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)
  • Tricky Town

    (search on Board Game Geek)

    small pic of Tricky Town small pic of Tricky Town in play small pic of Tricky Town in play

    • Replay Value (1-10): 5
    • Fun Factor (1-10): 8
    • Worth Buying (1-10): 6
    You start with four pawns at the start space, representing Daddy, Mommy, Sonny, and, er, Dotty? (Okay, fine, they're just a generic family of four.) The goal is to make one loop around the neighborhood, collecting Halloween candy at the houses. Some spaces give candy, other places lose you candy. The game eschews dice in place of a "Sorry!"-like mechanic -- each player flips over a random card and that determines the number of spaces you must move. (Odd numbers can only be made by one token, even numbers may be split between tokens.) The player interaction in the game mostly comes from Trick-or-Treat cards that allow you to move other tokens on the board.

    One really good addition to this game, and one that turns it from a mediocre game into a good one, is the rule that all children must be no more than 5 steps away from at least one parent. What this means is that there is actually a fair bit of tactical movement, where you need to keep your pieces near each other, and yet not directly on each other (because then you lose flexibility in your moves.

    I'd say that if the movement cards were just a little less random, there'd be a really good tactical game here -- and it's masquerading as a kid's game! Well, isn't Halloween all about pretending to be something you're not?


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    By Wei-Hwa Huang