Tag Archives: Holiday Gift Guide

5 Questions with James Ernest of Cheapass Games

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Welcome to another edition of PuzzleNation Blog’s interview feature, 5 Questions!

We’re reaching out to puzzle constructors, video game writers and designers, writers, filmmakers, and puzzle enthusiasts from all walks of life, talking to people who make puzzles and people who enjoy them in the hopes of exploring the puzzle community as a whole.

And I’m overjoyed to have James Ernest as our latest 5 Questions interviewee!

James Ernest represents Cheapass Games, a company with a brilliantly simple rationale: they know you have board games at home, so why jack up the price of their games by making you buy more dice, chips, or tokens? Their games contain exactly what you need to play the game, and describe precisely what you’ll need to scrounge up from other games in order to play.

As president and game designer, James is instrumental not only in maintaining the Cheapass Games legacy of great games for a fair price, but he’s also adept at utilizing Kickstarter campaigns and social media to communicate directly with the devoted board game and card game audience. In doing so, he’s helped introduce numerous hilarious and innovative games to the market, including:

  • Unexploded Cow: a card game where you try to rid the world of mad cows and unexploded ordnance.
  • U.S. Patent Number One: a game where you and your opponents build time machines and race back in time to register for the very first patent. [Glenn’s note: Currently out of print, but one of my all-time favorite board games.]
  • Veritas: a Risk-like strategy game where you try to become the predominant Truth in Dark Ages France while monasteries burn down around you. (Check out our full product review here!)

James was gracious enough to take some time out to talk to us, so without further ado, let’s get to the interview!

5 Questions for James Ernest

1.) For nearly two decades now, the Cheapass Games brand has been synonymous with affordable games with tongue-in-cheek humor and high replay value. How do you know when a game is right for your brand? What role do you play in bringing these games to market?

I’m the designer as well as the publisher for Cheapass Games, so I play nearly all the roles. I try to create products that fit into that format. When I make something that doesn’t fit the format, I often look for other ways to bring it to market, such as finding another publisher, or using a separate imprint under Cheapass Games.

For a while I used “James Ernest Games” as an imprint for my higher-priced games, though I currently release everything as Cheapass. I also used the “Hip Pocket” brand for smaller, more abstract games, and that one will be coming back next year.

2.) Many of the games in your library rely on a combination of strategy and step-by-step chain thinking, both skills most puzzle enthusiasts have in spades. Are you a puzzle fan? And what about that style of gameplay appeals to you?

The challenge in creating a strategy game is to make a puzzle with variety, so it can be replayed without getting dull. Part of that variety comes from rules that can give rise to meaningfully different game paths, and part of it comes from the interaction of players with different strategies.

As you’ve mentioned, I also like games to have stories, and that works in a similar way: the story has to be open-ended enough that it can proceed differently each time. The game is more like an environment where the players tell their own stories, rather than a way to tell a linear story. This is obvious for RPGs [roleplaying games] but I think it’s true for other games as well.

3.) You’ve created games of your own as well as helping others bring their games to life. What puzzles and board games, either in gameplay or in the experience of producing them for sale, have most influenced you?

I learned a lot about game construction from playing and working on Magic: the Gathering. A lot of my games have decks of different card types, balanced to produce the right mix of hands, based on my experience doing deck construction in Magic.

I also draw a lot of my approach to games from Pitch, which is a cutthroat trick-taking game. In a nutshell, you can choose different strategies in that game, either to play conservatively and win slowly, or to take risks and have the potential to win quickly or move backwards. Neither of those strategies is dominant and that makes the game good. Of course I also play a lot of poker, which contains similar choices.

4.) What’s next for James Ernest?

My next project is Pairs, a “New Classic Pub Game,” which I will be Kickstarting in February. After that, I have a couple of older Cheapass Games that I want to bring back into print. And I’m working on a new tabletop miniatures game called Cagway Bay, which is pirate-themed and diceless. I have a number of new game projects as well, but right now I’m not announcing any of them because I can’t be sure when they will be ready.

5.) If you could give the readers, writers, aspiring game designers, and puzzle fans in the audience one piece of advice, what would it be?

If you want to create things, there is no substitute for practice. Don’t just read about games; don’t just play them. You have to make a lot of games.

Many thanks to James for his time. You can check out the latest news from Cheapass Games on their website — including their upcoming Kickstarter campaign for the game Pairs! — or follow James on Twitter (@cheapassjames). I cannot wait to see what he and the great folks at Cheapass Games come up with next.

Thanks for visiting the PuzzleNation blog today! You can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, cruise our boards on Pinterest, check out our Tumblr, download our puzzle iBooks and apps, play our games at PuzzleNation.com, or contact us here at the blog!

PuzzleNation Product Review: Pink Hijinks, Chrononauts, and Fluxx: The Board Game

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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.

They offered us the opportunity to try out three of their games for the Holiday Puzzly Gift Guide, each with its own unique flavor and playing style, and we put them to the full PuzzleNation Blog test.

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The set-up for Pink Hijinks seems simple enough. Three stacks of pink pyramids (small on top of medium on top of large, like a little tree) occupy the middle row of a 3×3 grid.

Based on the roll of the die, you and your opponent maneuver your pieces with one of two goals in mind: either trying to either fill your home row with all three pyramids of a given size, or pushing all nine pyramids into your opponent’s row.

It’s a miniature chess game, allowing for offensive and defensive strategies. After a few rounds, we started improvising new rules and different gameplay styles, and discovered how much fun you could have with nine little pink pyramids. Pretty good for a game that fits in your pocket.

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Pink Hijinks is part of Looney Labs’ multi-colored Looney Pyramids series, an ever-expanding line of puzzle games built around their signature pyramid game pieces. Not only can you buy individual games, but the company is constantly releasing new variations on their games through their website, allowing players to combine pieces from multiple Looney Pyramids products and play brand-new games. (They’ve even compiled a listing of fan-designed games using Looney Pyramids!)

As far as I can tell, the Looney Pyramids series has the loftiest of goals: to offer as many unique playing experiences as a deck of cards, arguably the most adaptable tool in a gamester’s arsenal. And based on their lineup thus far, Looney Labs is well on their way toward reaching that goal.

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Time travel isn’t easy. If it was, everyone would do it. And Looney Labs takes that idea to the next level with Chrononauts, a card game where multiple time travelers are manipulating history, capturing artifacts, and racing to return to their own time with their missions complete.

Chrononauts is all about the cards. You’ve got mission cards, ID cards, timeline cards that make up the playing space, artifact cards, cards that change history (and others that change it back), as well as cards that can help or hinder your fellow time travelers.

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The history-changing aspect is the most puzzly part of the game, as you determine what moments to change (and which to protect from your opponents) in order for your timeline to come to pass, but ensuring you don’t accidentally end the game by creating too many temporal paradoxes. The designers did an impressive job figuring out how major points in history were interconnecting, and watching the effect ripple down through the cards after making a bold history-altering move is arguably the best part of the game.

My one caveat regarding Chrononauts is that the game goes far too quickly with only two players. It’s a game designed around consequences, and the more consequences that are out of your hands, the more engaging and challenging the game becomes. I’d recommend you always recruit as many players as possible to make the gameplay last.

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There are certain things you take for granted when playing a board game. You pick your game piece, and that’s yours for the duration of the game. You draw a given number of cards per turn. The board itself is static, so you can strategize.

But in Fluxx: The Board Game (titled to distinguish it from Fluxx: The Card Game), all of these givens are up for grabs, making for easily the most gleefully chaotic board game experience I’ve ever had. The board is made up of nine individual tiles, which can be shifted or rotated by your fellow players. The rules can be changed, affecting the number of spaces you move per round, how many cards you can hold, and even how many goals you must achieve before the game is over.

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[A simple punch card helps players keep track of the ever-shifting rules.]

It’s mind-melting fun, a game that demands constant awareness and a strong ability to think on your feet, since the rules can change in an instant. (One game, a card was played that made the players switch game pieces, so I went from little blue men to little green circles, and the swerve threw me off for at least two rounds.)

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Fluxx is the perfect example of the Looney Labs creative model: high replay value through wildly interactive, adaptable game play. Every game of Fluxx is different, not only because the rules are so malleable, but because with multiple games under your belt, you and your opponents become craftier, more adeptly manipulating the board and the rules to your advantage. It’s a great time.

I think puzzle fans and board game fans alike will find quite a bit to enjoy with the games from Looney Labs. So if you’ve got some Christmas cash burning a hole in your pocket, check them out!

Thanks for visiting the PuzzleNation blog today! You can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, cruise our boards on Pinterest, check out our Tumblr, download our Classic Word Search iBook (recently featured by Apple in the Made for iBooks category!), play our games at PuzzleNation.com, or contact us here at the blog!

The greatest gift exchange there never was…

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It’s Christmas Eve, so hopefully you’ve perused our Holiday Puzzly Gift Guide and completed all your shopping in a timely and not-at-stress-inducing, hair-tearing-out manner.

But if not, fear not! Some of the puzzliest and cleverest people in the artistic, board game, and puzzle communities may have just come up with the perfect last-minute solution for you.

You’re probably familiar with the concept of the White Elephant gift exchange, wherein everyone supplies a gift, and then a game of keeping or swapping takes over, allowing people to take turns, develop friendly little rivalries, and generally enjoy a bit of holiday frivolity.

But have you ever heard of a White Heffalump exchange?

This year, numerous game designers, artists, and puzzlers were recruited to participate in a White Elephant gift exchange. But this exchange had a marvelous twist: every gift was imaginary.

So everyone involved — including such names as James Ernest (head of Cheapass Games, publishers of Veritas), John Kovalic (artist for Munchkin and creator of ROFL!) and puzzler constructions Eric Berlin and Brendan Emmett Quigley — created an imaginary gift for the exchange.

And then they all played the game on Twitter, so fans and friends could enjoy the madcap holiday cheer.

Here are a few of the “gifts” created for the White Heffalump gift exchange:

It’s easy to imagine a trip with The Doctor would be a highly sought-after prize.

What’s more heartwarming than retroactively sharing a friendship since first grade? (And possibly an iron-clad alibi, should you need one…)

It’s like one of those grab-the-money booths from an old game show, but with SWEETS!

A formidable steed and a delicious meal all in one. You can’t lose!

And the wily Matt Forbeck offered up the ideal machine for generating presents for next year’s White Heffalump exchange.

From “time to play with toys” and a dapper platypus to a 29-word crossword and a wish-granting pocket pet, the gifts were hilarious, innovative, and absolutely ridiculous, and the gameplay back and forth as people traded and stole gifts was just as entertaining.

[For more details on the exchange, check out Matt Forbeck’s write-up here.]

So, if you’re still struggling with gift ideas, you can always go the White Heffalump route. It’s creative, low-budget, and loads of fun. Enjoy!

Thanks for visiting the PuzzleNation blog today! You can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, cruise our boards on Pinterest, check out our Tumblr, download our Classic Word Search iBook (recently featured by Apple in the Made for iBooks category!), play our games at PuzzleNation.com, or contact us here at the blog!

PuzzleNation Product Reviews: The Stars Are Right and Castellan

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Steve Jackson Games is a recognized and well-regarded name in both the roleplaying and board game communities. With a tradition of creating games that offer engaging and curious twists on well-worn puzzle and game templates, you never quite know what you’re getting yourself into when you pick up one of their products.

They offered us the opportunity to try out two of their games for the Holiday Puzzly Gift Guide, each with its own unique flavor and playing style, and we put them to the full PuzzleNation Blog test.

The Stars Are Right is a multiplayer card game where you rearrange the stars in the sky in order to summon minions and gather enough power to summon an elder god and destroy the world. It’s perfect for Christmas! =)

Seriously, though, this game is an effective fusion of several types of strategy and puzzle games. You have a simplified Magic: The Gathering-style card game with the different minions you can summon, as well as a wonderfully illustrated variant on a sliding tile puzzle in the 5×5 sky tiles laid out between the players.

Each card grants you a different opportunity to manipulate the sky (by flipping tiles over, swapping them, or shifting an entire row) and create new constellations. The more complicated the constellation, the more powerful the creature you summon, and the more points you get.

This sort of chain-solving and forward thinking becomes both more challenging and more enjoyable as you compete with other players and race toward your 10-point goal and victory. It’s as exciting to see someone change the sky to your advantage as it is frustrating to see your hard work foiled by an opportunistic move.

The artistic style of The Stars Are Right is thoroughly weird, channeling the works of H.P. Lovecraft and offering up all sorts of gross and bizarre creatures, which is juxtaposed nicely by the effective (and quite lovely) style of the sky tiles. It creates a curious separation between down-and-dirty (the card game aspect) vs. high-and-lofty (the elegant tile-puzzle aspect) that’s quite enjoyable.

All in all, The Stars Are Right is not only a strong introduction into more complicated card games, but a thoroughly fun puzzle game.

Which brings us to today’s second product review!

Castellan is a two-player puzzle-game where players both compete and collaborate to build an elaborate castle.

Every time a player completes a courtyard — walling it off completely from the rest of the game board — that courtyard is claimed, and the player is awarded points based on the number of towers framing the courtyard. The players have two small decks of cards that determine what pieces — towers, short walls, and long walls — they can play on their next turn, and once the cards are exhausted and every piece has been played, the player with the higher number of points wins, claiming the castle.

One of the most intuitive puzzle-games I’ve played in a long time, Castellan requires only a quick skim of the simple instructions before playing, making it a great introductory puzzle game for first-timers. And the molded plastic pieces add a wonderful tactile dimension to the playing experience. What kid, young or old, doesn’t want to build a castle?

But since the level of strategy and complexity is dictated by the players, this is hardly a game for kids alone. Puzzlers will find their spacial reasoning challenged as they assemble courtyards in their heads and try to determine which cards to play. Tactics and forward planning play a huge role in the gameplay, as you try to seize opportunities left by your opponent, claim courtyards, and use up your remaining pieces in ways that help you but won’t leave openings for your opponent to take advantage of.

And, quite honestly, it’s just fun to watch the board sprawl out as more and more pieces are added.

Castellan is appropriate for practically all ages (while The Stars Are Right’s monster art and general sensibilities could prove offputting to younger players or more traditional puzzle-gamers), but both bring something new to the table in terms of strategy, interactive gameplay, and puzzly challenges.

Thanks for visiting the PuzzleNation blog today! You can like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, cruise our boards on Pinterest, check out our Classic Word Search iBook (recently featured by Apple in the Made for iBooks category!), play our games at PuzzleNation.com, or contact us here at the blog!

Happy Thanksgiving, puzzlers and PuzzleNationers!

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To celebrate this most festive and familial of days, we couldn’t help but cook up a little puzzle for you and yours today. Please enjoy this Thanksgiving puzzle, and have a safe and happy holiday!

Five Houses, One Big Meal

This Thanksgiving, five families (the Corbins, the Johnsons, the McDashes, the Whittons, and the Edgertons) agreed to each bring one part of Thanksgiving dinner to five other households in the neighborhood. The options were Turkey, Stuffing, Sweet potato, Turnip, and Rolls.

Each family dropped off a different food at each house at a different time (9 AM, 10 AM, 11 AM, Noon, and 1 PM). No two families gave the same food to the same house, or showed up to the same house at the same time.

The table below displays each family’s name, each household they visited, what food they dropped off, and what time they dropped off the food. Some of the boxes have been filled in already. Can you complete the chart and figure out what time each family dropped off each food?

Thanks for visiting the PuzzleNation blog today! And say, why not save yourself the hassle of Black Friday madness by checking out our Holiday Puzzly Gift Guide?

PuzzleNation Holiday Puzzly Gift Guide!

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Happy Holidays and welcome to the PuzzleNation Blog Holiday Puzzly Gift Guide!

We’ve got three different versions of the Gift Guide for your perusal, each of them chock full of all sorts of puzzly goodness and designed to make your puzzle shopping as easy as possible!

You can view the products in the Gift Guide by category, by age group, or randomized in a grab bag format!

So, if you’d like to view products by category (puzzle games, board games, puzzle books, etc.), click the wreath!

If you’d like to view products by age group, click the penguin!

And if you’ve got a puzzle lover on your list and you’re not sure what to get them, you can scroll through a wonderful mixed bag of products by clicking the crossword tree!

A lot of terrific companies and puzzle constructors are taking part in our gift guide this year, and we’re sure you’ll find something for every puzzle lover on your list this year! Happy browsing and happy puzzling to you and yours!