Category Archives: Games

We interrupt your regularly scheduled post for something wonderful…

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I originally had our latest session of 5 Questions scheduled for today, but yesterday I stumbled upon a marvelous, time-sensitive story, and I really wanted to share it with the PuzzleNation audience, because it exemplifies the very best of the puzzly gaming community.

In last week’s Follow-Up Friday post, I briefly discussed Joe Michael MacDonald’s marvelous version of Qwirkle designed for colorblind players. And lo and behold, here is a Kickstarter campaign with even loftier goals.

The folks at 64 Oz. Games are in the final hours of a project called Board Games: Now Blind Accessible, wherein they produce specialty sleeves and other modifications for established board games and card games, allowing visually impaired players to play alongside their sighted pals.

Not only have they developed a touch-based game called Yoink! that is based on tactile gameplay, but a combination of Braille and clever use of QR codes has opened up games like Munchkin, King of Tokyo, and numerous roleplaying games to a previously excluded audience.

This inclusive spirit is brilliantly typical of the puzzle and game communities, since so many members — both designers and players/solvers — want nothing more than to share their love of games with the world.

And numerous board game, card game, and puzzle game companies are supporting the endeavor. Not only the folks at Cheapass Games, but also companies like Rio Grande Games, 9th Level, Living Worlds, and (hilariously, considering their reputation) Cards Against Humanity. (You can check out the full list of companies here.)

It’s an absolutely wonderful idea, and although there are only a few hours left to donate to this very worthy cause, I’m overjoyed to say that they’ve raised more than double their hoped-for campaign total!

This is Kickstarter and the puzzle and game communities at their best, and I’m glad I discovered it in time to share it with my fellow puzzlers.

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

It’s Follow-Up Friday (in color!)

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Welcome to Follow-Up Friday!

For those new to PuzzleNation Blog, Follow-Up Friday is a chance for us to revisit the subjects of previous posts and update the PuzzleNation audience on how these projects are doing and what these people have been up to in the meantime.

And today, I thought I’d mention a curious and clever board game development I stumbled across recently.

One of the most popular games from our recent TableTop Day event was Qwirkle.

A wonderful tile game featuring different colors and symbols, Qwirkle follows in the strategy and pattern-matching tradition of Uno and Mexican Train dominoes.

Unfortunately, my fellow puzzlers and I quickly discovered that the colors chosen for the game are difficult for colorblind players to tell apart. And in a game where you don’t want to show other players your tiles before you play them, it becomes much harder to tell the different between red and orange tiles, which is a crucial distinction during gameplay.

Thankfully, a software developer and board game fan named Joe Michael McDonald took it upon himself to design a colorblind-friendly color palette for Qwirkle.

qwirklecolorblind

[On the left is the standard Qwirkle color options. On the right is McDonald’s colorblind-friendly variant.]

It’s a terrific example of player ingenuity solving an unforeseen problem and opening up the game to a whole new audience.

Kudos to you, sir. Here’s hoping more games offer a colorblind-friendly variant very soon.

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

It’s Follow-Up Friday: TableTop Day Edition!

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Welcome to Follow-Up Friday!

For those new to PuzzleNation Blog, Follow-Up Friday is a chance for us to revisit the subjects of previous posts and update the PuzzleNation audience on how these projects are doing and what these people have been up to in the meantime.

And today, I’m following up on all the International TableTop Day goodness we got up to this week.

The PuzzleNation offices weren’t open on April 5 for the actual TableTop Day, so we celebrated a few days late with an event on Tuesday, and we invited our pals from Penny/Dell Puzzles to join us in all the puzzly game activities we had planned.

Here’s the table of available games for play that day! Everything from one-player brain teasers from ThinkFun (like Rush Hour and the Sudoku-inspired Chocolate Fix) to bigger group games like Apples to Apples and Scattergories, and everything in between! (Including previously reviewed games like Castellan, Pink Hijinks, ROFL!, Fluxx: The Board Game, and Loonacy!)

Here, fellow puzzlers partake in a spirited round of Apples to Apples, the perfect way to blow off a little steam at work after a long morning of puzzlesmithing.

Furiously contested games of Bananagrams and Qwirkle were conducted at either end of our play area, and both were big hits with attendees.

I even had the opportunity to test my mettle against Penny/Dell’s well-traveled Corin the Puzzle Bear in a few rounds of Jenga.

While he beat me handily in two straight games, the tide soon turned against him in round three.

We had a pretty decent turnout overall, and everyone who attended had fun. What more can you ask for, really? (Other than more excuses to play games during work, that is…)

I hope your International TableTop Day was just as enjoyable. As Wil Wheaton says on his YouTube show TableTop, play more games!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

PuzzleNation App Reviews: Pirate Ring

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Welcome to our second edition of PuzzleNation App Reviews! Today we continue our quest to delve into the world of puzzly games and apps for your tablet or smartphone!

Our resident App player and puzzle fiend Sherri has another intriguing game for us today, so without further ado, let’s explore her review of Pirate Ring!

Who doesn’t want to be pirate? Sailing the seas; hunting for treasure. Well, Pirate Ring is an iOS game that will allow you to test your strategic mettle against AI pirates.

This is a really tough game. It is all about strategy. There are two modes: one-player against an AI opponent and a two-player mode, in which you can play against a friend. (In the two-player mode, you swap the iDevice back and forth.)

I played the one-player mode, and the AI opponent was a beast! In one-player mode, you play as gold versus silver. Your goal is to recruit more ships than your opponent does. There are three levels of gameplay: Beginner, Journeyman, and Captain. Beginner is practice mode, and you earn rewards in Journeyman and Captain modes.

There is serious strategy involved in this game. To win, you compete in a best-of-five tournament, in which you use gold rings to recruit your ships and use gold coins to block your opponent’s rings. You have spots where you can turn coins into rings or rings into coins. (If you have trouble winning a game with enough ships, you can earn three ties per game for a win.)

Once you have enough ships for the win, move one of your pieces, a ring or coin, to the pirate in the center. Then, the battle commences!

I am not a huge fan of strategy games, but I found myself playing this game over and over and over because I just wanted to win. The graphics, while simple, are intricately detailed. You feel like you are strategizing over a table. If you want a game that really taxes your brain, this is a good one to play.

Ratings for Pirate Ring:

  • Enjoyability: 2/5 – I found the game to be frustratingly difficult. Apparently, I’m not much of a strategist. Those who enjoy strategy games would want to check out this game.
  • How well puzzles are incorporated: 3/5 – This is a very strategic game. You always need to think several steps ahead in order to beat your opponent. Good luck!
  • Graphics: 3/5 – You play on a static map. I, personally, loved the game board. For a brief time, it made me feel like a good pirate.
  • Gameplay: 2/5 – There isn’t much that changes, so it’s pretty monotonous, though I wanted to keep playing to win!

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

PuzzleNation Product Reviews: Loonacy

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loonacy

Looney Labs is a game company with a creative model everyone can get behind: high replay value through wildly interactive, adaptable game play. Perhaps best known for their card game Fluxx, Looney Labs games are designed for portability, packing a lot of punch into smaller, more efficient packaging.

Their latest release is Loonacy, a pattern-matching card game that requires quick reflexes, a quicker eye, and no small amount of strategy.

In Loonacy, players compete to drop all of the cards in their hand by dropping them one-at-a-time into various piles by matching one of two symbols on the card. For instance, if you’ve got a card with a cookie and a brain on it, you can drop that card onto a pile with a cookie on top or a brain on top.

loonacy2

You can try to strategize by arranging cards into your hand by symbol or possible chains — brain/cookie, cookie/ship, ship/puppy — but you have to play each card individually before you can drop the next card. And since everyone is racing to empty their hands at the same time, it can rapidly become a very chaotic playing experience.

(And in your enthusiasm, you’ll probably end up bending a few cards. Hey, it happens.)

But there is an element of strategy to the gameplay. If you have multiple cards with a cookie, you’ll want to play the card where the other symbol doesn’t help your opponents. (For instance, if there’s already a brain symbol showing and no one can play on it, play the cookie/brain card.)

That way, you can play your second (and hopefully, your third) cookie cards in a row and decrease the number of cards in your hand in a hurry. Of course, if someone drops their card on top of that cookie card, your strategy might go right out the window.

But that’s part of the fun. Loonacy tests observation, reflexes, and decision-making skill, all in the matter of a few minutes per game.

While it’s light on the puzzling, it’s high in charm, replay factor, and style. The sheer number of potential images to match makes this far more interesting than the average card game or pattern-matching challenge.

Looney Labs has a winner on their hands with Loonacy. I suspect it’ll be a big hit on Saturday during our International TableTop Day celebrations at home.

[Click here to check out our reviews of several other Looney Labs products!]

Thanks for visiting PuzzleNation Blog today! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, friend us on Facebook, check us out on Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and be sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games!

A day for puzzles and games galore!

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This Saturday April 5 marks the second annual International TableTop Day.

For the uninitiated, International TableTop Day was the brainchild of Internet superstars and gaming devotees Wil Wheaton and Felicia Day, known for their YouTube series TableTop.

While on the surface, International TableTop Day is a day to celebrate board games, card games, roleplaying games, dice games, and any other games and activities played around a table, the true spirit of the day is the socializing and communal gameplay that comes from sitting around a table with friends and loved ones, leaving phones and distractions behind, and enjoying a game.

Like last year, this year’s TableTop Day is a truly worldwide event, with game stores, hobby shops, and many businesses opening their doors and offering space for friends and strangers alike to play games. On the TableTop Day website, a map cataloguing events across the world on April 5th has over two THOUSAND events and counting listed!

While the PuzzleNation offices aren’t open on April 5, I will definitely be celebrating the day at home with family and friends; we’ve got several terrific games lined up to play, including Qwirkle, 12 Days, Gravwell, Scattergories, and a few others to be determined.

Not only that, but the following week, in the spirit of International TableTop Day, the PuzzleNation crew will be getting together with our friends at Penny/Dell Puzzles and hosting a belated TableTop Day event for our fellow puzzlers.

Let us know what you’ll be playing for International TableTop Day! You can share your pictures with us on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Tumblr, and make sure to check out the growing library of PuzzleNation apps and games! (They’re perfect for sparking some communal puzzling!)

And, most of all, simply enjoy a game with friends and loved ones. Happy International TableTop Day everyone!