Apr
11
At first glance, Qwirkle seems like the easiest game in the world to have designed. The rules are so simple and intuitive that you feel this game must have existed for eons as a kind of urgame in the collective unconscious. You’re matching colors, matching shapes—using skills learned in preschool, …
keep reading...
Apr
10
At the New York Toy Fair in February 2007, I walked every aisle, looking for games in unusual places. In addition to numerous unappealing titles from companies both old and new, I ran across a few games that sounded appealing, although I couldn’t look deeper than the surface since Toy …
keep reading...
Dec
19
Abstract games seem to fall into two broad categories: black-and-white, and vibrant as a peacock that lost a fight with a paint factory. The monochromatic abstracts are almost invariably deep and thoughtful games requiring you to carefully evaluate each move for the long term ramifications or else risk losing in …
keep reading...
Dec
16
Theme Week: The Fewer, The Better
Games by designer Leo Colovini tend to be more strategic and less chaotic when played with the fewest number of people listed on the box. (Some argue that his games are most fun when played with zero players, but we’ll ignore those sourpusses.) FAB has already reviewed Colovini’s Cartagena and Familienbande; this week, seven more games from Signor Colovini.
Architects design with exacting detail to ensure that their creations (1) meet all the necessary safety guidelines, (2) look polished and beautiful, and (3) don’t fall down and crush anyone.
Builders in medieval times weren’t anywhere near as exacting, if Leo Colovini’s Masons is any guide. Sure, masons …
keep reading...
Dec
15
Theme Week: The Fewer, The Better
Games by designer Leo Colovini tend to be more strategic and less chaotic when played with the fewest number of people listed on the box. (Some argue that his games are most fun when played with zero players, but we’ll ignore those sourpusses.) FAB has already reviewed Colovini’s Cartagena and Familienbande; this week, seven more games from Signor Colovini.
"Go west, young man, and grow up with the country.” Plenty of Americans heeded the call to travel west in the 19th century, whether they were looking for gold in California, religious freedom in Utah, or hundreds of acres of sunflowers in Kansas. Leo Colovini draws on this history for …
keep reading...
Dec
14
Theme Week: The Fewer, The Better
Games by designer Leo Colovini tend to be more strategic and less chaotic when played with the fewest number of people listed on the box. (Some argue that his games are most fun when played with zero players, but we’ll ignore those sourpusses.) FAB has already reviewed Colovini’s Cartagena and Familienbande; this week, seven more games from Signor Colovini.
Many of Leo Colovini’s games have themes that are only an inch deep. They provide players with some mild story to wrap around their actions and give them meaning, but for the most part, they’re disposable.
Despite the name, Submarine also boasts a shallow theme that you’re unlikely …
keep reading...
Dec
13
Theme Week: The Fewer, The Better
Games by designer Leo Colovini tend to be more strategic and less chaotic when played with the fewest number of people listed on the box. (Some argue that his games are most fun when played with zero players, but we’ll ignore those sourpusses.) FAB has already reviewed Colovini’s Cartagena and Familienbande; this week, seven more games from Signor Colovini.
Alexander the Great conquered more land before breakfast each morning than most of us will see in a lifetime, but conquering loses its thrill after awhile and Alexander wasn’t above sharing the wealth with his most trusted underlings—that is, you and one to three other generals.
In Alexandros, …
keep reading...
Dec
12
Theme Week: The Fewer, The Better
Games by designer Leo Colovini tend to be more strategic and less chaotic when played with the fewest number of people listed on the box. (Some argue that his games are most fun when played with zero players, but we’ll ignore those sourpusses.) FAB has already reviewed Colovini’s Cartagena and Familienbande; this week, seven more games from Signor Colovini.
The essence of rummy—draw a card, form sets, discard a card—is so simple that it’s been used in dozens of different games, but the number of pirate rummy games is sure to be tiny, perhaps limited to only one: Leo Colovini’s Corsari.
Playing this card game is unlikely …
keep reading...
Dec
11
Aaaaaaand we’re back! After a long delay due to efforts to bring Boardgame News up to speed, FAB reviews will appear far more regularly in the weeks ahead.
Theme Week: The Fewer, The Better
Games by designer Leo Colovini tend to be more strategic and less chaotic when played with the fewest number of people listed on the box. (Some argue that his games are most fun when played with zero players, but we’ll ignore those sourpusses.) FAB has already reviewed Colovini’s Cartagena and Familienbande; this week, seven more games from Signor Colovini.
The necessities of life are considered to be food, water, and shelter from the elements. Good things all, you can hardly argue against them being essential to your well-being. Leo Colovini, however, would like to add another element to the list: the ability to form relationships with your neighbors and …
keep reading...
Nov
30
Theme Week: Chock-o-block Schacht
In a 2004 interview, designer Michael Schacht said, “I am a big fan of games with few rules.... I prefer a rules structure that also permits poor play. After all, one should be able to learn a game and improve with each play. That has the disadvantage, though, that some of my games aren’t completely understandable during the first play.”
If you search long enough, you can find a game on almost any topic. Druids dancing around a tree? Check. Firefighters putting out a forest blaze? Check. Iroquois hunting for beaver pelts in the woods? Check.
Thus it shouldn’t be a surprise to find a game that involves …
keep reading...
Nov
29
Theme Week: Chock-o-block Schacht
In a 2004 interview, designer Michael Schacht said, “I am a big fan of games with few rules.... I prefer a rules structure that also permits poor play. After all, one should be able to learn a game and improve with each play. That has the disadvantage, though, that some of my games aren’t completely understandable during the first play.”
When you think of games related to China, Mah Jong might be the first thing that comes to mind. You’ve seen actors playing the game in movies, slapping down the chunky tiles and collecting the scoring sticks from opponents.
The pieces in Michael Schacht’s China can’t compare to …
keep reading...
Nov
28
Theme Week: Chock-o-block Schacht
In a 2004 interview, designer Michael Schacht said, “I am a big fan of games with few rules.... I prefer a rules structure that also permits poor play. After all, one should be able to learn a game and improve with each play. That has the disadvantage, though, that some of my games aren’t completely understandable during the first play.”
Like many other game designers, Michael Schacht uses particular design elements in his creations year after year. Hansa is a particularly good example of his interest in connection games—that is, games in which you can follow or create paths and connect one location to another in some manner.
Nov
27
Theme Week: Chock-o-block Schacht
In a 2004 interview, designer Michael Schacht said, “I am a big fan of games with few rules.... I prefer a rules structure that also permits poor play. After all, one should be able to learn a game and improve with each play. That has the disadvantage, though, that some of my games aren’t completely understandable during the first play.”
Since its debut in 2003, Coloretto has been one of Schacht’s most successful sellers. The card game is a prime example of Schacht’s design principles—the rules are simple, a player has only a few, easily understood choices each turn, and you can play really, really poorly—so it’s no surprise that …
keep reading...
Nov
25
Theme Week: The Need for Speed
There’s a time and a place for games that require a lot of planning, pondering, and chin-rubbing. That time is not this week, and that place is not this website. Here we present a half-dozen games that force you to play fast, fast, fast.
Mass-market American game publishers apparently have a phobia about printing the name of the game designer on the box. Instead of telling game buyers who actually designed the game, they want to create the illusion that the manufacturer is the source of all things gamey and good. If you like …
keep reading...
Nov
24
It’s the rare game that lasts less time than it takes to describe how to play, but if you started playing Brawl when this page was downloading, you’d be sorting the cards and getting set for game two by now.
Brawl, as the name suggests, is all about …
keep reading...
Nov
23
Theme Week: The Need for Speed
There’s a time and a place for games that require a lot of planning, pondering, and chin-rubbing. That time is not this week, and that place is not this website. Here we present a half-dozen games that force you to play fast, fast, fast.
While games themselves are fun, their names usually aren’t. El Grande, Coloretto, Acquire, Cartagena—these names are descriptive and functional, not show-stoppers that attract strangers passing by on the street.
A few winning game names are out there. Hoity Toity inspires curiosity; Wheedle is a hit with SpongeBob SquarePants …
keep reading...
Nov
22
Theme Week: The Need for Speed
There’s a time and a place for games that require a lot of planning, pondering, and chin-rubbing. That time is not this week, and that place is not this website. Here we present a half-dozen games that force you to play fast, fast, fast.
If you’ve watched more than 20 picoseconds of a psychiatry session on television or in the movies, then you’ve seen a troubled soul going through a word association session. The psychiatrist presents the patient with a series of words ("Father," “tool shed,” “hedge trimmers"), and the patient responds with the …
keep reading...
Nov
21
Theme Week: The Need for Speed
There’s a time and a place for games that require a lot of planning, pondering, and chin-rubbing. That time is not this week, and that place is not this website. Here we present a half-dozen games that force you to play fast, fast, fast.
Parents like to play games with their children to help them understand the principles of fair play, learn how to win and lose gracefully, and boost their brainpower. But unless the game is decided entirely by luck, parents and other adults often feel they have to keep their own brainpower …
keep reading...
Nov
20
Theme Week: The Need for Speed
There’s a time and a place for games that require a lot of planning, pondering, and chin-rubbing. That time is not this week, and that place is not this website. Here we present a half-dozen games that force you to play fast, fast, fast.
Here’s a simple description of Time Is Money: Grab all the cash you can in 60 seconds. The player with the most cash wins. Naturally, there are a few catches, or else the first player would simply snag the entire stack of bills and the game would be over in …
keep reading...
Nov
19
Many game designers and publishers use the same themes over and over again, casting players as business owners, stock holders, pirates, astronauts, merchants, and other familiar roles. But sometimes you’ll run across a game with such an unusual theme that the game itself becomes more interesting. “Tell me more,” you …
keep reading...
Nov
18
One element of games that draws people into playing them almost against their will is the toy factor. Mouse Trap is the classic example of a creation that’s more toy than game, and its Rube Goldbergian construction doesn’t appeal to adults because the game is little more than roll and …
keep reading...
Nov
17
Game and toy publisher Mattel has a long history of success with board and card games, from both putting out original games and buying already popular games, such as International Games’ Uno. In 2003, internal market research showed that Mattel was underserving the game-frenzied German market, so the company decided …
keep reading...
Nov
16
The name Sid Sackson will be meaningless to anyone who isn’t into boardgames. Heck, even most game fans won’t recognize his name, and that’s a shame because Sackson can be considered the grandfather of modern boardgames and Acquire is his masterpiece.
Acquire was first published in 1962 by …
keep reading...
Nov
15
When you think of Mattel, the first thing that comes to mind is probably Barbie. And if you think of games that Mattel has published, the first thing to come to mind might still be Barbie. Barbie Queen of the Prom Game, Barbie of Swan Lake, Barbie the Princess and …
keep reading...
Nov
14
Board games shine at letting you experience parts of the world that are otherwise off-limits. Not a millionaire? No problem—by playing Acquire, Monopoly, or Power Grid, you can buy all the stocks, hotels, or nuclear power plants you like.
While few of us want to spend …
keep reading...
Nov
13
The premise of blackjack is simple: Play the odds, and hope to end up with a higher total than the dealer without breaking the 21 barrier. With each flip of a card, players get a buzz of excitement. What’s going to be revealed? Will their risk-taking pay off?
Nov
11
Friedemann Friese has been releasing games through his own company, 2F-Spiele, for more than a decade, and over the years his games have become more polished and professional looking. In 2004, Friese released Power Grid, a slightly revised and vastly better-looking version of his 2001 release Funkenschlag, and the game …
keep reading...
Nov
10
The Princess Bride has many memorable scenes, but perhaps the one most quoted is the poison standoff between Westley and Vizzini, in which Vizzini tries to deduce which of two glasses contains poison. His logical arguments twist and bend as he first explains why he can’t chose this glass to …
keep reading...
Nov
9
The boardgame Clue gives most kids their first taste of deduction in a game. You eliminate suspects and potential murder weapons and locations one by one until you discover who did what where and nab the bad guy.
Coda puts a purer spin on deduction games, eliminating the …
keep reading...
Nov
8
Mankind has been creating myths since it first crawled from the sea umpteen million years ago, and the ancient pantheons of gods and heroes could fill numerous encyclopedias. Although most of these sacred figures have faded from the hearts of believers, some still survive in small ways in the modern …
keep reading...
Nov
7
Sometimes a game has one defining element that sets it apart from every other game in existence. High Society has just such a hook, one that lets you overlook the luck factor that sometimes determine the winner, one that elevates this title into the pantheon of great games—but before we …
keep reading...
Nov
6
True or false—a game must have all of the following to be considered a two-player abstract game (a la chess and reversi):
Nov
5
Magic these days is all Harry Potter this and Voldemort that, but in centuries past alchemy was the rage. Every magician wanted to transmute metals into gold or, failing that, their enemies into vapor.
You can now relive those magical days of yore thanks to Alan Ernstein’s Ars …
keep reading...
Nov
3
Theme Week: New Games from Spiel 2006
Hundreds of games debut at Spiel, an enormous game fair held each October in Essen, Germany. While dozens of new titles await their turn at the FAB testing table, we’ve already found a week’s worth of games to recommend.
The legend of Jack the Ripper has survived for more than a century, and the enduring mystery of this killer’s identity and the reasoning behind his murderous actions has inspired numerous films, television programs, novels, and interpretive dance programs.
With all that attention, it makes sense then that …
keep reading...
Nov
2
Theme Week: New Games from Spiel 2006
Hundreds of games debut at Spiel, an enormous game fair held each October in Essen, Germany. While dozens of new titles await their turn at the FAB testing table, we’ve already found a week’s worth of games to recommend.
Sébastien Pauchon won the “promising young designer” award at a game designer’s convention in Göttingen, Germany in 2005, and he’s already made good on that promise with Yspahan, the fourth title from French publisher, Ystari Games.
Yspahan, which began life with the name “Caliphs and Merchants,” puts players …
keep reading...
Nov
1
Theme Week: New Games from Spiel 2006
Hundreds of games debut at Spiel, an enormous game fair held each October in Essen, Germany. While dozens of new titles await their turn at the FAB testing table, we’ve already found a week’s worth of games to recommend.
In the 1970s, Peter Burley invented a simple, tile-laying game that played somewhat like bingo. One person would pull a hexagonal tile out of a bag, then all the players would place that same tile from their tile stash onto their personal playing board. Players repeated this process until their …
keep reading...
Oct
31
Theme Week: New Games from Spiel 2006
Hundreds of games debut at Spiel, an enormous game fair held each October in Essen, Germany. While dozens of new titles await their turn at the FAB testing table, we’ve already found a week’s worth of games to recommend.
Richard Breese is one of the most respected designers in the world of boardgames, yet few people have played—let alone seen—the majority of his work.
Starting in 1989, Breese has self-published all of his designs, with only a few of them being reprinted by larger publishers. His games …
keep reading...
Oct
30
Theme Week: New Games from Spiel 2006
Hundreds of games debut at Spiel, an enormous game fair held each October in Essen, Germany. While dozens of new titles await their turn at the FAB testing table, we’ve already found a week’s worth of games to recommend.
Most games tell you how to determine the starting player: If going first is an advantage, the youngest player will take the first turn; if it’s a disadvantage, the oldest player will start. Otherwise you’ll roll a die or spin a spinner or draw randomly from the deck for the …
keep reading...
Oct
29
Theme Week: New Games from Spiel 2006
Hundreds of games debut at Spiel, an enormous game fair held each October in Essen, Germany. While dozens of new titles await their turn at the FAB testing table, we’ve already found a week’s worth of games to recommend.
The urge to gamble seems hardwired in the human system: We date people we know nothing about, we take on ill-defined jobs that promise future riches, and we create new humans who cause all kinds of havoc in the lives of everyone around them.
No wonder then that …
keep reading...
Oct
28
Playing a game requires you to follow the rules. After all, if each person makes up his or her own rules, the game will consist of little more than arguing over who’s right.
Introducing rules during a game can succeed, though, as long as you do so in …
keep reading...
Oct
27
Humans must satisfy four basic needs in order to survive: food, shelter, procreation, and the experience of watching teens being defenestrated by an unstoppable killing machine that wears some article of outré clothing like a facemask, a hook, or a striped sweater. How else to explain the weekly release of …
keep reading...
Oct
26
One method of creating games is to start with a basic idea—say, medieval characters with special powers who build a town—then explore that idea in multiple ways to see what develops. Bruno Faidutti got lucky with the above idea, creating two complete games out of this kernel: Citadels, which sold …
keep reading...
Oct
25
Actress Felicity Huffman won an Oscar for her portrayal in this movie of a man who’s discovering the son he never knew he had, while at the same time eliminating the last vestiges of his masculinity— Wait a minute, that’s a review for IMDB, not Fun and Boardgames, so let’s …
keep reading...
Oct
24
This simple bluffing game revolves around one question turn after turn, a question that happens to have its own soundtrack: “Should I stay or should I go now?”
Players explore a series of five mines, each of which is represented by a randomized deck of cards. Each flip …
keep reading...
Oct
23
In Tower of Babel, players supervise construction of the eight wonders of the ancient world—yes, eight, as the Tower of Babel is included with the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the statue of Zeus at Olympia, and the rest.
Each of the eight wonders is marked with three randomly …
keep reading...
Oct
22
Richard Garfield has secured his place in the archives of gaming history thanks to Magic: the Gathering, an incredibly complex, fantasy-based collectible card game that adds 500 new cards—and untold thousands of card interactions—to its playing environment every year.
Pecking Order, Garfield’s latest creation, is about as far …
keep reading...
Oct
20
Theme Week: Ubergames—Germany’s Award-Winners
The German game industry hands out the Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year) each June to the best family game published in the previous twelve months. If you’re looking for games that are easy to learn and fun to play, pick up one of these winners.
For most of the world, Carcassonne is nothing more than a town in France. For game players, though, the word “Carcassonne” has been transformed into a synonym for a tile-laying extravaganza.
Carcassonne debuted in 2000, and its simple, yet compelling game play took the gaming world by storm, …
keep reading...
Oct
19
Theme Week: Ubergames—Germany’s Award-Winners
The German game industry hands out the Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year) each June to the best family game published in the previous twelve months. If you’re looking for games that are easy to learn and fun to play, pick up one of these winners.
Every American gamer knows Jenga. You remove a block from one level of an organized stack, place the block on the top of the stack—adding to or starting a new level—and hope the stack doesn’t topple. Block, block, block.
Villa Paletti plays like Jenga, but it has a …
keep reading...
Oct
18
Theme Week: Ubergames—Germany’s Award-Winners
The German game industry hands out the Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year) each June to the best family game published in the previous twelve months. If you’re looking for games that are easy to learn and fun to play, pick up one of these winners.
Just as movie directors bring new life to their work with extended director’s cuts, game designers rework past ideas for future gain. Case in point: Dirk Henn’s Alhambra, a slightly more complicated version of his 1992 stock-market game Stimmt So! Clearly Henn knew what he was doing since Alhambra took …
keep reading...
Oct
17
Theme Week: Ubergames—Germany’s Award-Winners
The German game industry hands out the Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year) each June to the best family game published in the previous twelve months. If you’re looking for games that are easy to learn and fun to play, pick up one of these winners.
Expect to hear a certain Beatles song in your head over and over again while playing this family-friendly game. Every player has tickets they need to complete, so they’ll be riding the rails back and forth across the U.S. to connect cities, punch their tickets, and score big points.
… Oct
16
Theme Week: Ubergames—Germany’s Award-Winners
The German game industry hands out the Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year) each June to the best family game published in the previous twelve months. If you’re looking for games that are easy to learn and fun to play, pick up one of these winners.
Nothing says fun like going over Niagara Falls in a canoe and meeting your end. Don’t agree? Then you might want to avoid this game, winner of 2005’s Spiel des Jahres, as you constantly face the risk of taking a very long fall off a very wet cliff.
Oct
15
Theme Week: Ubergames—Germany’s Award-Winners
The German game industry hands out the Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year) each June to the best family game published in the previous twelve months. If you’re looking for games that are easy to learn and fun to play, pick up one of these winners.
Games based on history often place players in the role of generals commanding forces in a specific battle or war, but Thurn and Taxis—Germany’s Game of the Year in 2006—takes up a far more mundane historical event: the creation of the German postal service by the Thurn and Taxis families. …
keep reading...
Oct
14
Theme Week: Why That Game Sounds Just Like…
Games aren’t created in a vacuum—the bag’s too small, and it’s really dark inside—so don’t be surprised when a new game reminds you of a title from yesteryear.
Word games, like trivia games, are always at risk of being spoiled by dividing players into “haves” and “have nots.” While some players are jazzed by their ability to pull strange words out of thin air, this dichotomy leaves others frustrated and determined to never play a word game again. …
keep reading...
Oct
13
Theme Week: Why That Game Sounds Just Like…
Games aren’t created in a vacuum—the bag’s too small, and it’s really dark inside—so don’t be surprised when a new game reminds you of a title from yesteryear.
The card game Pit has been damaging eardrums for more than a hundred years. In this real-time trading game, players try to collect all the cards of one type of good, such as hay, wheat or corn, typically by yelling as loudly as possible for the cards they need. Once …
keep reading...
Oct
12
Theme Week: Why That Game Sounds Just Like…
Games aren’t created in a vacuum—the bag’s too small, and it’s really dark inside—so don’t be surprised when a new game reminds you of a title from yesteryear.
The Game of Life has been a standard on toy store shelves since the 1960s, when Art Linkletter’s endorsement and smiling face were emblazoned on the ugly oversized box. In the 21st century, The Game of Life has been superficially updated through media tie-ins with the Simpsons and Star Wars, …
keep reading...
Oct
11
Theme Week: Why That Game Sounds Just Like…
Games aren’t created in a vacuum—the bag’s too small, and it’s really dark inside—so don’t be surprised when a new game reminds you of a title from yesteryear.
YINSH, like most abstract strategy games, presents players with a simple challenge: create three rows of five counters in your color.
Players start the game by placing five rings of their color on the intersections of triangles on a hexagonal board. After the placement phase, players alternate turns. …
keep reading...
Oct
9
Theme Week: Why That Game Sounds Just Like…
Games aren’t created in a vacuum—the bag’s too small, and it’s really dark inside—so don’t be surprised when a new game reminds you of a title from yesteryear.
Most people equate dice with chance, but Proteus is a dice/chess combination as luck free as chess itself. Each player starts with eight dice placed pawn-side up in his two back rows. The six sides of each die depict a Pyramid (worth 0 points), Pawn (2 points), Bishop (3 points), …
keep reading...
Oct
8
Theme Week: Why That Game Sounds Just Like…
Games aren’t created in a vacuum—the bag’s too small, and it’s really dark inside—so don’t be surprised when a new game reminds you of a title from yesteryear.
One of the first games many children play is Candyland, a racing game in which you draw a card and move your pawn forward to the closest space of that color. The next player does the same, and so on until someone reaches the end of the track. Candyland’s not …
keep reading...
Oct
4
Every proud father wants to see the family name carry down through the generations, but in Familienbande players take this family pride to the limit by arranging marriages and even dictating the genetic nature of the children they bear!
The game is played with a deck of cards …
keep reading...
Oct
2
Reiner Knizia’s Poison plays like a souped-up version of Old Maid. The deck contains red, blue, and violet cards numbered from 1-7 and green cards, which are all numbered 4. Players take turns playing cards, with the red, blue, and violet cards being placed in separate piles. Push the total …
keep reading...
Oct
1
"In this game, you play a bean farmer who plants beans, then sells them for gold.” I’ve taught Bohnanza to at least thirty different people, and I always enjoy the surprised look on their faces when I deliver that line. “Bean farmers,” their faces (and sometimes their mouths) say. “Why …
keep reading...