In November of last year, I wrote about the most recent class of toys and games accepted into the Hall of Fame. I enjoy seeing which puzzles and games are nominated, and occasionally accepted, as representative of iconic parts of our collective childhood and the spirit of play in general.
Battleship, slime, and Trivial Pursuit were the newest inductees into the Hall of Fame, and good for them, they’re all worthy nominees.
But I was appalled, APPALLED I TELL YOU, that snow was snubbed for acceptance into the National Toy Hall of Fame.
I mean, snow should have been a first-ballot Hall of Famer day one.
It’s a fundamental item of play for many children. Throwing snowballs. Building snowmen and other snowfolk. Catching snowflakes on your tongue. Sledding.
And people of any age can enjoy.
Plus it’s free. It falls from the sky and anyone in the proper climate can play with it. There’s no cost to play, no entry fee to enjoy.
Look a snowdecahedron! You can’t make dice out of slime. THEY WOULDN’T ROLL. THEY WOULDN’T ROLL, YOU FOOL!
Not only that, but snow literally creates opportunities to play with it. Ever heard of snow days? You betcha. Snow falls from the sky and creates days free of school and other responsibilities so children can go play.
Trivial Pursuit can’t do that! Trivial Pursuit falls from the sky, you just have a lot to clean up. No free day for Trivial Pursuit-ing.
So, I beseech you, trustees of the National Toy Hall of Fame, as well as your associated pals at the Strong Museum of Play…
Do the right thing. Let’s get snow back on the ballot and into the HoF where it belongs.
Fellow reader, will you join me on this worthwhile endeavor?
It’s the perfect time to vote for snow, because it’s summer in America right now and you’re liable to be more nostalgic for it.
(You don’t have to nominate snow. There might be a toy you think is more deserving, and that’s totally fair. It doesn’t have to be snow. It’s not like I’ll know you clicked the button and wrote something else in. I won’t. But I will somehow sense it and be a little disappointed, I’m not gonna lie.)
#JusticeForSnow
(Please note that this is not the same as #JustIceForSnow. That’s bad. Don’t put ice in your snowballs. You’ll hurt somebody like that. Not cool, man. Not cool. There’s a reason I’m not advocating for ice in the HoF.)
Clue (aka Cluedo) is one of the all-time classic board games.
It has seen numerous variations and licensed versions (like the Golden Girls edition, where you need to find out who ate the last piece of cheesecake) as well as escape room-style adaptations. Characters have come and gone, like Dr. Orchid, who took Mrs. White’s place in 2016.
It has even been turned into a movie, a comedic delight that’s on my rewatch list every year (alongside its less-appreciated but equally subversive counterpart, Murder By Death).
Now, this isn’t the first LEGO Clue board I’ve seen. In fact, I wrote about one back in 2016 that came with an interactive scorecard for your deductive reasoning.
But the set by Brickly_Pair goes above and beyond both of those previous endeavors.
The rooms are beautiful, richly detailed, and immersive. The logo in the center of the board is gorgeous. The game pieces are a little simple, but definitely feel inspired by the actual game’s pieces.
All the little nods to both its source material and classic LEGO sets (like the Wolfpack banner above the fireplace) make this a work of puzzly art as well as a fun way to revamp and revitalize a classic board game.
Now, seriously, could someone get to work on a Murder By Death set? It could have the shifting rooms, falling gargoyles, and best of all, a Jamesir Bensonmum minifig!
Do you think this Clue LEGO set will grace your shelves one day, fellow puzzler? Or would you like to see another board game get the LEGO brick treatment? Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you.
Just a quick post today to remind you that Free RPG Day is tomorrow, Saturday, June 27th!
Legitimately one of my favorite gaming-centric days of the year, Free RPG Day is all about building the RPG community. Game companies send freebies to local game shops and hobby shops all over!
And it literally helps everybody:
Local game shops get more foot traffic, hosting events and getting more eyes on all the products and services they offer.
Game companies introduce their games to new audiences, either through free adventures to try out (often being run in-house at those local hobby shops!) or through Quickstart versions of their games, giving a sample of what their game has to offer in a smaller, easily-digestible presentation.
Customers get freebies to expand their knowledge of the hobby, and often game shops run events and sales to capitalize on customer interest. Plus there’s always the chance of making new friends and discovering a new favorite game.
This year, loads of companies are taking part in the Free RPG Day festivities, although what’s available will vary from store to store.
You could find Quickstart versions for games like The Crooked Moon, Wizard Riders, Age of Vikings, Arkham Horror, Dungeons & Kittens, Vaesen, and Root, giving you a marvelous cross-section of different RPG worlds and play styles to choose from!
There could also be one-shot adventures for Cosmere RPG, Daggerheart, Everyday Heroes, Pirate Borg, Kobold Press, Marvel Multiverse RPG, Pathfinder, Starfinder, and more, offering a sample of adventure, horror, excitement, derring-do, and communal storytelling to try out!
You can visit the Free RPG Day website to find a participating store near you and to check out previews from all the companies taking part in the event.
And make sure to follow the #FreeRPGDay hashtag on Twitter and Bluesky, as lots of companies have discounts and freebies online as well!
Please keep your eyes peeled for this year’s edition of the Level 1 Anthology, offered by 9th Level Games. It’s a collection of new games by up-and-coming and established RPG creators, all centered around a particular theme. Last year’s edition was all about the end of the Wild West. This year’s edition is about Stand Up.
This project is close to my heart because I have a game featured in this year’s collection! (It’s called Pip, Pip, Cheerio: A Game of Last Words and Last Stands and it’s about remaining defiant, sometimes comedically so, in front of a firing squad.)
This event is being held both in-person and online, with four themed puzzles and two themeless/freestyle puzzles to challenge solvers. The list of constructors for this year’s event is quite impressive: Andrea Carla Michaels, Byron Walden, Mark Axel, Rebecca Goldstein, Sarah Sinclair, Sophia Maymudes, Mallory Montgomery, and Zhou Zhang.
The event itself is happening on July 26th in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, and is sure to be a great time.
Man, we’ve got Westwords in June, Boswords in July, Lollapuzzoola in August, and Midwest in October! Tournaments galore!
International Day of Play!
June 11th marks the third annual International Day of Play!
The United Nations, through UNICEF, created International Day of Play in 2024 to raise awareness of how important the act of playing is to the development and well-being of children.
This year’s theme for International Day of Play is “Protect play, protect childhood.”
Play is so important for all of us. It fosters relationship building and cooperation, reinforces friendly competition and concepts of right and wrong, and maintains that childlike love and whimsy that comes with play that so many of us, young and old, must hold onto at all costs in a world that is so often unkind, unfriendly, and unfair.
You can find out more about International Day of Play on UNICEF’s website.
Free RPG Day is coming soon!
Last, but certainly not least, Free RPG Day is Saturday, June 27th.
The concept behind Free RPG Day is simple. All over the world (but mostly in the United States), local game shops, hobby shops, and other outlets team up with RPG publishers to distribute new, fresh, and most importantly, free material for all sorts of different roleplaying games, systems, and settings.
Sometimes they’re quickstart versions of the games to introduce new players. Sometimes they’re exclusive adventures or modules to play either in-store or at home. Othertimes, they’re entirely new games, free of charge.
Not only can you receive a wealth of new ideas and playing options in one fell swoop, but it serves as a terrific way to meet fellow roleplayers and build a community of game enthusiasts.
You can click this helpful link to find local spots near you that are participating in Free RPG Day, and I would highly recommend searching online for local game shops, game cafes, and even community centers like your local public library to see who is participating.
These shops will often be running demonstrations of games, tutorials on how to play, hosting raffles and contests, and offering terrific sale prices to encourage you to find the game that fits you best.
Every year, dozens of companies get involved, not only to encourage the growth of the game world, but to promote their own products. And what better way is there to get people hooked than with free exclusive materials begging to be tried out?
Keep your eyes peeled for this year’s edition of the Level 1 Anthology, offered by 9th Level Games. It’s a collection of new games by up-and-coming and established RPG creators, all centered around a particular theme. Last year’s edition was all about the end of the Wild West. This year’s is about Stand Up.
This project is close to my heart because I had games featured in the previous two years’ Level 1 collections, and I also have a game featured in this year’s collection!
There’s a lot of misinformation out there about the connection between puzzles/games and brain health.
If you’re a puzzle fan, no doubt you’ve seen the onslaught of ads about “brain fitness,” “brain training,” and all sorts of promises about memory help and staving off Alzheimer’s, dementia, and other cognitive conditions.
A casual Google search will turn up dozens of articles online arguing both sides. And so much of the data is inconclusive at best.
But!
There are absolutely benefits to playing puzzles and games in very specific circumstances:
The University of Exeter conducted a study involving more than 19,000 participants that concluded that adults age 50 and older who regularly solve puzzles like crosswords and Sudoku have better brain function than those who do not.
An article from Scientific American discussed how crossword solving engages the episodic buffer, one of the mechanisms related to our working short-term memory, our ability to temporarily hold information while performing cognitive tasks.
Jigsaw puzzle solving can induce a mental state similar to dreaming, one that helps with stress, relaxation, and mood.
Anhedonia is the loss of the ability to enjoy things you would normally find pleasure in. Basically, the goal post of “enjoyable” moves, meaning something you previously enjoyed no longer results in the same good feelings it did.
And when you consider that anhedonia is present in an estimated 70 percent of patients with major depression issues, you can see how devastating anhedonia’s moving goal posts would be for someone already struggling with depression.
So how does this game work as a diagnostic tool?
The game challenges the player to collect the most apples from a series of digital trees. With each round of harvesting, fewer apples fall from the tree, and at some point, a player will move on to the next tree.
That moment, that decision point, is where the researchers are focusing their diagnostic attention:
The researchers asked 120 game players—50 diagnosed with major depression and 70 who were not—to compete to collect the most apples falling from digital trees. Researchers use such foraging tasks because reward-seeking circuitry, especially regarding something that looks like food, has been engrained in the mammalian brain by evolution.
And it turns out that the subjects who were previously diagnosed stopped taking pleasure in the game 50 percent sooner than non-diagnosed players.
While the non-diagnosed players would often stick with a tree until its yield dropped to 5 apples, those diagnosed with depression abandoned one tree for the next while the yield was still 8 or 9 apples.
Yes, like most diagnostic tests, this game will probably prove less effective as knowledge of it grows, but it remains a valuable option for researchers.
Dan Iosifescu, MD, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at NYU Grossman School of Medicine, elaborates on that:
Depression is increasingly thought of as an umbrella term that may include several distinct conditions… Measuring reference points may help us identify a specific subtype of depression linked to anhedonia, clarify its disease-causing brain computations, and tailor treatments.
And we may be able to do this remotely by asking patients, rather than traveling repeatedly for in-person visits, to spend a few minutes per week playing a smartphone game that lets us quickly adjust their treatment.
Greater accessibility of testing is definitely a good thing (although at the moment, the game is not publicly available to try).
Here’s hoping this game and others like it can be used to get specialized help to those who need it.
Do you find certain games and puzzles therapeutic, fellow puzzler? Let us know in the comments section below! We’d love to hear from you.
I know Star Wars Day was a few days ago — check out the Star Wars crossword I constructed for May the Fourth — but while the spirit of that galaxy far, far away is still being celebrated, I want to recommend some Star Wars-infused fun for board game and RPG fans to savor.
Now, there are dozens, possibly hundreds, of Star Wars-themed games. But, as I proved with my history of Godzilla games, it can take a long time for a beloved franchise to get a tabletop game worthy of the subject matter.
Thankfully, there are some choice options out there with Star Wars sauce for your tabletop enjoyment.
Image courtesy of BoardGameGeek.
Star Wars: Asteroid Escape
In this space-based variation on the game Tsuro — one of my all-time favorite board games — you try to navigate your ship through space by laying tiles and following the path as it connects to other tiles. Each player is laying tiles, quickly filling up the board, so you need to grow more and more strategic with your plays as the stack of tiles dwindles.
But with asteroids also roaming the field of play, can you outlast every other ship on the board? This is a terrific mix of Star Wars flavor with everything that makes Tsuro fun and challenging. It might be hard to find, but it will be a welcome addition to your game shelf.
Images courtesy of BoardGameGeek.
Star Wars: Timeline
I love the Timeline games. (I own nearly a dozen of them!) The simple act of trying to place your card in relation to other events on the table is both a great trivia experience and an opportunity to engage in some deduction and logical thinking.
So when I heard about Star Wars versions of Timeline, I happily snapped them up. With editions for both the original trilogy and the prequel trilogy, it will definitely exact a toll on your memory to see if you can precisely place key moments from the movies in the proper order.
Although easier than some of the other editions of Timeline (like their Inventions edition), this is still great fun for Star Wars fans of all ages.
Image courtesy of BoardGameGeek.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars
In this prequel era take on Pandemic, players take on the role of Jedi trying to battle back the onslaught of battle droids across the galaxy. Can you stop the spread of Confederacy forces by saving one world at a time?
While Star Wars versions of Risk and Monopoly are pretty much the same game with Star Wars seasoning, The Clone Wars takes the best of the Pandemic system and feels like it takes it in a fresh direction. This isn’t just another version of Pandemic, this is a very clever marriage of the two that takes the best from both.
Strategy and cooperation is absolutely key in this one, and the cooperative aspect separates it from many of the other games on today’s list.
Image courtesy of BoardGameGeek.
Villainous: The Power of the Dark Side
The Villainous games are amazingly well-designed games. Balancing different mechanics for four different villains as you try to achieve their goals and foil the efforts of the villains played by other players, this Disney franchise continues to expand and never disappoints.
And The Power of the Dark Side, their first Star Wars edition of the game, is one of the best versions of Villainous available today. With five villains to choose from — spanning the original, prequel, and new trilogies, as well as the Clone Wars TV show –there’s truly a villain here for any Star Wars fan.
Can you achieve your villainous dreams, or will the other evildoers at the table outmaneuver you and realize their darkest ambitions?
Embrace your inner scoundrel with this game, where each player strives to complete jobs for their employers, collect bounties, smuggle cargo… you know, your usual day-to-day shenanigans in the Star Wars universe.
This game sorta gives you the roleplaying experience in a one-session microcosm. You’ll make your character, make your choices, upgrade your gear and your ship, and make some money, all while dealing with shady and dangerous folks. It’s a whole narrative arc crammed into a single sitting.
While Outer Rim is a personal journey, Rebellion is Star Wars on a galactic scale. This is full-blown war between the Rebellion and the Empire, where one side has a Death Star to build and an insurrection to crush, while the other builds alliances, plays cat-and-mouse with the Empire, and plots to destroy the Empire’s greatest weapon.
I’ve only played this game a few times — it’s expensive, a bit overwhelming, and takes a while to get good at — but it’s been a blast every time.
The tabletop scene for Star Wars sure is stacked, but there are plenty of terrific immersive options out there as well for roleplaying fans looking to explore the universe of Star Wars.
And while officially licensed games are great (I’ll be mentioning one below), sometimes the best stories are told in the shadows by companies that understand the spirit of that franchise, but can’t afford all the bells and whistles.
This game manages to feel like an epic battle across the stars AND a session of playing with your favorite action figures all at the same time. It’s childhood wonder and all the heroic action we wish we could undertake as adults.
Will you stop Baron Deathray and his Killtroopers with a handful of dice and a lot of gumption? Only one way to find out.
Scum and Villainy
If you really like the Han Solo-esque scrappy smuggler making his way through the universe sorta thing, Evil Hat Productions have you covered with Scum and Villainy.
While the Evil Galactic Hegemony is ever-present, this game is more about criminal dealings, clever negotiation, devious schemes, and profiteering adventure. It feels like the day-to-day trials and tribulations of a struggling spaceship crew.
I love the focus in Scum and Villainy on the roleplay aspect of RPGs. So much of the game is about character and the worlds you visit, and not as much about swinging lightsabers and dodging turbolasers.
As you can see, there are many different ways to play a Star Wars game. It can be a war game, an exploration game, a scheming game, a storytelling game… sometimes all of them at once. And Fantasy Flight Games brings a seriously impressive narrative tool to the table with their Star Wars Roleplaying Game.
Like most RPGs, you pick a class and build your stats and roll dice to determine the outcome of your choices. But unlike many RPGs where the number you roll declares your action a success or a failure, the narrative dice of Star Wars FFG offer a much more exciting and engaging answer.
It’s not just a binary option, you succeed or you fail. With narrative dice, you can have additional complications, both positive and negative.
You could fail, but with some unexpected advantage: You missed a swing of your lightsaber, but you cut through the awning supports and blinded your foe for a round.
You could succeed, but with some negative consequence: You might have caught the bad guy with your blaster, but you also shot the engines of your ship, and now they need repairs.
Your actions tell a story that goes well beyond yes and no. And in a world where scoundrels often make mistakes while trying to do good, it’s a more interesting, more immersive journey every time, and it truly brings those adventurous moments to life.
Whether you’re a scoundrel on the Edge of the Empire, a hero during the Age of Rebellion, or someone caught between the Light Side and the Dark Side in Force and Destiny, they’ve got a place for you to tell your story.
Did your favorite Star Wars game or RPG get mentioned? Or are you miffed I left out Star Wars Trivial Pursuit and its bweepy little R2-D2 dice roller?
Let me know in the comments section below! I’d love to hear from you.
