Game Reviews: Mind Games, year 2006

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 2006. (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
  • Baffle Gab (6;5;3)
  • Bonkers (6;6;4)
  • The Invention Game (6;6;7)
  • JabberJot (7;6;4)
  • Linq (6;8;6)
  • Nymble (6;5;4)
  • Questionary (8;8;5)
    Party Games: Artistic skill
  • Portrayal (5;7;9)
  • Sketchword (7;7;5)
    Party Games: A Variety of Tasks
  • Eve's Quest (8;6;3)
  • Evolution (6;7;6)
  • Fikloo: The Game of Crazy Commands (5;2;1)
  • Kiss My Rules! (2;3;2)
  • Quelf (9;7;8)
    Quiz Games
  • 800: The Game of Verbal Perfection (7;5;4)
  • Don't Quote Me - TIME for Kids Edition (9;6;5)
  • mental_floss: The Trivia Game (6;6;5)
  • Mind's I (4;4;3)
  • *Wits & Wagers (7;8;8)
  • You Must Be an Idiot! (9;9;9)
    "Roll Dice And Move" Games
  • Da Vinci Code Board Game (2;9;7)
  • Pairs or Better (4;1;2)
  • Tricky Town (5;8;6)
  • Urban Legends the Game (1;2;1)
  • Wreck the Nation: the Game of Political Misbehavior (1;2;1)
    Number and Math Games
  • Zeus on the Loose (8;8;7)
    Word and Language Games
  • Heximania (6;4;8)
  • Jot (6;4;3)
  • *Keesdrow (9;7;9)
  • Nerdy Wordy (6;4;5)
  • Pick Two Deluxe (7;6;3)
  • Sketchword (7;7;5)
  • Snatch (7;6;4)
  • Wordigy: A World of Words for Family Fun (3;1;1)
    Reflex and Reaction Games
  • Match of the Penguins (3;5;3)
  • Space Faces (4;7;6)
  • Thing-A-Ma-Bots (4;6;5)
  • Top Speed (6;7;5)
    Strategy Card Games
  • Da Vinci's Challenge Card Game (4;3;2)
  • It-Dah-Gan (7;8;5)
  • Pepper (9;7;5)
  • Poison (7;8;5)
    Strategy Dice Games
  • Cosmic Cows (5;5;4)
  • Pickomino (8;7;9)
    Family Strategy ("German") Games
  • Castle Keep (3;8;5)
    Abstract Strategy Games -- Pure Abstract
  • Byte (9;6;1)
  • Cephalopod (8;8;1)
  • *Deflexion (7;4;8)
  • Diffusion (9;7;1)
  • Dragon Chess (6;6;4)
  • *Hive (9;7;8)
  • Net Y (8;6;1)
  • Pacru 302 (7;6;6)
  • *Pentago (8;8;7)
  • Pünct (8;6;10)
  • Ringgz (5;3;2)
    Abstract Strategy Games -- Luck or Hidden Information
  • Darter (8;8;7)
    One Player Games
  • Gordian's Knot (2;5;10)
  • LonPos 101 Pyramid and Rectangle Game (4;6;9)
  • Regatta (2;9;9)
  • Summit (3;2;7)
    Games With Original Themes
  • Codebreaker (6;7;6)
  • Debate This! (7;3;3)

    • Castle Keep

    (search on Board Game Geek)

    (small images)
    large pic of Castle Keep

    • Replay Value (1-10): 3
    • Fun Factor (1-10): 8
    • Worth Buying (1-10): 5
    Gamewright tries to find another way to make fun out of color/shape matching. In this one, each player is trying to create a 3x3 castle, with a keep in the middle, four towers at the corners, and four walls on the edges. Walls and towers have to match in either color or shape. On your turn, you draw some tiles, and then play some tiles eitehr to build your own keep or destroy other players'.

    Well. I didn't think it was possible, but apparently one can take a reasonably simple game and add so many rules and special cases that I feel like I'm trying to dance around the tax code rather than play the game. Trying to play the game went something like:

    "Okay, so I'm going to attack you with this tile."

    "Uh, that's a tower. You can't attack people with towers, only with walls."

    "Oh. Well, then, I'll attack you with *this* tile."

    "Er, you can't attack me, I only have one tile. The rules say you can only attack once everyone has at least two tiles."

    "Right, but that already happened. A few turns ago everyone had at least two tiles."

    "No, I'm pretty sure the rule means that everyone needs to have at least two tiles before you can attack."

    "What? Look, it clearly says 'once' here in the rules. It doesn't say anything about maintaining two tiles."

    "Okay, fine, I'm not going to argue about it. But if I knew we were interpreting it that way, I wouldn't have left myself with just one tile earlier."

    "Well, tough."

    "Besides, you know that if you do that, then the game is over, right?"

    "What?"

    "See, it says that you win if either you complete your castle or if you destroy another player's castle."

    "Oh, I forgot about that. I guess I win, then."

    "Yeah."

    "Well, that was anticlimactic."

    "Yeah."

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    By Wei-Hwa Huang