments featured on the show, check out the show notes at The Spiel! * Music credits include: Black Room by Jun Mayuzumi \| the song Ye Ye by Shuri Eiko \| the song *