Monday, December 08, 2008

I Can't Complain

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Monday, June 30, 2008

Par Out Golf

We used to play a game called something like Paper Golf. I was a kid then, so that makes it a folk game, at least. It was a great little game - you draw something that looks like a golf hole. You take your pencil and try to get from tee to hole in the fewest number of strokes. If you hit something (a tree, a rock) or go into a sand or water trap, you lose strokes or have to start your next shot from that point. And that's pretty much it. Except you have to do it with your eyes closed!

It was such a good game that, ever since I first played it, I wondered why someone hadn't come out with a commercial version, one that takes the game as seriously as it deserves. I am happy to inform you that someone has. And it's called "Par Out Golf." And it's, as I might have imagined, most definitely Major FUN.

Par Out Golf is played on a set of spiral bound, laminated pages. Special "wet-erase" markers are used so the line is easy to draw, won't smudge, and very easy to erase. The rules are very, very close to the game of golf, complete with sand and water traps, obstacles and slopes. So close is it to "real" golf, you can play each of five classic variations of golf: stroke play, match play, tombstone play, and pro play.

Of the several skills you practice while playing Par Out Golf, a fascinating, and, to any golf player, significant challenge is learning how to visualize your shot. The more observant you are, the more capable you are at remembering the lay of the land, the more effectively you can imagine the exact amount of drive to put on the ball, the better you'll do. This, of course, is the essence of Par Out Golf. Like "real" golf, Par Out Golf challenges both mind and body. If you want to know more about the physical and cognitive aspects of the game, take a look at the thoughtfully included essay: Par Out Science 101.

If you want, you can practice on the Driving Range (on another page) or use the 19th hole (on yet another page) to design your own. You can add your own obstacles, changing the difficulty of each hole, essentially making the game something you can play for-just-about-ever.

Par Out Golf is recommended for 1 to 4 players (it comes with four different wet-erase markers). If you must try before you buy, you can download the first three holes here.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Labels: Family Game, Major Fun

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Friday, February 08, 2008

Chateau Roquefort

Caution, perspective owners of Chateau Roquefort, some assembly is required. Do not attempt to do this by yourself. Why, you ask? Because no one, not even those who buy games just so they can poke things out, can believe how unusually pleasurable it is to everso gently punch the many pieces out of their frame - lovely, thick, two-sided, brightly printed, silk-textured cardboard pieces so well pre-cut that seem to fall out on command. It is an indelible experience of something well-made. Something made for kids and parents and especially people who like to collect things.

And even more especially for parents who like to collect things who also like to play with their kids who also like to collect things.

Chateau Roquefort is another beautifully made, European game from Rio Grand Games. It's a game of strategy and memory. The board remains mostly covered during play. On your turn, you can uncover part of the board, and you just might reveal images of different kinds of cheeses. Also on your turn (you have 4 moves per turn), you can move one of your mice (you have 4 mice) onto the board, or from the entrance to one of the horizontally or vertically adjacent squares, or from a square to yet another similarly horizontal or vertically adjacent square. You can also slide a row or column of squares, perhaps to reveal new kinds of cheeses, perhaps to reveal an empty hole, perhaps to cause one of your opponent's mice (as many as 4 players) to fall into said revealed pit.

It is probably true that children as young as six can play the game. However, they would have to be exceptional - given that there are many, many pieces, the loss of which would pretty much significantly impair the replayability of a unique and expensively beautiful game.

The object of the game is to win cheeses. You win a cheese when two of your mice are on squares revealing the same kind of cheese. There are many different kinds of cheeses. And you can only win one of each.

This is an unusually intriguing play principle - trying to position two of your pieces so that they are both rest on the same kind of cheese. On a unique kind of board (sliding tiles, always only partially revealed). Conceptually, it's probably elegant enough for a six-year-old to understand. But we believe that it is best suited to kids who are old enough to appreciate the beauty of the game, the necessity for taking good care of it, and the complexity of the relationships between all the different kinds of moves you take on one turn. It's probably a little too cute (wonderfully designed little wooden mice) for most boys of that age. But, given all those caveats, for the right players, kids, adults, and especially families, the game is the kind you may very well treasure, for ever.

There are some concerns about storage - given that there are so many pieces, and that the board is actually integrated into the box. You'll find a thorough discussion of the ramifications of all this in this review. Our conclusion: despite all the caveats, the game is Major FUN.


from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Labels: Family Game, For Kids, Major Fun

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Sunday, September 30, 2007

Send virtually anything to virtually anyone, virtually for free

If you happened to find yourself in such a position, and you wished to express, materially, in a virtual-sort of way, your personal appreciation for my ongoing existence, you might very well wish to send me a gift of some sort - especially if it didn't cost you anything. The question remains, however, what to get me. I've narrowed it down to: Pottery Classes, a Digital Camcorder, and a dress-up outfit. As an added incentive, if you happen to choose the one I really, really, really wanted most in the world, given only those three choices, you'd get three thumbs-up points and so would I! So, see, I really do want you to guess the one I really want, because then we both gets thumbs-up points. So the game is about giving each other things, things that'd be nice to be able to give each other, virtual, no-cash-value gifts that nonetheless are genuine acts of thoughtfulness.

This is GiftTRAP Live, Virtual GiftTRAP, yes, the Major FUN award-winning GiftTRAP of that very same name. Only, it's online now, and it's all grown-up into a game for online social networks, if you know what I mean.

On the one hand, it's a kind of an eCard, so to speak, a nice virtual thing you can send people. Way more personal than a joke. Just as much fun. On the other hand, it's a great way to start that "what do you really want for your birthday, or holidays" conversation. So it's like Web 2.0, see, interpenetrating virtual and actual space. Now that you know that I'd actually prefer the dress-up outfit, you know where to shop for me. And you can shop online, even. And it's like one of those Mass Multiplayer Online Games you sometimes read about, like Second Life, only the life on GiftTRAP's stage is kinder and gentler and more fun.

It behooves me to admit to a personal interest in this project. It was a comment I made back to the Nick from GiftTRAP that kicked off this whole project, and I've been lucky enough to kibitz on various iterations of this game as its evolved.

Which is why I get to be the first to blog about it going live.



from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Labels: games, Major Fun, Virtual Toys

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Monday, August 27, 2007

Q-BA-MAZE

Q-BA-MAZE is a marble run construction toy, in the tradition of Boyongolo, the HABA Ball set, the Quercetti Marble Run, the Skyrail Marble Run Roller Coaster, and, of course, Cuboro. In the tradition of, and yet, unique, and uniquely worthy of our collective attention.

Actually, all these toys, and many more like them, are worthy of our collective attention. Building a marble run engages both creative and scientific reasoning. Every design must ultimately "work," not only aesthetically, but also mechanically. No matter how good it looks, if the ball doesn't go where you think it should, or if the run isn't as long as you hope it should be, you're just going to have to build it differently.

Now, back to Q-BA-MAZE. I promise not to use the word "amazing" more than once - after this. First, allow me to use the word "cube." As in Cuboro, the basic building block is a, well, block. Unlike Cuboro, there are only three types of blocks, they are made out of a durable polycarbonate, translucently acrylic-like plastic, and they fit together in most satisfyingly interlocking configurations. They can slide into each other along their sides, they can be stacked on to each other, they can be built up and out into cantileverishly cunning constructs. They also work. One of the three, the one that opens on both ends, works in a most curiously delightful manner. It is a switch, of sorts. With no moving parts. But when a ball drops into it, the ball will often hesitate before traveling left or right, sometimes hesitate a most tantalizingly long time, as if deliberating. And this turns out to be a particularly delicious deliberation, adding just that extra touch of surprise, just that extra change in rhythm that makes the whole, multi-colored construct that much more surprising, that much more engaging.

Q-BA-MAZE comes with a bunch of steel balls - not because they're easy to lose, and definitely not because they're easy to swallow (hence, the small child advisory), but because the more balls you drop into it, the more complex the pattern of the fall, the more fun it is to watch - a visual equivalent of the difference between melody and symphony.

Watch the video, read the blog, construct your own myriad of delights, or build any of the configurations you find online, like this one, if you happen to have purchased the 50 count set (36 blocks and 14 balls).

You'll be amazed.

via Major Fun

Labels: Major Fun, toys

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Monday, July 09, 2007

Booby Trap, at last!

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.


From Major Fun

Labels: For Kids, Major Fun

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Friday, July 06, 2007

Can't Stop, can you?

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.

from Major Fun

Labels: Family Game, Major Fun

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Friday, June 22, 2007

Hasbro's Express Games

Take three of world's most popular games - Monopoly, Scrabble and Sorry - and turn them into new games that you can play in 20 minutes or less. What do you get? Would you believe you get some genuinely new, significantly fun games?

You have to abandon your expectations just a wee bit to appreciate what Hasbro's new Express Games series. The Express version of Monopoly isn't what you'd expect if you're thinking Monopoly, as in the board game, with all that money and those wonderful playing pieces and the trading and the sheer vengeance of watching someone land on one of your hotel-laden properties. It's a kinder, gentler dice game, where your major opponent is your own greed. And the Express version of Scrabble? Also a dice game. Where you play on a smaller board. And after you move, you remove, actually, the word that the previous player made. Which makes for a new challenge each turn. A new game, really, where the focus again is not strategic, but on your skills as a wordsmith.

And then you have Sorry. Again, there's no actual board. But if Express Scrabble and Express Monopoly both express a swifter, and less competitive contest, Express Sorry is everything you'd want in a game of vindication and retribution. Again there is no board. Dice, pawns and discs. Each of up to 4 players or teams has a disc to indicate which color pieces she is trying to gather. The dice indicate which of the four different-colored pawns you can collect from the center disc, or from the other players' discs. The dice have, of course, a wild side. But even wilder is the "Slide" side which allows you to change the color you are trying to collect, or to slide any of the opponent's discs to a new color.

All of the Express games are far more than 20-minute versions of the board games they are named after. They are more than reinterpretations. They are different games. Games in their own right. And they will take you by surprise. Very fun, unique surprises that you will want to experience many times, with just about everyone you know.


from Major Fun

Labels: Family Game, Major Fun

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Thursday, June 21, 2007

Dominoes like you never played them before

You know how every now and then you come across this beautifully packaged set of dominoes, sometimes in a tin, even, and the dominoes are in deed very nice - hefty, colorful, smooth - and sometimes there's even some kind of lovely plastic thing that sits in the center of the table or some place, and keeps score or turns around or even makes noise - and yet it's still dominoes? You know what I mean. Dominoes, in a nice package, but it feels like dominoes, and it looks like dominoes, and it plays just like dominoes. And you can't help feeling just a little disappointed, just a little like you were hoping maybe for a really different game, something new, something that maybe used dominoes, but was more interesting, more challenging, more, well, different?

Despair no more, my playful friend. For Highrise Dominoes is in deed a wonderfully different game. And the base that is included in the lovely tin is really functional, really central to the game.

The object is to build a tower of dominoes. First, a basement is built - 8 dominoes placed, face-up, in the bottom of the turntable base. From then on, players take turn building on to the base, the rule being that the domino has to match the numbers it rests on. And yes, you can lay your domino so that it rests on two different dominoes. And once that domino is laid, you can lay another domino on top of that. And the higher the level, the higher the score.

It's a completely different experience of dominoes. There's so much to look at. Which is why you're so happy that the turntable turns.

There are clear plastic blocks that are used when the dominoes you want to match are on two different levels. Which is fine, unless the dominoes are on two different levels that are more than one level apart. And then comes the joyous agony of having to maybe (gasp) draw another domino.

There are also wild dominoes, there's a double, with both halves wild. And there are others with only one wild half. But, boy, do you get to love those wild ones! Seeing as they are often the only ones that you can play. Which you really want to do. Because the first player to use all her tiles can get many, many points.

From Major Fun

Labels: Family Game, Major Fun, Thinking Game

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Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Dots Amazing!

You need a real artist to take a simple children's puzzle, like Connect-the-Dots, and transform it into something worthy of mature, adult-worthy consideration. A real artist.

And that's just what David Kalvitis is, an artist. And that's just what he's accomplished with his many Dot-to-Dot books.

Let me give you a few examples:

Stars puzzles: You start at number 1, as you would expect, and continue connecting dots in order until you come to a star. Then you have to look for the next number, which could be anywhere else in the puzzle, and continue from that number to the next star. And on and on, number-to-number-to-star. Jumping around from place to place on the puzzle, you really have no idea what you're drawing, sometimes until the very last star.

Arrows: You see this big field of arrows - no dots at all. Just arrows. So there's absolutely no visual hints about what the puzzle is about. You look for a circled arrow and start there, following where it points until you come to another arrow, and you take off in that direction. Of course, if you make a mistake, just one, small, easily explicable error, you soon find youself wandering realms of graphic chaos. Which is why, despite Kalvatis' heartfelt recommendations that all his puzzles be done with a marker, we find ourselves frequently recommending a soft pencil with a very good eraser.

Compass: Here, you get nothing but an array of dots with a few symbols sprinkled in hither and yon. You look for a star and, then read the directions printed above the puzzle. And I do mean directions. Like, from the star, go: N (North(, and then Wx2 (two dots west), and then SWx2, and then on and on and on, and if you do it exactly right, you'll end up at an A. And then, from the A, you start on the next line of instructions....

For an elementary school teacher, the different puzzle types involve skills that are closely tied to the mathematics curriculum. For the rest of us, they are an invitation to return to a deeply satisfying, often remarkably peaceful pastime.

These are but three of the innovative, challenging and inviting variations of connect-the-dots Kalvitis has created for us. And, if you're a social puzzler, it turns out that many of them can be solved cooperatively - especially the big puzzles, or puzzles like the Star puzzles that you solve in segments.

There are five volumes of the "Greatest Dot-to-Dot" series, so far. The first four are a great introduction to the wide variety of puzzle types. The fifth volume is most appropriately called "Super Challenge," where you'll find puzzles that span two pages and hundreds and hundreds of dots. There are also four volumes of Kalvitis' Newspaper Dot-to-Dot puzzles - smaller, but every bit as innovative.

Each puzzle is a work of art in its own right. When you complete a puzzle, you are rewarded with images that are themselves often surprisingly vivid, sometimes rich in detail, sometimes spare and subtle. Often drawn in perspective. Never stiff. Never blocky. Always surprising.

from Major Fun

Labels: learning, Major Fun, Thinking Game

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Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Stack revisited

I am certain you recall that Stack received a Major Fun Award a little over 4 years ago. In fact, it was a recipient of several awards: the Party Games award, the Thinking Games award, the much-touted Keeper award, and even, oddly enough, it was found most Senior-Worthy. And you probably even recall why.

I, on the other hand, have been exploring the game in greater depth, especially recently as I work more and more with various groups of seniors hereabouts. And what I have been exploring, actually, is the, shall we say, "Super Stack" set - two different sets of the Stack game (the deluxe, jumbo, of course), each set having different color dice, thereby enabling me to play a game with 8 people.

The large dice that come with the deluxe version prove to be especially comforting for senior eyes and hands. Easy to read, even at a distance, enjoyable to hold because of their greater heft, and easier to stack because of their larger size. Having enough for eight people makes the game ideal for building a sense of community and friendship. Because the group is larger, people don't can play at a safe distance from each other (psychologically safe), but because they're all sharing the same set of dice, they feel connected. If we need to, we can easily divide into smaller, more intimate groups. But having all those dice means that each player has twice as many options to consider. On the one hand, it makes the beginning of the game that much easier and more inviting. On the other, it makes the endgame that much more dramatic. Stacks get built, options constantly get fewer and fewer, the need to play strategically gets more and more vivid.

Stack, even with only 4 colors, has never disappointed us as a game for almost all ages. But having twice as many dice turns out to be more than twice as flexible, twice as interesting, for at least twice as many people.


from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Labels: Major Fun, senior fun, Thinking Game

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Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Rukshuk

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.

Labels: Family Game, Major Fun

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Wednesday, April 18, 2007

Puzzling Fun

Before we talk about Pete's Pike and some of the other delightfully new puzzle/games from ThinkFun, answer me this? Have you ever tried River Crossing? If not, stop reading now, click on the ThinkFun, answer me this? Have you ever tried River Crossing link, and try it right now, on-actual-line. How about Rush Hour? Tipover? Go ahead. Click away. You can play all three. It is to sing the puzzle electric.

Of course, you'd be missing the feel of the puzzle/games themselves, the well-made, cleverly designed, intelligently portable, box-throw-out-able packaging of it all. But you'd get a good sense of what these puzzle/games are all about - how they involve moving pieces on a board, pieces with different properties, boards with different layouts. And how each layout is really a new puzzle. And how the puzzles range in difficulty. And, most importantly, from a major fun perspective, how they invite kibitzing.

The different levels of challenge allow you to challenge yourself as much or as little as you want to. Go ahead, start with the the first card. Be a beginner. Enjoy your competence. Feeling feisty. Skip a card or two. Try something intermediate. Because you can challenge yourself as much or as little as you want, the puzzle/games are especially fun - you never feel yourself overwhelmed or bored (unless you want to be).

Then there's the kibitz-attraction - because the puzzles are visually attractive, and because what you're trying to do is generally easy to explain (see, I'm trying to get this goat (Pete) to the top of the mountain (OK, the middle of the board), and I can move Pete up or down or across from where he is until he's right next to one of his Goats. And I can move the Goats the same way.) So, if you're feeling social, and you want that wonderfully collaborative experience of thinking together with somebody, well, then, you've got a game fun enough to play at a party. And if you're not feeling so social, you can just sit on the sofa, all by yourself, and still have significant fun.

So the very design of these ThinkFun puzzles is the very kind of design that lends itself to Major FUN-ness. And when you have a bunch of these puzzles together (in addition to Pete's Pike, we had HotSpot, Cover Your Tracks and Treasure Quest - all new, each fun), you can amaze yourself and friends at how darn clever these puzzle/games really are, how each, similar in all the good ways, is so different, in similarly good ways.

Take Hot Spot. Very, very similar to Pete's Pike, you might say, except with "Bots." Only, Bots can jump over each other. In fact, a Bot can jump over two Bots, if it feels so compelled. Not diagonally, of course. Very different. You have to think a different way. Not like your Pike's Pete thinking, oh no. Not at all.

And then there's Treasure Quest and Cover your Tracks. Not quite as self-storing, perhaps, but with a significantly adequate drawstring storage bag, for those who seek portability and boxlessness. But very different from Hot Spot or Pete's Pike. Cover Your Tracks, with its four, large, asymmetrical pieces that fit on the board in only certain ways, and its slide-under puzzle cards, very, very different from Treasure Quest, with its sliding gate and four kinds of square tokens (you gotta love the Gold Masks that you push/side along the board), and your statuesque, token-pushing Hero - and yet, in a way, remarkably similar to all the other ThinkFun puzzle/games. Similarly well-made, similarly ingenious, similarly fun, differently puzzling.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Labels: Major Fun, Thinking Game

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Monday, April 16, 2007

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.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Labels: games, Major Fun

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Friday, April 13, 2007

Cineplexity

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.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Labels: Major Fun, Party Game

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Monday, March 12, 2007

Shakedown

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.

from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Labels: Family Game, Major Fun, Party Game

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Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Whoonu

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.



from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Labels: Major Fun, Party Game

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Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Acronymble

Acronymble 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.



originally posted in Major Fun

Labels: Major Fun, Party Game

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Friday, January 12, 2007

Meaningful fun, Major fun, and Deep Fun, too.

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Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Cosmic Cows

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.



from Major Fun

Labels: games, Major Fun

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Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Five funnest games for 2006

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

The Five Most Major Fun party games for 2006 are:

Wits and Wagers combines trivia with betting to create a unique party game - one that can involve anywhere from 3 to 21 players in an evening or half-hour worth of relatively painless trivia questions and sometimes near-painful strategizing.

Knowbody Knows, for example, exactly how many hours Tom Hanks sleeps in a week. Probably not even Mr. Hanks knows that. So, OK, so you don't know. You can still guess. Because, see, it's only a guess, and, as the designers of the game are so ready to remind us, Knowbody, actually, Knows.

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.

GiftTRAP is a party game about giving each other gifts. The better you are at giving people the things they really want, the better you do at the game. How do you like that for a party game premise? giving each other presents. Well, we loved it!

Luck of the Draw is described as "a game for the artistically challenged." And I am happy to tell you that this turns out to be a remarkably accurate description of the very people who will have the most fun playing it: the people who don't like games that make them draw.



See all my articles about these games.


Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Labels: games, Major Fun

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Monday, November 27, 2006

In10sity

In10sity, you see, is Trivia-like in it's nature, but a kinder, gentler, and significantly Major Fun-worthy Trivia game.

In10sity is called that way, because all of the 700 trivia-like questions can be answered with a number, a relatively small number, between 1, and don't you see, 10. Which makes all the difference between the Trivia games of known Triviality, and this cleverly, but perhaps misleadingly Trivia-like game of In10sity. If it's numbers, you can just guess. And if you're right, it doesn't necessarily mean that you knew anything at all about the question in question - not as necessarily as it means that it could have been just dumb luck. Or perhaps some uncanny sensitivity, some ability to empathize to the point of... Nah. A lot of times, it's luck. I mean, how many Danny DiVito's do you think it would take to reach the top of a bamboo plant?

Funny, impossible, sometimes requiring actual knowledge, In10sity is party-worthy Trivia game, designed specifically for people who are more interested in testing their collective capacity for luck and laughter, than in demonstrating superior knowledge.

Everything included in the game, from the board to the "answer dials" and the three different dice - giving variable scoring potential each turn. Well thought-out, well-produced, worth playing again and more than likely again.



from Major Fun

Labels: games, Major Fun

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Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Beyond 99

Zeus on the Loose is quite solidly based on everything that makes the kids' card game 99 fun to play. And, quite like the Major FUN-awarded game Straw, it makes a good game, better.

Zeus on the Loose adds new cards, with new powers, a lot more interaction, and a Zeus statue.

Let me summarize the root game, as it were, according to Pagat, who classifies 99 as an "adding game": "These are...games, in which the values of the cards are added together as they played in a single pile, the object being to avoid taking the total above the target score (98, 99, 100 respecively)."

So, you see, if your card has the power of, for example, reversing the digits (one of my favorites), you can make the card total, which is currently at, for example, 93, become 39, don't you see.

Interesting. Fun, even. But it's the "lot more interaction" that earned Zeus on the Loose it's Major FUN for Kids award. It would have to be. Because the added functionality and the significantly silly images of male and female Greek gods, and even the cool little Zeus statue cannot be compared in fun value to the Stealing Zeus rules.

You see, to win, you must be the Holder of the Zeus. To be the Holder of the Zeus, you must steal it from a player who is currently Zeus-Holder. O, you steal quite openly, there is no deception involved. Merely the experience of complete, if temporary, vindication. And then it gets stolen from you. And you can't win without it. And then you do a "Same Number Sneak" (see the rules), and steal it back. And, well, it's like a whole nother game, as it were. Like 99, sure. And Straw. But a whole new level of fun.


from Bernie DeKoven's FunLog

Labels: games, Major Fun

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Thursday, October 12, 2006

Reinventing Tic Tac Toe

Flip-Tac-Toe is a 3-in-a-row game on a 4x4 board for 2-4 players. And that's not all. It's a Tic-Tac-Toe game that breaks almost every convention of Tic-Tac-Toe, and yet, when all is said and done, is still definitely Tic-Tac-Toe.

You get 12 big bright foam chips apiece. You put one of your pieces anywhere on the board. Or you move a piece anywhere on the board. Yes, that's right, I said move "a" piece, as in any piece, as in one of yours or one of anyone else's. Anywhere. Even on top of another piece (unless there are already 4 pieces on it). And if there are stacks of pieces, you can also turn a stack over, on your turn, so to speak.

A stacking strategy, they explain, is to try to get your color on top and on bottom of a stack, like a sandwich - so that it always stays the same color even when flipped. Very interesting. And very different when you play with 3 or 4 people, stack-sandwich-making-strategy-wise.

Easy to learn, because it's tic-tac-toe. Takes a while to master, because it's so much more.






from Bernie DeKoven's FunLog

Labels: games, Major Fun

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Thursday, October 05, 2006

GiftTRAP - playing with empathy

GiftTRAP is a party game about giving each other gifts. The better you are at giving people the things they really want, the better you do at the game.

How do you like that for a party game premise? giving each other presents.

Well, we loved it!

What fun to think about what other people might want for a present! What a fun thing to think about for a change! What a fun way to play with other people - giving presents to the very people you're trying to beat, winning because you're good at guessing what other people might want!

OK, so they're not, like, real presents. They're only photos. But in the world of GiftTRAP, they're real enough. So real enough that you actually get excited when people give you the gifts you really want. Really excited. Even though they get more points than you do. And you're just as excited when you give people the gifts they most really wanted. Because they get excited. And, just maybe because you get more points than they do.

GiftTRAP is masterfully packaged. The board, for example, is folded into a U-shape that fits everso well into the GiftTRAP box (well, cube, actually). Since each player has to use a lot of different pieces (2 scoring markers, 9 gift tokens, and 4 choice tokens), all of the player's chosen color; the pieces come in their own individual, appropriately colored organza drawstring bags. Then there are the many decks of cards - 640 of them. Just so you never run out of something new to give each other.

But it's the game itself that deserves the most attention, and praise. Praise, because it's probably the first and only party game in which empathy is a strategically valuable commodity, empathy and intuition, sensitivity and appreciation, even.

GiftTRAP is a new kind of party game. A kinder kind. A Major FUN kind.




from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Labels: games, Major Fun

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Wednesday, August 23, 2006

The Junkyard Sports Foundation

Apparently, during a giglag (giglag - time spent between jobs), I decided to form a one-person Junkyard Sports Foundation. Really. A foundation. A genuine, grant-making organization - except that what the Foundation grants is fun, and the organization is pretty much me.

Though the Foundation is newly organized, it has self-funded and maintained several online publications for years, including this weblog. One of the Foundation's most recent grants, also self-funded, is the worldwide, online distibution of the complete instructions for conducting the Junkyard Golf Course and Community-Building Event with Potluck.

For more Foundation activities, stay tooned to this weblog, and associated Foundation-supported weblogs (Junkyard Sports and Major Fun).

Labels: Major Fun

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Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Senior-Worthy Games

Last week, I wrote a piece called "Games Seniors Play.

Spurred to action, I, your local Defender of the Playful, have created yet another Major Fun award. For games that are good enough to interest the grown-up mind, without making too many demands of a somewhat outgrown body. I am calling this award the "Major Senior-Worthy Fun" awards.

So I started with games that have already been recognized in a Major-funlike manner, and singled out those games that don't require too much speed or dexterity. Each and all a genuine challenge to mind and wit, all and each an invitation to mature, skilled, grown-up, fun.

Should you know of any other games that we should seniorly consider, please leave word.

Labels: games, Major Fun

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Tuesday, July 25, 2006

Tumblin-Dice

Think of perhaps shuffleboard with dice. Think, for example, of a shuffleboard that is on five levels, with, where there were once pucks to slide, dice to, well, slide perhaps or flick or shove. A shuffleboard looking pretty much exactly like this.

Think further of the role, or roll, of luck - how the dice, even though you try to slide them everso carefully, tend to change faces when they descend a level. There's an intimation of the possibility that one could control all of this, making the die land 6-up even by the time it reaches the X4 level after having knocked all the opponents' dice to off-table oblivion. On the other hand, there's an unavoidable element of luck which makes a 7-year-old often as successful as a 57-year-old. Think of this, and you'll understand, almost immediately, why Tumblin' Dice has received a Major Fun Family Game award.

If you know shuffleboard, you'll know how to play Tumblin' Dice. When I introduced the game at the Tasting, I asked my fellow Tasters to play the game without looking at the rules. With almost no discussion, they played almost exactly the way the designer had intended them to. Because the game was so easy to figure out, it is exceptionally welcome in a variety of settings, especially recreation centers, classrooms and my house.

Speaking of classrooms, the game requires enough arithmetical calculations to make it actually useful in almost any elementary school setting. When a die lands in special scoring sections of the board, the face value of the die is multiplied by a given factor. So, in figuring out a total score players exercise both additional and multiplication, and, one might argue, even algebraic skills.

But don't let its educational implications fool you. Tumblin-Dice is an invitation to minutes or hours of play, for kids, for adults, for the whole darn community. Did I mention adults? The kind of adults who might be interested in playing, um, professionally?

It's made as well as it plays - a big, polished, two-piece all wood, table-worthy game that you might never put away. Ever.

Labels: games, Major Fun

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Monday, July 03, 2006

Play! The Art of the Game

Play! The Art of the Game is a new exhibit at the Cobra museum in Amstelveen (near Amsterdam). According to the promotional description, the exhibit "reveals that play and playfulness are inextricably linked to the art of our time. There are marked parallels between the areas of art and play. Both are separate from everyday working life, are self-regulating, irrational and aimed at pleasure."

Though I've often written about the play/art connection, the following description is a far more informed, and useful overview of the influence of one over the other:

"Game and play have been defining impulses for major 20th and 21st artists. Innovative thinking and the experiment were their guiding principles. Marcel Duchamp dedicated himself to the game of chess and gambling, Hans Arp, Hugo Ball and Kurt Schwitters aspired to a more playful interpretation of the concept of art by using word games and chance, the Fluxus artist George Maciunas made a funny-looking ping-pong table, in their film 'The Way Things Go' Fischli & Weiss play around with the concepts of action and reaction, Jean Tinguely made moving constructions while Laurel & Hardy act like children in the film 'Brats'."

Thanks to fun scout Martin Booman for this find.

Labels: art, Major Fun, playfulness

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Monday, May 08, 2006

Wits & Wagers

Wits & Wagers combines trivia with betting to create a unique party game - one that can involve anywhere from 3 to 21 players in an evening or half-hour worth of relatively painless trivia questions and sometimes near-painful strategizing.

The trivia questions are all answered with numbers. e.g.: "How many times to the Beatles sing the word 'Yeah' in the song She Loves You?" and "According to July 2004 estimates, how many people live in the U.S.?" Players record their answers on write-on, wipe-off cards, with write-on, wipe-off markers (supplied). What makes this all somewhat kinder and gentler is that the likelihood of anyone knowing the actual answer is very low. So, it's more like a guessing game - anything from educated to wild will do. Which makes the whole game far more inviting and replete with jollitude than most exercises in trivia.

Then there's the betting. Answers are arranged numerically on the heavy duty vinyl betting mat (probably one of the thickest and most durable ever put into a game). The median answer has the lowest pay off because it is the most likely answer to be correct. Higher and lower answers have increasingly higher pay offs since they are riskier bets. Players bet their chips on which guess is the closest, without going over (what one might be tempted to call the "Price is Right" rule). Since you don't have to bet on your own guess, the betting round is like an exercise in second guessing, only with more information. Like what each player is willing to bet on which answer - especially since you can bet on two different answers. As your opinion tends to undergo massive changes once you see what all of your friends think, winning Wits & Wagers becomes less a demonstration of what you know than of how well you know the people you're playing with!

Designed by Dominic Crapuchettes, Wits & Wagers is a rare accomplishment - combining two ordinarily very different game concepts into something unique and uniquely playworthy.

Labels: games, Major Fun, playfulness

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Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Very, Very Big Bubbles

We took this picture during our last Tasting. David and company are on our front lawn, learning to use "beebo Big Bubble Mix" to create what can only be called an XTREME bubble. "Our mission," say the XTREME Bubble Team "is to manufacture and distribute to all people, the most exciting, amazing and revolutionary bubble solution in the history of the world! We believe that if every person in the world had a chance to play with beeboo Big Bubble Mix, the world would become a better place." Yes, beebo Big Bubble Mix, the same beeboo Big Bubble Mix used to blow the " the World's Largest Free Floating Soap Bubble."

There was no question at all about the Major FUNness of the XTREME bubble-making experience. I personally have never seen bubbles so large, so ameoba-like in their blobitude, so surprising in their floaty formations. Not having made an exhaustive comparison, I can not attest to the fact that beebo Big Bubble Mix results in the biggest of all possible bubbles. It worked. It was easy to mix, easy to make work. Learning to use the bubble wand was most definitely an integral part of the whole experience. As a connoisseur of all things fun, I can tell you that this stuff is great fun. And I mean great!

At a purported savings of $6, you're probably going to want to purchase the entire 1 Bottle of beeboo™ Mix & 1 Bubble Wand starter kit. Then, you'll probably have to get the 2 bottles of beeboo™ Big Bubble Mix, unless you find yourself ready for the 4 bottles of beeboo™ Big Bubble Mix

Labels: Major Fun, playfulness

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Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Paradice

"Paradice is interactive art, a game of give and take. Players explore decisions made in response to changing circumstances and engage with the contradictions of competing needs."

Interactive art? At almost $200, it better be art! And fun, too.

It is my honor to be able to inform you that Paradice is both.

The pieces. You have to see them in the light to really appreciate how the hand-poured resin seems to shine with its own internal brilliance.

The game. You have to play it. Because playing it completes the artwork. Which means you have to read the rules. And learn about the pieces. Pieces that have names like: Opportunity, Circumstance Changer, Human Being, Forest Spirit, the Rainforest, Palm, Coniferous and Deciduous trees. Yes, that's correct, Forest Spirit. It's clearly a strategic game, with some element of chance (Opportunity looks and acts exactly like a round die). But then there's the thing about being either the Giver or the Taker. And only the Giver can win. So if you're the Taker you might think that your only purpose in life is to keep the Giver from winning. Until you are able to internalize the strategic implications of the rule that at any moment, depending on the roll of Opportunity, you might have to change roles entirely.

As you continue playing, the whole game seems filled with light and delight. You finally see through the game (Paradice being only the first product of a company called "See-Through Games"), and begin to perceive the artist himself, John O'Neill. "John O'Neill," begins his artist's statement page, "is an artist committed to the realignment of art with society in forms that people can appreciate and afford. He pursues the synthesis of artistic inspiration with insight into the human situation."

He is also a friend of mine. Which, in the case of this review, is a mixed blessing. I am not as impartial as I should be - not enough to actually give this game a Major Fun Award. And because I have the honor to know him personally, when I see through Paradice to the artist, I see someone of vision and integrity and an abiding love of life.

Labels: art, games, Major Fun

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Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Humor and Play: Joyfully Overcome Relationship Hurdles

Humor and Play: Joyfully Overcome Relationship Hurdles is a new article appearing in a rather remarkable health information resource called "Help Guide." Rather remarkable, at least from my perspective because it also coincidentally just happens to include an article that I co-authored with Dr. Jeanne Segal "Playing Together for Fun."

The article itself is also of the rather remarkable ilk, opening with a quote from Major Fun, himself, and mine, too.

Now that you know what peaked my interest, let me go on to suggest what might peak yours with some semi-random samples:

"Love play is not a competitive game; it has to be fun, interesting and equally engaging for both partners. There can be no winners or losers in interactive play. Something isn’t funny unless it is funny to both parties – and this includes teasing. Each person has to be excited and drawn into the experience. When this is the case, nothing is more stimulating. If, or when, the playful experience isn’t mutual, the play isn’t interactive and may detract from, rather than support, a love relationship..."

"Play gives us an opportunity to turn frustrations and negative experiences into opportunities for shared fun and intimacy. In the context of interactive play, we replace judgment and criticism with humor, and can say and do things that might be awkward or offensive in other contexts. In playful settings we hear things differently and can tolerate learning things about ourselves that we otherwise might find unpleasant or even painful. Play also gives us a positive way to address differences."

"Play is a powerful survival mechanism that supports our ability to surmount life’s hardships and tragedies. Whole civilizations brought to their knees have survived over time by enlisting the force of humor and play to counteract their distress. Deeply experienced emotions can alternate rapidly. One moment we can be in the throes of grief and the next laughing at a ridiculous memory or comment. Such is the nature of primary emotion. Humor and play are respites from sadness and pain but, more than just time out, play also imbues us with the courage and strength to find new sources of meaning and hope."

Labels: Major Fun, playfulness, theory

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Wednesday, February 15, 2006

Thing-a-ma-bots

"Thing-a-ma-bots" is a silly game, naturally, because I designed it. (So this is not a review, even though I personally happen to think that the fun to be had is most clearly Major FUN variety.)

Built completely from parts of other games, the parts I Iike best – Thing-a-ma-Bots is a 'junkyard approach' to card game design. A unique, new game, built from a combination of rules from other, older games. A card game designed to challenge everyone equally, kids and adults, based on collections of rules that make people exercise both mental and social abilities. Rules that are often very surprising, and most important to me, rules that make people laugh. Like, for example, that bit from the game Steal the Old Man's Bundle where "If you play a card that matches the top card of an opponent's bundle, you steal their whole of their bundle and add it to the top of yours, placing the matching card that you played on top." Very fun little bit. Makes it impossible to know who's going to win until the very last minute of the game. (more)

Labels: games, Major Fun

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Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Shout About Movies, Music, TV, Fun

Shout About Movies 4 may not be the catchiest title in the world. But, if I know you, it'll probably be the highlight of you next party.

Now, before you get carried away to Amazon.com or your local retail outlet, let me help set an expectation or two. First, it's a consumable game. You can play it three times with the same group of people. And that's it. If you want to play it again, you're going to need a whole new group of people, none of whom has played it before. And that leaves you out. Unless you haven't played Shout About Movies 3, or Shout about Music or Shout About TV. And are willing to spend at least another $20.

In fact, the whole Shout About series is like that. Consumable. Which, in a way, is really quite innovational. In another way, the idea of a consumable game violates a very basic property of every other game we ever played. And I just don't like it one bit.

Except, it's really fun. It really works. The sheer entertainment of it all. The way the remote control is used and passed between teams. The score keeping. The variety. The timing and pace. It can keep a whole party-ful of people engaged for eight entire rounds per each of three games. With some snacks in between, you've got a whole evening's worth of significant and ultimately funny fun for everyone. Each round is different. Oh, it still deals with people's knowledge of movies or music or TV, depending on which of the series you've purchased, all right. But it's a different challenge. And each challenge gets people together, thinking hard, together, team vs. team, in intense, multi-media, animated, competition about knowing really trivial things.

Unless you happen not to know anything at all about, say, music of the 90s. Which explains why the games tend to be even more fun as the crowd gets larger. I and my wife, for example, and a goodly collection fellow Tasters, each of whom was at least 20 years newer to the world than we, tried one of the Music games. While everyone else was clearly having fun, loving the challenge of it, genuinely, but playfully engaged in trying to remember things first, we found ourselves wandering off to the refrigerator and getting snacks ready.

So there you have it. A consumable game, for goodness sake. Major FUN. By a unanimous decision.

Labels: Major Fun, playfulness

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Tuesday, December 20, 2005

Deflexion - the Laser Game

Deflexion is a chess-like, two-player, arguably abstract strategy game - with lasers! Each player gets four different kinds of pieces, one of which is the "pharaoh." Two of the pieces have mirrors on them. The object: position the pieces so that when you fire your laser, it winds up hitting the non-mirrored side of one of your opponent's pieces. If you hit a Pharaoh piece, the game is over.

The pieces need to be set up in their specified starting positions. It took a while to do this, because the whole board (and not just the starting rows, as in chess or checkers) is used. And, as a taste of strategic implications yet to come, the rules describe two different set-ups, each chock-full of its own subtle significances. Meaning, as Shakespeare might have said if he had his own Deflexion game, that there are more things in lasers and mirrors than are dreampt of in our philosophies....

The moment we installed the (included) batteries and discovered that yes, there are actually lasers, and they are, yes, most definitely bright enough, and that, yes, they do bounce off the mirrors in a most classically laserlike manner - we were hooked. O, we were trepidatiously hooked, all right. What if the game doesn't really play as good as it looks? What if the laser light can't really be seen when it hits a piece? What if it's too complex? After all, there are some strange, chess-like rules about how certain pieces can move. And, o, we so much wanted the game to be as good as it looked! I mean, with lasers and mirrors and everything!

And, upon reflection, so to speak, we found it fun. We found it very fun. Major, as a matter of fact, FUN. And we were sorely happy.

Labels: games, Major Fun

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Wednesday, November 09, 2005

Plext

Plext is a Boggle-ish word game that is unique and, consequently, uniquely fun. Designed by Chris Handy, who also designed the Major FUN Award-winning game "Handy," Plext features a set of 14 letter dice. The dice are rolled and then placed in a tray so they line up end-to-end. Players then compete to list the FEWEST ("fewest" is definitely a new idea for word games) words that contain ALL 14 letters, in the order in which those letters appear.

We had a little trouble initially understanding the full implication of FEWEST and "in order." So, here's the deal. It doesn't matter how many letters you add. All you have to do is use up all of the existing letters, in the order that they're, um, in, and in as few words as possible. Let's say that your letter array is: PFGBWOSMYHPCVD. A first word like "preferring" would use the P, F and G. For the next word, you try "worship" to get rid of the W, O, and S. That's two words and six letters. For your third word, you reach the veritable apogee of verbal verisimilitude and write "mythopoetic." Mythopoetic? Yes, indeed. In the dictionary and everything. Swallowing M, Y, H, P, and C! All that's left is a mere V and D. "Void" will work perfectly. As would "Valid" or even "Envisioned." So in four words, you use up all 14 letters.

We were surprised at how absorbing and fun, and unique, this little game proved to be. We were not, however, in the least bit surprised by the quality of the components and packaging. Like almost all the games manufactured by SimplyFun, Plext is lovingly packaged and presented, and the pieces well-finished and durable.

The game is recommended for 2-6 word-game players, ages 10 and up, with about 45 minutes to play.

Labels: games, Major Fun, playfulness

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Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Castle Keep - a Keeper

Castle Keep is a tile placement game of luck, strategy and significant fun, for 2 to 4 players, ages 8 and up.

There are 90 cardboard tiles (thick, colorful). There are three different kinds of tiles (corner pieces called "towers"), side pieces ("walls"), and central pieces ("keeps"). There are three different shapes of corner and side pieces (straight, zigzag and curvy), and three different colors. You start with any four of them. Your goal: build a complete castle of 9 tiles, with all the outside, adjacent tiles of the same color or shape, and a "keep" whose color matches any tile in the castle. Your other goal: destroy your opponent's castle. Accomplish either, and you win the game.

OK, so destroying an opponent's castle is a little harder than building your own. Well, it should be. You have to have a wall or corner tile that exactly matches (color and shape), and two Keep tiles of the same color as your opponent's Keep.

You might want to be careful about building a castle whose walls are both the same color and shape as their towers. Granted, it's a lot prettier. But there's a price for beauty: if one piece gets attacked, and adjacent pieces are the same color and shape, they are also, well, shall we say "obliterated?"

The two-player version is just different enough (you only build one castle, and try to be the player to complete it) to make it, well, different - different enough to make you have to find a different strategy in order to win. Which makes it like having two different games. And then there's a solitaire version. And then there are variations.

Designed by Richard D. Reece, Castle Keep has just enough strategic elements to entice the serious game player, just enough luck to keep everyone, adults and kids, from getting too serious to know when they're having fun, and is just long enough (around 20 minutes) to keep people deeply and happily engaged.

A definite keeper of Major FUN proportions.

A claimer (I was going to day "disclaimer," but it seemed too negative): rumors have it that Gamewright, the manufacturer of this certifiably Major FUN Award-Winning game, has contracted with Major FUN, him- (and my-) self, to produce a new card game actually designed by the aforementioned. Though these rumors are rumored to be true, this exceptionally good news for all fun kind has in no way impacted the impartiality and integrity of this reviewer. Castle Keep is a game worth keeping, no matter who manufactures it. And that's the troof.

Labels: Major Fun

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Friday, August 26, 2005

Today's FunCast: Linkity

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Linkity

Linkity is a fast-action word / card game from Simply Fun that is most definitely FUN in a Major kind of way.

The deck consists of 81 cards. Each card has a single letter on it, along with a cartoon of a letter-shaped bugs. Why bugs? According to the manufacturer, there is "no particular reason - we just liked the bugs." Players are dealt hands of 7 cards. After the first card is played, players compete to put the next card down - while saying a word that starts with the letter on the card, and is related to whatever word the previous player used. Let's say Tamara starts with the letter "A" and say "Apple." Let's say Rick throws down his "S" card and says "Slice." And then Celia, throwing down her "G" card says, naturally, "Golf." See, the word "Golf," though having nothing to do with the original word "Apple," can be demonstrably linked to the word "Slice." Hence the name of the game: Linkity.

Each player (3-8) begins a round with seven cards. Players don't take turns, they simply go as soon as they can think of a contextually appropriate word that starts with a letter that appears on one of their cards (though you can only put one card down per turn) and has something to do with the word just said. And yes, of course, players can challenge each other (greatly adding to the intrigue and potential silliness of play). The first player to use all her cards wins the round. The rest are penalized one point for each card remaining in their hands. A full game requires three rounds and takes maybe a half-hour.

Since there are no turns, you really have to think fast, and often creatively in order to win. It's this creativity-under-pressure that adds both to the hilarity and intensity of the game, and adds to the temptation to try words that aren't quite exactly, well, linked. Which adds correspondingly to the party-like spirit of the whole game.

When playing for the first time, disregard the first round. This gives everyone a chance to get a good understanding of the slightly subtle concept that a word needs only to relate to the immediately preceding word. The game works best when players are of roughly equal ability. So, if there are kids around, let them play their own game. They deserve it.

Labels: Major Fun

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Thursday, August 25, 2005

Learning about play from Children

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Thursday, July 21, 2005

Card Throwing - magic or martial art?

Is it magic? Is it a martial art? I couldn't tell either. Whatever it is, it's about throwing cards. To wit:

"Throwing cards has two lines of history which blur as we reach the 20th century. Not surprisingly for a martial art, these two lines are eastern, and western. The West had its beginnings in the mystique of illusion and magic. Card magicians and stage magicians both loved the flying card. It wasn't until about the late 1800s that it became popular. A stage magician by the name of Howard Thurston had finally mastered throwing cards from the stage, high up over the audience to the people in the cheapest seats. Just before him, and less known, was Alexander Herrmann who was the first to include it as a major performance in his act."

Martial art-wise, card-throwing author Tony Lee cautions:

"This is a tough martial art. But not a 'martial = war' art. It is a martial art as in the spirit martial arts are meant in the Far East - as enriching experiences in life. And so I will not teach you how to hurt someone with this. That's right. It is impossible to turn these into deadly weapons without something extra. That something you will not get from this."

But it is something you can get from photos and notes abstracted from Ricky Jay's out-of-print "Cards as Weapons," where we learn, for example, of a type of throw called "The Butterfly Swirl," that "...in the pain-tolerance tests conducted at Duke University many people described...with the word aculeus which is defined as the bite of an insect, hence the slogan 'Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.'"

Whatever way you decide to take it, card throwing, like most fun things, is as magical as it is potentially painful, leading you to realms of play that are unexpectedly rich, and sometimes downright dangerous.

Labels: Major Fun

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Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Palabra

Palabra is a word game that is easily as deep as Scrabble® and yet requires only a deck of cards. 120 cards, actually. Cards with letters on them. And colors. And some even with special symbols. And some more special than that.

It's not just a word game. It's also rummy-like. So, if you really can't find a word, but if it just so happens that you can make a "straight" with, say, the letters J, K, and L, well, go for it. Since a J is worth 9 points and a K 6 and an L 2, you got 17 points right there. And if they are all the same color, you'd double your score. And if some of the cards have stars on them, you might double or triple the score again!

The competitive part, and I mean, really competitive, comes with the "shaving" rule. On your turn, if you have cards that match those the person before you just played, you can use them to take points off his score and add them to yours. Kind of a delicious moment in the annals of legally mean things to do in the name of fun.

I know. It sounds just too complex to be fun. So many other things to think about that it could take away the joys of word-making. And yet, it turns out at least as interesting for the word game lover as Scrabble, with all the fun of a really good card game.

The deck has been recently refreshed - the cards are a bit thicker and the color key on the side of the cards has a different shape for each color - a great help for people who have difficulty telling colors apart. If you have the old set, it's still worth getting a newer version, because with 2 decks (yes, 240 cards!) you can play with up to 12 people.

Major FUN? You bet! Hmmm. Betting. As one might do in poker. Hmmmmm. And hmmmm again. Given the 28 variations currently described on the remarkably thorough and generous Palabra website (which includes resources like the inestimably valuable 2- and 3-letter word list, vowelless words, and Q-words not followed by a U), given, in particular, variations 13 (called "All Poker") and 24 ("Texas Hold 'em), poker, most definitely. And there's, for further example, a more Scrabble-like crosswords (variation 12), of course. And, should you enjoy playing with yourself, so to speak, a significantly amusing solitaire (variation 21), even.

Labels: Major Fun

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Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Games and the classroom

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Tuesday, May 10, 2005

Catch Phrase, Refreshed

Hasbro's Electronic Catch Phrase is probably one of the best electronic party games ever. A cross between password and hot potato, this exciting, engaging team word game can engage as many people as you want to play with in a good hour of competition and laughter. And now it's getting a second Major Fun award. The first was presented two-and-a-half years ago. Today, we have an improved Electronic Catch Phrase, just released, with new categories and words, making something like 10,000 in total.

This award goes primarily to Hasbro for having the intelligence and integrity that led to improving an already excellent game. This is all too rare an occurrence in the game industry. A successful game tends to get repackaged, and perhaps even rethemed, but rarely if ever fundamentally improved. The new version is simply easier to use. A back-lit LED screen is much easier to read. The digital score readout (replacing the cumbersome electronic voice), and the button size and placement all make for a friendlier, easier-to-control, more pleasant to play with device.

Most of the people at our Tasting who tried the game weren't familiar with Catch Phrase in any of its earlier incarnations - even the original mechanical and paper version released in the 90s. The main obstacle to their understanding the joys that awaited them was their other experiences of password-like games. See, that part, the guess-what-word-I'm-trying-to-make-you-say part, is so easy to understand that the other part, the hot potato part, completely escaped most people. Until we finally got to play the game. People kept on thinking that they should get a point when their team guessed the word. But that's not it at all. When your team guesses your word, you get to pass the device to a player on the other team. And points are kind of negative - awarded to your team when the timer goes off (hot potato-like) in the other team's hands. Despite the brevity and succinctness of the rules, this was the one real source of confusion that nothing short of a reworking of the rules (perhaps as a comic book) could have avoided.

On the other hand, as it were, once this rather inconsequential hurdle was cleared, delight was immediate and continuous. It really is one of the best electronic party games out there. And Catch Phrase, refreshed, is even better than its predecessor. At less than $25 retail, it's well-worth the purchase, even if you have the older version.

Labels: Major Fun, Party Game, Word Game

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Thursday, April 21, 2005

Heximoes

Heximoes are, as the name so clearly implies, hexagonal dominoes. 132 hexagonal dominoes, to be precise. Compared to your basic rectangular, 28-in-a-set, two-number dominoes, Heximoes are at least three times more complex. So the question is, are they, as the manufacturer suggests, six times more fun?

Though it is difficult to quantify fun, it is not at all difficult to experience the fun of Heximoes. They are every bit as fascinating as dominoes (see this for more about the many wonders of dominoes). And, because they are hexagons and each number is a different color, the games you can play with them tend to make much more appealing, geometric patterns. The challenge of placing tiles is also far more fascinating, since you have to match each adjacent tile (which can be as many as six!).

The manufacturer Educational Insights describes three different games, and a solitaire version, each of which is as inviting and challenging as any domino game you can think of. If you know dominoes, you'll understand how to play Heximoes almost immediately. On the other hand, the experience of playing with six-sided tiles is so clearly unique, that any comparison to traditional dominoes does little justice to the experience of play.

Heximoes are made of cardboard, so they can't compete with the look and feel of a traditional, ivory, wood or plastic game of dominoes. But they certainly can compete with the play value. All in all, Heximoes are Major FUN.

Labels: Major Fun

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Monday, April 18, 2005

Gobblet, Jr.

It was more than two years ago when a game called "Gobblet" became the first strategy game to get a Major FUN Award. Today, it's Gobblet, Jr., a simpler version of Gobblet where the goal is to get three-, instead of four-in-a-row.

What makes the game so attractive is: 1) it's based on tic-tac-toe - so, if you know tic-tac-toe, you'll be able to understand how to play, pretty much immediately; and 2) it's way more interesting than tic-tac-toe. Way. Each player gets two sets of nesting cylinders. Players take turns placing any of their cylinders down anywhere on the board. And yes, if you have a larger cylinder, you can even put it on top of your opponent's cylinder. Which, you probably already see, has enough strategic implications to make playing the game utterly fascinating. OK. Maybe not as utterly as Gobblet, uh, Sr., where you have three sets of nesting cylinders and are playing on a 4x4 board on an even more woody box, but definitely utterly enough.

Though it's called "Gobblet, Jr," it's not getting a "Kids" award, or even a "Family" award, but a full-fledged, adult-worthy, Thinking games award, just like its bigger brother.

See, at the last Tasting, I didn't tell anyone about the other Gobblet. I showed them Gobblet, Jr., and I said, look, even though it looks like a kids' game, play around with it as if it were a big person's game, deserving of the best of your very adult selves. And they did. And it was. Even in its simpler, 3x3 version. A game to be taken most maturely. Even if kids like it, too.

Labels: For Kids, Major Fun

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Friday, April 08, 2005

The Old Shell Game Renewed

Every now and then I come across a game so elegant, so simple, so well-designed and made, that I am reminded why I started this whole Major FUN Awards program. Scoop's Surprises is just that kind of game.

Though it will remind you of the "old shell game," it reminds you just enough to make the game easier to learn. Once you start playing, however, you'll rapidly discover that, compared to Scoop's Surprises, the old shell game is mere child's play.

There are four wooden "ice cream cones." Each of these houses three pegs. There are four sets of three different color pegs - vanilla, chocolate, strawberry and mint. The person playing Scoop first moves the cones around, exactly as in the shell game of yore. Depending on the age of the players, Scoop uses three or four (or maybe only two) of the wooden cones, and makes maybe only three or four or maybe five or more switches. Then, and here's where the game gets truly boggling, then Scoop tells you which flavor you have to find.

Having to keep track of not just one, but as many as four different "flavors," the mind basically melts. It can be extremely challenging. Or, with some loving simplification, easy enough for a five-year-old.

Scoop's Surprises is surprisingly easy to learn and even more surprisingly fun to play - for the entire family. Did I tell you Scoop gets to wear a special ice cream hat? And how that hat adds just the right sprinkle of humor to a remarkably well-made, well-conceived, and enduringly entertaining game?

Labels: Major Fun

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Wednesday, March 23, 2005

WaveLength

The topic is BUBBLE GUM. We've got a minute. List the first five kinds of bubble gum that you can think of. You make yours. I'll make mine. And when you're finished, rank them from 1-5. No, I don't know how you should rank them, by your favorites, by what you think is the most popular. Wait. Let me correct that. List the five kinds of bubble gum that you think I'll be able to think of. And then rank them the way you think I'll rank them. OK? Here goes. I got: 1. Dubble Bubble, 5. Skittles, 2. Bubblicious, 3. Bazooka and 4. Bubble Yum. We get one point for each gum. And an extra point for each gum we ranked the same. OK. OK. So maybe Skittles really isn't bubble gum. All that's really important is that we both think it is.

You know, for a trivia-style game, this was kind of different. It's about Pop culture, for one. For another, it's fun. A lot more fun. One might almost say, to coin a phrase, Major FUN. It's called WaveLength. What makes it so much more fun than your average trivia game? Three things: one, you're not working alone, against everyone else. It's you and your partner. Two: everybody plays, all the time. There's quite literally, "never a dull moment." And three, it's not so much trivia as it what you might call "Family Feud meets the Match Game." How "right" your answer is depends completely on what the other guy has to say. It's a trivia game (over a thousand questions), but you're all playing together, you're actually trying to get more connected, trying to think like what you think the other guy's thinking. It's got all the ingredients of a good trivia game. It's all about facts and memory. But it's even more about connecting to the other guy; getting on, what you might call, the same "wavelength," so to speak.

Major FUN-wise, Wavelength is what the award is all about.

Labels: Major Fun

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Tuesday, March 22, 2005

4-Square Volleyball

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Friday, March 11, 2005

Knock-Out

Knock Out is the second game from the Muggins people to get a Major Fun award. Again, it's made for durability and ease of use - a wooden board, marbles, plastic trays for holding the marbles - and elegantly conceived. And yes, like Muggins, the first "educational game" to receive a Major Fun award, it's value, at least for adults, lies in the learning opportunities the game provides. And, even more importantly, it's fun.

Numbers, from 1-18, are spaced clockwise around the board. A hole above and below each number can be filled in by marbles. Throwing three dice, the object is to use the break up the combined number to capture as many of the numbers as possible. A number can only be captured when both holes are occupied by the same color marble. As you play the game, you get a vivid lesson in probability. The lower numbers are always the first to go - and the most hotly contested. It's a remarkable opportunity to be explore the machinery and mystery of math.

Variations allow for more sophisticated play. There's a "Place Value" level in which the dice can be arranged so the first die represents tens, the second units and the third can be added or subtracted from the total, which is then broken down to its components. For example, a 6, 5 and 3 are rolled. The 6 and 5 become 65. The 3 can be added or subtracted to make 62 or 68. 68 can then be broken down to a 1, 2, 4, 8, 9, 12, 15 and 17.

Above all, it's fun enough to want to play again and again, especially for elementary school children. Major Fun. For kids.

Labels: Major Fun

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Thursday, March 10, 2005

Square Games

Cinda writes:

"Just wondering if you have ever considered square dancing as play or fun?

"As I read the information on your website, it brought to mind my favorite activity square dancing. I have done this for over 30 years and believe that the combination of the mental and physical activity are the best thing for my health physical and mental.

"My husband is a square dance caller and it is his job to choreograph everyone. The moves are standardized but they can be put in lots of different combinations. He usually is working in his head about three calls ahead of the dancers. As a dancer, we try to do what he calls in the order that he calls it. It is sort of a team sport since all 8 people in a square are doing what he calls and need to be in the proper position to make it work. The reward is getting back "to your corner." And if the square breaks down, we usually just laugh and reform and start again. It is a great stress reliever."

Major Fun replies: No

That is, not until now. I guess, until you prompted me to some further research, Square Dancing always seemed to me to be, well, square. I thought of it as a fairly rigid activity, where only the people who knew all the steps could really play. I thought of it as resistant to change and innovation and spontaneity. Happily, I am dead wrong.

Take, for example, Clark Baker's description of Square Games. These are games for people who already know all the right moves, as it were. He explains: "Assume that you know how to square dance. Not only that, but that you are good at it. Perhaps you have already learned some Advanced and Challenge dancing. Perhaps you are even a little bored at the current dance, weekend, festival, or convention. Or perhaps you just want a slight change to make things interesting. What you need is a square game -- something you or your square can do while the caller is calling to the rest of the folks."

I found his "ground rules for this type of dancer-led fooling around" both eminently practical, and somehow soberingly poignant:

• Obtain your squares' cooperation


• Do it in the back of the hall


• Don't bother others


• Don't disrupt the calling


• Don't come across as being better than everyone else


• Don't seem like you are having way more fun than everyone else

For the rest of us non-squares, dancing-wise, I found this Square Dancing 101 conceptually quite helpful. To get some insight into the games callers play, see the generously explicated David's Dance Caller's Home Page.

Labels: Major Fun

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Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Kate's Fun Factor Five

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Monday, February 21, 2005

Why do people want to spend their time "killing" each other as a pastime?

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Monday, January 31, 2005

Just need someone to play with?

It's great learning about new, fun games. Each is yet another invitation to play. But then, sooner or later, you run against the inevitable truth that no matter how good the game is, it's a lot more wonderful when you can find someone to play it with. That's why I find myself writing you today about Meetup and its virtual cornucopia of games groups.

There are groups devoted to playing Bunco and Boggle, Charades and Crosswords, Pinball and Pokemon. Thousands of groups, all around the country. And if you can't find the group you're looking for, you can make your own. For free. For fun.

Living in the LA area, I've been able to take advantage of a similar service, called the "LA People Connection." The success of my Major Fun Games Tastings is due largely to the active, fun-seeking audience of this rather remarkable, and constantly growing community, listing over 3,000 events since its founding in 1999. As it gets used more and more, it becomes a deepening resource for a remarkable variety of events, connecting you to a similarly remarkable variety of people. Again, it's free (though donations are sorely needed and deeply welcome and even earn you a gold star), and for fun. And soon, it'll be national!

(I just learned that the new, national version of LA People Connection is now online, and has officially become My People Connection. Go, then, my people, and connect!)

Labels: Major Fun

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Monday, November 01, 2004

gameLab, Arcadia, Blix and Loop

Combine games research with the development of innovative digital games and people games, and you get gameLab. gameLab was co-founded by Eric Zimmerman and Peter Lee. Eric, whose articles appear in Brenda Laurel's Design Research, writes in his Play as Research: The Iterative Process: "In iterative design, there is a blending of designer and user, of creator and player. It is a process of design through the reinvention of play. Through iterative design, designers create systems and play with them. They become participants, but do so in order to critique their creations, to bend them, break them, and re-fashion them into something new. And in these procedures of investigation and experimentation, a special form of research takes place. The process of iteration, of design through play, is a way of discovering the answers to questions you didn’t even know were there."

Before you read Eric's fascinating, informed, and insightful description of the iterative design process (which I still believe, despite all the filmic complexity of multimediation, is the best and really only way to design a game), try a game of Loop. It will not only help you understand better what he's talking about, it will also help you understand why you want to read what he has to say.

Or, maybe start with a simpler game concept like Arcadia. Have you ever tried playing two arcade games at once? Just to keep from getting bored? And discovered how such a simple idea, like playing two at once, makes both games suddenly worth playing again? Almost as if you'd created a whole new game simply by combining a couple? Well, Arcadia combines four different arcade games, and paces each so that it's actually almost possible to play them all simultaneously, without losing your mind. Go ahead. Give it a try. I'd start out with the easiest version if I were you.

Then there's Blix, which reminds me a little of the first game I designed for the TRS-80, can you believe, and the Commodore Pet, and later the 64 and even the Atari VCS. It was called "Ricochet." Which is maybe why I'm not as objective about the elegant wonders of Blix as I can be the others. Which is also why gameLab has been inducted into the Major FUN Hall of Fame. Let me know if it's as fun as I think it is, will you?

Labels: Advergames, Major Fun

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Monday, October 25, 2004

Snorta - seriously silly fun

Snorta is even simpler than the rules make it out to be. And more fun. There's a deck of 100 animal cards. The deck is divided equally between 4-8 players. Players take turns exposing the top card in their pile. When cards match, the first player to make the sound of the other player's animal wins.

Other player's animal? Well, see, there's a bag full of plastic animals. Really nicely sculpted and painted cartoonishly funny-looking animals that live in a cloth drawstring bag. Each player picks, and that becomes the player's animal. And that animal gets hidden in a similarly nicely sculpted barn-like, doghouse-looking thing. So you have to remember everybody's animal. Which isn't so easy - especially when you're looking at cards with other animals printed on them.

If you lose, you have to pick up all the cards that the other player has already turned over. Depending on how long it's been since a match has been drawn, that pile can get punishingly large. So the tension builds. And the excitement mounts. And the laughter frequently turns into something approximating hysteria.

And then there's these occasional "swap" cards hidden in the animal card deck, which let you draw a different animal from the animal sack. Just in case people actually get too good at remembering the animal you used to be.

The mechanics of the game are subtle enough to make you want to play again and again. Even though a match can only involve two players at a time, all players are engaged. If you're not one of the players involved in a match, your pile just grows one card larger - making the possibility of success next round even that much more enticing. If you have a match fight with someone with a large pile, and you lose, it makes the loss that much more punishing. Combine the visual and memory challenge with the sheer silliness of people making animal noises at each other, and you get Snorta - a Major FUN Award-winning party game that's competitive enough to take seriously, and silly enough not to care. Snorta is an ideal family game - one that adults can enjoy (our Tasting group ranged in age from 7-63, including a couple of advanced teens) as much as their kids.

Labels: Major Fun

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Friday, October 08, 2004

Pop Earns First Major Fun Advergame Award

I am apparently about to grant the coveted, and also first Major FUN Award for Advergame Design to a company called "Pop."

Advergame? Well, we're certainly not talking infotainment here. We're talking genuine game, with all the fascination and replay value therein implied, designed specifically to promote a commercial product. Like, for example, the cybersolitaire game RSVP and the evermore puzzling Open House, both created for Lifetime Television. Not to mention the lightning fast poker-like game of Lucky 8s created for Puma. Each uniquely hypermediated. Each significantly playworthy.

It's an amazing feat of game design, really, when you can make a commercially-supported game that respects its players - offering genuine invitations to play, and yet clearly inviting the player to think about the product or company sponsoring the whole experience. It restoreth the soul almost as much as it filleth the wallet.

Labels: Advergames, Major Fun

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Friday, August 13, 2004

The Olympics, Heroism, Fun and Junk

From the perspective of someone also known as "Major Fun" the Olympics are a perfect example of how easy it is to separate fun from games. Even though they are called games, they are really contests. Even though only amateurs are allowed to play, the stakes are international in their proportion. Yes, yes, the acts of heroism on the peaks of flow are everywhere to be found. One of my favorite stories about Olympic heroism is this one, even though it actually took place before the Olympics.

Perhaps the best thing about the Olympics is how very easy it is to make up you own, just-for-fun events, out of junk and a sense of humor. I found, for example, several versions of "Office Olympics, including this, and of course, the, for example, Office Hurdles," and, in a similar vein, the ever-challenging sport of "Office Rowing." Of course, there's always the executive-like team building experience of Out of Office Olympics, and the always questionable challenges of the Indoor Olympics.

Forgive me if I seem to denigrate the inestimably international contribution of the Olympics to world peace and things of similarly grandiose ilk. For me, the inspirational part of the whole thing is how many junkly ways there are to bring it home.

Labels: Major Fun

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Thursday, August 12, 2004

Streetplay and Junkyard Sports

Finding Streetplay remains one of my happiest Internet discoveries. Even before I started my journeys into Junkyard Sports, Streetplay served as a resource for games and inspiration. Devoted to reporting on and preserving the spirit of the kinds of street games that were at one time found in almost every large American city, the Webby-award nominated Streetplay site has grown into a major resource for anyone wishing to bring more fun to this increasingly somber world of ours.

Well, today, it gives me great, vast, and perhaps unparalleled pleasure to announce that Street Play and Junkyard Sports have formed a partnership, as evidenced by this.

Labels: Major Fun

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Sunday, July 11, 2004

Putting a face on time

Of all the endearingly silly ways to watch yourself waste time, Daniel Craig Giffen's Human Clock is by far the most of both - endearing and silly, which explains why it is a recipient of the coveted Major FUN Award.

Everything on Giffen's site shows an almost maniacal dedication to human-scale whimsy. There are three clocks: digital, analog and text. Each mode is sillier than you'd expect it to be. To change between clocks, you go to an equally silly, but fully functional control panel that looks like something drawn by a fifth grader, and acts like a grown-up web interface. Try all three.

Then there's artist Yugo Nakamura's Industrious Clock. Not as human, perhaps, but it definitely conveys a certain "hand-made" humor. Nakamura's art, and playfulness, are even better represented by his "Surface" collection. Click on the small circles on the bottom of the page to explore.

Labels: Major Fun, playfulness

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Tuesday, July 06, 2004

Fun is part of the solution

You know how they say it takes only one student?

This email was the one from the one.

After I stopped crying, I decided to blog it, thus:

I was just taking some little bits and pieces of papers out of my journal and I found the following hard-copy of something your brother-in-law wrote to you:

"I find many if not most people today are not in a particularly
"fun-seeking" mood. They are preoccupied with finances, war, the economy
and personal problems. Fun, however, is a vital therapy no matter the
circumstances. The release of life's anxieties cannot have too many
channels, in my view. I....have a need to communicte via Fun to people. I
may not want to enter that Fun because I cannot overcome the 'troubles of
the day' without major incentives to do so. Fun may be good for me but I
can't seem to allow myself to enter in anyway. Perhaps I don't see fun as
the solution but rather as an escape from solving the problem(s). Funny,
when people most need the releases, they are less apt to seek them."

I am touched again by his honesty and his insight. I too feel unable to enter into Fun when so much feels wrong and sad and overwhelming in the world today, everyday. I forget your teaching, so to speak, that Fun IS part of the solution and not just a form of denial, an escape, a narcissistic indulgence at the expense of others who are not as fortunate as I am.

Just thoughts, which bring me back to the mindfulness practice that DeepFun is for me. It is the practice of Little Fun all the time, despite the trying external circumstances on this beautiful and fragile earth I love and despite the woe I see. And as I practice this path, I want to change my paradigm and begin to really believe that having fun, living fun, teaching fun, being fun, can transform this world, that it is part of the solution to the distress. IF not the world at large, it may have the power to transform MY little world, my circle of influence, I hope. And that is a step in the right direction.


(Yes, as it so happens, I will be conducting my next aformentioned September 5-10)).

Labels: Major Fun

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Friday, June 25, 2004

Skelly, Junk Stories, and Junkyard Sports

Reading Bernie DeKoven’s book Junkyard Sports brought back fond memories of childhood games. My two favorites consisted of things which adults would normally discard and my friends and I would get hours, sometimes even days or weeks, of enjoyment out of them. One was the bottle caps from soda pop. The other was old cardboard shoeboxes.

The game we played with the soda pop caps was, as I recall, named “Skelley.” I never figured out why, but that was its name. We would draw a chalk diagram on the sidewalk consisting of a series of numbers. Using our thumb and forefinger, we would then proceed to shoot the bottle tops from one number to another. Sometimes we would fill the caps with candle wax to make it heavier and supposedly easier to get into the numbered boxes, but I was never convinced this helped.

In the springtime, the other game became a major event in my neighbor. In fact, you could tell when spring had arrived because half of the kids lined the edge of the sidewalk with their shoeboxes cut with progressively smaller holes. And the other half, were across the street rolling their marbles in the gutter hoping it would enter the smallest hole in the shoe box and get the biggest reward.

Fast forward fifty years, or so —

I now teach humor workshops. One of the components of the longer programs is about how play can help us solve problems, be more creative, and have more fun.

In one exercise, I ask members of the audience to get into small groups and agree upon something that stresses the group out. I then give each group a bag of what might be considered “junkyard” stuff— a clothespin, the front half of a greeting card, a post-office label, an old comb, a piece of a ribbon, etc. Then I instruct them to write a story using the props in the bag.

What they come up with amazes me. It is original, it is playful and it frequently is laugh provoking. In a simple, fun way, using household “junk”, they reframe their stress and laugh about it.

So, over the years, I have known the value of play. But it wasn’t until I encountered the work and writings of Bernie DeKoven did I realize how simple and how marvelous it can be.

I think DeKoven is a modern day alchemist. In this book, he magically shows readers how to turn a junkyard into gold mine. What a joyful world this would be if we all read this book and followed his advice.

Allen Klein,
author of The Healing Power of Humor
and The Courage to Laugh.

Labels: Major Fun

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Tuesday, June 15, 2004

Panna

Yesterday, I had an opportunity to present a bit about Flow and fun and junk and stuff to some professors and students at the Studiolab of the University of Delft in the Netherlands. I was talking, naturally, about competition, and, of course, about Junkyard Sports and the connections between.

Someone asked me if I knew about Panna. I didn't. I've seen it played, apparently, a lot. All over that large green expanse called "Museumplein" - you know, the one in front of the Stedelijk Museum. It's that soccer-like thing that people do, usually without an actual soccer goal around, kinda kicking the ball at each other and bouncing it on various bodily extremities.

Turns out that Nike, of course, has a major Panna-like campaign.

But I didn't really understand the competition-junkyard connection until I came across this blog - "When people think of football (not soccer) they think of a field of green grass with white stripes. Or maybe a dusty pitch in the barrios of Brazil. But there is one kind of terrain that has always stayed in the shadows. The city squares. There, many great players started their career, from Johan Cruijff to Edgar Davids. The game they play there has now got an official name; Panna. Panna is slang for playing the ball through your opponents' legs. This is the most humiliating way of passing your opponent. Panna is all about skills and tricks. Streetplayers traditionally have a very good technique. Because the ground is perfectly flat, you can have great control over the ball. In street football, there are no clubs. You play with whoever is there. This means it's about you and your reputation. And you get that reputation through showing off. The guy with the best tricks gets the most respect. And the really good ones develop their own tricks. That's why this game is fun to watch."

Played in the street. Competitive, but informal. Play with whomever. Yup. Most junkyardly in deed.

Labels: Major Fun

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Tuesday, May 18, 2004

Playing for a Living, Playing for Life

An anonymous comment on yesterday's Rejuveniles story pointed us to the World Series of Poker. The comment: "I have a suspicion that the increasing interest in poker is also partly because people who can make a living through play are so revered by our generation, and the poker stars are a living, breathing, high-profile example."

I would add: as are almost all of our "true champions" - the professional athletes in any major sport you can name, the heroes of the worlds of chess and billiards and backgammon and Scrabble, the superstars of ice skating and bowling, the fortunate few of bingo.

Anthropologist Clifford Geertz wrote what has become a classic study of this phenomenon: "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight" (When you go to this site, you may think you're hearing something like the Macerana playing in the background. I welcome all and any hypotheses.) He concludes: "What the cockfight says it says in a vocabulary of sentiment-the thrill of risk, the despair of loss, the pleasure of triumph. Yet what it says is not merely that risk is exciting, loss depressing, or triumph gratifying, banal tautologies of affect, but that it is of these emotions, thus exampled, that society is built and individuals put together."

And they call this fun.

Labels: Major Fun, theory

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Thursday, April 22, 2004

Junk Bands

Junk Bands. Not Jug Bands. Though, on the other hand, Jug Bands are Junk Bands.

But I was thinking in particular of Junk Bands like the National Junk Band, at least one whose songs will bring a smile to the mental lips of any fan of Monty Python.

What I was in particular thinking when I was thinking about Junk Bands was: they use junk to make music, and they look like they're having fun doing it. And it seemed to me that the deep playfulness displayed by these Bands is a genuinely actual act of Sung Heroism (as opposed to the unsung kind).

Consequently, on behalf of Major Fun, I hereby and -with welcome them, players of Junk and Jugs and Washboards, too, each "Defenders of the Playful," musical Junkmasters all.

Labels: Major Fun

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Saturday, March 27, 2004

Wordigo

Wordigo really took us by surprise. We see a word-board game and we think: "maybe fun for the guy playing, but agony for the people who are waiting their turns." So we conclude "Word-board game = not really Major FUN material." Then we notice the different boards and four complete sets of tiles. This leads us to conclude that maybe all four of us can play simultaneously. No turn-waiting. Immediate gratification, verbally-playfully speaking. Except that there are six of us. So we play in three teams.

And the game just takes off. Sure, we are confused a little by the different boards in the set, and the funny arrows on the tiles, but we start anyway, racing against each other and the timer, using and drawing tiles and discarding, trying to fill our boards up with words. And then, when the time is reluctantly up, we figure out the scoring, which really gets interesting, strategic-implication-wise. The next round (we hardly ever play more than one round during a "game tasting," but this game was just too darn delicious), we are much more score-conscious so we get strategic and discover we really don't have enough time anyway. We also decide to start with the second board, only to discover that it is actually more challenging than the first.

The game comes with four sets of letter tiles with pouches, four sets of four different game boards (two boards with a different design on each side), the first and probably only seven-minute sand timer in the world, and a score pad. The tiles look remarkably similar to those letter-with-number tiles you see in scoring letter games, but they have arrows on the vowels. The boards are similar to kids' crossword puzzles, but without the clues.

The game can be played simultaneously with up to four players or with teams, which we think is even more fun. And you can even invite the kids to play or compensate for those with different verbal skills. The boards are of varying levels of difficulty. Those who want to can use the easier boards or start with more tiles or maybe recycle their discarded tiles.

Wordigo is the only word game I know of that allows you to use a dictionary while you're playing. Of course, looking something up in a dictionary while the sand is inexorably streaming your time away is perhaps not such a useful option. Unless you're playing in pairs. Which we just happened to be. And even then, we were all too wrapped in the rapture of it all to use anything other than our rapidly muddling minds.

For those of us who enjoyextended moments of time-free deliberation, the game is still entertaining without timers. Players just continue until all the boards have been filled.







from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Labels: Major Fun, Party Game, Thinking Game

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Friday, March 26, 2004

Balancing Act

Balancing Aliens never disappointed us. And we were already excited, just opening the box. And from there, it just got more and more exciting. Such an elegantly made instrument of fun, so finely tuned, so subtle, so strategic, so silly.

The kind of silly you have to watch very, very carefully, and think about alot. That you can expect to get when you have a round game board, with bowling pin shaped pieces, that sits on a big screw, that can be raised or lowered, for different skill-levels. A board that has two sides, each of which a totally different game, each just as obviously the only game possible.

I mean, you could play it with 7-year olds who could probably beat you. And the very steady-of-hand 80 year old. And those of the less-steady persuasion could direct others where to move and get just involved in the strategic implications of it all. And you could be each as strategic as you can possibly get, and still, anyone might win, might be drawn inexorably towards adding just one more alien, teetering on the very precipice of improbability. Until lured by both scoring and collective-admiration potential, you upset the delicate balance, and all fall down.

Though dexterity is a definite advantage, winning the game is all about intuiting its strategic and physical dynamics. Even if your hand is not steady enough, you can still direct some younger hand and feel fully engaged in play.

Balancing Aliens is a fun toy and a fun game. Major FUN. As in award-winning. It's a near perfect model for what a good family game should be like. Because it's based on physical as well as strategic properties, and because the strategic properties are so well expressed by the physical properties, the rules of each of the two balancing games are as apparent to kids as they are to grown-ups. Kids will play with kids. Grownups with grownups. Kids with grownups. Equals in skill and delight.


from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Labels: Family Game, For Kids, Major Fun, Thinking Game

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Tuesday, March 23, 2004

Basari

Basari is a racing/bidding/bartering/strategy game for three, or better, four players. It is definitely one of your more complex games, involving, as it does: racing, bidding, bartering and strategizing. But it is not one of your more difficult games - and that's what makes it so noteworthy. That it's acutally possible for anyone over, say, ten to do all those things at more or less the same time. Not only possible, but fun.

The race is for score. In fact, the score board is a race track. The bidding and bartering is for jewels or points. You start with a showdown, all players choosing between one of three possible things they're interested in bidding and bartering for: position, points or jewels. If you're the only one choosing a particular action, well, then, you go right ahead and do it. If someone else has made the same choice, prepare to barter. You need jewels in order to barter. Which is precisely why you might not be the only one choosing jewels. Which makes it more of a gamble. Especially if three or more people also chose jewels.

On the other hand, it doesn't matter how many jewels you have if you don't win. Which is determined by how many points you have. Which is determined by your position on the inner race track. Which determines what everyone is bidding and bartering for.

OK. So it's going to take some time to learn the game. And no, it isn't like one of those elegant, perfect information, Japanese Go experiences. But it is fun. And often surprising. And not too challenging. And though you're competing, and though only one of you can win, there's just enough luck involved to keep you from taking it too seriously.


from Bernie DeKoven, funsmith

Labels: Major Fun, Thinking Game

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Wednesday, February 25, 2004

Finding the Fun Way In

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Thursday, February 12, 2004

Major Fun gets Wild

In a recent press release, the manufacturers of the Major FUN Award-winning game Wildwords made significant Much Ado about the award - significantly more Ado then has yet been Adone by any other game manufacturer.

This news initiated a ripple of cosmic glee throughout the known funiverse.

We (the games tasters of Redondo Beach) really like Wildwords. And I, the originator of the Major FUN Award, find myself beyond gratified to see the seal so prominently displayed.

There is one thing in their press release, however, that I find myself needing to reflect upon: now that a connection has finally been drawn between the Major FUN Award and the search for a cure for colon cancer, I needs must perhaps take this whole award thing even more to, um heart.

Labels: Major Fun

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Wednesday, February 11, 2004

The Name of the Game is "Whimsy"

The world of compter games, and, consequently, of computer game players, can get very harsh. Despite the endless possibilities of faster processor and more graphic glories and completely surrounding sound, most of our games are given over, as we are, to violence. Not that violence can't be fun. Not that there's anything wrong with violent games. Just that there are far too few respites. Ferry Halim is one of the few. A true respite.

Ferry Hallim demonstrates that all it takes to make something as interesting to play with as violence is a little applied whimsy.

Whimsy. Hallim is a master of it. His games are true diversions, invitations to worlds that simply don't take themselves very seriously. He is the creator of light-hearted games that are bouyant enough to lighten-up even the dark of desire and the heavy of heart - at least for a few minutes. Like the game Summer Walk, where you make three bird-like things hop into the good floating things, to the tune of the pleasant guitar. Or A Cupid's Day where you, as Cupid, shoot arrows into clouds.

Whimsy. What a powerful concept.

Ferry Hallim is the newest inductee to the Major FUN Hall of Fame.

Labels: Major Fun, Virtual Toys

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Thursday, February 05, 2004

The Oxford University Speculative Fiction Group Silly Games List and One-legged Herring dueling

The Oxford University Speculative Fiction Group Silly Games List - yes, the Oxford University Speculative Fiction Group Silly Games List - is, as advertised, a list of sometimes very silly games, authored, as one might suspect, by actual students of the aforementioned.

As Major Fun, Defender of the Playful, I am both heartened by and in awe of those few who have in fact managed to find a place for silly games, e'en in the dark bastions of the terminally academic. In awe, because some of these games are true masterpieces of silliness. My favorite so far:

One-legged Herring dueling
This requires two idiots, two herring, and stout washable rainwear. It should be played outdoors. Contestants stand on one leg facing each other, holding their right foot in their left hand for balance. In their right hand, they each hold a herring by one end. They hit each other about the body with the floppy ends of their herring for one minute; the winner is anybody who refuses to play, closely followed by the player whose herring is most severely damaged by the experience.

Labels: Major Fun

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Friday, January 30, 2004

Balancing Act

Balancing Aliens never disappointed us. And we were already excited, just opening the box. And from there, it just got more and more exciting. Such an elegantly made instrument of fun, so finely tuned, so subtle, so strategic, so silly.

The kind of silly you have to watch very, very carefully, and think about alot. That you can expect to get when you have a round game board, with bowling pin shaped pieces, that sits on a big screw, that can be raised or lowered, for different skill-levels. A board that has two sides, each of which a totally different game, each just as obviously the only game possible.

I mean, you could play it with 7-year olds who could probably beat you. And the very steady-of-hand 80 year old. And those of the less-steady persuasion could direct others where to move and get just involved in the strategic implications of it all. And you could be each as strategic as you can possibly get, and still, anyone might win, might be drawn inexorably towards adding just one more alien, teetering on the very precipice of improbability. Until lured by both scoring and collective-admiration potential, you upset the delicate balance, and all fall down.

Though dexterity is a definite advantage, winning the game is all about intuiting its strategic and physical dynamics. Even if your hand is not steady enough, you can still direct some younger hand and feel fully engaged in play.

Balancing Aliens is a fun toy and a fun game. Major FUN. As in award-winning. It's a near perfect model for what a good family game should be like. Because it's based on physical as well as strategic properties, and because the strategic properties are so well expressed by the physical properties, the rules of each of the two balancing games are as apparent to kids as they are to grown-ups. Kids will play with kids. Grownups with grownups. Kids with grownups. Equals in skill and delight.

Labels: Major Fun

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Monday, January 26, 2004

Ze Frank: Prolific Player

Ze Frank receives the Major FUN Award for being perhaps one of the most prolifically playful presences on the web.

There are so many examples of his work that he is sharing, virtually for free, that it is difficult to select any as truly exemplary. Let's begin with this rather straightforward collection of virtual matchstick puzzles. Why? Because it's what you'd expect from a collection of virtual matchstick puzzles: clear, challenging, easy to use, fun to solve. Not particularly playful, but respectful of play and the needs of players. Now let's try just one more game-like experience. It's a Memory Game. All right, it's Concentration. But notice how each image is animated? Now it's truly a virtual game, not just translating a card game into the electronic medium, but transforming it.

Now take a look at Ze's Animated Snowflake. Not a game at all, but a unique bit of interactive delight. Technologically sophisticated. Easy to understand. Lovely to behold.

And here's one more, well, maybe two more examples of yet another gift of Ze's playfulness. It's called "Blow." It's an invitation. People are asked to send in a picture of themselves, blowing. Ze adds their picture to a growing blowing collage. It's, well, silly. It's also an invitation to fun and sharing and community. And here's one more: My Cat Annie. It's a statement, is what it is, of the further reaches of Ze's playfulness. And, for those of us who wonder whether this world can be made more fun, it's a reason for hope.

Labels: Defender of the Playful, Major Fun

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Thursday, January 22, 2004

10 Days in the USA, or 15 maybe

The astute reader will all but immediately note that 10 Days in the USA is highly likely to be found Major FUN Award-worthy, given it's obvious similarity to the already Major FUN Awarded 10 Days in Africa.

What is of such noteworthy note, however, about the 10 Days in Africa and 10 Days in the USA similarity is that 10 Days in the USA is not actually identical to 10 Days in Africa. Of course, you may nod in your uninformed glibness, it is not actually identical to 10 Days in Africa. It's in the USA! But that, you see, is not the only difference. True, there are significant enough strategic differences necessitated by the immediately apparent differences in political geographies. But that is not all. There is, for example, the rule pertaining to Hawaii and Alaska and the color of the airports therein.

So noteworthy are the differences between these two sister games, that, for the first time in the history of the Major FUN Award, we find our royal selves recommending to those who have the therewithall: go ye and purchase either or both, 10 Days in Africa and 10 Days in the USA, because each is just different enough for each to be, separately, and together, found trans-globally Major FUN Award-worthy.

As to the 15 Day in Either Africa or USA variation, that, actually, applies to both, when only two people are playing, and gets our "Why Didn't We Think of That Ourselves" award.

This just in from an unamed source, purported to be the president and lead games designer of Out of the Box Publishing, distributors of the 10 Days series: "10 Days in Europe, 10 Days in Asia, and 10 Days in the Middle East are all in the works, and each will have unique features. Hint: a mode of water transportation."

Who can count the strategically geographic joys awaiting us?

Labels: Major Fun, Thinking Game

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Wednesday, January 21, 2004

Sky Toys

Rhino Toys, makers of the Major Funly Oball, have introduced the world at large to two new play-saving devices: The Skyblaster (on the left) and SkyO. After hours of fun testing, both in and out of the Fun Testing Lab, both were found to be Majorly Fun, and both herewith granted the esteemed Major FUN Award.

Let us begin with the perhaps subtler significance of the SkyO. It's a ring-shaped tossing thing, similar, in concept and function, to that which has been called the Flying Disc, and, of course, the Frisbee® of registered trademark fame. Only SkyO is easy to throw, and easy to catch. And this is a big, big gift to all of the sensitive of hand or weak of throwing arm. Which means it is a greater boon to the rest of us who like to throw and catch things that hover, because thanks to SkyO, there are so many games that so many more of us can play.

As for Skyblaster, the whistling, rubber-tipped dart that you launch with a self-contained rubber band, it is a direct path to many a flight of fancy. Almost soft enough to catch, with everso subtly bendable, path-guiding fins, and so easy to fly so far. However, let this be a lesson to you: use the finger. I tell you this despite the remarkably clear instuctions embossed on the underside of the dart head, because I tried to use my thumb as the launcher, over and over again. Using the finger, you can send SkyO soaring to remarkable heights, even if you are short.

I haven't yet made up any games for the Skyblaster, though I'm thinking a SkyO would make a wonderful Skyblaster target....

Labels: Major Fun

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Thursday, January 15, 2004

WildWords

On first glance, it could be easily mistaken for that highly popular word/board game, SCRA*LE. And, in truth, the similarities are close enough to make any SCRA*LE player to feel right at home. Of course, it's the differences that make it interesting - differences that are different enough to make it a completely new, and disturbingly compelling game.

Here is one play, illustrating the various possibilities inherent in a single turn of WildWords. You will note the SCRA*LE-like board. On closer inspection, you will note that despite the apparent SCRA*LE-likeness, there are differences - like the squares that say "Lose 20 on Play." Omigosh, you mean there are squares you don't want to cover? And the surprisingly many squares that say "Turn to Wild."

Which brings me to what may be the most clearly unSCRA*LE-like concept of "Wild" you'll ever encounter. A wild tile, indicated either by the * or by it's turned-overness, can be any string of consecutive letters. Not just any one letter. But any one or many letters. This change is radical. It's what makes WildWords into a unique word/board game. Uniquely profound. Uniquely challenging. Uniquely fun.

Then there's the whole thing about challenging another player - you know, when you think someone's spelling a word that isn't in the dictionary. That has also been most discerningly enwilded. First of all, with the possibility of a single wild tile standing for maybe seven letters, it's a lot harder to know whether or not there's a challengable word. Which makes it all the more inviting to bluff. Which makes it all the more necessary to challenge. But in WildWords, when one player challenges another, all the other players (SCRA*BLElikely, WildWords can be played by 2-4 players), must also agree or disagree. In either event, if they are wrong, they each lose 20 points. Harsh. In a beautiful kind of way.

Also, I gotta tell you, the tile holders are probably the best tile holders ever to hold a game tile. Smooth. Cool. Hefty. With wood-protectors, even. And the easy-to-read tiles are all packaged in a plastic bag inside a drawstring bag. With six extra tiles, just in case.

In sum, WildWords is the newest to receive the coveted Major FUN Award.

Labels: Major Fun

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Wednesday, December 31, 2003

Sweet Nostalgia

Remember Necco Wafers - those chalky, crumbly sugar discs you probably almost died for? Well, thanks to FunDay Times Contest-Winner Josef Brandler, you have now been reconnected to the source.

Josef tells us of two such time-spanning candy connections: Hometown Favorites and Candy You Ate as a Kid. He writes: " I was talking about candy with my daughter during this halloween season and I told her we had great candies when I was a child growing up in the 60"s and 70's.I told her about turkish taffy, sugar daddies, candy buttons, wax lips, little bottles filled with colored syrups, necco wafers, licorice pipes, bubble gum cigars and cigarettes, sensen, tootsie pops, chuckles, and all of the candies I loved as a kid. After the discussion, I went on the Internet to find out if they still produced these candies and if I could purchase them.I found these two sites that specialize in favorite snacks and candies from the past, They not only have the items to purchase individually,but they also sell "decade gift packs "with a whole assortment of candy favorites from the 60's, 70's, 80's, and 90's. It was great to see the old time favorites and to share them with my daughter."

And now he shares them with us.

Thank you Josef. Candy, and in fact most forms of eating, are major sources of fun, and I, who have been blitehly focusing on things like games and sports and weird art forms, stand deliciously corrected.

Labels: Major Fun

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Friday, December 26, 2003

75 Years of Bubble Gum

Fun Correspondent Jim Sims writes:

Happy birthday, bubble gum! 75 years ago, a mom-and-pop store on Schenectady Street in Philadelphia, PA sold out Walter Diemer's first five-pound batch of Dubble Bubble, the world's first commercial bubble gum, in a few hours. Three quarters of a century have seen people perfect their bubble blowing skills; the Guinness World Record for largest bubble blown is 23" and over a million children aged 12 and under took part in Dubble Bubble's fourth annual National Bubble Blowing Contest this summer.

Chewing bubble gum isn't the sort of deep fun we spend hours or weeks we prepare for; it is one of the most common examples of ordinary fun I quote in Major Fun's article "Lowering the Fun Threshold". "You can raise the amount of joy in your life considerably by considering the ordinary fun, the 'Minor Fun,' and making it central to your day-to-day routine. If you can spice up a dull job with some ordinary fun by blowing a bubble or two in the background, so much the happier."

Yet bubble gum is not quite so dumb. One of the joys of play is that it can teach us to cope with the setbacks in life with a smile. If you care to try for deeper fun by raising the stakes, spend time trying to blow the biggest bubble you can, the biggest bubble you dare. You may not find it convenient to enjoy the sort of messy play which might result in a custard pie in the face, but blowing bubbles is enjoyably ever-so-slightly out of control. You never know just when the bubble will burst, or exactly what sort of mess you'll have to clear up when it does!

Want more to chew on?

See this article in the Indianapolis Star

And here's one that answers the eternal question why bubble gum is pink

And this gumly art video exploring concepts relating to Kussmaul Breathing ("air hunger") through bubble blowing

And of course this video of the Guinness World Record for the largest bubble blown

Whilst here we have documentation of Dubble Bubble's 4th Annual National Bubble Blowing Contest, and an article descrubbling a preliminary round for the aforementioned contest.

For the all-but-professional blower, here are some tips from those who have demonstrated professional prowess.

Pictures? See this and this.

And for historical reference, this past Blog o'Fun article within which (scroll down) a Bubble Gum game is poppingly described.

Labels: Major Fun

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Sunday, December 21, 2003

Shipwrecked

Shipwrecked is an intense, challenging bidding game with enough strategic ramifications to occupy every corner of your so-called mind. You bid for cards. The cards have funny pictures on them. They also have three different values. Each card is worth a certain amount of points (the accumulation of which is the point of the game), pays a certain amount of "gemstones" every turn (which you need if you win the bid), and has a certain value (in case you run out of gemstones and have to sell the card back to the bank).

The bidding process is really what the game is all about. Each of the 2-4 players has three different types of bid cards. You get three Pass cards (which mean just that), two Stop cards (which you can use to stop the bidding and force a showdown), and one Strike card which wins the bid only if it is the only one used during that round. There are a total of 6 bidding rounds per card, each round costing the winner one gemstone less.

Sound complex? Well, it did take us a while to figure out the rules. And it took us a much longer while to figure out what the rules really mean (you'll probably need to play it at least twice, at at least 20 minutes a game, before you have any sense of what it all means). But the learning process is fun, the game intriguing, and, despite the competitive pressure, the surprise of discovering who bid what leads more often to laughter than it does to despair.

The game play of Shipwrecked is similar to a classic card game known as "G.O.P.S." - the Game of Pure Strategy - with just enough humor, luck and variables thrown in to keep you engaged and laughing until you discover that someone has actually won. Most Major FUN Award-worthy.

Labels: Major Fun

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Thursday, November 27, 2003

moovl

moovl is a product of the people who make the Major FUN Award-winning Soda Constructor (reviewed in this issue of the FunDay Times). Which might explain why it's such a fascinating, inviting, and playworthy drawing toy.

The big fascination comes from getting to draw things that: a) move and b) interact. I'm not sure which, a or b, contributes more to the fun. Having them both together, and being able to change the drawings, and how they move, and how they are influenced by the mysterious physics of gravity and friction and stiffness - each and all contribute to moving moovl funwards.

In the words of the Soda people themselves: "Moovl imbues freehand-drawings with life-like simulated dynamics and programmable behaviours. This dynamic transformation places drawing in a highly motivating self-directed feedback process of cause and effect, experiment and discovery."

In other words: moovl is fun. Like I said, it's: "a fascinating, inviting, and playworthy drawing toy." Online. Advertisement free.

Labels: Major Fun, Virtual Toys

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Monday, November 24, 2003

Ten Days in Africa

Ten Days in Africa is an innovative game of strategy and luck for 2-4 players. Definitely strategic, with enough luck to keep the game surprisingly fun.

Like Hasbro's RackO, the object is to put ten randomly selected cards into some sort of sequence. You fill the wooden card holders with cards one at a time. Once a card is placed, it can't be moved - only exchanged with a card from the deck or one of three discard piles. Unlike RackO, the sequence is topological, rather than numerical. A win depicts a path, by foot, car, and/or plane, that leads from country to country to country, spanning all ten cards.

At first, we found ourselves thinking more than we really had to, so playing time for the four of us was more than an hour. The rules are a paragon of brevity and elegance, but it took a while to gain a proper appreciation for the geopolitical innuendos of the African continent. And it took another while to understand the implications of the different modes of travel. Or the significance of the three, face-up discard piles and the strategic covering up or revealing of the cards thereupon.

It's a learning that is easily curved by playing. Just make the first game not count. Consider it an opportunity to play with a set of wonderfully thick little cards that fit everso handsomely into their wooden card holders; a chance to get a bit more familiar with the geopolitics of Africa; a learning experience. A learning-geography-like learning experience, as a matter of fact. As a matter of fact, the most fun I've ever had learning geography. Even though the map could have really been a map of anywhere. In fact, maybe precisely because the map could have been a map of everywhere. Which probably explains why you might also consider buying Ten Days in the USA, or, for that matter, Ten Days Almost Anywhere - the Paris Metro, perhaps? Downtown Kabul?

As we were finishing the first round of the game, one veteran Games Taster said: "let's remember this experience. It's a benchmark for the kind of excellence the Major FUN Award represents."

Labels: Major Fun

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Sunday, September 14, 2003

Pen Tricks

Boredom kills. But not always. Some times, boredom gives birth to whole new forms of fun. Not, perhaps, major fun. More along the order of what I call "minor fun." Like, for example, twiddling. To be more specific, pen twiddling. And pen twiddling itself, given enough frequent, long, and boring meetings, can develop into something of an art form. Until it is not just pen twiddling, but actual pen tricks. Penstidigitation, as it were. Magic, so to speak.

The achievements available to a true pen trickstser are so vividly illustrated by this site, serendipitously named "Pen Tricks," from whence this article's illustrations derive. Not to mention the significantly vast collections of trick-like manipulations avialble to those who follow the closely related art of Pencil Manipulation and Pencil Spinning.

(Author's note: neither of these sites restricts itself to pencils - inadvertently revealing the world view of the true twiddling devotee who will twiddle anything at hand: pencils, pens, remote controls, forks, gum sticks, and, when all else fails, thumbs).

Labels: Major Fun

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Tuesday, September 09, 2003

Doubles Wild

Warning! It looks like another game of tic tac toe. In fact, it looks like a game of tic tac toe where you roll dice to decide where you can put your marble on the grid. So, it's wooden. So it's really well-made and delicious to feel. But, so what? It's tic tac toe!

Well, it is, and it isn't. The tic tac toe part of it makes it easier to understand and play. The dice part of it, most surprisingly, elevates the game to something surprisingly unique, nail-bitingly exciting and, from time to time, pants-wettingly fun.

See, it's called "Doubles Wild." And it's the wild doubles thing that is at least partly responsible for the fun of it all. Because without the wild doubles thing, you just roll your the dice and move where they tell you to. But with the wild doubles thing, you can position your marble anywhere along the specified row or column. And if you get two doubles (it didn't happen to us during the Tasting, but we all acknowledged the possibility), then you can put your marble anywhere on the board.

And it's also the attack-defend thing. See, if you can land on someone else's piece, you can maybe remove it from play. Maybe, because you have do engage your opponent in the feared "battle of the dice" where you have three chances to try to roll the higher total. And the losing player loses a marble.

And even more surprisingly, it's the roll again thing. If you don't like your first roll, you can roll either or both pair of dice again. So you have to think of the odds. And the strategy. And how desperate you are to keep the other player from winning.

And, as you can almost guess from the first move, it's the more and more marbles on the board thing that really makes the game into what one could only call a Major FUN Award-worthy experience. Because as the board gets populated, so do the strategic implications.

You can play Doubles Wild with two, three or four players. We had six at the time of our tasting, so we decided to play the 3-player version, in teams of two. I wish you could have been there to hear the profundity of reasoning and the intricacy of pro- and con- measurement. We played for an hour, and were surprised by the depth of the game on the average of every three minutes.

Labels: Major Fun

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Sunday, August 24, 2003

Catch 22

Catch 22 will remind you of Parcheesi, which, as everyone knows, is a derivative of the ancient Indian game Pachisi, which has only a little to do with why this game is so darn much fun. The Pachisi-likeness of it all has something to do with the fun - it makes the game feel familiar and that much easier to learn. But let me tell you right now, what we got here is as much like Pachisi as chess.

Yes, there's a bunch of plastic pawns, but you get only one. And there's a die - only one. And there's a board with a track on it - only the track is much more complex. And then there's this bunch of plastic blocks - 5 for each player. And a big bunch of little plastic poker chips. And that, equipment-wise, is basically it.

But the game itself is far more than a race. It's a vendetta.

See, you roll a die and hope that eventually you land on a space with some chips on it. So you can get those chips. Which is cool. And then, once you get enough of them, you try to find the closest open path to one of the finish squares. So you can win. Except if anyone lands on you, that person gets your chips. Which means as soon as you have enough chips, suddenly you're everybody's meat, if you know what I mean. Oh, yes, people can also put their little plastic cubes in your way. And just when you're getting close to the goal, and around all those blocks, there's the possibility that someone will switch places with you and send you somewhere you really don't want to be. And then someone else might pounce on you. And then you can join everyone else trying to steal that guy's gold.

There's a lot more strategy than chance. Way more strategy than you need to keep the game interesting. And just enough chance to keep the game fun. The sudden shifts in fortune make winning unpredictable, and can keep the game going for an hour or more, even though you spent maybe ten minutes figuring out how to play it.

Catch 22 is an ingenious race and chase game, most Major FUN Award-worthy.

Labels: Major Fun

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Friday, August 22, 2003

Malarky

It happened almost as soon as we opened the box. Everybody brightened up, almost as if we knew that Malarky would prove to be just the kind of game we were looking for - easy to learn, fun, competitive, but just competitive enough to keep your attention. An intellectual game, but not so intellectual that you'd actually have to know anything. In other words, just the kind of game you'd want to bring to a party - or make a party out of.

My first exposure to anything Malarky-like was the parlor game called "Fictionary" - your basic bluffing game where the object is to be the one everyone thinks knows the "real" answer, even though you really made it up. Malarky isn't about word definitions, but rather about everyday life "factoids" like why laundry detergent boxes come in such odd weights.

But the real genius of the game is in the execution. You get this big deck of obscure but everyday factoid cards, as you'd expect. One player selects and reads the question, and everyone else has to think up an answer - again, as you'd expect. The problem that these games usually have is how to get from this point to the voting without enduring painful minutes of writing and deciphering. Normally, everyone writes something down. And then they pass their slips to the questioner, who also has to write the answer down. And then she has to read all the answers, one at a time, without fumbling or giving anything away. The designers of Malarky have come up with what they call "Concealing Folders." This simple device (a cardboard frame with a front and back cover) makes possible truly stunning acts of subterfuge and dissemblance. The reader puts the card in one of the folders, closes the folders, mixes them up, and then distributes the closed folders. Everyone takes turns, opening the folder and appearing to read the "real" answer. Of course, only one player actually has the question card.

This simple device, the cleverness of the questions, and the introduction of voting chips combine to create a game that takes an old parlor game to a new level - making Patch Product's Malarky a game that could only be called "Major FUN Award-worthy."

Labels: Major Fun

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Tuesday, August 19, 2003

Letters, play and art

Letterscapes is one of the more recent creations by computer graphic artist and scientist Peter Cho, graduate of MIT's Aesthetics + Computational Group. To appreciate his art, you have to play with it. Which, as far as I'm concerned, is the whole point. Click on the link (or the image) and you'll be transported into a spinning galaxy of letters. Click on a letter, and you find yourself clicking, pointing, dragging, trying to figure out just what you can make that letter do. Each letter is kind of a puzzle. You don't know what it will do until you interact with it. And then, as the letter dances and transforms before your eyes, you begin to discover the art of it.

There's an online portfolio of Cho's art for you to play in. One of my favorites is called "Type me, type me not." There's a link to a brief explanation of how it works, but it kind of spoils the fun of discovery.

Another play/artist who works in this genre is Major FUN Award-winning Jim Andrews. His Arteroids takes the play-art connection in a different direction, to produce an Asteroids-like game with words and letters accompanied by some definitely funny sounds.

This is a new, computer-unique art form. It is creating a new aesthetic that incorporates the viewer like no other art form before it. Whatever you call it, it's fun. And thereby a gift to us all.

Labels: Major Fun

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Thursday, July 31, 2003

Blurt

It's a word game. It's a board game. It's the first word/board game I've found that makes the best of both. It's called, "BLURT!" target="_blank">Blurt!"

As a word game, it's simple enough. You read a definition. The first player to, um, Blurt! it out, so to speak, wins. This is fun, because the fact that you know what a word means often has little to do with the speed of your Blurt!

As a board game, it's a race, where you throw the die and move your pawn - a pawn that has the power to send others back. There's just enough chance to keep everyone guessing.

There's the "Showdown," or, as we called it, "Blurt-Off," when you land on somebody else and have to compete head to head for first correct Blurt! Failure sends you back - depending on the roll of the die.

And then there's the "Takeover." Land on a square that is the same color as your pawn and jump on anybody else, no matter how far down the track they are. Then comes the Blurt-Off, and the risk of being sent all the way back to the Takeover square.

The board game balances the challenge of the word game beautifully, creating an exciting social dynamic where everyone is involved and anyone can win, up until the very last play.

Labels: Major Fun, Party Game

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Monday, July 21, 2003

Playing Art

Taprats is a site devoted to interactive, Islamic Star Patterns.

Islamic Star Patterns? As the author explains: "Over a thousand years ago, artisans in the Islamic world began to develop a system for constructing intricate geometric art based on radially symmetric starlike figures."

What we have here is an opportunity to play with this art - in a way its originators had never conceived of. By launching a rather sober-looking Java applet, we can shrink and stretch and widen and combine or way to works of wonder - interlacing, intricate patterns of knots and not and what not. It's solid evidence of one of the computer's major contributions to the art of fun, bringing us new, and endlessly fascinating tools for playing art.

Labels: Major Fun

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Friday, July 04, 2003

Fireworks!

Fireworks. Amazing how much fun it is, how mothlike we are when it comes to getting as close as possible to the sight and smell and bang of it all.

For those of us who can't wait for the civic celebrations, the Internet has some wonderfully virtual pyrotechnics to play with. There's these "Phantom Fireworks" where you can more or less choreograph your own multi-million-dollar extravaganza in major cities around the country and the world, accompanied by the 1812 Overture, five different firework effects, and a spectacular finale.

If you're as interested in the science as the art of fireworks, be sure to visit the Nova Online Fireworks site where you can play "Name that Shell as you try to learn the different kinds of fireworks.

And, courtesy of the Smithsonian photographers, here are some invlauble tips on how to "shoot" (photographically speaking), your local fireworks display.

Labels: Major Fun

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Friday, June 27, 2003

Quits

OK, you can call it "Quits," but you won't want to. Quit, that is. In fact, you'll want to play it again, and again, and at least again. That is if you like strategy games for two or four players. Especially if you like Major FUN Award-worthy strategy games.

You know those sliding block puzzles? If not (and especially if so) check out The Sliding Block Puzzle Page. Now take another look at the Quits board in the picture. See how it's made of blocks, and how the wooden-marble-pieces rest on those blocks? On your turn, you can either move a piece or move a row of blocks (you temporarily remove one of the blocks). The goal is to get your marbles to the opposite side of the board. And, of course, every time a row is moved, everything on that row moves with it.

Quits is one of several remarkably playworthy and innovative strategy games from Gigamic, represented in the US and Canada by Family Games. You'll be seeing more of them, and so will we.

Labels: Major Fun, Thinking Game

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Wednesday, June 25, 2003

Abalone

Abalone is one of those few, elegant, easy-to-learn, two-person strategy games. What makes it among the very few is a method of movement unique enough, and fun enough, to make playing the game a new, and utterly absorbing experience. Since utter absorption is the point of playing, Abalone is the kind of game the Major FUN Award was created for.

The movement principle? Knock your opponent clean off the board. How? By pushing a bigger row of marbles into her.

As you can kind of see from the picture, the board is made up of a hexagonal honeycomb of holes. Marbles rest on the holes. If you push a marble into any one of the six possible directions, and there's another marble or two or several in front of it, all the marbles move at the same time. Just pushing a row of marbles is kind of a fun thing to do, like the fun things you do when you're just playing with marbles. It's an even funner thing when you push a row of your marbles into your opponent's. And it's defnitely funnest when one of your opponent's marbles drops off the board as a result.

Abalone has been around since 1988. It's been around long enough to create an international following. And that following has followed long enough to develop an active online community along with a collection of highly playworthy rule variations.

For the non-Macintosh many, there's an online version. But nothing beats the delight of watching your opponent's jaw, and her last marble, drop into the pit of sweetly meaningless defeat.

Labels: Major Fun

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Monday, June 23, 2003

Fire and Ice is Nice

At our more-or-less weekly Game Tastings, we have come to have increasing respect for strategy games that are easy to learn, that challenge the intelligence, and are built on some unique principle. Primarily because there are so darn few of them.

Fire and Ice is one of the few.

One of a series of four, finely crafted wooden Masterpiece Games from Out of the Box Publications, Fire and Ice is a bit like playing seven games of tic-tac-toe, simultaneously. But only enough of a bit to make the game easy to understand. And then, the fun starts.

When you move one of your pegs, you have to put one of your opponent's pegs into the hole that you just vacated. The effect of this rule is to create a kind of mental tickle as you try to contemplate each move from the twin perspectives of your position and your opponent's.

There's a lovely, mathematical symmetry to the design of the board: "The board contains seven raised triangular islands. Each island has seven holes and the playing pegs fit into these holes. On each island, six lines and a circle connect the holes to make seven groups of three holes each. The islands themselves are also connected together in the same pattern."

Fire and Ice is a welcome addition to our collection of Major FUN Award winning strategy games - unique, easy to learn, a game that takes 20-30 minutes to play, and yet is deep enough for some deliciously deep thinking.

Labels: Major Fun

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Wednesday, June 18, 2003

Tantrix

It's a puzzle. It's a strategy game. You can buy it online. You can play it online. It's called "Tantrix," and it gets the Major FUN Award.

The hexagonal tiles are made of Bakelite. Touching and smushing them around is almost as delicious as playing with them. The Tantrix Game Pack consists of 56 tiles. Each tile is unique. There are four different color lines - some are curved, some straight, some are even more curved. There are numbers on the other side of each tile. These are used to determine which tiles are to be employed in creating which puzzle. The Discovery Puzzles involve using tiles numbered 1-30. The Rainbow Puzzles require sorting the numbers into like colors. Then there's Tantrix Solitaire. And, of course, the strategy game for 2-4 players.

There's a bit of learning to do in order to play the strategy game, and the puzzles are the perfect training vehicle. Playing online is very satisfying - the interface is intuitive, the online chat adding a feeling of immediacy and community.

Invented in 1987, in New Zealand, by a New Zealish chap named Mike McManaway, Tantrix is a unique puzzle/game, deserving a position of prominence in anyone's game collection.

Labels: Major Fun, Thinking Game

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Wednesday, June 04, 2003

Smart Mouth

Smart Mouth got the Major FUN Award almost before we started playing it. The design of the toy - I know, it's really a "game mechanism," but it's just so darn much fun to play with - makes a very simple word game concept into a genuinely fun, exciting challenge.

OK. The game first. It's a word game. You're given two letters. Your objective: to be the first to call out a word that begins with one and ends with the other. For example, S and T. You could call out "SIT," but you'd be wrong, because words have to be at least 5 letters. How about, um, let's see, "SMART"? Why yes, that's exactly right.

Easy to understand. Challenging to play. And there are variations, and more variations, so you can play it with the kids or with your friends or your parents, and everybody'll have fun.

Now to the toy part. There's a box on a base. The box has two sections - each rounded at the top, each holding 36 letter tiles, which are also rounded at the top, so they can only fit in their sections one way, which turns out to be exactly the way they need to be if they are to be displayed in the right direction. There are two different colored tiles (so that the letter combinations will all work), each color goes in its own section. Fill the box. Put its cover on. And slide it forwards. When you slide it back, you reveal the first two letters. Simultaneously. To all players. The first player to call out the correct word gets those tiles. Which is how score is kept.

Elegant. Easy to understand. A device that works so well you can actually throw out the nice, sturdy box the game came in. My only regret - I had so much fun playing with the toy that I had to be the judge for the whole game. Oh, well.

Labels: Major Fun

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Tuesday, June 03, 2003

Amusing Mazes

If you found yourself drawn by Robert Abbott's mazes, featured in a recent issue of the Funday Times, Clickmazes might very well prove inescapably fun.

The site is a compendium of mazes, almost all of which can be played online. The illustration is from their section of Plank Puzzles, like those featured in the Major FUN Award-winning puzzle River Crossing. And this is only one of two dozen similar sections, each devoted to a different kind of maze. You'll be, well, amazed at how many different kinds of mazes there are, and how they collectively so clearly demonstrate yet another juxtaposition of mathematics, art and fun.

For further evidence of the fun/math/art connection, Andrea Gilbert, the site's author, explains her path from playful doodling to art and math: "As a child in the 70s I drew free-hand mazes, ever larger and ever more detailed, on 2D and then 3D surfaces. In the 80s I preferred form and structure, strong patterns that could be broken in small ways to produce elegant mazes. In the 90s I turned increasingly to rules and logic to add extra layers of complexity and push my skills to the limit."

Labels: games, Major Fun

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Friday, May 30, 2003

Bang!

They call it "Bang!" - this award-winning card game from Italy. The first time we tried it, we called it "quits."

You know the rule we have at Game Tastings - the one about a game taking maybe 15 minutes to learn. Well, we gave it a half hour, that first time. Who'd think that a card game, in that small of a package, could be that complicated?

The second time we tried it we gave it 45 minutes - an exacerbatingly long time to learn a game. There are so many special cards, each with its special function, that we were especially frustrated. Before the next Tasting, Tammy took the time to find the best versions or the rules she could, and sent them out to all of us so that we could prepare. And, as you so well know, preparing for a Tasting is simply not done.

The third time, we devoted the last half of the Tasting to playing Bang! We were outside. And it was getting colder. But we were determined to play it through. And we did. Even though it got colder and still colder. And, yes, somebody shot the sheriff, and they didn't kill the deputy. And we finally actually played the game. And we had fun. I mean, we were beyond Tasting. We had established, beyond doubt, that the rules are just too complicated, and can take veritable hours to learn. Which is simply not your typically Major FUN-awardable scenario. And yet, fun was definitely being had.

Our conclusion to date: if you like role-playing games, you'll definitely get a Bang! out of this one.

Now Tammy's at work on creating visual aids because she's convinced she can make it easier for us to play next time. Even though, according to Tasting protocol, that next time might not be for a couple months. I'm having a sneaking suspicion. Protocol or not, we'll be playing it again this coming Sunday.

Labels: Major Fun

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Thursday, May 29, 2003

Art, Fun and the Internet

It seems to me that the Internet is doing more for the art/play connection lately. In fact, I'm beginning to believe that, along with the broadening of bandwidth, the Internet has become an invitation for artists and art appreciaters to create new forms of gloriously graphic, interactive fun. Witness this work, called "An InterFace of my significant other."

Go to the homesite - Alterfin - and click on "org" - note the title "Art & Play"- mouse and click around a bit and you'll get a good sense of how this one artist, Yariv Alter Fin, pursues the art-play connection. For further evidence, see this collection of QuickTime clips. Alter Fin even extends the art-play exploration into poetry with "This is My Voice."

If you don't want to take this one instance as proof of the Internet's influence on the Art-Fun connection, click your way over to the Symmetry Lab and then play around on Jim Andrew's site. Try his visual singing synthesizer, his experiments in Langu(im)age, and the Major FUN Award-winning interactive poetry game of Arteroids (you now use the "X" key to shoot).

Labels: Major Fun

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Friday, May 23, 2003

Word Sense

Word Sense is a sweet little word game that will keep 2-6 players delicously challenged for ten minutes to an hour of intense but rather joyous competition - especially if everyone shares similar verbal competencies.

The handy plastic carrying case contains 31 letter tiles, two blank dice with stickers, a score pad and pencil. Five of the letter tiles are double letters. There are two versions of the game, one of which requires players to compete simultaneously. We liked this one so much more I'm not even going to tell you about the other version. Which means you won't need the dice.

One player is the Chooser. That player decides how many tiles get turned over (2-5) - the more tiles, the more difficult the challenge. Let's say the Chooser chooses 4 tiles. The other players then pick four tiles, placing them face down in front of them. At a signal from the Chooser, all turn their tiles over. Which might give you something like W D (ED) N (ED being a tile with two letters on it). The challenge - be the first player to shout out a word that uses all of those letters - in any order. A solution: how about UNWEDDED?

We were very pleasantly surprised to discover what a good challenge this little game gave us. There are several variations suggested by the manufacturers. Which is a clear invitation to invent your own.

All in all, most Major FUNly.

Labels: Major Fun, Thinking Game

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