I’m not advertising oily fish, I promise. Sardines is a game!
It takes almost no preparation to play Sardines… just some friends (the more the better!) and a place you’d be able to play Hide & Seek in. In fact, let’s talk about Hide & Seek for a moment. There are many variations, but the basic idea is that most of the group runs off and finds places to hide, while one or two stay behind and count to a predetermined number before setting off to search for everyone else. Once they’ve found everyone, the round is over.
Sardines is a lot like that, but in reverse. One person goes and hides, and once they’ve had some time to find a good spot, everyone else goes looking for them. You don’t want to search in a pack, however, because once you find the person, you hide with them, until the last person finds the whole group. Depending on where you’re hiding, this can lead to being packed in pretty tightly (like sardines) especially if your spot is a closet or something otherwise unsuited for the number of people.
It’s fun and easy to teach, with plenty of hushed giggling to go around!
Well, I hope we are. Though there is a certain amount of “hey, stop stealing my stuff!” Why? Well, Chums is a SimplyFun take on Go Fish!
I’ll admit I haven’t really played Go Fish recently to compare the two, but Chums works like this: you start with five cards (seven for 2 players), and on your turn you pick a card you already have, let’s say number 8, and ask one of the other players, “[Person], do you have any 8s?” If they do, they have to give you all their 8s, and you get to ask again. Once someone says no, you have to draw the top card of the deck. If that card is the most recent card you asked for, you show it to the table and get to ask again anyways; if it’s not, your turn is over, and play moves to the next person. Once you collect all four of a set, you place it face up on the table in front of you — when someone no longer has any cards in hand, or when the deck runs out, the game ends immediately and whoever has the most face-up sets wins.
Where Crazy Ates is mostly the luck of the draw, Chums has that strategic element, trying to remember which other players have what; there’s been many a time where one of us has asked another for something they didn’t have, only for the next player to turn around and ask for that card.
As a bonus, every number (1-12) has its own colorful species of fish! I used to make a point of collecting 4s and 10s, because I liked the lionfish and pufferfish illustrations best.
“Hold up, didn’t you already tell us about Sudoku?” Well, yes, sort of, but that was Hawaiian Sudoku! And, no, I’m not here to talk about the normal version, at least not exactly — I’m here to talk about the board game.
Yep! Sudoku is a competitive game now! Sudoku Challenge actually came out in like 2006, but I didn’t have a blog then, so we’re going to pretend this is a new discovery. The first thing to choose is which side of the board you’re playing — Sudoku (9×9 grid), or Zoodoku (6×6). What’s Zoodoku, you ask? Well, it’s the easier version of Sudoku, and much, much cuter, since instead of numbers, you’re placing animals.
Whichever you choose, the mechanics are the same — you start by placing the starter tiles (marked with a different backing), one in each box, no overlapping rows/columns, and placing each player’s chosen pawn at 0 on the scoring area. Players then take turns drawing a face-down tile and choosing where to place it. Just like regular Sudoku, it can’t be in the same row, column, or box as a tile of the same type. Unlike regular Sudoku, you have another goal: scoring. When you place a tile, you get 1 point for each other tile that shares a row, column, or box with it. Each tile is only counted once. If you’re feeling exceptionally masochistic, you can play Sudoku with a twist — instead of scoring one point for each other tile, you add up their values. Note that if you do this, you will run out of 40-point tokens; we used the Zoodoku tiles as stand-ins.
There are going to be times when prior placements leave spaces unable to be filled, like the empty space in the middle right of the board below, where the box needs a deer (blocked by row) and the row needs a raccoon (blocked by both column and box). If a player draws a tile they cannot place, the game ends immediately, and whoever has the most points wins.
Brought to you by the same people who made Schrödinger’s Cats, Pavlov’s Dogs is a cooperative psychology game that will challenge your memory and your capacity for dog puns.
Players start the game by collectively deciding how many tests they’re going to play, and how many of each level, ranging from Easy to Very Hard, with 2 sets for each level and a bonus Silly set. Each set represents a different Dogtor, the likes of Sigmund Fetch and Immanuel Mutt, and, with a maximum of 1 from each set, the tests you draw are placed in the Dogtor folder faced down.
For each round, one player will be selected as Dogtor, and choose one rule to flip face up. This is the rule for the first test (Ex: scratch ear when Sit is played). The other players will be read this rule, and then dealt 5 cards each, face down, and take turns flipping their top card. Following any special instructions from the tests first, they conclude by listing the value of the test. For the first card played, this is the number in the corners; for the cards that follow, it’s that number added to the sum of the cards already played. The Dogtor will use the folder with the tests as reference, and say either “Good dog” or “Bad dog,” depending on if they followed the instructions correctly. If they got it wrong, the value of the test resets to 0, and that player loses one of their bones (everyone starts with 3). Your grade at the end is based on how many bones the group has left, so be careful!
At the interim between rounds, players can choose to shuffle around bones — this is advantageous because if a player loses all their bones, the game is over and you’ve failed your selected difficulty level. Then comes the hard part — a new Dogtor is chosen, a new test selected, and you now have to adhere to both the new test, and every test that came before it. Yup, that’s right — they stack! You thought one rule and simple addition was easy? Try five rules and simple addition, and one of those rules changes the value of some of the cards. Now play the game again with a new set of rules. Can you see why it’s a challenge?
It’s a true legacy to Ivan Pavlov, as well. After all, you really are training yourselves — specifically, training your memory and cognitive flexibility. And a lot like Lumosity, a mental training program I posted about here, I suspect if you recorded your scores you’d notice definitive improvement the more you played.
Anyone remember my post about Throw Throw Burrito? Well, here comes the sequel: Throw Throw Avocado! I didn’t think it was possible, but the avocados might actually be even cuter than the burritos.
As a quick review, Throw Throw Burrito is a speed matching game where you’re trying to draw and discard (hand limit 5) until you have a set of 3 matching cards, which you play into your score pile. If these are Battle Cards, all other gameplay stops long enough to carry out the specified combat. Whoever loses that battle gets a boo boo, which counts as a negative point when scoring.
For the most part, the mechanics of the two games are the same, though the normal cards come in different varieties depending on which game you’re playing. Battles, however, are a significant difference. Where Throw Throw Burrito has a duel (back-to-back, walk, turn and draw), a brawl (two players) and war (all players, except whoever played it), Throw Throw Avocado’s battles are decidedly wackier. There are legs duels, where you have to throw the avocado through your legs, double brawls, where the two players have to keep grabbing and throwing until someone has been hit twice, and freeze wars, where all players — including whoever played it — go to war, and if you get hit you freeze and become a human shield. Another difference between Burrito’s wars and Avocado’s freeze wars is that in war, whoever gets hit first loses, and in freeze war, the loser is chosen by the last player standing. There’s also a chaotic combination option if you own both decks, but we haven’t tried that yet, so I can’t really comment on it.
The cats were very patient with us and our flying squishies, and it’s a lot of fun to throw (soft) things at the important people in your life! (Or strangers; who cares? Everyone wants to throw things at people.)
No, I’m not talking about Jenga. Tower of Hell is a Roblox game where you’re trying to reach the top of the tower before the timer runs out and the tower resets. The catch? It’s a randomly generated layout each time… and there are no checkpoints.
Tower of Hell is an obby — in other words, an obstacle course. Each section of the tower sports its own challenges, from gaps you have to jump, to sliding zones (think moving sidewalks, but more likely to vroom you off the edge and halfway back down the map), to glowing areas that will kill you if you touch them. Dying respawns you at the very bottom, whereas falling off of something provides the opportunity to catch yourself on a lower level on your way down.
The progress map on the right shows where everyone is in relation to the sections, as well as the highest spot you’ve reached so far– the higher on the map it is, the more coins you get. Once someone reaches the top and steps into the victors’ archway, the timer speeds up, doubling its pace for each player who’s finished.
Usually, the clock is set for six minutes. I say usually because one of the things you can buy with coins are mutations, which affect the map for the rest of the current round — one of those is to add two minutes to the timer, and another, also pictured above, takes away the lethality of the glowing parts, so it’s just falling you need to worry about. Where mutations affect everyone, gears affect only yourself; both, however, disappear at the end of the round. In fact, the only in-game purchase of permanence are effects, which come in “boxes” that provide a random trail, gear skin (ex: Pastel Gravity Coil), or constant effect, like “Steaming,” which my avatar is sporting in the second screenshot.
As a final note, the (often witty) name of each section is displayed at their starting platform, which is the flat safe space that all sections have in common. I mention this specifically to point out that they are not the title in the lower right corner of the screen; that’s the name of whatever instrumental track is currently playing in the background.
We’ve all wanted to be members of a prehistoric tribe, hunting dinosaurs for dinner and competing to be the next tribal chief, right? Right. Well, now you can, because that’s the premise of the board game Ooga!
In Ooga!, the board is a randomized array of dino tiles, comprised of 5 different color-coded species on 3 different terrains, as well as the occasional coconut (for nutritional balance, of course). The Tribal Chief flips over a menu, which will be the goal until it’s completed — for instance, 1 red, 1 purple, 1 green and 2 blues. The aim is to collect all the dinosaurs on the menu, at which point you call out “Ooga!” discard those tiles, collect the menu, and become the next Tribal Chief. The game ends once all 12 menus have been completed, at which point whoever has the most of them wins.
The catch is that you can only pick up the dino tiles which not only match at least one color on the menu, but also a terrain from the current bones. Each hunt, the current Tribal Chief will toss the four bones, and whichever flip picture-side-up are available that round. One of these, rather than a terrain, marks Coconuts as fair game, which act as a wild card to replace any one dinosaur when completing a menu.
I should also probably mention that once the bones are thrown, you collect dinosaurs on a first-come, first-serve basis by stabbing them with a suction cup on a stick. (Sorry, I meant a “spear.”) The round ends as soon as all but one of the players has caught a tile, or, since we were playing two-player, once each has caught one. Mom refers to this as “the matchy and stabby game,” and honestly if that’s not incentive to try it I don’t know what is.
(Apparently I’ve already done a write-up for this game, but I forgot until after I had already written this one, so… if you didn’t try Ooga! the last time I posted about it, maybe you’ll try it now.)
Hey, would you look at that? It’s been over a year since I last wrote about a Fluxx variation (Jumanji Fluxx, December 2019). I guess we’re due for another one!
Our newest rediscovery in that vast, mythical land known as “the game closet” is Eco Fluxx. From Keepers like Birds and Flowers to Actions like Extinction and Pollution, this deck is, like the others, a fun and quirky reimagining of the original Fluxx concept. It’s more than re-themed cards, however, as like every version of Fluxx it has some unique mechanics of its own.
The first big difference is the Creepers. In any game of Fluxx, you can’t win if you have a Creeper in front of you (unless the current Goal says otherwise). In Eco Fluxx, though, there are 3 Creepers, and while they’re in play, nobody can win. Furthermore, 2 of them have a second, more active negative effect — Forest Fire will force you to discard one of your Keepers every turn you start with it in play, until you no longer have any (at which point the fire goes out and gets discarded). If you have Flood instead (or, ow, at the same time), then at the end of your turn you have to discard your hand and give Flood to the next player, until either someone intervenes (plays a card that allows you to discard a Creeper) or it’s gone through every player in the game.
The other feature that stands out as specific to Eco Fluxx is a particular subset of Goals that I’ve been referring to as the “[x] eats [y] Goals,” like “Snakes Eat Mice,” “Mice Eat Seeds,” and “Rabbits Eat Leaves.” The key difference here is that where most Goals say “if you have [x] and [y] in play, you win” and some Goals say “if you have [x] in play and nobody has [y], you win” (ex: the “Ferns” Goal requires Leaves and no Flowers), “[x] eats [y]” Goals say that you win if you have [x] in play and anybody has [y]. For instance, in the picture below, I won with the Goal “Bats Eat Insects” by having Bats in play, because even though I didn’t have Insects, Mom did.
Along with this new style of Goal are a couple ways to combat it — the first is Poison, a Keeper that protects your other Keepers from being eaten. The second is a New Rule called Camouflage — you can “hide” one of your Keepers by either playing it face down or flipping it over if it’s already on the table. You can only have one hidden at a time, but while it is, the card is treated as if it isn’t in play, meaning things like “[x] eats [y]” Goals, Forest Fire, and Keeper Limits don’t affect it. You can reveal your hidden cards at any time, but you can only hide them on your turn.
Unsurprisingly, I love this version of Fluxx at least as much as I love the others, and I hope you will too!
Some of you may recall that I wrote about a game called Just Desserts a couple years back. For those of you who don’t, I’d advise you read that post here before continuing with this one. Why? Because today I’m talking about the expansions!
Just Desserts currently has two expansions: Just Coffee, and Better With Bacon. Yeah, I know, ew. Believe me, Mom and I spent plenty of time making faces at cards like Chocolate Bacon Cupcakes and Maple Bacon Donut.
The expansions don’t change the mechanics of the game; what they do is add two new ingredients (coffee and bacon), and two new families, bringing the count up to 9. Each has 4 customers, and six new desserts. For each expansion pack, there’s one dessert that doesn’t have the expansion’s special ingredient in it, and a customer who’s favorite is that one dessert. Which makes sense — none of the other families have one ingredient entirely in common, after all.
The one thing I think is really different with the expansions is that they each have a character who has their favorite listed as “Anything With Bacon” or “Anything With Coffee,” which allows players a way to use a single-ingredient card on its own (not possible with any other customers) or to use something with extra ingredients and still get the tip for a favorite.
For some extra fun and opinionated commentary (because seriously, why do people put bacon in desserts) I’d suggest getting the expansions (Just Coffee, Better With Bacon) to add to your base deck, or buying them all together at the Looney Labs online store. It’s worth it!
A couple weeks ago my best friend introduced me to Among Us. Yes, the game that it seems everyone is suddenly talking about. It’s got fan-made songs, animations, fanfic… but some of you are probably asking, “What actually is Among Us?” Allow me to explain.
Have you ever played Mafia? Or Are You A Werewolf? Among Us is like the digital, slightly more complicated sci-fi version of those. In those games you have the “night,” when the killers (be they mafia or werewolves) choose a victim, and then the “day” where you find out which one person has died, and vote someone out. Either the citizens vote out the killers and win, or the killers murder enough citizens that they can’t be voted out by majority, thereby winning.
Caption: Role: Crewmate
In Among Us the crewmates have another goal: complete your tasks. Each crewmate is given a random selection of assignments, like fixing wiring, downloading and uploading data, and entering their ID. Some of these, like the ones I just listed, can be found in any game of Among Us; some are specific to certain of the three maps. For instance, “Align Engine Output” wouldn’t be useful on Polus, which is a planet’s surface, but since the Skeld is a spaceship it makes sense. Neither of those maps have a greenhouse, but the airship by the name of Mira HQ does, so “Water Plants” is a perfectly reasonable task. A small handful of these are also “visual tasks,” meaning other players can see them, which, since imposters can’t do tasks, proves your innocence. Submitting a Medscan is the most well-known of these, but there’s a handful of others as well. Whatever your tasks are, if all the crewmates finish theirs they win the game. This simultaneously gives the imposters pressure to kill quickly and the crewmates an alternate objective, rather than solely focusing on the murder aspect of gameplay.
Caption: Medscan on Mira HQ
Though, admittedly, the murder aspect is important too. The imposters’ job is to kill all the crewmates (or, rather, enough that there’s the same amount of crewmates as imposters, just like in Mafia and Are You A Werewolf). They have a couple of tools to help them achieve this: a partner, depending on server settings (there can be 1-3 imposters in a max of 10 players), vents that allow them to move unseen between certain rooms, and sabotage. With this last functionality they can close doors to slow down their targets (on the Skeld and Polus, at least), sabotage communications, temporarily making the list of tasks inaccessible, turn off the lights (narrowing all the crewmates’ range of view), and cause a reactor overload or (on the Skeld and Mira HQ) an oxygen depletion, either of which left unchecked for long enough will automatically result in a victory for the imposters. Each of these has a different means of reversing them, but whatever the case they help to slow down the task progress and sometimes draw people away from a fresh corpse.
Caption: O2 depletion drew everyone else to the far side of the Skeld, enabling an easy kill.
That’s important because, unlike Mafia and Are You A Werewolf, it’s not a matter of one voting session per death. Rather, a meeting is only called when someone comes across and reports a dead body, or presses the Emergency Meeting button that’s in the Cafeteria on the two ships and in the Office on Polus. This button is primarily useful for when you saw someone going into/coming out of the vents, witnessed a murder on the security cams, or watched someone’s vital signs terminate (each map has multiple means of monitoring; the Skeld has security cameras and Admin, which gives a headcount for each room; Mira HQ has Admin and a Sensor Log for each of three sensors you can pass in the hall; and Polus has security cams, Admin and a vitals monitor). As an interesting aside, crewmate’s ghosts can still complete their tasks to contribute to victory, and imposter’s ghosts can still sabotage. This is a compelling reason to stick around even after being voted out or murdered.
Caption: The yellow highlighting the computer indicates that it’s one of my tasks; the computer next to it is the vitals monitor.
How many kills the imposters can manage without anyone noticing depends largely on location and how strategically they’re playing, but unless they’ve won, a body is eventually found and a meeting called. Then, of course, there’s the accusing phase. I won’t get into the strategies for that here, at least not this week (I don’t think I’ve ever done a follow-up on a game before but if y’all want one or I feel like it I may), just the process.
Caption: Getting my neck snapped in the Laboratory on Polus
I don’t recall ever playing a game of Mafia or Are You A Werewolf with a time limit on voting, but each Among Us server has a set discussion time before voting opens, and a set time from there before voting closes (both set by the server host). As you can imagine, it’s a lot of back-and-forth pointing of fingers and “Where was the body? Any sus [suspects] nearby? Where was everyone else?” It’s also a race to get your argument in before people vote, since voting doesn’t happen all at once in Among Us; rather, you can submit your vote anytime after voting opens, and when the time is up or everyone has voted all the votes are revealed.
Caption: As the imposter, I can see who the other imposters are (indicated by red name). The megaphone next to Red/M2lk indicates they called the meeting.
Once voting for a meeting has closed, there are a few things that can happen. If there’s a tie, nobody gets ejected. If skipping vote gets the most votes (yes, “skip” is an option, but no, not voting at all does not count as a vote to skip), then nobody gets ejected. If, however, any one player gets the most votes, they will be joining the ghosts. How depends on which map they’re playing: since the Skeld is a spaceship, ejections there occur by flinging them into the vacuum of space via airlock. Whoever’s voted out on Mira HQ goes skydiving without a parachute, and on Polus they take a quick stroll into a lava crater. Whether you get to see if they were an imposter or not at the point of ejection depends on the settings set by the host.
Caption: This isn’t an actual ejection screen, but it’s the lava crater.
If it’s not clear by how long this post is, I enjoy this game immensely. I think it’s a brilliant, engaging twist on a concept I was already fond of. I highly recommend trying it, whether for free on mobile, for a small fee on PC, or, like I’m playing, on PC for free through an app player called BlueStacks that enables Android applications to run on PC (for info on how to get Among Us that way, click here).
