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Major Fun Award-winning Games
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Major Fun
United States
Indiana
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The Major FUN Award goes to games and people that bring people fun, and to any organization managing to make the world more fun, through its own person contributions, and through the products it has managed to bring to the market. Major FUN especially likes games that: *make people laugh *are original, flexible, easy to adapt *are well-made, durable, easily stored *are easy to understand and teach Games that receive an award are selected during "Games Tastings"- monthly gatherings attended by a random collection of local game-players. We start with a pile of unopened games, in no particular order. We read boxes and create our "menu" - a well-ordered stack of games. We then play our way through the stack. We rarely play a whole game through (that's why we call it a "Tasting"), unless we are having too much fun to stop. Those games, the ones we really don't want to stop playing, become candidates for a Major Fun Award. It's informal, not very scientific, but it's fun, and surprisingly accurate. The winning games are reviewed by Major FUN himself. There are no negative reviews, so, if you submit a game and it doesn't get reviewed, it's because, FUN-wise, it wasn't found to be, shall we say, Major. for more, see: http://www.majorfun.com/
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Posted Thu Oct 5, 2006 6:49 pm
Edited Thu Jul 9, 2009 3:27 pm
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1.
Board Game: Balanko
[Average Rating:6.00 Unranked]
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Major Fun
United States
Indiana
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 Balanko
Balanko is such a straightforward invitation to fun that you almost don't need to read the rules. There's a ball on a string. There's another ball that rides a curved track. There are pits of various score values - the center and widest pit being, naturally, both the easiest to get the ball into and of the lowest value. There are sliding scorekeepers to keep track of your achievements.
One player releases the rolling ball. The other player releases the swinging ball, hoping that the swinging ball will hit the rolling ball into a high scoring pit. The only other thing you might want to know, suggested-rule-wise, is that the ball-roller, sitting on the opposite side of the game, can try to catch the ball-swinger's, uh, ball. Which is actually a good idea, given that if she doesn't catch the swinging ball, and the rolling ball is still rolling, her opponent can try to catch it and again take yet another swing.
If nothing else happens, sooner or later the swinging ball is going to hit the rolling ball anyway. On the other hand, it could make the rolling ball go into either the ball-swinger's or the ball-roller's pit. So, if one player doesn't catch it, the other player might consider it strategically sound to grab for the swinging ball as soon as it's in range.
Setting it up is a bit less straightforward, but the instructions are clear, the steps few, and it is easy enough to do (once you rid yourself of certain expectations about how it "should" go together) that you won't mind having to take it apart and put it back together. Though you'll probably want to keep it assembled and ready to play with for-practically-ever.
We've given Balanko the coveted "Major Fun Family Game Award" because it is the kind of game that will be as much fun for kids as it will be for adults and probably even more fun for kids and adults together. For similar reasons, it's also getting a Party Games award, even though only two people can play it at a time. And, if that's not enough to interest you, you should know that it is being seriously considered a Keeper.
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Major Fun
United States
Indiana
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Paddle Pool
Paddle Pool is what they call a "classic." It was first published in 1970 by Milton Bradley - (and, at one time, was apparently also called Battle Ball). And now, thanks to the playful entrepreneurs at Fundex, the children of the world can once again gleefully engage in an elegantly engaging, playfully competitive, intuitively clear game of keeping a ball out of your goal and whacking it into-anyone else's.
Paddle Pool is at its best as a four-player game. You can modify the board for three or two players with special cardboard inserts. In case of lost inserts, you can always assign one or two players to two paddles. The game comes in a deceptively small box. With careful instruction-following, the game assembles into a 20x20 inch playing field. The court is raised in the center so that a ball, placed in the center, could roll into any of the four corners. Which is at least one good way to get the game rolling. A rod-and-paddle is snapped diagonally across each corner of the game. This allows the player to move the paddle to the right or left defend, and to twist the paddle to raise or lower the paddle to whack.
There's place for a small scoring peg in each corner. Pegs are placed in the #5 hole. Every time the ball goes into your goal, you lose a point. The game is over as soon as one player reaches zero. The player with the highest score wins.
It's amazing how absorbing this simple game can be. I tested it out on some junior high school kids in a special education class. The only thing I needed to explain to them was that the player who makes the ball fly off the court loses a point. This was a very useful thing for them to know. It introduced a little finesse, a bit of control, and kept the ball nicely in play. I put the game on the table, and suggested, if there were more than 4 people who wanted to play, they could play the game like Four Square - a new player coming into the game as soon as one player lost. Twenty minutes later they had the game on the floor and were blissfully playing away.
Once the game is assembled, it's pretty much going to stay assembled. It's sturdy enough, and the pieces fit together well-enough. And trying to take it apart and fit it all back into the box is enough to drive you to engineering school.
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Major Fun
United States
Indiana
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Saboteur
Saboteur is a fun, party-worthy game - especially if you learn it from someone who has played it before. And even more especially if you're playing with 5-10 people (though you can play it with as few as 3).
The instructions, though well-written and not overly complex, but require more patience than most Major Fun games - the path cards and the cards that blow up paths and the role cards and the goal cards and the gold cards and the action cards with tools and cards that break tools and, well, if you try to figure out what each card does before you start playing the game, you'll probably lose patience before you discover the sheer fun of it all.
So here's the gist. There are miners and there are saboteurs, maybe. Depending on how many people are playing and what role cards are drawn. Nobody knows for sure until the end of the game who's what. The miners are trying to build a path to the gold card. The saboteurs are trying to keep the miners from succeeding. Whoever succeeds, miners or saboteurs, get to share the wealth.
There are 110 cards - well-made, nicely illustrated. Players get 4-6 cards, depending on how many are playing. The three goal cards are placed, face down, on one end of the board. Only one of those cards has the big gold nugget. You won't know which unless you draw a card that allows you to sneak a peek. At the other end of the table, exactly seven card-widths away, is the start card. Players take turns playing path cards, face up, so that a path is made from the start card, ultimately, hopefully, to the gold card. There are cards that can blow up path cards - forcing the miners to create a different path. There are cards that can keep players from playing. Now, if you're a Saboteur, sooner or later you're going to want to blow something up, or play one of those bad cards on somebody or play a path card that creates a dead end. But if you do this too soon, tipping your hand, as it were, then the miners (a.k.a. "dwarves") will gang up on you. So there's this exciting tension that builds up, and sense of secrecy, and alliances, and, well, it gets more and more fun, until everyone knows who's who and what's where. And by then, the game's over.
It doesn't take long to play (10, maybe 20 minutes for a round). You're supposed to play three rounds. Which you probably will. Because, like I said, it's fun, and it's a game you can play with as many as 10 people.
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Major Fun
United States
Indiana
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There's something primal about Destruct 3. My wife says it's a boy thing. If it is, it's a primal boy thing. Build. Destroy. Build again.
There are 12 small wooden blocks: three T-shape blocks, four L-shape, four longish rectangles, and one shortish. You can use any two of these for a base, upon which the remain ten are to be built. You assemble your construct somewhere in the center of the designated platform. After you've created your version of a stable structure, the enemy (all right, the other players), take turns trying to destroy it.
The are three destruction mechanisms, which one might call, respectively: the Ramp of Doom, the Pendulum of Destiny, and the Catapult of Catastrophe. Each of these is a large wooden structure, to which a ball-and-cord is attached. Which of these devices you get to use is determined by the roll a die. You take the appointed mechanism, position it in any of the 12 mechanism mounts, and do your best/worst.
The scoring is equally ingenious. You get two points for each block you've knocked over, as long as it rests in the center square of the building platform. You get one point for the blocks that remain on the periphery. And no points for blocks that are knocked completely and entirely off the platform all together. Thus, you must temper your destructive impulse, else you will knock the blocks too far from the high-scoring center of the building platform. And, as builder, you get to be both constructively artful and strategically cunning in devising structures that are prone to wide dispersal upon impact.
Destruct 3 is not a kids' game. Not at it's price. It is a maturely crafted, all-wooden, eco-sensitive, heirloom-type, self-contained, hinge-boxed play tool, made of rubber tree wood, because "rubber-tree wood is a by-product of rubber harvests and is a sustainable resource." You may let your kids play with it, as long as they are clear about who owns what and why.
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Major Fun
United States
Indiana
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Rukshuk, a.k.a. "The Game of Rock Balancing," is, as you might infer, a game about balancing rocks. Well, not actual rocks, but cunningly contrived, highly rocklike pieces, in 5 different colors. Highly rocklike - hefty, and irregularly shaped rocklike. There are long, flat white "bridge rocks" (each player gets two of these to be used as required). The collection of building rocks includes smaller white pieces, which only count for one point, but all have somewhat flat, and most accommodating surfaces. Thus one can easily imagine oneself building white rock towers and things. Whilst the blue rocks are only flattish on one side, so the idea of stacking one on top of another appears to be, shall we say, not such a good one. Then there are the green rocks (rated as "difficult"), and the highly irregular, 4-point-scoring red rocks (candidly rated "impossible") and of course the high-scoring, but extremely rare gold rocks. None of which is actually a rock.
Then there are the 25 challenge cards, each depicting rock constructs of various difficulty and geographic significance. The Pinnacle formation, for example, is purportedly found on the Galapagos Islands, whereas the Pigeon Rock configuration is somewhere near the city of Beirut.
Players each draw seven rocks from the rock bag, thereby randomizing the scoring potential and challenge, since you really can't tell what color rock you'll be getting until you actually get it. Got it? A Rukshuk card and the sand timer are then turned over to reveal the challenge for the round and to start the rocky contest. Players can build and rebuild their rock construct, attempting to place whatever higher scoring color rocks they have in their indicated multiple-point positions, or not. Once all the sand has fallen, all construction ceases, and the scores are calculated accordingly.
Rukshuk is a surprisingly well-balanced game, if you excuse the expression. It can be played as a solitaire, or with as many as fivc players. The pieces, the fantasy, the challenge cards all work together to make the game intensely involving, even for the nimble-fingered few, wirh just enough chance and strategic depth to entice the less-than-dexterous many.
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6.
Board Game: Qwirkle
[Average Rating:7.05 Overall Rank:310]
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Major Fun
United States
Indiana
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Qwirkle is an elegant tile game, easy to learn and understand, visually inviting, and increasingly challenging as the game progresses.
There are 108 thick, wooden tiles - thick enough to stand on end, like dominoes. Each tile is imprinted with one of six shapes in one of six colors. Players take turns, adding to an increasingly complex grid of tiles, the rule being that to place a tile it must be either of the same color or shape as the adjacent tiles. You can place several tiles, as long as they are in one line.
Each player starts out with 6 tiles, and replenishes her hand after each play. The game continues until all 108 tiles have been played.
Your score for the turn depends on the number of tiles in the rows or columns adjacent to the tiles you've just placed. So, if one of your tiles brings the number of tiles in a row to, say, 4, and the number of tiles in a column to, for example, 3, you'd score 7 points for that one tile. If your tile is the sixth in a row or column of tiles of the same shape or color, you'd score twice as many points (12). As more tiles are placed, there are more choices, so the search for the high scoring play becomes more and more complex. The challenge is both visual and logical, clear enough to engage a school-age child, and complex enough to invite serious, adult competition. Most importantly, though it is a competitive game, the competition is gentle and inviting. You win more by your ability to find the best possible placement for your pieces than you do by trying to keep your opponent from scoring.
In fact, so satisfying was it to get a high score in any single turn was that we really didn't need to keep a cumulative score. We could admire each other's genius (and luck), while more or less competing to see if one of our plays could score even higher.
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Major Fun
United States
Indiana
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You're probably going to think that Alfred's Food Fight is a perfectly silly game. Which, especially if you happen to be between the ages of let's say 6 and 12, is exactly what's going to make it one of your very favorites.
Chef Alfredo stands on top of a batery-powered, turning spaghetti base. He holds two velco-covered pizza pans, and wears a velcro-covered apron and hat. Players (up to 4) use their spring-action forks to fling spaghetti-yarn-streaming meat balls, hoping to make them stick somewhere on Alfredo's ample velcro coverings.
And that's the game. Simple. Exciting. Silly. Major FUN - especially for kids. Sure, sure, you can change the rules. You can score extra points, if you want, for sticking on the pizza pans, or something. You can make it easier - get closer to Alfredo - and in the same way, make it more difficult, moving further away. But the real point is: it's silly, it's fun, and, with enough patient fork-flipping, you can get very good at it.
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Major Fun
United States
Indiana
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Froggy Boogie is a beautifully crafted, all-wood, many-pieced, memory/race game. There are 9 frogs that are set up in the middle of the play area (table, floor, bed - any flat surface). Each frog has places for two eyes. There are two different kinds of eyes (small cylinders that fit into the frogs eye-holes): One kind has an image of a baby frog on the bottom. The other doesn't. When setting the game up, players put one of each kind of eye in each frog. The challenge, which turns out to be significant enough even for adults (or perhaps especially for adults), is to remember, for each of the nine frogs, which eye has what. Wooden lily pads are placed around the cluster of frogs - this becomes the race track. Players begin the game by selecting a playing piece (one of six differently colored "baby frogs"). Two wooden dice are thrown. Each of the "adult frogs" (the ones with the eyes) is painted in two different colors. The throw of the dice determine exactly which adult frog gets chosen. The player then selects one of that frog's eyes. If there's not a baby frog on the bottom of the eye, the player gets to jump to the next lily pad and guess again. If there is, it's the next player's turn.
If memory isn't your forté it's reassuring to know that you can always rely on luck (there's a 50/50 chance you'll be right). If you're a kid, or you're interested in challenging your memory, you'll find the game challenging enough to make you want to take it most seriously.
The game is very attractive, to children as well as adults. It's colorful and funny - all those cross-eyed frogs. Yes, it requires extra care to keep track of the many pieces. But, because children will find the game fun to set up, and as challenging as it is attractive, the extra care required becomes an additional attraction - the game is its own special "collection" of bright wooden treasures.
The game is a race. The first player to get her baby frog back to the big lily, wins. For older kids, this is great fun - an incentive, an opportunity to demonstrate and be rewarded for a superior memory. For kids who have trouble dealing with losing (or winning), it might be necessary to change the rules a bit.
Luckily, the game is interesting enough, and flexible enough, to allow players to adapt it to the way they have the most fun playing. Because there is no board, you can arrange the frogs in any way you want. In fact, you can even rearrange the frogs during the game - making it all that much more challenging, and making the game that much more of an invitation to play for the whole family.
My grandkids happened to have a problem with competition. So, we played with only two baby frogs: the "Happy Frog" and the "Sad Frog." One of us would throw the dice, and then all of us would select the eye. We pooled our collective memory. If we guessed correctly, we'd move the Happy frog to the next lily. If we were wrong, the Sad frog would advance. No one "owned" either of the frogs. We were like gods, cheering for the Happy frog when the Happy frog won. Cheering for the Sad frog when she got to move. Sure, sure, we wanted to Happy frog to win. But, in the end, it turned out that the Sad frog won. Which, of course, made her Happy. And us, too.
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Major Fun
United States
Indiana
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What's the name of that movie? The one with a Native American, or maybe a Hawaiian. By a river, I think, or a lake or a stream of some sort? Oh, you know what I mean. Yeah, that's it, Blue Crush. Wait, there's another movie, also with a river or lake or stream, and there was a wheelchair, I think, or was it a crutch, no, a cane. Wait, could that be Cane River?
Is part or all of this conversation at all familiar? Have you now or ever engaged someone in a similar movie-related dialogue? Well, then, Cineplexity is, without doubt, the very game you should be playing at this very moment, verily.
We were actually amazed at how fun this game turned out to be. Sure, it reminded us of the oft-touted, trend-setting, Major FUN-award-winning, Out of the Box Publishing easy-to-learn party game Apples to Apples. As well it might, considering that it is published by the aforementioned themselves. But, you see, it looks so Apples-to-Apples-like with its many cards and simple rules and calling out for 4 to 10 players and stuff, that you'd assume it's pretty much another of those many Apples to Apples variants, only about movies. But you'd be wrong. It's a different game. Completely. Sure, there's a judge (cleverly called the "director"). And the Director doesn't actually play, because s/he has to do the, um, judging. But that's it, Apples-to-Apples-similarity-wise.
In Apples to Apples everything is relative, the actual degree of relativity determined by the judge. In Cineplexity, you have to come up with a "real" answer - a verifiable, actual movie including, beyond doubt, the actual scene or props, or belonging to the specified genre, whose characters have the certifiable characteristics depicted by two, or perhaps three, of 504 the randomly drawn Cineplexity cards. And, amazingly, there seems always to be at least one movie that usually at least one person knows that matches precisely.
Oh, the intensity. And oh, oh, the brain-wracking. And, ah hah hah, the laughter.
Cineplexity. Surprisingly different. Not so surprisingly fun.
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Major Fun
United States
Indiana
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Paddle Pool is what they call a "classic." It was first published in 1970 by Milton Bradley - (and, at one time, was apparently also called Battle Ball). And now, thanks to the playful entrepreneurs at Fundex, the children of the world can once again gleefully engage in an elegantly engaging, playfully competitive, intuitively clear game of keeping a ball out of your goal and whacking it into-anyone else's.
Paddle Pool is at its best as a four-player game. You can modify the board for three or two players with special cardboard inserts. In case of lost inserts, you can always assign one or two players to two paddles. The game comes in a deceptively small box. With careful instruction-following, the game assembles into a 20x20 inch playing field. The court is raised in the center so that a ball, placed in the center, could roll into any of the four corners. Which is at least one good way to get the game rolling. A rod-and-paddle is snapped diagonally across each corner of the game. This allows the player to move the paddle to the right or left defend, and to twist the paddle to raise or lower the paddle to whack.
There's place for a small scoring peg in each corner. Pegs are placed in the #5 hole. Every time the ball goes into your goal, you lose a point. The game is over as soon as one player reaches zero. The player with the highest score wins.
It's amazing how absorbing this simple game can be. I tested it out on some junior high school kids in a special education class. The only thing I needed to explain to them was that the player who makes the ball fly off the court loses a point. This was a very useful thing for them to know. It introduced a little finesse, a bit of control, and kept the ball nicely in play. I put the game on the table, and suggested, if there were more than 4 people who wanted to play, they could play the game like Four Square - a new player coming into the game as soon as one player lost. Twenty minutes later they had the game on the floor and were blissfully playing away.
Once the game is assembled, it's pretty much going to stay assembled. It's sturdy enough, and the pieces fit together well-enough. And trying to take it apart and fit it all back into the box is enough to drive you to engineering school.
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Major Fun
United States
Indiana
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Number Chase is a number-guessing game, involving some serious arithmetic skills (like understanding greater than and less than, odd and even, number range and properties). But you don't have to tell the kids that. The game is so clearly fun, so gently challenging and enticing, that it just doesn't matter to the kids that actual arithmetic skills that are being exercised. Who, besides teachers and parents, cares about all that number comparison and identification and deductive reasoning? The important thing is that the game is actually fun enough to play and play again.
Number Chase is one more Major FUN-award-winning game in Playroom Entertainment's Bright Idea series. Designed by award-winning fun-maker Rienhard Staupe, the game consists of 50 thick cards. I emphasize "thick" because it is a testimony to the wisdom of a good game manufacturer - knowing that cards, in the passion of play, get mangled, creased, and generally yucky. By having the good sense to make the cards thick, we are gifted with a game that will last long enough for the whole family to enjoy.
There are 50 cards, numbered, as one might expect, 1-50. To play the game, the cards are placed on the table, sequentially, in 5 rows of ten. One player (let's call her the "emcee") writes down a "secret number" between, as advertised, 1 and 50 (all right, between 0 and 51, if you insist on literal betweeness). The guessing player or players select any card. If it just happens to be the right number, that player wins the round. If not, the card is turned over. On the other side of the card there's a question about the number the players are trying to guess (e.g. "Is the number less than 42?"). The emcee answers yes or no. Then another number is guessed. Another card turned over. Another question revealed ("Does the number have a "5" in it?"). Etc., etc., until the correct number is finally chosen.
Everybody stays involved in the game, because every answer is relevant, even when it's not your turn. So, everyone is having fun, everyone is thinking, deducing, exercising what he or she knows about number properties. And as the guesses become more and more educated, so do the players.
In other words, if you were trying to help educators understand the nature of a successful learning experience, Number Chase is the very game you'd want them to know about.
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Major Fun
United States
Indiana
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Ugly Doll is a kids' game, pure and simple. It's about speed and recognition and matching - skills that most adults have left far behind. It's also about Ugly Dolls, stuffed dolls that are simultaneously cuddly and ugly, and are consequently all the rage in toyland. Which makes it even more suitable to kids, and even less interesting to adults. Which, of course, makes it so kidworthy in the first place.
Designed by one of the chief Gamewright architects, Jason Schneider, the game is elegantly simple. The cards (all 70 of them) are placed face-down on the table and smooshed around. (It is suggested that "cards can and should overlap.") The first player (according to the instructions, "the player who most recently took a bath") turns over any card. The next player turns over any other card. And so forth and on until...no, not until a simple match is found, but until three identical cards are turned over.
Oddly enough, it's the threeness of the match-seeking that makes the game so interesting and so successful. It's significantly more difficult, visually and conceptually, to find three of something than two. Significantly. And, because players grab cards as soon as the third match is revealed, and the cards tend to be scattered both willy and nilly about the table, even if you're not fast enough to be first, there is a good chance that you'll be able to grab at least one of the three - much better, chancewise, than if there were only two of a kind.
For 2-6 players, ages 6-12. Not deep, not profound, but Major FUN especially for, like I said, kids.
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Major Fun
United States
Indiana
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PDQ is a sweet little word game - easy to learn, quick (Pretty Darn Quick) as a matter of fact - a game you can play by yourself or with maybe one, or several or even many other people?
You get a deck of 78 letter cards - nice looking, good stock, big, easy-to-read letter cards. You deal out three at a time, face-up. And then you see who can make a word first, or, in case of a tie, who can come up with a longer word. TLP, for example. Tulip. Sure. Or perhaps Platitude. Platitude. Of course. Longer than Tulip. (Did I mention that you can use the letters backwards or forwards?) (Did I also mention that you can use any number of letters before, between or after the three letters that you draw?) (And, of course, the letters have to be in the same order?)
Designed by Jay Thompson to be played by kids as well as adults (kids use just two cards at a time, word game experts can try playing with four), PDQ is pretty darn close to everything you would want in a word game - 5-30 minutes of engaging, challenging, and frequently laugh-producing fun.
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Major Fun
United States
Indiana
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Shakedown is a dexterity game of clearly Major FUN proportions. Basically, you're balancing playing-like cards on top of a narrow platform, adding new cards with every turn. But that's only basically.
Let's start at the bottom. The bottom of the "tower" upon which the cards are balanced. The same bottom where all the cards are stored, and from which all the cards are drawn during play. Let's also take a moment to look at the tower itself, how it twists, as if to make it even more challenging to figure out exactly where the actual center of gravity might be. A lovely thing, actually. Colorful. Self-storing enough that you could throw the box away and take the game with you to every party and family gathering within which you find yourself and others. Note, further, that the cards, which are drawn one at a time from the base of the tower, are drawn from the base of the tower. The base. Whereupon the tower stands. Imagine therefore the increasingly precarious conundrum thereby imposed every time you attempt to extricate a card from the aforementioned - having to perhaps lift the tower upon whose top all those other cards are so cunningly balanced so that you can get your card and take your turn.
Let's continue to the deck itself. Some cards have different values. Other cards ask you to perform acts of evermore significant challenge, like "play cards with non-dominant hand" or "hold tower and spin around" or perhaps "previous player - blow once from 5 feet." And now, at last, to the top, considerably smaller than the base, and yet whereupon the cards are to be placed (two corners of each card not touching any other card).
All in all, an elegant, almost self-explanatory, somewhat Jenga-like game, requiring steady-hands, a willingness to fail, and just enough luck to keep you from taking it seriously.
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Major Fun
United States
Indiana
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Whoonu? Good game. Good question. As in "who knew." Or, "who knew, out of a choice between goldfish, sand castles, climbing trees and fried chicken, you'd like climbing trees the best. Sure, sure, those people who don't know you from Adam wouldn't know such a thing. But even me, your best friend?"
You get 300 cards (a significant amount, but one can't help wonder if there are even more cards waiting to be expanded thereunto), six stacks of six chips, each stack worth one more point, and a small envelope in case you want to be extra certain that no one can see who thought what about you. So, on this turn, you're the one. Everybody else gets four cards. And sure, given that there are only four out of 300 cards, it's just as likely that there'll be something or nothing that you'll really like amongst the four. You remove the cards from the envelope of secrecy, contemplate them for a bit, and then place them, face-up on the table, in order of what you deem to be least to most favorite. Players then claim their cards, and you reward them with the corresponding chip - the highest scoring chip going to your favorite.
The game is just short enough to keep it light, just long enough to keep it involving. The game mechanic of the chips (when the chips are all used up, the round is over) makes the game that much easier to play.
And that's pretty much that. Simple, elegant, just enough luck to keep you from taking anything seriously, just enough to make you want to know as much about everybody as you can. For sure, you'll be learning a lot about each other. For also sure, you'll be laughing a lot, surprised a lot, feeling somehow closer to each other, having had just enough fun so that you don't really care who actually won - because just getting to play Whoonu together is already very much like winning.
Thanks to Kevin and delightful daughter Kelsey Eikenberry for introducing me to Whoonu. Feel free to thank me for introducing it to you.
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Major Fun
United States
Indiana
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cronymble is most definitely a party game, and most assuredly a game that will make you laugh. Hence, most probably, Major Fun.
MAJOR. As in More Active Jollies Organized Ridiculously, or, perhaps Mighty Attractive Jauntiness Of Ribaldry, or even Mellifluent Acronym Judging Oscillates Randomly.
Players compete (more or less) to create phrases or sentences (you get an additional point of your acronym is a sentence) from a collection of randomly drawn tiles. The number of tiles is determined by the draw of a card from the Length Deck. And what you have to do with them is determined by the draw of a card from the Composition deck. There are four different kinds of cards in the Composition deck: one tells you to also use a nonsense word, another to use only words that start with the same letter, and another to select any word starting with the chosen letter, and make an acronym from it. And the fourth kind of card tells you to do what you would have done anyway without the card.
Everyone but one player (the master of ceremonies for that round, a.k.a. the "NYMWIT") votes for a favorite. Votes are tallied. Players move the corresponding number of spaces on the board, et, obviously, cetera.
How long you have to think is determined by the throw of a die, which tells you how much time to set on a tension-inducingly noisesome kitchen-type timer.
The rules are written with enough humor and playfulness to keep people from taking the rules too seriously - there are constant invitations to make up your own rules, suggestions like "If a player doesn't finish in time, don't disqualify them (maybe drum your fingers or whistle a bit)." Whistle and drum we did. Laugh a lot we also did. Major FUN was most definitely had.
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Major Fun
United States
Indiana
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Cosmic Cows - you gotta love them cows. Tiny little, doll-like, plastic cows. All ten of them.
And then there's the game. You know Yahtzee? OK. Think of it as Yahtzee with cows. And you're playing a Yahtzee kind of tug-of-war with your opponent, trying to get maybe all 5 dice the same so you can super beam the middle cow, as it were, all the way to your winning zone. Kinda like getting a Yahtzee in, uh, Yahtzee. Or maybe a full-house so you can move one cow three spaces closer to you and the other, two. Before, of course, your opponent, no doubt, pulls them back. Ten different cows to shoot for. Five different dice. The number of spaces a cow gets to move depends on how many dice show that number. Oh, and you get three rolls, like as in, well, Yahtzee.
But it's not Yahtzee. It's Cosmic Cows, and darn if those little cows and that dicey equivalent of tug-of-warring them back and forth across the board doesn't make it feel like something really different than Yahtzee. Not like a dice game at all. But a board game. And a sweet, light, semi-strategic board game it is. One that has very cute little plastic cows and is really easy to learn how to play - especially if you know how to play games like Yahtzee.
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Major Fun
United States
Indiana
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Knights of Charlemagne, yet another game by the amazingly prolific Reiner Knizia, is what one might call a Major FUN Award-winning strategic card game. One might call it that, because:
1) it feels very much like a strategy game, played between 2-4 players, where people hope to outbid each other for high-scoring resources.
B) it is played with cards - one deck of well-made, easily shuffled playing cards, and another deck of pleasingly thick, cardboard resource cards.
And III) it received a Major FUN Thinking Games award.
There are 50 "Knights" playing cards - five suits (colors), each suit consisting of two sets of cards numbered from 1 to 5. Then there are 21 of those pleasingly thick resource tiles. Five of them are called "Manors," five "Cities," 10 more "Treasures," and one "bonus" tile. The tiles are arranged in columns. Some tiles are worth more than others. To win a tile, you have to have invested more cards than your opponent's.
There are complications, o, there are complications. There are five different colors of Knight cards, don't you know, and the City Tiles are won by the player who has bid more knights of the same color, whereas the Manor cards the player who has invested more knights of the same rank. And yet more complications relating to the bonus card. Not complex complications, mind you, but complications of the intrigue-generating kind.
The game doesn't take long to teach (especially if the teacher has already played it), and less than a half hour to play - a very focused, strategically dense, and yet refreshingly light-hearted half hour.
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19.
Board Game: Quelf
[Average Rating:6.25 Overall Rank:1772]
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Major Fun
United States
Indiana
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Quelf is a silly game. For those of us who are mature enough to appreciate silliness as an art form, it is both a bench- and a watermark of wackiness.
If you find yourself unwilling to, for example, "suck your thumb in silence and start rolling the dice. When you roll a '3,' shout, 'Get off my land!' in your best chipmunk voice," mayhap Quelf is not exactly your kind of game.
There are five decks of cards, each a different color. There's a board. Each space on the board is a different color. Hence, each turn you must draw from one of the decks. Each turn. The decks? There's "Showbiz" (e.g. "You are now a professor of archeology with a lisp. Give us a dissertation on archaeological discoveries in your backyard during the last 10 years."), and Quizzle, (for another example, "How many fingers does a one-armed and thumbless woman have?), Scatterbrainz (everybody takes turns, trying, without repeating, to add to a list of answers for such questions as "Ways to get your leg out of a spring-loaded, steel bear trap."), Stuntz (see "suck your thumb," above), and the fortuitously Curses-like deck of "Roolz" ("For the remainder of the game, every sentence that you speak must end with the words 'Hear me, for I have spoken.' If you forget, pay the penalty.").
Then, on every card, there's also a "Quelf Effect" - additional rules, adding clarity sometimes, creating chaos others.
Quelf is the kind of game you'll want to devote most of the evening to. Not that it's complex or profound, but rather because the consequences of all those different decks become more apparent, and more hilarious as the game unfolds. It may take a while to manifest themselves. It takes a few rounds before you can truly grasp the implications of the various decks and the exacerbating joys of their Quelf Effects, but by that time you'll probably be laughing too much to notice.
Quelf is a masterpiece of silliness. Hence, Major FUN.
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20.
Board Game: Rumis
[Average Rating:7.07 Overall Rank:232]
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Major Fun
United States
Indiana
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Rumis is a genuinely deep strategy game for 2-4 players brought to you by Educational Insights. "Educational Insights," you probably ask, in potentially reverse discrimination, "how could an educational game, recommended for kids first grade and older, be of any interest to my mature self?" (A painfully parallel question to teachers who voice similar concerns about games like Apples to Apples and Ten Days in the USA). Perhaps it will somewhat clarify issues when you take into account that these are the same people who brought us the very Major FUN-award winning Blokus.
Though the game can be played by 2-4 players, it works best with 4. Each player uses a set of 11 3-dimensional blocks. There's one shape made of two cubes, two shapes out of 3 cubes, and the remaining shapes are each permutations of 4 cubes. Players alternate turns laying setting blocks on the board (you can use any of 4 different boards), the rule being that, after the first round, each piece (called "stone") must be placed so that it touches at least one face of any stone of your color that you already played. You do have to stay within the perimeter of the board, and you can't stack stones above the height limitation (which differs, depending on which board you use.
The base is a turntable, which becomes increasingly appreciated as more and more pieces are placed, and the configuration becomes more complicated. When the game ends, you look at the structure from top down, scoring a point for every face of your color that you can see.
The concept is strategically deep enough to keep even veteran gamers challenged throughout the game. At the Tasting, we had two different teams of players who wanted to try it, and each team wanted to play it again and again with different boards. The only complaint was that maybe a little too much dexterity is required for precise piece placement. This could have something to do with the age of the players and the amount of coffee consumed.
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Major Fun
United States
Indiana
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Twisted Pairs is a party game, indeed it is. You need at least 4 players. But it is clearly of the more-the-merrier type.
No, it's not charades. I can see why you'd think it's like charades - you're trying to get people to guess something that you know (hopefully). And you're performing, more or less. Except it's not acting. It's spelling. I mean, what you're doing is spelling out a word or several words. Not with words, naturally. But with your bodies. Did I say "bodies"? As in more than one body? Indeed I did. As in two bodies. So, to make, for example, the letter "H," you and your partner might be standing facing each other, holding your arms down at your sides, but bending your elbows and holding hands, like the cross-bar of the "H" - know what I mean?
Which, of course, is the big question for everyone else - that is, do they know what letter you mean. Because as soon as someone does know that letter, or thinks she knows that letter, or thinks she wants everyone else to think she knows that letter, she simply says something like "got it." And then the two letter-makers go on to make the next letter. Got it? And on and on until someone guesses correctly, getting, so to speak, the point. As for those who didn't "get it," well, they're still very much in the game, guessing away at the next and the next letters, hoping to fill in the blanks, in retrospect. And when someone correctly yells out the entire phrase, then there's the race to be first to shout out the bonus answer and get a richly deserved for bonus point. And so can the spellers.
No, of course not, it's definitely not Twister, though you and your partner are twisting around each other's bodies in some bizarre, Twister-like ways. And it clearly has nothing to do with Trivial Pursuit either, unless the spinner happens to land on the Trivia Question. We'll talk about that later. But there's no Pursuit going on. Unless you count the pursuit of laughterness, which is just about what this game is all about.
The stuff of the game includes a box of cards. There are two sets of cards - one for questions relating to Pre-1990, the other, Post- (a thoughtful distinction for the younger player, as well as for those with short attention spans). Each card contains one of 5 different categories, 4 of which result in a word or phrase that the Spellers attempt to convey, bodily, letter-by-letter. The categories ("famous character," "famous quote," "song title," "song lyric") help the rest of the party figure out what the spellers are spelling. The fifth category is the Trivia Question. Here, the spellers are given only the question, and must rely on their collective wit to spell out the correct answer (written on the back of the card). And, should their wit be not well informed, well, at least it was fun watching them try.
All of which to say there are many levels of mental and physical calisthenics, combined with ongoingly merry mayhem resulting in an experience that is clearly Major FUN. Everyone involved, everyone thinking hard, everyone challenged at almost every level, and, surprisingly often, everyone laughing. Do you still need to know why we recommend this game with such enthusiasm? As the designers so pithily inquire: "do we have to spell it out for you?"
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Major Fun
United States
Indiana
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Thataway is an easy to learn, quick to play, totally engaging addition to Gamewright's collection of 12 Minute Games. The card game, designed for 2-5 players, is a race in which players compete to build the longest chain of cards. Some cards point left or right, others up or down, still others point both directions (so you have a choice of either).
At the beginning of the game, the cards are divided into as many draw piles as there are players. Since players can draw from any pile, it doesn't really matter if the piles are equal. As soon as you have a playable card, you place it on the table, face up. When you draw a card that can be connected to it (if, for example, you've played a left-facing arrow, the only card that can't connect to it is a right-facing arrow), you place that card, face-up, and adjacent to the connecting card. There are also Gorilla cards. As soon as you play a Gorilla card, the game is over. The player with the longest chain of connected cards wins that round.
Cards that are played already are placed in a scoring pile. Cards that remain in a player's hand are passed to the player on the left, and added to that player's pile. The game continues until a fourth Gorilla is played.
Since, as soon as you draw a Gorilla, you have the chance to end the round, you have to pay attention not only to how many cards are in your chain, but also to everyone else's chains. This adds a delicious tension to the game. It's hard enough watching your own cards, having to watch everyone else's is just enough to distract you into losing - end the round too soon or too late, and someone else can score higher.
The game is more of a race than it is a strategic interaction. You're much more focused on winning than you are on making anyone lose. Consequently, the competition, as fierce as it is, is also quite gentle. You can lose without taking it personally. And, for all the tension, you tend to spend most of the time laughing. Thataway turns out to be a surprisingly entertaining little game, easy to learn, long enough to get significantly involved, short enough to want to play again next time. Major FUN for everyone 8 and over.
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Major Fun
United States
Indiana
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Can't Stop is the Majorest FUN of one of the Major FUNnest game designers I ever had the honor to know. The late Sid Sackson was a passionate, modest, and remarkably accessible game inventor and collector. His expertise, his appreciation for an elegant design, his love of play is everywhere evident in this most accessible of his games. And, thanks to Face 2 Face Games, you, too, may soon find yourself delightfully unable to stop.
Can't Stop is a dice game in which players try to be the first to claim 4 of the 11 rows (corresponding to all the combinations of two dice) on the Can't Stop board. You have 4 dice. You throw all of them, and then combine them into pairs - however you want. So, if you throw, for example, a 3, 4, 5, and 6, you can move one space forward in the 7 and 11 columns, or one space forward in the 8 and 10 columns, or two spaces forward in the 9 column - thus giving you just enough decision-making power to make you feel responsible for whatever fate awaits.
Can't Stop is perhaps the ultimate fate-tempting games. Because, you see, your turn doesn't end with one throw. Oh, no. You can throw and throw again. Until, don't you know, you don't have a legal move. If you only had stopped right before that, you could have progressed significantly up the board, coming everso closer to claiming a row of your own. But you didn't stop, did you. Oh, you could have. You should have. But, no. O'ertaken, once again, by the sheer bravado of your unassailable hopefulness.
You have three white pieces to move, and a bunch of markers to plant. You throw the dice and move one or two of the pieces. You feel somewhat sanguine about your next throw, knowing that you'll have at least one more piece to move regardless. Of course, any column already claimed by another player can't be used. Which is good (because any move that you can't make is not counted as a possible move) and not so good (because you have fewer opportunities to win).
If you have the good sense to stop at the right time, you remove the white pieces, and use your markers to indicate your progress along those columns. If you have the bad luck not to stop in time, all the white pieces are given to the next player, whatever progress you might have made on your turn is obliterated, and the game goes on.
The game always seems winnable, until it isn't. As more and more columns are claimed, the temptation not to stop becomes evermore profound. And the likelihood that you should've when you could've evermore self-evident.
Can't Stop can be played by 2-4 players. Or by that many teams. For anyone old enough to play checkers and appreciate the value of profound chagrin.
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Major Fun
United States
Indiana
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Booby Trap is what you'd call a "classic kids' game." It's been around since the 60's (originally a Parker Brothers game), and has been recently re-released by Fundex. For kids old enough to appreciate the patience, dexterity, observation skills, and luck necessary to win, Booby Trap is a study in fascination.
An assortment 63 pieces (three different discs, each of a different width and color, each with a peg handle in the middle) is literally squeezed in the playing frame so that they are as tightly packed as possible. The squeezing is achieved by attaching a rubber band to a "tension bar" on one side of the frame. The goal of the game, then, becomes to remove as many of the discs as you can without disturbing the tension bar.
The larger pieces are, of course, worth the most points, and are, equally of course, the most difficult to remove. And yet, oddly enough, if you are very observant, or lucky, you might easily pick one that, despite appearances to the contrary, lifts out with the greatest of ease and heart-lightening joy. Of course, after someone's judgment or luck proves to be less than successful, and the bar moves, and other pieces get sprongged off the board, the tension, for the next player, is considerably, so to speak, released.
There is a rule which can be very difficult for younger children to observe - the one about having to move whatever you touch. The desire to test before plucking frequently overwhelms the need to play strictly by the rules. Those who are old enough to appreciate the sagacity of the touch-it-pluck-it rule will derive immense satisfaction, and the sometimes shockingly violent evidence, of the efficacy of their observational powers, and will be moved more quickly to laughter than to tears in either event.
This restored release of Booby Trap also includes a variation which allows for a shorter game. Six narrow boards are included, one for each of the up to six players. Each board shows a different sequence of pieces that must be selected. It's a good challenge, and, depending on what happens before your turn, and what size piece is next on your board, often surprisingly more than adequate.
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Major Fun
United States
Indiana
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Ribbit is a board game in which 2-5 young players (5-10) race to get their frog to the finish line. The next thing you need to know is that it is designed by one of the most prolific, and reliably innovative designers in the industry: Reiner Knizia.
There are 5 wooden frogs, each of a different color. Selecting from a small stack of 5 cards, one for each frog, each player secretly determines which frog she wants to be the winner. There's also a deck of movement cards. These cards determine which frog gets moved how many spaces, forward or back. Some cards apply only to the frog that is furthest behind. These cards help to make sure that all the frogs stay in the race.
Players take 5 cards from the deck of movement cards and decide which card they want to play. If one frog ends its turn on a space (lily pad, of course) that is already occupied, that frog jumps on top of the other frog's back. If a player wants to move that other frog, both frogs get moved. Here again we see an innovative, and strategically significant play principle. If the frog you want to win is on the bottom of a frog pile, every time you try to move closer to the goal (the pond), you move everyone else closer as well.
The fact that players don't really know what frog each player wants to win adds but mystery and an opportunity to be deductively as well as analytically engaged. Younger players may not be canny enough to appreciate this particular subtlety, but older players will find it engaging and suspenseful.
All these factors (secret frogs, frog piles, the "last frog" movement cards) result in a unique play experience for young children - and yet, none of the various innovations are too challenging or difficult for them to learn. A great contribution where great contributions are most needed.
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Posted Fri Apr 6, 2007 3:22 pm
Las Vegas
Nevada
Catch Phrase http://majorfun.com/2005/05/catch-phrase-refreshed.html
Tumblin-Dice http://majorfun.com/2006/07/tumblin-dice.html
Wits & Wagers http://majorfun.com/2006/05/wits-wagers.html
Rumis http://majorfun.com/2005/01/rumis.html
Khet: The Laser Game http://majorfun.com/2005/12/deflexion-laser-game.html
Nice site btw, and nice short concise reviews.
Edmonton
AB
Sounds a little boneheaded to me. Many, many very enjoyable games are not particularly exciting on the first few turns of the first game. Seems like a very shallow way of choosing games to recommend.