“It’s pretty disturbing to think that they would actually make a game of a very horrific history that started with the King Philip’s War,” said Jim Peters, executive director of the Massachusetts Commission on Indian Affairs and a member of the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe who has also recently waged a battle against the Indian symbolism in the state seal. “It’s just an ongoing insult to the indigenous people of this country.” ...

“I don’t think (Poniske) took into consideration that the descendents of the people that he wishes to exterminate in his game are still here,” [Julianne] Jennings [a Nottoway Indian and adjunct professor of anthropology and Native American studies at Eastern Connecticut State University and Rhode Island College] said.

“It’s an awful idea for them to do,” said Ellie Page, historian for the Pocasset Wampanoag tribe of Fall River. “To make a game out of it is to diminish the sacrifice that these people had to go through at that time.”

Unlike the article in The Providence Journal that I linked to on March 16, this piece seems more balanced in how Poniske’s game is presented, but it still gives the impression that people have no idea what they’re really protesting. Do they think King Philip’s War will be like Yahtzee, with players rolling dice and yelling, “Yay, I massacred half a tribe!” when they get three-of-a-kind? Have they looked at the Multi-Man website to see what these games are like?

What’s the real issue here: the depiction of Native Americans as killers? As victims? Their mere presence in a game because “game” = “trivialization” or “mockery”? Amazon.com lists dozens of books about King Philip’s War, and I’ve seen no protests directed at those authors because they wrote about the historical situation covered in Poniske’s design.

Games have taken stuttering steps towards being acknowledged in the mainstream as something beyond child’s play – which is similar to what happened with comic books in the mid-1980s thanks to Maus and The Dark Knight Returns, decades after underground comics for adults had already appeared from Crumb, Shelton, Stack, Wilson, Williams, et al. Of course comics are still regarded as children’s material by most people, so games obviously have a long way to go, too.

Jackson notes that the company’s gross sales for 2009 increased slightly over the previous year, falling just short of $3 million. One of the main reasons that gross sales did rise is that for the most part SJG kept Munchkin and its multitude of spin-off titles in print throughout the year. As he notes later in the report:

The Munchkin line, including the Munchkin Quest boardgame, accounted for nearly 80% of our revenue in 2009! It is now available in 15 languages, with one more licensed.

Wow.

Velo City isn’t the first published game from designer Kevin G. Nunn, but it is the first to debut on the German market. (3-7 players, ages 8+, 45 minutes, €30) Each player in Velo City controls a team of bicycle couriers, and naturally you want to prove that your team is better than anyone else’s. To determine who’s the big wheel in the group, players race through the city street, either singly or in groups, picking up energy drinks along the way while avoiding manhole covers.

On a turn, a player either rolls his team die, then moves one of couriers forward exactly as many spaces as shown – possibly spending energy drinks first to roll a second die for an energy boost or sprint – or rolls his team die along with the die or dice of opponents sharing the same space as one of his riders. If the active player then chooses his die, his rider is the only one to move; choose an opponent’s die, however, and both you and the opponent move ahead.

Players can also spend energy drinks to have their riders draft another rider leaving the same space. Where does your courier team get all these drinks? If a rider stops on a space depicting an energy drink, the player takes one from the bank. When a rider hits a manhole, the player can either pay an energy drink to stay in place or move backwards to the first empty manhole space, picking up an energy drink on the way. Move all the way back to start, and you get two drinks – small compensation for the trouble! (Plus you’ll have to take more frequent bathroom breaks.)

Rules for Velo City can be downloaded from the game’s webpage in English, German, French and Italian.

In Inon Kohn’s Charly, each player brings a horde of animals to the table, and if they have planned well, they’ll be able to feed their beasts without having to reach into their own pockets. (2-6 players, ages 6+, 20 minutes, €17)

At the start of a round, each player receives seven animal cards and one food card. The animal cards show dogs, mice, rabbits, monkeys or pigs, with 1-3 animals on each card except for the pigs, which always come in pairs; the food cards show bones, cheese, carrots or bananas, with 4-8 pieces of each item. Thus, food for each of the first four types of animal is included in the deck – bones for dogs, etc. – but pigs will eat anything because they are undiscriminating and ravenous. One to three food cards are also revealed on the table, depending on the number of players.

On a turn, a player can either draw a new animal card from the deck or discard pile, then discard an animal card, or call for a feast. (If you take the latter action, each player can exchange animals once more.) Players then lay out their food cards and take turns placing animal cards on their respective foods, with pigs eating whatever the player decides to feed them. If an animal card doesn’t enough of the right food available, their owner must feed each animal from the 15 pieces of honey with which he begins the game. Players then begin a new round.

Once a player runs out of honey drops, the game ends, with the player holding the most honey drops winning. The complete rules for Charly can be downloaded from the game’s webpage in English, German, French and Italian.

Designer Michael Schacht continues to add new animals to his ever-expanding zoo, this time with meerkats, ostriches and wolves searching for space in Zooloretto Mini. (2-5 players, ages 7+, 45 minutes, €18)

Zooloretto Mini seems like a cross between the Spiel des Jahres-winning Zooloreto and the Coloretto card game that preceded it. Each player starts with a zoo board that has three empty enclosures, each with room for six tiles. Seven types of animal tiles and three types of landscape tiles are mixed in a bag, then players take turns either drawing a tile from the bag and placing it in one of the available delivery trucks, or claiming a truck and placing the tiles on it in the player’s zoo.

Each enclosure can hold only one type of animal, and if you place a fertile male and female critter in the same pen, you’re immediately blessed with a newborn that also needs to find a home. Landscape tiles can go into any enclosure. If you can’t place a tile, such as when you take a fourth type of animal, that tile goes into your barn.

When you place the sixth tile in an enclosure, you can immediately either discard one tile from your barn or snatch a tile from someone else’s barn and add it to your zoo. After each player claims a truck, a new round begins, until the bag is empty and players need to dip into the reserve tiles placed aside at the start of the game. Players then score points for the number of animals in each enclosure – the more, the better – and the types of landscape in their zoo. After subtracting points for each type of landscape and animal in each player’s barn, the person with the highest total wins.

Rules for Zooloretto Mini in English, German, French and Italian can be downloaded from the game’s webpage on the Abacusspiele website.

Each player controls two koi on a 7x7 gameboard, and each turn a player either moves one koi to an empty adjacent space, then drops one of his ten stones on any empty space or jumps one koi over an adjacent stone into an empty space. After each turn, if a player’s just moved koi is adjacent to other koi – whether that player’s or the opponent’s – he scores one point for each adjacent koi. The first player to reach ten points wins.

MacKenzie mentions on the website of his Clever Mojo Games that Jin Li will be available for the iPhone and iPod Touch at some point.

The gameboard can be reoriented because troop movement in Battles of Westeros doesn’t depend on the playing of cards that direct troops in the left, center or right sections of the board, as in the case of BattleLore. Instead, writes Kouba:

Because the only boundaries on the battlefield are the board edges themselves, it is possible to order any units on the battlefield, as long as that unit is “controlled.”

Controlled units are units that begin in a hex within a commander’s zone-of-control (ZOC). A commander’s ZOC in the core set (no matter which House) is two hexes. This means that any unit within two hexes of a friendly commander is controlled.

Sounds like an interesting change from BattleLore as players will always have the ability to move their commanders, and those movements will determine which other troops can take actions or be affected by certain events. What’s more, if you can take out an opponent’s leader, you effectively render certain other units helpless as they’d suddenly lack direction and stand around with their thumbs up their butts waiting for orders.

At least that’s how I imagine things on Westeros. FFG promises more previews in the weeks ahead, so maybe my speculation will turn out to be misguided…

[B]usiness funds had been co-mingled with the personal funds of one of the owners. We believe the missing funds were the result of bad habits that began alongside the creation of the company, which was initially a small hobby group. Upon further investigation, in which the owner has willingly participated, the owner in question now owes the company a significant balance and is working to help rectify the situation.

Bills goes on to note that Catalyst has restructured its accounting procedures and is investigating back payments that might be due to freelancers and others.

Despite this turmoil, Catalyst has shipped two card games to U.S. distributors in the past week, the revised High School Drama: Varsity Edition, which designer Boyan Radakovich self-published through Shifting Skies Games in 2006, and Merchants, an English language version of Pegasus’ Handelsfürsten from designer Reiner Knizia. These games have been updated on Gone Cardboard.

While this expansion will include 42 goblin figures, it contains only two new types of troops, with all of the previous troop types appearing in either the BattleLore base set or the Goblin Marauders expansion. Those new troops are Goblin Halberdiers, who fight well against cavalry, and Ogres. While some players will lament the minimal amount of novelty in the expansion, others will be pleased that they can now do battle with an entire goblin army instead of a mixed human/goblin army.

In addition to the figures, Horrific Horde includes five new scenarios, new unit summary cards, and 15 cards for the Call to Arms expansion so that players can build customized Goblin armies. Pics of the new figures are on the FFG website.

This game has been added to Gone Cardboard.

Habitat first appeared in a limited print run at Spiel 08 and has been largely unavailable since that time. For a game description, let’s turn to a game preview that I published on BGN in August 2008:

Your goal in the game is to create a diverse forest by collecting and feeding at least one type of animal in each of the eight ranks. Grizzly bears are rank 8, for example, while worms and insects are rank 1. Says Hogg, “Animals are arranged into food chains based on their rank and diet, and whether they swim, fly or live on land.”

Each turn you can play nice and draw cards hoping to get animals you need to complete chains and keep animals fed – or you can play aggressively and use large animals to pilfer resources and smaller animals from opponents. Drawing also brings opportunistic event cards like “Migration” that draws animals from others to your part of the forest. “Additionally,” says Hogg, “each turn you have a chance to save unfed animal populations from starvation by feeding them with lesser ranked cards, as well as the opportunity to redesign your food chains to be more resilient for the struggles of the next round.”

Head to the preview link above for more comments from Elliot Hogg about the design and development of this game. This game has been updated on Gone Cardboard.

Designer: Reiner Knizia
Publisher: FRED Distribution (aka Gryphon Games)

Players: 2-7
Ages: 7+
Playing Time: 30 minutes
Rules Language: English
Price: $15
Links:

Reiner Knizia appears to be the undisputed master of getting his games published and republished … again and again and again. Well over a dozen of his previously published games have been republished, often with new names, themes and artwork. While these cosmetic changes likely mean more dollars and Euros in the pockets of publishers and distributors – and Herr Knizia – they often cause confusion amongst the buying public. I can’t help but wonder how many unsuspecting folks have actually purchased a game, only to discover that they already own an earlier version that was published under a different name.

In spite of this potential confusion, it is good to see good games brought back to life. The latest of Reiner’s reincarnations is Swat! from Gryphon Games, which was previously released by Winning Moves as It’s Mine! I’ve enjoyed this family-friendly game for many years and am happy to see it once again available.

The idea of the game is to grab cards which result in a positive score at the conclusion of the hand. One-at-a-time, the dealer reveals cards from the deck. When a player decides he would like the collection of cards revealed, he slaps his hand to the table. The first player to slap – or swat – the table gets the cards. If more than one player slaps the table, it is up to the dealer to decide which player slapped first. It is not uncommon for several players to slap the table at once, making it difficult to determine who was first. We decide this with a quick match of “rock-paper-scissors” between the contesting players.

When a player collects a batch of cards, he places them face-down in a stack. The player is charged with the task of attempting to remember which cards he has collected so that he can maximize his total in future hands (similar to the idea used in Schnäppchen Jagd). A player can collect at most three stacks of cards per round, so one must be careful on when to slap the table and take a collection of cards. The player who slapped first and collected a set becomes the dealer and repeats this process. Once everyone has collected three hands (or the deck of cards expires), points are tallied from all three stacks and recorded. Three rounds are played, and the player with the highest cumulative scores wins the game. Of course, players can play more or fewer rounds based on their preference or time constraints. The original It’s Mine required a player to win two rounds to capture the game.

Swat! is a game of deciding when to pull the trigger and take a collection of cards. There is the persistent temptation to hold off slapping the table until just one more card is turned. Slap too early and you may miss out on a valuable card or two; slap too late and an opponent may beat you to a nice collection. Of course, waiting can also backfire if a few negative-valued cards are revealed. As each card is revealed, the tension mounts and the butterflies in one’s stomach increases. This tension is what really makes the game click.

Swat! can be played in twenty-to-thirty minutes and is ideally suited for family play. All but the youngest of children can play competently, but there is enough fun and decisions present to keep adults entertained and engaged. I’ve had great success playing the game with my gaming group and family and friends, and it has been universally enjoyed by all. The new packaging and theme is nice, making it even more appealing. Kudos to Gryphon Games for re-publishing this entertaining game.

Designer: Steve Ryan
Publisher: Educational Insights

Players: 4+
Ages: 7+
Playing Time: 180 minutes
Rules Language: English
Price: $25
Links:

Version played: Comped review copy
Times played: Twice, once each with five and six players

Steve Ryan’s Stix & Stones from Educational Insights has all the hallmarks of a game designed for a mainstream audience as it’s a new take on a familiar game with a clever title that’s a well-known phrase. Here’s the pitch that retailers would give to potential buyers: ”Stix & Stones is like Pictionary, but instead of drawing you build images out of plastic sticks and stones that your teammates then try to identify.”

For the mainstream buyer, the phrase “like Pictionary but different” would get many of them to the cash register, but we serious gamers are made of sterner stuff. Sure, “like Pictionary but different” gives someone 75% of a good game – the game will promote creativity, be interactive and provide great moments – yet the final 25% of the game is the critical stuff. Does Stix & Stones have something like the arbitrary die roll in Pictionary that makes randomness as powerful as skill? Or does it fit the Cluzzle model of having cleverness in your artistry be of primary importance?

Before I answer those questions, check out these images from one of my games and take a guess as to what’s depicted:

These creations were half of the first six designs in the game, and no one guessed them correctly – neither the teammates of the picture builder, nor the players on the other team. Score after 30 minutes: 0 - 0.

An Invitation to Fail

The main problem with Stix & Stones is that it invites players to bid to failure. Unlike Pictionary, in which teams compete against the clock or against each other, Stix & Stones has the picture builders on the two teams bid against one another, Name That Tune-style, as to the number of pieces they will use in their artwork: “I can draw that item with only 15 pieces.” “I’ll do it in 13.” “Okay, 12.” And so on with each picture builder mentally shedding bits from an imagined design until the real-life creation will be as illusory as the imagined one and no one will guess anything.

Players can bid to failure because there’s little chance of a penalty for doing so. If your team guesses the object, you score one point; if your team fails and the opponents guess it, they score two points; however, if the opponents also guess incorrectly, no one scores anything. Thus, you might as well drop your bid lower and win the right to draw as your team will guess first – and if your team can’t guess it, then your opponents will likely fail, too.

Simple solution #1: Award one point to the opposing team whenever the team with the winning bid fails to correctly identify the artwork, and two points if the opposing team can guess the object. Teams would therefore constantly advance toward the ten point goal line and not hover at zero while they get drunker and even less adept at building pictures.

Time to Guess?

Stix & Stones also fails to measure up against Pictionary in terms of how players take guesses. In Pictionary players guess the entire time that a drawer is drawing because either time is running out or another team might beat you to the punch. As the drawer, you get to respond to your teammates’ stupid guesses by taking a new approach or editing the work that you’ve already done. Surely those bozos will get it now, right?

In Stix & Stones your teammates are forbidden from guessing while you construct the piece in 60 seconds, then they caucus and can make only a single guess. One! Which means there’s lots of humming and hawing while they debate whether the square with a dollar sign in it is a bank or a vault or money or a bill or something else entirely. Time passes, and everyone gets bored, and there’s no real reason for choosing one answer over another, so you start picking apart every little detail of the artwork even though they don’t matter, and everyone gets even boreder, if that’s possible, then finally someone says, “Oh, whatever, we’ll go with your answer,” then you’re wrong, then the other team does the same thing, and oh, God, when will it end?

Simple solution #2: Allow players to guess while their teammate is creating the artwork or provide a limited amount of time in which players can guess as many times as they want. I mean, I would have been bummed out after I made this fantastic work…

...and we had failed to gain a point because my teammates guessed “aardvark” instead of “anteater.” Thankfully, they intuited that the stones were ants, not termites. (The rules allow you to score when naming synonyms, but aardvarks and anteaters are not the same, despite their superficial bug-eating ways.)

Meeeeee!!!

What’s the most fun part of Pictionary? Guessing what someone else is drawing? Not really, although it does have moments when the drawer is growing exasperated by your denseness and jabbing at the paper again and again and circling the same thing repeatedly as if the sheer quantity of circles will transmit information to your brain. Knowing what the drawer on the other team is doing and quietly laughing at her feeble attempt? This can be good for a few chuckles, yes, especially when you think about how awesome your drawing would have been.

Which just points out that the most fun part of Pictionary is actually creating the pictures – that is, having an idea for how you can dash off lines to create a globe before the other team’s drawer can. When you have a good partner, you as the artist can feel your minds merging, and your heart fills with smugness and joy when she correctly guesses “accordion” while everyone else at the table sees only a half-dozen chicken scratches and the sandtimer is not even a quarter empty.

Creating a picture is also the fun part of Stix & Stones, but the game lacks an “all play” feature in which both builders create a picture at once. You can still have the vicarious thrill of looking at an opponent’s “artistry” and knowing that you can do better, but what’s more likely to happen is that you’ll lower your bid so that you can be active and do something, rather than sitting and watching until you’re next chance to bid, which once again leads to everlasting failure and a neverending game.

Simple solution #3: Add an “all play” feature to Stix & Stones. Perhaps you can change the scoring system so that each picture builder can use as many bits as she wants, but if a team guesses the right answer while using fewer components than the other team, they score more points.

Or players can have bid cards that show an upper limit in the number of pieces they’ll use, along with a point value they’ll score if their team guesses the right answer first. Using more pieces results in fewer points. By taking this approach, the game would then feature a bluffing element of sorts in terms of how players want to approach their bids. Do I bid low and hope my teammates can get Christopher Columbus from only seven bits, or take a safer route? Maybe the picture builders now also have to compete for the building components rather than being able to take the ones they want.

I can think of many different approaches to the 25% of Stix & Stones that isn’t Pictionary, and while those approaches might not be better than what’s in the box – given that I’ve playtested none of them – the game as published drags on far too long for the amount of fun we had, leading us to stop both times before we put in the 180 minutes required to reach ten points. Thus we come to…

Simple solution #4: Put Stix & Stones aside and play Pictionary instead.

Factory Manager is a more modest effort.  The game only lasts five turns, and the key mechanism is an auction for turn order, hardly a major innovation.

In FM, players vie for tiles over the course of the game’s five turns:

• Storage tiles boost a factory’s storage capacity. (A player’s income is based on either his storage or production capacity – whichever is lower.)
• Machinery tiles boost a player’s production, but increase his labor use and his energy use.
• Red robot tiles boost a player’s production without using any additional labor, but they increase energy use.
• Yellow robot tiles don’t effect production numbers, but they decrease labor usage while increasing energy costs.

After tiles are purchased, players adjust their production, storage, energy use, and labor use numbers.  The cost of energy is adjusted by the draw of a random tile (with the cost generally going up over time).  Players then collect income (minus their energy costs).

While some of this may sound complex on the page, it seemed that FM was a fairly simple and straightforward game in practice.  And the game doesn’t overstay its welcome; even a five-player game should not take more than an hour and a half at the most, and maybe considerably less than that.

If there is a flaw in the game, it may the last turn.  When playing with the Appalachian Gamers, I found that most players were content to choose tiles by instinct for most of the game.  But on the last turn, every player did a cost/benefit analysis of purchasing every combination of available tiles.  This made the last turn the slowest of the game, and more than one player thought it diminished the fun of the game.

Nevertheless, I rather like Factory Manager.  I admit that the game is a bit dry, but I am the kind of gamer who enjoys Martin Wallace’s Automobile in spite of the fact that I may never win the game unless I play against ten-year-olds.

I find that there is suspense in each turn to see whether I will get the tiles I need most.  Factory Manager may not be the giant that Power Grid is, but I don’t hold that against it.  There is room in my collection for a few dry economic games, and one of them will be Factory Manager.

The winners of the Premio Archimede receive support funds of €3,500 in the form of research trips, funds for publication, and so on. The jury will also award a few special trophies, such as the Carta Mundi Special Trophy for the best card game, with the prize being 1,000 copies of said card game produced for free by Carta Mundi.

The deadline for entry is July 30, 2010. Visit the Premio Archimede page on the studiogiochi website for a participation form, entry fee information, and other details.

Such agreements have become more common in recent years, with German publisher eggertspiele signing a similar agreement with Amigo earlier in 2010 and French publisher/distributor Asmodee now serving as the logistics partner for GameWorks and Libellud, among other companies.

The first person to submit the game name that subsequently wins each award will receive prizes from Spielbox. All other individuals who submitted the correct names will be entered into a random drawing, for prizes to be announced later. Complete details of the contest on Spielbox.de.

Whether you are a child, teen or adult, the loss of a special person hurts a great deal. The pain affects us physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, behaviorally and spiritually. Aultman Grief Services has created Doggone Grief – a board game to help people of all ages verbally communicate their mixture of grief emotions....

“Most kids’ first loss is their pet, so it seemed natural to develop a dog-themed game to assist in the communication process,” said [director Brenda Brown], “and dogs show emotion really well too.” ...

Matt Gagnon, the counselor at Oakwood Middle School in Plain Local Schools, said, ”Doggone Grief is a great concept because there are not many fun activities relating to grief on the market.”

For more details on the game, head to the Doggone Grief page on the Aultman Grief Services website.

Battleship (1931)

I’m sure there were earlier parlor games that fit into the “deduction” category, but Battleship is the first mass-produced game which really strikes me as a classic of the genre.
To a certain extent, there’s not much to it. You place battleships on a map, then try to guess where your opponent’s ships are. You’re told if you miss or hit, and also when you’ve sunk a ship. The first one to sink all of an opponent’s ships wins. However, from that limited ruleset comes a game which is truly deductive: starting with a very limited palette of information (the size and allowed orientations of your opponent’s ships) you try and gain more information, in a timed competition against your opponent.

The Good. The core mechanic is original. Overall, this game offers a deft model for including hidden geography in a game, tough one that’s largely limited to two gamers due to the need for maps that can’t be seen by other players. (The idea is easier to model online, and it’s the core of a game my company runs called Galactic Emperor: Hegemony, where each player gets their own view of the galaxy. Most other online multiplayer games use the same model, though few really consider it an element of game.)

The Bad. Battleship is not terribly strategic. The skill of zeroing in on ships really isn’t that tough to acquire, and as a result the game doesn’t feel like it’s playable by anyone but kids.

Overall. Not worth consideration by a serious gamer, but I’d really like designers to take a look at this game, and consider how like mechanics might be used in a more strategic deduction game. It’s still pretty good for kids too. And, it’s got nice bits.

Clue (1948)

The game that most think of when you mention deduction games, and also the basis for many later games (including next week’s Mystery Express) is ultimately Clue (or Cluedo as it’s called in England, playing off of the Latin word, “Ludo”, meaning “I play"). At the start of the game, three cards (Who? Where? How) are taken out of the game from decks on those topics. The rest of the cards are then shuffled up and given out to their players. On his turn a player moves around (via a random die roll) and when he gets into a room he can make a suggestion for those three topics. Other players will then show one of those cards if they have them. Finally, when someone thinks he knows all three elements, he can make a full accusation.

The Good. Clue offers a basis for deduction games that was so good that almost every other major deduction game uses it. It puts forth a real opportunity to solve a mystery. There’s even some opportunity for misleading other players by asking questions that imply certain cards are missing when they actually aren’t.

The Bad. Random movement really underlines the basis of the game in the family genre. The methods for looking at cards aren’t that terribly interesting. You can engage in some strategy by carefully making suggestions that let you look for certain cards, based on what’s in your hand and what you know other people have, but it’s not enough strategy to actually be interesting. You have to sit around and just answer questions if you accuse incorrectly, because you’re otherwise out of the game.

Overall. I’m very thankful that this game exists, because it’s allowed for the creation of much better games. If forced on me at a family gathering, I’d probably be willing to play it.

Mastermind (1971)

The last of my “foundational” games is another one that many of us may have played as kids: Mastermind. But, maybe that just reveals when I was a kid (in the 1970s). It’s most widely called a “code breaking” game. Like Battleship it’s for two players and like Battleship it depends on the geography of two players to maintain some hidden information--though here it’s just a set of four pegs. One player choose a set of four colored pegs, placed in a certain order. The other player then tries to guess them by putting out sequences of four pegs. Each time the code-maker tells him how many of his pegs had both the right position and color and how many just had the right color. Theoretically the two players trade back and forth, scoring based on how fast they guessed the “code”, but practically I remember this game being played in single rounds, where you either got the code or didn’t.

The Good. This is one of the most logical of the deduction games. A limited language is used to good effect to provide enough information to make the game fun, but not enough to give things away. Generally, I think limiting language like this is a great way to build a deduction game. Mechanics of this sort have also been little duplicated in modern games (though I think Reiner Knizia’s Res Publica offers a great example of limiting language in a game; many of the hidden role games like Shadows Over Camelot do the same, but to less good effect because they seem too artificial).

The Bad. Though very analytical, the game is short and light. There’s not a lot to it. It’s been traditionally sold as a kids’ or family game, and a lot of that’s due to depth. The puzzle is also solvable. Various algorithms over the years have pulled the solution to the original puzzle down to five moves or less (though I’m not sure how well a person does with these algorithms, which depend on computers).

Overall. Of all the games I’ve listed this week, this is the one I’d be most likely to play again, though I wouldn’t expect it to have much depth. I also think it, like the core mechanic of Battleship, is just begging to be exploited in newer games.

Around the Corner

I’ve got at least two more articles planned for this series, one focusing on Clue-like games and another focusing on hidden-role games. I’d love to hear your thoughts on top deduction games that should go in those articles, or in other ones that I’ve missed, and of course your thoughts on these three classics as well. I may also write an article on “Forgotten Classics” (like the aforementioned What’s On My Head?) if I get enough suggestions for those.

You can find my article on Mystery Express, the game that got me thinking, over at RPGnet. You may also want to take a look at last week’s review of Terra Prime (the other game by newcomer Tasty Minstrel Games, also the publisher of Homesteaders).

In the meantime I’ll see you back here in 14 days. It’ll be April First, so don’t believe a thing I say.

In American Rails, each player assumes the role of a wealthy capitalist managing a portfolio of stocks and bonds in six fictional railroad companies. Through ruthless negotiation and rigorous planning, players struggle to increase the value of their holdings and reap the profits. The player with the most money at the end of the game will become the nation’s first railroad baron and win the game.

English rules are available through Harrison’s website, which also features a preorder page for the game, which should be available before the end of April 2010.

The list of titles included in Family Games: The 100 Best, along with the gamer or designer writing about them, is posted on the book’s webpage. Some of the interesting combinations include:

• James Ernest on Candy Land
• Corey Konieczka on For Sale
• Matt Leacock on Go Away Monster!
• Jason Matthews on Gulo Gulo
• Alan R. Moon on Hoity Toity
• Peter Olotka on Risk
• Richard Breese on Rummikub
• Andrea Angiolino on Survive!
• Steve Jackson on The Great Dalmuti