Category: Multi-player

Games for 3 or more people

Fluxx for Scientists!

And, to continue their extensive Fluxx franchise, Looney Labs brings us: Chemistry Fluxx! Perfect for chemistry students, teachers, and fanatics. Learn chemical symbols while stealing them from each other!Chemistry Fluxx

Most of the actions in Chemistry Fluxx are the same as traditional Fluxx, but some of the rules are different. My personal favorite is what I believe is called “Spontaneous Reaction.” It’s a free action rule stating that at the beginning of your turn, if you can name a chemical compound of any two or more of the keepers in front of you, you may draw a card. This cannot be a compound that you have already named. For instance, if you have Barium, Nitrogen and Oxygen, you could say, “Barium Nitrate” Ba(NO3)2 and draw a card. There’s also the Lab Coat Bonus. Whoever has the lab coat draws an extra card every turn.

The keepers are mostly elements, but sometimes equipment. I already mentioned the lab coat, and there are also test tubes, goggles, etc. Because the majority of the keepers are elements, most of the goals are about the elements. Goals are compounds like Carbon Dioxide, Water and Salt.

Speaking of goals, I have a question that perhaps one of you could answer for me: one of the goals is Laughing Gas, for which you need nitrogen and oxygen. But aren’t nitrogen and oxygen 99% of what we breath?

 

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Ooga!

Ooga! Ooga Ooga! Sorry, that was caveman speak for “Look, it’s a dinosaur!” I realize, those timelines may or may not accurately line up, but it works out well enough in the kids’ game, Ooga! Ooga

In Ooga, the players are members of a tribe, competing to be the first in hunting the correct dinosaurs for the menu. You are armed with spears (stick with a suction cup), and when the Tribal Chief throws the bones, you go where they lead you. Sometimes, that will be the forests, sometimes the deserts, and sometimes the spewing lava craters. Or, if you are really lucky, they will send you to the grove, where you get to spear… a coconut! Coconuts count as a wild card, standing in for any type of dinosaur.

When you successfully meet the menu criteria, you shout “Ooga!” and take the menu, replacing it. You also take the title of Tribal Chief, meaning you get to throw the bones. This is both good and bad, because while it does give you the time to survey the board before throwing, it also gives you less time to prepare the spear in your hand so that you can stab a dinosaur (Yeah, I know, poor dinos. They just wanted to be friends! Well, except for that T-Rex. He’s trying to eat the rest of them. And I will point out that you rarely see two T-Rexes on one card.)

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Guillotine

Off with their heads! No, you don’t get to behead your opponents. Yes, you do get to compete over who can behead the most important people in France. Yes, there are a lot of puns. No, King Louie is only worth 5 points, not 12.Guillotine

In my Social Studies class, we recently had a discussion about the French Revolution, so naturally, when my mother and I were trying to decide what game to play, I suggested Guillotine. Ironically, while I remembered the history behind the game, I didn’t actually remember the mechanics of the game itself. I have, of course, remedied that.

I would call this game straightforward, except the line of people awaiting beheading keeps shuffling… after all, nobody wants to be that one executioner who kills the Hero of the People (Yeah, that’s a card. He’s a -3 pointer, too.) You do, however, want to be the one to kill Marie Antoinette, King Louie, or even just that poor unlucky Cardinal who happened to be in France at the time (the religious figure, not the bird. I’m not even sure if a cardinal is large enough to behead properly in a guillotine. Perhaps a miniature guillotine?).

Anyways, the question becomes, if you don’t want to get stuck with the Martyr, how do you manage to kill somebody else? Well, there’s always the possibility that your designated Martyr Trips (Move any Noble back one space) and you end up with that Unpopular Judge instead, who, while not necessarily the best choice, is worth much more than that Martyr (It’s a matter of -1 point versus 2 points).

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Crossy Road

The other day, I was on my phone playing a game called Crossy Road when my mother looked over my shoulder and said, “Wait… you’ve downloaded Frogger?” I was naturally confused, as to me, Frogger is the game where you all sit in a circle with the “Detective” in the center, and the “Frogger” sticks their tongue out at the other individuals in the circle, causing the others to “die” while trying not to get caught by the detective.

So, as I have found to be wise when I am utterly confused, I asked her what she meant and then showed her how the game I was playing worked. She has since downloaded the game, which I take to be a good sign.

Crossy Road appIn Crossy Road, you pilot your avatar (the starter is a chicken) across roads and rivers, avoiding many different obstacles, such as various speeds of cars and trucks, getting run over by speedy trains and jumping into an icy river in an attempt to cross it.

You play daily challenges, which can be anything from frightening three birds (background scenery; I barely noticed them until I got one of these challenges) to hopping four hundred times (every time you move is counted as a “hop”). To move forwards, you can just tap the screen, and if you want to move sideways or backwards you swipe in that direction.

Challenges and daily prizes give you “gifts”, which you open to receive a randomized quantity of coins. You can also get coins by jumping on them during the game. Once you get one hundred coins, you can “win a prize”, which is where you win a randomized avatar.

The avatars are grouped by category. I’ve been mainly using the Arctic setting since near the very beginning, when I won an Arctic fox, then later on an Arctic hare, and I believe my default right now is a puffin.

Every map has it’s quirks. the Savanna has ridiculously breakneck fast tourist buses, Australia has alligators in place of some logs that can snap up and eat you if you jump too close to their head, and Pac-Man has ghosts to avoid instead of cars, but don’t be fooled by the little pellets that Pac-Man eats in standard Pac-Man: they’re just for show.

Each avatar has it’s quirks, too. The pumpkin leaves a trail of candy that falls out of its top every time it jumps, the vampire spontaneously turns into a bat and then turns back, and if you have your volume on, you can hear that the piper really does play bagpipes!

Some of the avatars are awesome, some are strange, some are adorable, and some are downright impossible! There’s 3.1, the computer; the African termite, which is kind of freaky due to the blocky animations; the baby animals category, which has fawns and iguana hatchlings and baby bunnies… so downright cute; and somehow the plate of kimchi is able to move independently?

Woah, look at me… I haven’t even told you the goal of the game! It’s a game against yourself, so your goal is to beat your highscore, and possibly those on the leaderboard, if you’re more ambitious than I am.

You can also play multiplayer if the other players are using the same router as you are, in which case the goal is to see how far you can make it as a team.

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Are You Phrazy… Holiday Edition!

I’ve already told you about the original Are You Phrazy, but what about the holiday version? Are You Phrazy? Carols Edition

If you didn’t read the previous post, and you don’t want to do so now, let me summarize: Are You Phrazy is a speed word game, where on your turn you play one of the cards in your hand, unless somebody else can match the previous card played, in which case if they say theirs before you say yours than play goes to the person directly after them. The goal is to be the first person without any cards left.

The holiday edition of Are You Phrazy is pretty much the same as the original, except for the messages on the cards. All of the messages are direct quotes from Christmas songs, like “Pa rum pum pum pum” and “You would even say it glows.”

After playing this version of Are You Phrazy, we revisited the original, and I determined that I preferred this one. I found the original to be less amusing than the holiday version, and also slightly ruder (You’ll never find a “Talk to the hand” or “Can the chatter” card in the holiday deck, because you’d never find either of those in a Christmas carol).

Also, a lot of the original Are You Phrazy lines are quotes from 80’s and 90’s TV shows, so I didn’t understand the humor involved.

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Mad Libs, the card game!

I’m sure most of you have played the original Mad Libs, where they have a whole story and you fill in the spaces with whatever words you please, but have you ever played the card game?Mad Libs the Game

I first tried this version of Mad Libs a year ago at DorkStock (see that post here) when I was hanging out with the Looney’s. Instead of answering with whatever word you want, you have to choose one of the words in your hand. Each card has a word and all of its conjugations, which you match accordingly to the conjugations required on the card.

The results are hilarious. “He who strikes last strikes best, but he who lives by the mud shall die by the mud.” Wait… what?

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Superfight

Superfight: aka the strangest argument you’ve ever been a party to! Where the group discussion isn’t what toppings should be on the pizza, but whether one hundred Genghis Khans with a battleship would be able to defeat a steel, fire-breathing dinosaur skeleton*.Superfight

In Superfight you are drawing three objects (mostly people), like MacGyver or Ghandi, and three descriptions, like “has a puppy gun” or “can remain invisible as long as they hold their breath”. You take the character of your choice as well as two descriptions, one of your preference and one random.

Everybody reveals their strange, deadly combinations, and then the argument commences! It’s best to play this game with somebody sitting on the side as the Judge, because otherwise you may never reach a consensus. The debate is about which one would be best able to defeat the others, and it can get pretty silly! For instance, my fire-breathing Hulk with a portal gun managed to defeat my mother’s acid-spitting, neurotoxin-emitting demon because I just summoned the Bifrost** or something similar and teleported her away!

On occasion, the card turns up where there are multiple interpretations thereof. For instance, my cousin insisted that his “can control all animals” card included humans, since we are animals, and when I played the character “Mr. Rogers”, I insisted that it was Mr. Steve Rogers, aka Captain America (played by Chris Evans in the MCU).

In the end, it’s not about who wins, but who can claim and defend the title of the craziest, silliest, most overpowered being in the history of Superfight***!

 

*Yes, this was a real scenario.

**Thor can handle an acid-spitting, neurotoxin-emitting demon, right?

***There is no documented record of the actual craziest, silliest, and most overpowered combination that has been drawn.

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Crazy Ates

Yes, you read that right. Crazy Ates, not Crazy Eights. Most of you know the original, Crazy Eights, with the boring numbers, but Crazy Ates steps it up a level: each number has a food allocated to it!Crazy Ates

Possibly my favorite is 10, the banana split. But what’s really fun is when you add the colors. You know how in Crazy Eights, there are colors as well as numbers to match? Hopefully, you know what I’m talking about. Anyways, something my cousins and I like to do is think of a food of that color and add it to the dish of that number. For example, a blue number 3 could be the blue cheese burger. Or a purple 9 could be an eggplant quiche. It adds just a little more flavor to the original play.

8 stands as the wild card, depicted by a steak with ice cream on top (please don’t ask). If you don’t have a matching number or color to the card in play as of your turn, you can play your favorite dead cow topped with dairy to get you out of drawing! The goal of the game is to be the first person without any cards left.

Both the Crazy Eights and Crazy Ates are simple and good for little kids while not being brain-numbingly boring for the adults. There’s still a level of strategy involved, even if it is pretty small.

 

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Terraforming Mars

One of those things that we all love to fantasize about. Or at least, I do. Because honestly, who doesn’t want to imagine turning a desolate, uninhabitable planet into a technological wonder?Terraforming Mars

In Terraforming Mars, each player represents a corporation that is helping in the terraforming process. They are competing to help the most (tracked as points) in order to gain more government funding.

The terraforming process itself has three necessities. Oxygen, heat and water. To make these, you play cards out of your hand that increase your steel, titanium, plant, energy, heat and money productions. You use the money to do this, which is why you (of course) want as much money as possible.

Some cards just require money, but some require specific things that you have to discard or simply have in front of you.  This is where you have to be really careful and smart about how you play (Munchkin skills help with that). Other cards can only be played when the conditions are right. For instance, some cards (Livestock, I believe) can only be played when there is at least 7% oxygen. The game ends when the planet is technically habitable, or -if you’re playing alone- when you hit a certain amount of generations (turns).

If there was one thing I could change about this game, it would be to add a cooperative version. As fun as it is to be competing corporations, I would like to believe that in the event of a terraforming mission we would work together.

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Time to go to the Robot Lab!

This week I’d like to introduce a Kickstarter game called Robot Lab. I’ll give you one guess on what it’s about: yup, it’s about robots!

In Robot Lab, you each choose a color for the body of your robot. As you draw cards throughout the game, you have two goals: get a head, two arms and two legs of your robot’s color attached to your robot, and stop your opponent from reaching that goal.Robot Lab

You can do this by using your “attach” turn to attach a piece you don’t want onto their robot. For instance, if they’re building an orange robot, and you’re building blue, and they had no head, you could use your turn to attach a red head from your hand onto their robot.

This game could theoretically be adapted to be cooperative or single-player, but I think that would take a lot of the fun out of it. One of the best parts is that it takes the Munchkin aspect of stabbing your friend in the back to simplest form. No fancy, triple-card moves, just a wrong colored arm and a turn to spare.

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