Category: Two player

Games for two people

No soups, no salads, no entrees… Just Desserts!

There is a wonderful game called Just Desserts. It is a Looney Labs game and I first played it with none other than the wonderful Kristin Looney. The Looneys were the gaming guests of honor at Windycon (see my previous post). I also played Seven Dragons and Looney Pyramids, but that’s a different tale.Just Desserts

In Just Desserts you are trying to match desserts to what your customers do and do not want. You start with 3 desserts and 3 guests. On your turn, you draw another dessert and flip a guest card to walk into the restaurant. The first step is to try and match a favorite. The card says what their favorite dessert is. If you succeed in giving them their favorite, the guest card becomes yours and you draw a card as their tip.

If you don’t have a guest’s favorite, you can look at the components, for example, vegetables, fruits, and spices to complete Nature Girl. Nature Girl doesn’t actually have a favorite. Let’s pretend your hand had Baklava (pastries and nuts), Pineapple Upside Down Cake (cake and fruit), and Rhubarb Crumble (pastries and vegetables). For convenience, let’s pretend you drew Cinnamon Rolls (pastries and spices). You could combine Pineapple Upside Down Cake (fruit), Rhubarb Crumble (vegetables), and Cinnamon Rolls (spices) to win Nature Girl.

Now let’s pretend that instead of drawing Cinnamon Rolls, you drew Ambrosia Salad (fruit and marshmallows). You could not get any of the guests in front of you. In this turn of events, you would draw another dessert and play would pass. You may satisfy up to 2 guests per turn.

In this game there are 7 different families, illustrated by the color of the guest card. You win the game by winning either 3 of one family or 5 members of different families.

I like this game because it is some strategy, some luck and all fun.  I would play this game with my family and friends.

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Portable games

Need a game that you can play on the go, that doesn’t take much time, and is easy to play? Here are some of our personal favorites.

Pass the Pigs; Chupacabra; Easy Come, Easy Go

Easy Come, Easy Go is a fun math and logic game that requires you to be paying close attention. You roll dice to try to get certain number combinations so you can claim a goal, like Exactly 7. The game ends when someone has 3 goals. Plus, John Kovalic drew it!
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Chupacabra is a very appetizing game where you roll and eat dice with other dice. Chupacabras can eat cows, chickens and goats. (When you eat dice you acquire them.) For every chupacabra, you can eat 1 goat or 2 chickens. It takes 2 chupacabras to eat a cow. The goal is to have all of the dice.
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Pass The Pigs is a “dice” game where you use pigs instead of dice. Depending on the position they land in (like razorback, which is when the pig lands on his back), you get points. The goal is to be the first to reach 100 points.
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Would you like a role in Deadwood Studios?

Deadwood Studios is a brilliant acting game where you can do some minor acting. On your turn you move to another room, or, if you have already taken a role, you can act. If you move into a room you may flip the scene and then chose whether or not you want a role in it.

Deadwood StudiosOnce you have a role, you may rehearse, where you earn a token that will remind you of the rehearsal bonus (+1 to your roll for each token), or you could act. When you act, you roll a die. If you roll the number of the scene’s budget or higher (indicated in the upper right of the card), the movie progresses a scene. Otherwise, you receive money (unless you have an “On card” role) and the scene doesn’t continue.

In the end, the person with the highest collection of rank, fame and money wins the game.

I would play this game with my parents and convention friends.

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Hexxagon

Hexxagon is an online game where you may either play the computer or another person. There are rubies and pearls. Each turn, you may either multiply by moving onto a space adjacent to your current position, or you may jump, where you do not multiply unless you land adjacent to any of your opponent’s pieces. If you do, these pieces become yours.

Hexxagon
The goal of the game is to do one of three things: you could turn all their pieces into yours, you could block any legal movement for your opponent, or you could fill the board and have more pieces than the other players. If you want to know how many pieces there are for each person, there is a little counter in the bottom right corner.

I actually learned this game at school. Because it is about logic, when we have spare time our teacher lets us play. We even had a Hexxagon tournament once! It took a couple days because it was double elimination.

I would play this game with my family and friends.

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Make Your Own Mixels

Before I start, I will clarify: I am effectively advertising the Lego Club Magazine. The most recent issue had a little game that I thought was adorable. You roll a 2×4 Lego piece to see how much you move. Each turn you pick up anywhere from 1 to 5 Lego pieces depending on the square you land on.  On one square you even have to put a Lego piece back, and there are a couple squares where you can lose your turn.  (When you lose your turn, we flip the Lego mover token – a piece picked at the beginning of the game – upside-down to remind us.)Mixels, a game from the Lego Club magazine

When you reach the end square, called the New Year’s Party, you start building your Mixel. The person with the Mixel voted best by the players wins.  Our house rule is that you can’t vote for your own.

Question: Which of the Mixels below do you like best? You can send me your answer by commenting on this post!

Mixels

I would play this with most people I know because it’s all creativity and luck.

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Takenoko

There’s a great game named Takenoko. In Takenoko, the emperor has received a panda. He leaves his panda in his gardener’s care. Your goals are plotting the land in specific patterns, growing certain amounts of bamboo, and having the panda eat certain amounts of different types of bamboo.Takenoko

These actions please different people. The emperor wants the land to be in specific patterns, the gardener needs to grow certain amounts of bamboo, and the cute and cuddly panda (who certainly didn’t eat the bamboo) needs to eat certain amounts of the gardener’s precious bamboo.

On your turn, you start by rolling the weather die. Each side has a illustration representing types of weather. Each type of weather has a certain benefit you can use that turn only. Once you’ve rolled the weather die, you place special tokens on each of the actions you plan to do. You do this so that you cannot change your mind after your first action. You get 2 actions a turn, unless you roll a specific condition on the weather die.

There are 5 actions you can choose from on your turn.  One option is that you can place new land tiles. To do this, you chose 3 face-down land tiles and chose which one you want to play. The other 2 get discarded.

You could also choose to move the gardener. He and the panda can move any direction in a straight line. If the plot of land the gardener moves to is irrigated, it receives one bamboo of the corresponding color. Every irrigated plot of land of the same color next to the one the gardener has just tended also receives a piece of bamboo.

The panda moves similarly. However, when he moves, he only eats from the plot of land he is physically on. The player takes 1 piece of bamboo from the bamboo plant and places it in their personal “stomach”. When the player has a specific amount of certain colors of bamboo in the “stomach”, they achieve 1 of their panda goals.

If you like, you could spend an action to irrigate a plot of land. You do this by taking an irrigation stick and placing it along the edge of any plot of land. The last option is to draw a goal card. You can chose from the 3 different types.

The game ends when someone achieves a certain amount of goals, depending on the amount of players. Once someone hits that certain amount of goals, it initializes the final round. At the end of the final round, the person who initiated it gets the ‘Emperor’ card, which is worth 2 points.

Now everyone counts the victory points in the lower left corner of their goal cards. The person with the most points wins!

I would play this with most of my friends and family due to it’s simplicity and peacefulness (except for the gardener… he’s upset with the panda).

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You’re Hired! ~the Bus Company

I tried this new game called Bus (part of our Pack O Game). In Bus, you have a color token, which is your Bus. When you land on a Bus Stop, you draw a Passenger Tile. You may choose between drawing a face-up Tile or a face-down Tile.Bus

These Tiles have point values and speed limits, as well as 2 Passengers. The passengers will be drawn in different colors. You must go to both Road Tiles with those colors to complete the Passenger Tile.

The speed limit tells you how many Road Tiles you are allowed to move per turn. The point value states how many points you get if you complete the Passenger Tile. The sum of the point value and the speed limit will always be 6.

The winner of the game is the person with the most points. If there is a tie, the winner is the person with the most Passenger Tiles. I only know this because we had a three-way tie.

I would play this with almost anybody.

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Charlie and the Chocolate Factory is now a board game!

There is this game called Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. It is kind of like Candyland in the way you move. You draw a card and move the amount of spaces the card says. The cards also have poems from the movie.

The goal of the game is to be the first player to the Glass Elevator space on the board. On the way to the Glass Elevator, there are golden ticket spaces. You cannot win if you do not have 5 golden tickets by the time you reach the elevator.

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

If you hit the point when you are about to advance to the final section leading to the elevator, you have to move in the Round Chamber until you have 5 tickets.

I would play this game with most people because of its sheer simplicity.

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Fly

I tried a new game today called Fly. My mother bought it in a Kickstarter called Pack O Game. Fly is a very simple game that anyone can learn.

FlyYou use the table tiles to make a 9 by 3 picnic table grid. In the top left corner, you stand the box up next to the grid. Next, place the sky card so that it stands on top of the box. On the table tiles there are little flies. You raise the fly swatter card to a minimum height of the top of the sky card. When you drop the flyswatter, every fly you cover completely you remove to your score pile.  Scoring is based on collecting multiple flies with the same symbols or color.

I enjoyed this game because it is a simple game and does not require logic. The best part is the fact that you could have trouble reading and it doesn’t matter! The only part you need to read is the instructions. I would play this game with my family or my friends.

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