Month: April 2022

C’mon, it’s Harvest Time!

…just ignore the part where I’m posting this in April. In the Midwest. Because hey, the board game Harvest Time is pan-seasonal! It’s also from the same company as Max, The Secret Door, Eyes of the Jungle, and Caves & Claws, which seems to always be good for some simple, cooperative fun.

In this particular game, players are trying to harvest their vegetables before winter comes. There are four gardens – if you have more than four players have some team up on the same gardens, or if you have gardens to spare, a particularly ambitious player might tend multiples.

In standard gameplay, you start with your garden prepopulated – four types of vegetables, with three of each – and roll to harvest. The green dot on the die means you should harvest peas, the red dot means you should harvest tomatoes, etc. with the black dot denoting good soil – pick any vegetable you want! – and the white dot indicating that winter is on its way. If you roll white, choose one of the six winter pieces to place over the fall scene in the middle of the board. Your objective is for everyone’s gardens to be harvested before the winter scene is complete!

There are a few special rules to help with that. First off, you can help other people with their gardens! Whenever your roll would allow you to harvest, you can choose to harvest that color vegetable from a neighbor’s crop (and give it to them; you’re helpers, not thieves). This is especially practical when you’ve finished harvesting your own of that color, and your neighbor has not. If there’s none of that color left in any garden, reroll the die.

The other rules are even cooler warmer: as soon as your garden is completely harvested, you get to remove one winter piece from the board. Furthermore, when you roll white now, you get to remove another winter piece! If you’re thinking “but seasons don’t work like that!” …you probably don’t live in the Midwest.

If you’d prefer to play the extended version, it’s really easy to set up: just make planting a part of gameplay! The fall scene is actually its own set of tiles that cover the spring scene on the board (Why do we skip summer? Who knows!) so gameplay is the same, you just roll for what to plant and dread fall’s approach instead of winter’s. Or rather, before winter’s, because once you’ve finished planting – or fall has finished your planting for you, whichever comes first – you roll straight into the harvesting part of the game! I personally find this version much more fun because the better you do in the first half, the harder the next part is. And on the flip side, a really dismal planting season means you’ll probably be able to bring it all in before the frost! It’s a “glass is always full” situation, really.

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Let’s Go On A Brain Quest!

Alright, that’s a rhetorical “let’s,” because this game is definitely designed for people younger than me. But people younger than me exist, so for those of you who are and/or live with such individuals, let me tell you about the Brain Quest board game!

Brain Quest is an educational game aimed at first through sixth graders. Players are seated by age so that the oldest player is on the youngest player’s left, the second oldest is on the oldest’s left, etc. To start the game, the youngest player rolls the die while the player on their left grabs a card from the tray and announces the subject. (The subject of the card is at the top, and cards are folded to have the questions facing outwards while the answers are hidden inside.) Questions are labeled 1-6, but which you answer isn’t determined by your roll. Instead, you must choose a number equal to or greater than your current grade level.

As you might expect, your Reader then reads you the question you chose and you answer it. If you’re right, you get to advance your piece on the board, as many spaces as you rolled on the die plus the difference between the question grade level and your own. (So if you’re a second grader, you rolled a five and correctly answered a fourth grade question, you’ll move seven spaces.) Anyone who’s beyond sixth grade can only answer sixth grade questions, and takes either a -1 on their rolls (if they’re still in junior high) or a -2 if they’re older. Note that even if you get a negative roll, you do not have to move backwards.

I had wondered at first why you’d bother rolling before learning the subject and choosing your question, but having played with fabricated ages for a blog-worthy grasp of the mechanics, I realized that how much the dice weren’t helping encouraged me to go for higher level questions, since I kept rolling ones. Similarly, as answering incorrectly means you don’t move at all, the subject can affect how ambitiously you challenge yourself. The Brain Quest subjects are your usual core classes, English, Math, Science, and Social Studies, plus Grab Bag, which is a random mix of other material. (From the card pictured below, I got stuck with “Mick Jagger is the lead singer in what rock group?” Which I believe is the only question we missed, because while I’ve aged out of the academics, I evidently know nothing about rock. Or Rolling Stones. Whoops.)

There are a few interesting spots on the board as well, accentuating the school theme with a track (move along the track that matches your grade level, and don’t worry! They’re all the same number of spaces), a game of foursquare (go through the spaces in numerical order, just like actual foursquare) and a mud puddle, because recess just be like that sometimes. If you end a movement in the mud, lose one turn. The first person to reach Finish wins!

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Monkeys? In a Barrel???

I’ve previously blogged a story by the name Barrel of Monkeys, but not the actual game… which struck me as an oversight, so guess what I’m talking about this week?

Barrel of Monkeys isn’t as old as Jacks, but it’s definitely another classic. Your container is – surprise – a barrel, and the contents are a set of monkeys*, each with arms curling in opposite directions. To play the game, you hold one monkey by its upper arm (Pick a side. Congratulations, that is now the upper side) and hook another monkey’s arm through the first one’s lower. Continue to make a chain in this fashion until something drops! It’s not at all complicated, but for young ones it practices fine motors skills, and even older players may find their arms protesting the static hold. That, and if you have cats they will definitely contribute their own Challenge Mode. If you don’t have cats – or they’re not interested – you can make it harder yourself by combining multiple sets!

While the amount of monkeys in a set varies, the official scoring for multiplayer is has each monkey worth a certain amount of points. When you stop (either because someone fell or because you ran out of monkeys), you score however many monkeys are still on your chain, and the first player to reach the victory condition (points equivalent to completing the full chain) wins. Though as kids, we always just went for “whoever can make the full chain first.” It’s your choice by which rules you play! The objective for single-player is more along the latter lines, as you time yourself making the whole chain and try to be progressively faster.

*Monkeys are not required to play this game. You may alternatively utilize a Barrel of Pterodactyls!

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Jacks!

This game is a classic! Despite the name, it has nothing to do with folks named Jack – unless your name is Jack and you’re playing Jacks, of course.

For any of my readers who don’t know, a “jack” in this case is a plastic or metal “X” shape, with extra spokes facing front and back to make it 3D. The game Jacks uses these – shocking, I know – and a bouncy ball. “That’s it?” you ask. Yep! Now scatter the jacks on the floor, throw the ball into the air, grab a jack and catch the ball before it bounces twice… all with the same hand! This is how Jacks is played. If you succeed, move the jack you grabbed to your other hand and go for another! The goal is to get all of them (my set has 10, which I’m assuming is standard) without ever letting the ball bounce twice in one throw. If it does bounce twice, re-scatter the jacks and try again.

Got them all? Great! No, you’re not done yet – you’ve just progressed to the next level, which is picking them up two at a time! Once you’ve picked them all up in pairs, go for three in a throw, four in a throw, etc. until you either give up or manage to pick up the whole set in one bounce. Good luck! And remember, you can legally shift jacks without picking any up so long as you still catch the ball in time. Shoving them closer together is a valid move!

If you want to play Jacks competitively, simply trade off turns whenever you miss a throw. The winner is whoever makes it through the full progression first!

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