Game Reviews: Mind Games, year 2005

These are Wei-Hwa Huang's personal reviews of games that might or might not have been submitted to the Mensa Mind Games event in 2005. (You'll have to go to that site to get the official list of submitted games, when they decide to post it.)

DISCLAIMER: The opinions, ratings, and reviews stated in this document and related webpages are the sole personal opinions of Wei-Hwa Huang and Wei-Hwa Huang alone. Wei-Hwa Huang does not speak for the more than 200 participants on the Mensa Mind Games selection panel. This is not an official site of Mensa Mind Games or Mensa Select, although the statements on which games are winners of Mensa Select are factually correct. Mensa Mind Games and Mensa Select are registered trademarks of American Mensa.

If you have any questions or concerns about my reviews and comments, please feel free to mail me.

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Party Games: Word-based

Eye to Eye (6;7;4)

his & hers (4;3;2)

Last Word (7;8;7)

Wavelength (5;6;5)
Party Games: Artistic skill

Famous People (3;3;4)

Things in a Box (3;5;2)

Why Did the Chicken...? (4;5;2)
Quiz Games

Trailblazer (3;2;3)
"Roll Dice And Move" Games

HotFlash! The Menopause Game (2;2;1)

StockRush: a Week on Wall Street (5;6;7)

StakXchange (1;2;5)
Number and Math Games
Word and Language Games

Abet (8;7;5)

In a Pickle (6;6;6)

I Spy: In Common (1;1;2)

Letterflip (6;5;4)

Lexogon (8;7;7)

Sentence Says (3;2;2)
Reflex and Reaction Games

Jurassic Jumble (6;5;5)

Perpetual Commotion (9;8;6)

Pounce (4;7;4)

Snorta! (4;6;7)
Strategy Card Games

*Loot (7;7;7)

Wacky Water (2;3;1)

Turn the Tide (10;9;9)
Family Strategy ("German") Games

The Motley Fool's Buy Low Sell High Game (8;8;9)

*Niagara (7;7;8)

Tutankhamen (8;8;10)
Abstract Strategy Games -- Pure Abstract

Astroplane (5;4;3)

*Da Vinci's Challenge (7;7;8)

Infinifield (5;4;3)

Isolate (4;3;6)

Tac of War (7;6;4)

ZigZag (7;5;7)
Abstract Strategy Games -- Luck or Hidden Information

Boxum (3;4;2)

Chameleon (3;5;9)

Domination (7;6;6)

Easy Come, Easy Go (9;8;8)

*Ingenious (8;8;10)

Maask (5;7;8)

Roundabout (5;4;3)

Spot-A-Shot (1;1;4)

Stack Gammon (6;5;6)

Trillion (7;4;10)
One Player Games

GridWorks (4;9;7)

Namitz - The Game of Think (1;1;1)

Subtrax (2;6;7)

Tipover (3;8;9)

Touchdown (2;4;6)
Games With Original Themes

Faces (8;7;9)

Mr. Bigshot (3;3;5)

*Zendo (10;9;10)

Niagara -- Mensa Select® Winner

Replay Value (1-10): 7
Fun Factor (1-10): 7
Worth Buying (1-10): 8

The game comes with a fancy waterfall setup; there are "spaces" that hold canoes, and every turn the water flows downwards. Players have to really plan ahead to not let their ships fall over the falls, while also trying to grab the rare gemstones near the brink of the falls and watching out for other players being able to steal their gems.

It's been a very long time since I've seen a game that uses the actual game box (both lid and base) as an integral part of the game, and hearkens back to old times when most of the fun was setting up the game but the game itself was a boring roll-die-and-move game, where you just were waiting to land on a space that let you move the cool gadget. Thankfully, unlike those games, Niagara is a pretty real game with reasonable strategy in it. There are no random elements in this game at all; the psychic players who knows exactly what their opponents are going to do will always win, unless there is another psychic player who also knows to think ahead a few moves. Certainly in the games I played, I was just a little bit more psychic than the other players and did pretty well. Certainly, as part of my evolution towards being a board game snob I find these sorts of games getting more and more appeal to me, and this game is a pretty good example that also appeals to my childhood visceral nature of seeing plastic pieces fall down.

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By Wei-Hwa Huang