Game Reviews: Mensa Mind Games®, year 2007

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 2007. (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 100 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
  • Head1liners (5;6;6)
  • *Hit or Miss (8;8;9)
  • Rhyme N Tyme (8;5;6)
  • Take Your Best Shot (8;6;10)
    Party Games: Artistic skill
  • Luck of the Draw (4;8;4)
    Party Games: A Variety of Tasks
    Quiz Games
  • Cineplexity (8;9;6)
  • NAQ (8;10;7)
  • Numaro (4;6;4)
  • Take A Wild Guess (3;3;1)
    "Roll Dice And Move" Games
  • Postcards from North America (2;7;2)
  • *Skullduggery (5;7;5)
    Number and Math Games
  • Equalz (5;7;4)
  • Space TiVitz (5;5;7)
    Word and Language Games
  • Bananagrams (7;9;8)
  • disorder (9;9;7)
  • Lim (Letter Cube Cards) (4;5;6)
  • Merriam-Webster's Word Sweep! (9;7;7)
  • Sneak A Peek (The Crossword Game) (6;3;4)
  • You've Been Sentenced! (5;6;5)
  • Zotto (4;5;3)
    Reflex and Reaction Games
  • Poppo! (3;3;7)
  • Slap Wacky! (5;3;2)
  • Three of a Crime (7;8;8)
  • Toppo (9;9;8)
    Dexterity Games
  • Kippit (8;8;9)
  • Shakedown (6;5;6)
    Strategy Card Games
  • Abridged (7;9;5)
  • Ka-Ching! (9;9;10)
  • Margin for Error (8;9;5)
    Strategy Dice Games
    Family Strategy ("German") Games
  • *Gheos (8;9;9)
  • Aussie Rules Super Subsistence Farmer (10;9;2)
  • Medici vs. Strossi (7;8;8)
  • Treasure Fleet (8;8;6)
    Abstract Strategy Games -- Pure Abstract
  • Babylon (5;4;4)
  • Cover Up (4;3;7)
  • Mix-Up (8;7;9)
  • Newton's Apples (3;4;5)
  • Project Kells - Tara (6;6;10)
  • Skybridge (3;4;7)
  • Spin & Trap (2;2;7)
    Abstract Strategy Games -- Luck or Hidden Information
  • Bendomino (4;4;6)
  • Cromlet (6;8;6)
  • *Gemlok (7;7;8)
  • Mimic (3;5;2)
  • Quirky (4;4;6)
  • *Qwirkle (8;9;10)
  • 24/7 the Game (7;7;10)
    War or Combat Games
  • HeroCard: Cyberspace (5;7;6)
  • HeroCard: Rise of the Shogun (5;7;5)
    One Player Games
  • Aqube (1;1;3)
  • Blik-Blok (1;3;1)
  • Cliko (6;2;5)
  • Cover Your Tracks (5;1;6)
  • Logic Links (2;1;1)
  • Meta-Forms (6;2;5)
  • Noodlers (3;1;2)
  • Zoologic (7;2;4)
    Games With Original Themes
  • Kingka (2;2;6)
  • Yamodo! (1;1;3)
  • Introduction

    Wei-Hwa's report and reviews of the games at Mensa Mind Games in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the year 2007. I might have played the games at that event. Sometimes I played the games at other gatherings. Each game has some photos, followed by a paragraph of description, some ratings, and a paragraph of commentary.

    I played most of these games in 35 hours. I've rated each game with three values from 1 to 10: replay value (how often could I play it?), fun factor (how often do I want to play it?), and worth buying (how badly do I want to own my own copy? are there any cool bits?).

    An asterisk (*) represents a winner of the Mensa Select Award.

    The "Worth Buying" rating is based on my assessment of the game's quality, originality, and how easy it is to duplicate the experience with components found around the house. My text reviews tend to lean towards the game experience, which I find to be more important than discussions of the components, especially since game components can often get revised or changed. What this means is that since the components can often be improved in later editions of the game, you should take that "Worth Buying" number with a grain of salt, especially if the rating is low.

    Overall Impressions

    This year's crop seemed to be better than last year's on the average, but also filled with more middling games. Nothing really screamed "must get" to me. Also, there seem to be a lot more competitors for the 1-player puzzle game market; always hard to evaluate fairly against games that take more than one player.


    Other MMG Reviews


    By Wei-Hwa Huang