Game Reviews: Mensa Mind Games 2003

Other MMG Years
Wei-Hwa's report and reviews of the games played at Mensa Mind Games 2003. Each game is followed by a paragraph of description and a paragraph of commentary.

I stayed up for 40 hours straight playing these 64 games. Yowzer.

Interested in seeing what the boxes look like?

An approximate average of Wei-Hwa's "replayability" ratings and his "fun factor" ratings (on a scale of 1 to 10) is listed after the game name. Note that these numbers are arrived at by only one or two plays, so take them with a grain of salt.

A text file with the games ordered by scores is also available.

Winners of the Mensa Select Award

Blokus [8]


- Everyone gets a full set of polyominos of size up to 5 and takes turns placing them on a 24x24 grid. The restriction is that every piece you place can't overlap anything, has to touch one of your own pieces at at least one corner, and CANNOT touch one of your own pieces at an edge. Person who places more area wins.

I thought this was definitely a good pure abstract with a good blend of strategic and tactical play. To boot, the pieces are beautiful and the designers did a very good job of designing the pieces so that they are satisfying to hold AND stay on the grid. Even if the game was poor I'd want to own this on the pieces alone.

Octiles [9]


- Like Chinese Checkers, you must get your pawn to the opposite side of the board. In this game, by traversing paths drawn on octagons. (All edge-to-edge path combinations on octagons are represented.) In "Labyrinth"-style, on each turn you replace a tile with the special tile, move a pawn, then hand the replaced tile to the left to become the special tile for next turn.

I was a bit surprised that this was eligible for Mensa Mind Games, since Kadon Enterprises has been selling this game for years. I guess Kadon wasn't a big enough distributor. The rules in this version differ slightly from Kadon's in how unplayable pieces get treated, but otherwise gameplay is equivalent. The game itself is definitely a fun one -- it feels very close to Ravensburger's Master Labyrinth, and, somewhat surprisingly, I found the downtime between turns more tolerable than Master Labyrinth. Quite a good game and deserving of the award.

Fire & Ice [7]


- An abstract strategy game where on each turn you move one of your pawns and the vacated spot immediately gets occupied by your opponents' pawn. There are seven regions of seven spaces each. To "control" a region you must have three pawns of yours in one of several particular patterns. You win if you control three regions that are arranged in one of those patterns.

It's hard to find any game to compare this to. The innovative mechanic of adding an opponent's piece to the board each turn does a good job of guaranteeing the game in end (indeed, it is an interesting exercise to calculate the longest possible game) but I do have the fear that it might not be too hard to find a guaranteed winning strategy. Still, it will be a while before any human can work one out. Also one of the best games there.

TransAmerica [9]


- Players get dealt 5 random cities on a triangular network of the USA. On each turn, players add on to a (shared) rail network connecting the various cities. Whomever gets all of their cities connected first wins.

I owned this long before the event, and have played many games. Strangely enough, the game it most reminds me of is Fantan: everyone has different goals that result in building a cohesive whole, and while your possible moves are limited the choice of which one to do can occasionally make a big difference, or no difference at all. I gave this one my top vote, of course.

Cityscape [5]


- Players take turns putting skyscraper pieces on a 4x4 grid. At the beginning of the game, players set their goals which are based on the columns that they will see at the end of the game (e.g., "I bet that 3 skyscrapers will be visible in this column." "I bet that this column will have the tallest skyscraper.") At the end of the game, players score points for each goal they achieved.

The concept is new to many game players but a small cadre of puzzle solvers, myself included, instantly recognized this game as based on a type of puzzle called "skyscrapers". Unfortunately for me, playing this game pales in comparison to the joy of solving an elegant "skyscraper" puzzle, so I'm not really one to appreciate this game. (But try this variant: everyone rolls their dice randomly and displays them to everyone. Then the players attempt to play cooperatively so that everyone scores all their dice.)

Party Games: Word-based

BackRound [3]


- Players attempt to identify words that their teammates read backwards. The cards tend to reverse the phonetic sounds and not the spelling.

If you have the skill of reversing phonetics (and have a good ear in case your opponents mumble), you'll do well at this game, otherwise you won't. Unfortunately, that's pretty much the only interesting feature about this game -- once the concept is down, it prettty much feels like flash cards.

Coodju Lite [2]


- Players must spell words in many ways: forwards, backwards, vowels only, consonants only, and first-and-last.

Yet another game that's tests one skill and has no strategy otherwise. The so-called "new" first-and-last spelling challenge is the silliest one I've seen yet: mention the first and last letter of each word! What's so special about that?

VisualEyes [5]


- Cubes with iconic pictures are rolled. Players must look for and identify common expressions and words ("love bug", "big city") by pairing up the pictures.

Not a skill I'm good at but I like the concept. But like most creative games, it has trouble when people get too creative with their answers, and the rules as written tend to lean on the strict side. I'd also be worried about the same combinations coming up and a group that's played this game a lot would turn this game into a speed test rather than a creativity deal.

Wordblind [4]


- Players are given four successively easier definitions of a word and attempt to identify the word. The scoring track is created dynamically by placing tiles as players need to land on them.

I like the dynamic board concept and think it would improve a lot of trivia and word games where the "board" is basically a giant scoreboard. Unfortunately, this is not one of those games that is improved. Rather, the dynamic board is more of a distraction from the other innovative item: the questions. But as is, the two innovative concepts aren't quite fully developed and neither can really be said to add any fun factor. (By the way, this game got some complaints that it doesn't supply pawns -- I applaud it for that! I have enough pawns anyway; I don't need to pay for more.)

WordXchange Junior [2]


- Players take turns drawing random letters while attempt to form six given specific words. Players can also steal other players words if they can add letters and rearrange them all to form another (longer) word.

Maybe this is okay for little kids, but even little kids should find the first part of the game (where players draw letters and hope that they're on one of the six cards) quite tedious. The adult version of the game is much more exciting and really allows one's anagram skills to shine -- and it's easily scalable for children. So why did this company deem it necessary to have a children's version, which is basically the same game with extra constraints on creativity?

Party Games: Artistic Skill

Conjecture for Kids [6]


- Two teams compete by making sculptures out of clay. Each team appoints a sculptor. Both sculptors see the name of an object on a card. First sculptor to get their team to say what's written on the card (by sculpting) wins.

The game is as simple as it can be: no fancy rules, no elaborate scoring function. I like this simplicity.

Nanofictionary [6]


- Players collect story elements and attempt to weave them into creative stories, which they then tell. Score points based on how well one's story does in a subsequent voting and judging.

Making up stories always makes me nervous. Still, this is a bit more soothing than the hectic "Once Upon A Time", where everyone is sharing the same story; at least here everyone is independent. The scoring is simple and light enough so that people who want to ignore it basically can.

Proverbial Wisdom Junior [4]


- Players must draw, act, or just guess from multiple choices to identify common proverbs.

I doubt there's anyone who likes to both wonder about the meanings of proverbs as well as wanting to give clues to hint one. As such, this game has some good ideas but somehow has a little bit of something to annoy everybody. Perhaps the adult version has trickier questions?

Skribble [7]


- Each team of two players has one person who needs to get their teammate to identify a certain word by drawing. The trick is that the guesser is also the one doing the drawing! The clue giver has to give geometric instructions only ("Draw a vertical line there. Now draw a triangle underneath.") as hints.

A very nice and innovative idea. I wish they had been a bit more specific in how restrictive instructions were supposed to be, and also the components are not that great, but otherwise the game is fine.

Squiggle [6]


- Each player gets the same random squiggle, and a fixed amount of time to attempt to turn it into a picture or object. Score points if the other players can identify the picture and score bonus points if the name of the picture is in a supplied list of words.

This would be a much better game if the wordlist didn't stifle creativity by giving only 1 point for words not in the list. Eventually one would just memorize the most highest-scoring words in the list and draw those. I would probably try it with this modification: throw away the word list. Instead, score as many points as you have letters in the word (but no more than 10).

Party Games: A Variety of Tasks

Derivation [7]


- Players write down the origins of certain idioms in an attempt to bluff the other players into believing them. Also, sometimes players can earn bonus points by answering trivia questions, acting charades, or drawing other idiomatic phrases.

I have to admit that this game takes the basic concept first commercialized in Balderdash and give the best user-interface for it. It doesn't seem particularly innovative but it plays well.

Rigamarole [8]


- A variety of tasks; teams must answer trivia questions, convey concepts to their teammates by only giving examples (think the bonus round on $10,000 Pyramid), complete sensory perception challenges, and do some playacting.

I'm tempted to say that this is Cranium done right: instead of taking the old stand-by party game goals, the designers here really went out of their way to have party game goals that are rarely seen in games. Also, the board and scoring is just complicated enough to allow for some decision-making, yet not too complicated that one starts playing the board instead of the game.

Tall Tales Pocket Edition [3]


- Players must answer trivia questions about myths as well as attempt to fool and out-top other players with outlandish stories.

Let another flashcards clone. The clunky voting mechanism means that this game fails with too few players.

Trivia Games

Dibs [9]


- Each question has several answers, and players must play "Dibs" cards that determine who gets to answer first (and score few points if correct) or answer later (and score many points if correct).

I'm a sucker for trivia lists, and this game really struck my fancy. I love the small bits of variability that allows you to control your question and score. I could possibly see this game failing if everyone at the table were an expert on the same thing, though.

Don't Quote Me [7]


- Game based on identifying famous personalities from their quotations.

Gets good score for box and board design but otherwise the game is very blah.

Graymatter [8]


- A rather standard trivia game, the notable highlights being an ability for the player to choose between two questions while hearing only the subjects, and having follow-up information instead of a straight answer.

I think this is how Trivial Pursuit should have been: A simple linear track (none of that walking back and forth in order to get a wedge piece), stiffer penalties for wrong answers for players that are ahead, and EXPLANATIONS for why the right answer is what it is!

National Geographic Geo Bee Challenge Game [2]


- Geography questions. A pop-o-matic die and a board with one track determine the type of question asked.

Ugh, the die and board are completely unnecessary and add no value to the set of amazingly boring questions.

Professor Noggin's Card Game Series [1]


- 12 sets of cards that ask trivia questions. Each set covers a different subject.

Flashcards of trivia. With no explanation for the answers. Bleah.

Red-Handed [5]


- The answer to every question contains the name of a color. Groups of colors form the question categories. You need to score 5 points to win, but you can only get points if you answer a question correctly AND get lucky and draw a "SCORE" card -- you could end up drawing a "Red-Handed" card and not be able to score until you get rid of it!

The questions are somewhat interesting, but the scoring can get downright frustrating ... since the "Red-Handed" card hits everyone with equal probability, sometimes the player better at answering the trivia questions will run away with the win, and sometimes they will answer tons of questions without being able to win. I think luck should be a factor of trivia games but not this much.

"Roll Dice and Move" Games

Bull Market [7]


- Four stocks emulate the market by rising in price when players buy and lowering in price when players sell. Occasionally a stock becomes "bullish" and rises faster. Simple mechanisms for stock splits, bankruptcy, and IPOs also are in the game.

It's really cute to have a game with no termination condition; rather, the players get a timer, decide how long they want to play, and go for it. Since the luck factor is so high anyway, it does a reasonably job of capturing the feel of the real stock market. (Except that players can't trade with each other.)

Globopolis [8]


- A science-fiction background story thinly disguises this game that plays like an advanced version of Monopoly. Players must trade and collect resources to develop their regions, or they can attempt to attack and take over those of other players through dice-based attack rules.

There's quite a lot of investment time in learning the rules; I'd suggest that it be explained by a human instead of figuring out the rulebook, which reads like the author is being overcautious about avoiding any reference to Monopoly. I found the plastic bits reasonably fun to play with and the dice-combat mechanism rather original.

Holiday Hop [1]


- Players spin a spinner and move along a 366-space board representing the days of the year. When landing on a holiday, draw a random holiday card that transports you to another holiday. First one to reach December 31st wins.

This game is a lot like Chutes & Ladders, except that at least in Chutes & Ladders you knew where the good spots and bad spots were. No decision points and a whole lot of potential frustration. Aimed at an age group of kids who can't play the game by themselves, and whose older siblings would probably cheat just to get this horrible game over with.

Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring [4]


- Pawns representing the characters from the first LoTR movie go through a board depicting events from the story. A player may choose to move any pawn during their turn, and as the game progresses the story unfolds.

The slowly-appearing board is a nice twist. This game can't really be played to win; if you abstract off all the story elements there really isn't anything interesting left. Fortunately, the story elements and and pieces (especially the mountain before the entrance to Moria) are very well-done. The game is like the movie in so many ways: nice visuals, long time investment, much less content than its original source, and no real ending. (Instead, you have to buy Game 2 to continue the story!)

Risky Business [3]


- Attempt to bring your company from funding, to hiring, through product development, to customer-finding.

Remember the most frustrating part of Trivial Pursuit -- rolling the die and going back and forth, always missing the space you really need to further the game? Well, this game is just like that, except without any trivia to distract you with. There are some decisions, but pretty much the choice is clear and you have a 1 in 6 chance of getting to the space you want. Ah well. At least the plastic pieces are a bit more fun to play with than in Trivial Pursuit.

Vegas, The Board Game [5]


- Land on spaces and play simulations of one of five casino pastimes: Blackjack, Craps, Roulette, Slots, and paying money for entertainment.

This is not a bad emulation of gambling games. If you're going to be playing a completely luck-based game, you might as well do it in style. I'm quite disappointed that the rules of these games have been simplified, though -- Blackjack without any double downs, splits, or insurance? Craps where the only legal bet is a PASS bet? (On the other hand, I also would be happier if the slot reels were independent, though in real life that's not how they work at all.)

Number and Math Games

Bedmas [7]


- Each player gets a fixed set of mathematical operators. On each turn a random set of digits are selected and everyone gets one copy of that set. Players attempt to form a valid equation with at least one of their operators and the selected digits. Players who form the highest-valued equations win.

A fine idea, but with only one problem: no room for scratchwork. Once you have a reasonably good equation on your rack, it could be dangerous to touch it to try to improve on it. It would be better if there were enough tiles for everyone to have two sets, or just use pad and paper and have people write down their final equations on that.

Knock-Out! [6]

NO PICTURE AVAILABLE
- A grid has numbers from 1 to 18. On each turn, roll three dice and partition the sum into any numbers that are still available, then claim them. Once a number has been claimed two times in a row by the same player, that players locks the number and it is no longer available. First to reach a certain number of locks wins.

I'd like this game better if the numbers weren't all weighted equally. It's much harder to get numbers higher than 15, and the game really should reflect this in the rules. With the current setup, the winning method seems simply to collect the smallest numbers you can first, until everyone is stuck trying to roll the high numbers without having the small numbers as a buffer.

Maya Madness [3]


- Each player is given a secret number token (from 1 to 9) and a hand of cards (most range from -5 to 5). Players take turns playing cards, changing a shared running total, scoring points (and a new secret number) when their secret number is reached.

Since the goals are all positive numbers, once the number reaches, say, minus 8, it's a long while before anyone can score. This wouldn't be a problem if the number rarely became negative, but there's one "change sign" card that ruins that. There are a few ways to fix what's broken in this game, but overall one really needs to find small integer arithmetic fascinating to like this game.

Trio Quadro [2]


- Cards containing many numbers are laid out in a 4x4 grid and a "goal number" is called. Score points if you are the first to find a row that can get the goal number through an allowed like of operations.

Imagine playing Set where almost any three cards forms a Set. If you're bad at recognizing Sets, it won't be fun; if you're good at recognizing Sets, it also won't be fun because it's just too darned easy to find them. This game has exactly that problem (except replace "finding sets" with "doing arithmetic"). It seems like the designers came up with a nice set of cards and then had trouble figuring out any games to play with it. After last year's failure, this one comes a bit closer to being a real game but still fails.

Word and Language Games

Crossword Pyramids [5]


- Pyramids are stacked on a square grid, each pyramid representing one letter. Players take turns moving pyramids, creating words, and scoring by removing them, which reveals more letters underneath.

The designers have solved the problem of most letter-tile games where the letters are upside-down to half of the players! Well, almost. The board still uses the clunky "four-directional" letters that plagued the designers' previous efforts. The game has a trouble with downtime -- since it's so easy to use pyramids belonging to other players, there's no use in trying to plan ahead since the letters you're eyeing may be gone by the next turn. If that could be fixed somehow, this would not be a bad game at all.

Proclaim! [9]


- Players attempt to give one-word clues to the other players to identify a specific word. The fewer people who get it right, the more points are scored -- unless no one gets it right at all, in which case points are lost. Other players may "Proclaim!" they know the answer in an attempt to get bonus points.

This game is basically Eleusis, but as applied to clue-giving games. Excellent! The art of giving ambiguous clues is something I've never seen in a wordgame before.

Reflex and Reaction Games

Birds, Bugs & Beans [4]


- A variant of War where the way to win cards is to make specific sounds when certain cards come up.

A silly game that plays reasonably fast.

Check Out! [6]


- There are six "aisles" of cards, each with an item-type and a color. A card is revealed and the first person to identify an aisle that the card can "fit" in (a card "fits" only if its item-type AND color are not already in the aisle) wins a point towards victory.

Feels like a simpler version of Set, with only two attributes to deal with simpler rules.

Hocus Focus [5]


- A set of "wizard" cards has wizards that are thin, normal, or fat, and each wizard also has four colors (purple, blue, green, red) distributed among four attributes. 11 cards are laid out randomly and a 12th is turned up. First person to identify a card that has nothing in common with the 12th scores a point towards victory.

The size of the wizards can be hard to distinguish, but otherwise the game plays fine. It's a shame that the designers couldn't come up with a more interesting game to play with these cards, though.

PDQ [8]


- Three random letters (from cards) are laid out. First player to name a word containing those letters in order (but not necessarily consecutive) wins. (Some other constraints are added as variants.)

The concept is an old but not often explored one, and you don't really need this particular deck to play this game (any set of letters will do), but they do a good job with the cards, making them quite visible and readable (the upside-down letters also help). A fast game with quite a lot of replay value.

Strategy Card Games

Bluff 'N' Peg [7]


- A variation of 5-card draw that emphasizes the bluffing by having players reveal their cards stud-style, and de-emphasizes the gambling aspect by having a Cribbage-style pegboard.

It's a good effort but it really doesn't feel sufficiently different from poker for me. Since poker isn't a bad game, the rating is reasonably high but the game doesn't give you much extra value.

The Bucket King [8]


- Players play successive "tricks" in each suit in a way not unlike poker betting. The first one to "fold" must lose one of 15 buckets (3 each in five suits) that each player gets at the beginning of the game -- buckets that each player has strategically arranged, since once a bucket is lost all buckets above it are lost too.

A very fast-paced game once all players understand the rules (which could take a bit because this game is like no other game out there). More luck than strategy, although there certainly is room for quite a bit. A good game.

Burn Rate [7]


- Players represent dot-coms, hiring people, looking for funding, throwing bad ideas at other companies and releasing their own bad ideas, and putting engineers to work on bad ideas so that contractors don't have to be hired. Everyone starts with 100 units of money which drops at an alarming rate due to salary. Last one with money remaining wins.

This game is quite popular at the dot-com company I work for for some reason. Even without the excellent theme and humor value, there's still quite a game in there, although I myself am not that fond of games where you have to choose which player to attack each turn -- diplomacy tends to creep in.

Doubletake [1]

NO PICTURE AVAILABLE
- Gin Rummy-like game where there are certain cards that allow players to take melds from other players.

There might actually be a game here, but the rules were written so loosely and so ambiguously that it was completely unplayable.

Out of Control [3]


- Rummy-like game where each turn you roll a die to see what you are allowed to do that turn.

I never thought Rummy could me made so tedious! Each turn you know what you would like to do, but you need to get lucky on the die to actually do it. Before this game, I never really noticed how much time in a game is spent rolling dice.

Snowball Fight [6]

NO PICTURE AVAILABLE
- Players take turns playing attack and defend cards at each other. Die rolls, as adjusted by the cards played, determine whether the attack succeeded.

The round cards are cute and the artwork is reasonably humorous, which offsets the awkwardness of holding round cards to begin with. A fast and light game, but there's really no deep strategy beyond choosing which opponent to attack (the good ol' diplomacy effect).

Van Gogh and Friends [2]


- A 36-card deck depicting 6 paintings by 6 French artists along with a coffee-table book. Instructions for playing Concentration and Go Fish are supplied.

I suppose if you're an art buff and not a game buff, this game would be fine. Game-wise, there's no really special game here.

VICI [8]

NO PICTURE AVAILABLE
- From a deck with 6 cards in each of four suits, each player is dealt 5 cards with a stack of four cards in the middle. Each player is also secretly assigned a different suit. There are "friend" relations between the suits as well as "enemy" relations. On each turn, a player trades up to 3 cards with either another player or the center stack. The goal is to hold only cards of your suit and then identifying your "friend". If you are correct, you get bonus points if your "friend" can successfully identify his "enemy".

One doesn't really need the custom deck to play this quite original game of silent trades and bluffing. The only complaint I have about this game is the scoring: it seems to me that only the last hand (the one that determines who takes the pot) is important. I'd probably like it better if the pot were split every third hand or something.

Wheedle [8]

NO PICTURE AVAILABLE
- A real-time negotiating and trading game where players attempt to get majorities of stock in companies before other players can. Each company is represented by an odd number of cards (5, 7, or 9) in a suit. The cards are dealt out evenly, with one public card remaining as the "bankrupt" company. During trading, players may make any deals they like as often as they like. They can also trade a card with the "bankrupt" company card. Once a player has a majority in all companies they hold, they can halt the trading, at which point everyone scores.

The only Knizia game this year (I think), and it's a good one. It plays like Pit but the rules are simpler and therefore easier for people to just jump right in. It definitely needs a more forceful way to stop, though ... during play people were still making last-minute trades after "STOP" was yelled. I propose that the central card be "shielded" somehow (maybe the person yelling "STOP" can cover it up?) if you actually play this game.

Zoki - Red Alexa [7]


- A Zoki set (a set of tiles where all four-digit combinations of the numbers from 0-3 are represented) is used to play a trick-taking game similar to Hearts.

This is a pretty good trick-taking game, only marred by the fact that Zoki tiles really don't make good cards.

Family Strategy ("German") Games

Carcassonne: Hunters & Gatherers [9]


- Players take turns laying tiles that connect together into complicated regions, and also decide on placing wooden pieces in the hopes of scoring points for the regions that are formed.

This game will get a lot of replay value for anyone. Really. (Except me; I've played this game and its precursor so much it's starting to grow stale.)

TransAmerica

Winner of Mensa Select

Abstract Strategy Games -- Pure Abstract

Blokus

Winner of Mensa Select

Cityscape

Winner of Mensa Select

Fire and Ice

Winner of Mensa Select

Hijara [7]


- A flat representation equivalent to playing Connect-4 on a 4x4x4 board. Of interest is that the game continues until the grid is filled, and "diagonal" lines earn more points than "flat" lines.

This is the first time I've seen this game in two-dimensional form. I like the 3-D form myself, although some might feel different. I do like the fact that the game doesn't terminate on the first sequence and that different ones are worth different points -- that allows for some extra strategy.

Quadtria [3]


- Two players take turns moving one of their five pieces on a geometric board. First to make a particular triangular pattern wins.

Every year there's some abstract strategy game that seems okay at first but the designers don't realize that it's broken because one player can force a stalemate. And occasionally one of them actually wins Mensa Select because most people, even Mensans, can't tell this from only one playtest. So I was really afraid of this game winning. Want to guess why?

Rhumb Line [5]


- Equivalent to playing tic-tac-toe on a 8x4 cylinder.

There's a final round where players can move a piece, but that's about it. In this game, it's too hard for intelligent players to really make a threat; I suspect most games will end up being a tie.

Shanjari [6]


- Players take turns placing their stones, or moving any already-placed stones, on a hexagonal grid. To win, you must create a particular pattern of yours and your opponent's stones.

The concept is rather fresh and new. But, the game gets too uncontrollable with anything but two players. Consider my rating up there an average between the 8 for the two-player game and a 4 for the multi-player game.

Abstract Strategy Games -- Luck Component

Hawaiian Glyphs [1]

NO PICTURE AVAILABLE
- A grid of Hawaiian glyphs is shared. Players take turns drawing tiles from their bags and matching tiles to the grid. First player to get a certain number of tiles in a row on the grid wins and must tell a story.

Two-player five-in-a-row is a game. Four-player twelve-in-a-row (on a 12x12 grid) is just insane. Good thing the reward is something no one wants. (Okay, in all fairness, the goal isn't always 12; it's decided by the roll of a die with numbers from 7 to 12.

Lakeedah [4]


- Two players attempt to move pieces across a square board and into certain goal spaces. Die rolls determine how many spaces can be moved and also determine the outcome of attacks and captures.

There might be a strategy game here without the luck factor. But as it is, it plays a lot like a wargame where all the pieces are the same and there is no story. The next time some wargamer attempts to convince me that the story has nothing to do with the appeal of wargames, I'm tempted to show them this.

Mozaic [3]


- Two players take turns drawing stones from a bag and placing them on an 8x8 grid. A player scores points for having a 2x2 subsquare of their color; however, players are forced to play thier opponent's stones if they draw them! Some special stones allow for stone moving, removal, or turn changes.

I can see why they needed to add the random element; the game is not very interesting when everyone just plays their own pieces. Unfortunately, the game is not improved that much by the drawbag -- there's still very few interesting decisions to be made.

Octiles

Winner of Mensa Select

Path Blitzer [6]


- Players attempt to connect two sides of a hexagonal grid. Each space has a number written from 1 through 9 on it. Each turn a players rollw two dice that determine which spaces they are allowed to play on that turn. They may also use the dice to "attack" an enemy space, whose winner is determined by a dice-off.

Overall, not a bad way to add luck to the original game of Hex. I feel that perhaps there are other games that can be played with the colorful grid. The pieces are quite weighty and have a nice tactile feel to them.

Puzzelar [3]


- Two players attempt to connect opposite sides of a square grid board. A spinner determines how many pieces you can put down that turn.

The strategy element is almost completely dominated by the luck factor in this one, unfortunately. Whomever spins the higher numbers is probably going to win. (Of course, any such game can easily be spiced up with a doubling cube...) The pieces also feel rather cheaply done.

One-Player Games

River Crossing [8]

NO PICTURE AVAILABLE
- Player places stumps and planks on a square grid. A hiker must get from one end to the other by picking up the planks and moving them around while also walking across them.

Another good puzzle game from Binary Arts. As usual, the interface is superb with just one or two small problems. In this case, the problem is that the plank that the hiker is standing on has an annoying tendency to flip 90 degrees and that makes it hard to place the plank back on a position.

Games with Original Themes

Friends & Fortunes [4]


- Players go through several different scenarios based on classic dilemmas in Von Neumann-Morgenstern game theory. Each scenario is simply described with a payoff matrix and players are attempting to maximize their holdings.

Although I thought it was interesting, this game was one of the most unpopular ones at Mind Games, perhaps because most people either didn't get it or just didn't think it was fun. It is rather ironic that game theory doesn't quite make a good game by itself. It also suffers from lack of replay values; the same group of people will probably find themselves doing the same deal over and over again.

Similarius [8]


- Players look at several faces for a minute, and then one is chosen at random and removed. Players must then attempt to draw that face from memory and normal points are scored based on how accurate one's memory was. Bonus points are also given for predicting the player with the most normal points.

Depending on how good you are at the skill of remembering faces, you'll either love or hate this game. One worries if repeated play will start making the game easier, just because of seeing the same face over and over again. I suspect with the great number of faces, that won't be a problem -- kudos to the game designers for taking an original idea and making a rather robust game out of it.

The Touch [8]


- A compartment contains many plastic pieces of different shapes. Players have a fixed time to reach in without looking in an attempt to find specific pieces.

This is a great idea for a game and the designers didn't bother trying to make the scoring too sophisticated, instead optimizing the actual interface instead. I'd be worried about repeat play but maybe the designers could sell expansions. Or players could of course make their own...