Games: Super Collapse 3

I downloaded this game at the same time as Peggle Nights (both were already paid for), but waited, as usual, for an opportune time before installing it. We had company (friends of my husband) downstairs where Al and I usually play together, so I agreed to install a new game.

Super Collapse 3 is a “match 3″ game, which I just learned is a type of game that goes back some two thousand years. After the fall of Rome, the idea of the game (no ancient gameboards survived) was preserved in medieval monasteries. Professors from England brought the game to America when they went to teach at Harvard. The games became very popular in America for the next two centuries. There was a popular match-3 game show in the 1950’s, but it was quickly cancelled after evidence surfaced that the producers had “fixed” the game.

I suppose there were so many inexpensive games available in the next few decades that match-3 games lost their popularity. I certainly don’t remember playing any, or even being aware of their existence, until Al started playing them on the computer. They’re relatively easy to create and easy to play.

Some of the match-3 games I have played previously (and reviewed here) are Luxor, Newton’s Nightmare, Ultra Block, and Mr. Peanut Matchup. Of these Super Collapse 3 is closest to Ultra Block, but unlike Ultra Block it has very “modes” of play. Classic mode is very similar to Ultra Block, though it differs in one helpful way: when there are no available moves the game speeds up (temporarily), so you not only don’t have to wait as long to make the next move, but you always know whether there is or isn’t a move available.

Games: Peggle Nights

WARNING! WARNING! This game is addictive. If you continue reading, and are persuaded to get the game and play it, I am not responsible for how much time you spend playing it.

I always wanted to play pinball. But the real pinball machines, on the rare occasions I actually saw one, cost money to play. I liked trying even the little plastic toys that were sort of like pinball, but they didn’t have flashing lights and bells and free balls. And when I did get to try something with flippers at the bottom, I didn’t do well enough to give me any confidence that putting money in a pinball machine would be worth my while.

Fast forward a few decades. This spring, when Al had to have a root canal, we promised him a computer game if he could sit calmly through it. (He was quite worried, and he also gags easily when someone pokes around in his mouth – he had thrown up on the previous visit when they tried to take an X-ray.) He did amazingly well, and when the computer game he requested required making a commitment to purchase two more games in the future, I agreed.

But then we didn’t find any more games he wanted, even when his birthday came around. So I finally started looking through the games to see if there were any that I thought looked good. For him, that is – they were all kids games, mostly peopled by TV cartoon characters.

Of course, sometimes he and I do end up liking the same games, like Bookworm Adventure. When I read the description of Peggle Nights, I thought I might just like it myself. (Besides, it’s by Pop Cap Games, same as Bookworm Adventure.) I downloaded it without telling him about it, so that I could surprise him with it at an appropriate time. And when another game he wanted to play yesterday (free, online) turned out to require two email addresses (his, plus mine as a parent), rather than get him an email address I decided to install Peggle Nights.

It’s not exactly a pinball game – only one stage has actually had flippers (shaped like lobster claws, since the hero for that stage was a giant lobster). But it is about hitting pegs with a ball, and the ball bouncing from peg to peg, or bouncing off various obstacles, and getting points for what you hit. You want to hit all the orange pegs, but most of the pegs are blue. You get points for them too, but you want to hit them mostly to get them out of the way.

Games: Cranium Family Fun Game and Rack-O

Al asked for a Family Night, and the holiday tomorrow allowed for staying up late this evening playing games. So we gathered around the game table downstairs, and we picked out Cranium Family Fun Game as one mostly likely to work well for all ages and provide lots of fun and laughs.

Like most of Cranium’s games, this one has a number of different kinds of activities. Depending what color you land on, you pick out a card from one of four decks: Creative Cat, Word Worm, Data Head, or Star Performer. We quickly agreed that Data Head was the easiest category, generally depending more on knowledge than ability. Recognizing common objects from photos showing just a small detail is probably the hardest in that category, while the true/false questions and multiple choice were usually easy for all of us.

Word Worm is my favorite category, as I really like words. Spelling words backwards is not very challenging for any of us, but finding six words starting with six different letters (roll the letter dice to get your letters) in six specified categories can be quite a challenge. So much so, in fact, that we never managed before time was up.

Creative Cat and Star Performer require more ability and creativity, and generally are where the laughs come in. How do you pantomime playing musical chairs, or doing instant messaging? My husband had somewhat more luck acting out being a race car driver, and later being a waitress (the latter was quite memorable and will probably continue to generate laughter whenever we remember it).

I had to crab walk around the room with a plastic frog on my belly. There was some question as to whether the frog was still on my belly, as it slid down near my hip, but as I made it around the room, panting with the effort, my husband decided I had accomplished it. On other rounds, we raced around the house collecting items, such as something made only of cotton (a T-shirt), or something with batteries (a remote control). Kyra helped with this category, providing both something alive, and something for a dog to fetch.

Games: The Alien Game

Have you ever played a game and thought the rules didn’t make much sense, or that the premise of the game was weak, and that you could probably come up with a better idea yourself? If so, I can tell you that coming up with a game that works well when you try to play it is not an easy thing.

Al is learning that also. Together we’ve been working on The Alien Game, borrowing ideas from Clue and Where in the U.S. Is Carmen Sandiego?, as well as, of course, his very fertile imagination. It started because he wanted a new game to play, and my stash of games (I pick up inexpensive games when I find them at yard sales, thrift stores, or dollar stores, and save them in my closet until an occasion comes when I think it’s time to bring one out) was depleted.

It’s not that we don’t have games in the house. We have at least four shelves of games downstairs, ranging from little kids games like Candyland to strategy games, party games, and a variety of card games. But Al has outgrown some of the simpler games, and is not ready yet for some of the more advanced ones. Having neither extra money nor a good idea what to get, I suggested making our own game.

I didn’t have anything particular in mind – perhaps some kind of card game where we designed our own cards. Or a simple board game where we tried to get from start to finish, encountering a few obstacles on the way. But Al tackled the project with enthusiasm and much grander aspirations. This game, he decided, would be a space adventure version of Clue, modified so that it would only require two players.

Games: Cornhole

I’ve played this game a few times before, but until today I never knew what it was called. Actually it has several names, but I’ve no idea which - if any of them – were used by people I played with previously. I don’t remember seeing it until a few years ago, and now it seems to be everywhere (well, at least in eastern Iowa), but I don’t know if that’s because it has suddenly become more popular, or because I moved into corn-growing country.

It’s sometimes called Bean Bag or Bean Toss, but the bags aren’t filled with beans, they’re filled with feed corn. They’re tossed at a wooden platform thirty feet away, with the goal being to get the bag into the hole in the platform. A bag in the hole counts three points, one that just lands on the platform counts one point. Points accumulate slowly, though, between well-matched players, because within each round, each player’s points cancel out an equal number of the opponent’s points. So if I score six and you score seven, you net a total of one point for the round.

I hardly ever score six, though. That would mean either two bags in the hole, or one in the hole and the other three (four bags are thrown by each player/team each round) on the platform. Mostly my bags fall off the back or the side of the platform – if they don’t miss altogether.

But it’s a game I can play, because it doesn’t require much in the way of physical coordination. And watching other people play, I can see that my skill (or lack of it) is pretty typical. I think that’s why the game is so popular, because anyone can play it. As the American Cornhole Association website points out

Horseshoes require a sand pit and are hard for the kids to pitch, lawn darts require a lawn and hasn’t been seen since the 70’s, ring toss was made for children and bean bags are for wimps; Cornhole is the game for everyone!

I just finished playing – and losing – in a tournament here at work. The department Fellowship Committee (of which I am a member) has been scheduling lunchtime tournaments about every other month this year, to help people get to know and enjoy doing things with their co-workers. The first three were Wii tournaments, and I didn’t even try. (I was going to try Mario Kart racing, but I watched someone practicing, and just from watching the screen as the track twisted and turned so quickly, my head and stomach informed me that this would not be a good idea.)

At one meeting I suggested some low tech games, like we used to play on Friday Fun afternoons in Michigan. And so the Baggo tournament came about. I hadn’t heard the name Baggo before either; it turns out it’s one company’s version of cornhole, replacing the wooden platform with a plastic one which causes the bags to slide a lot more (the platform slopes down towards the person tossing the bag). Two of the three sets of platforms being used here are wooden, and the third one sure doen’t look like an official Baggo set, but I guess that’s the name that people know the game by around here.

The teams were definitely not evenly matched. Unlike the Wii tournaments, which had qualifying rounds, this one seems to have set up partners and matched teams arbitrarily. One of our opponents clearly is an excellent player. But I didn’t let him skunk us (11 to 0) on the second game; somehow I managed, for three rounds in a row, to outscore him. In the end he and his partner won, 21 to 8, making them the winner of the match.

But my partner and I have another chance next Wednesday, when we face another team that lost today (though not by as much as we did). And I might have to be on the lookout for an inexpensive cornhole set, so I can practice in my back yard.

Games: Bing-Oh! Travel

I bought an inexpensive Bingo game for my son Al when he was in kindergarten, partly to have another game (besides Candyland and Snakes and Ladders) that he could understand. Mostly I bought it to motivate him to learn his numbers, which it may or may not have helped with.

The main problem we encountered (besides his wanting to get Bingo on the master card that shows all numbers called) was that it used a spinner to select the numbers. A spinner with sixty numbers means very tiny wedges for each number, and often the spinner lands on the line in between. Or it lands on a number previously called (which can’t happen with the more expensive “cage” type Bingo).

The other problem with traditional Bingo, even the “cage” style, is that there’s nothing much to do except wait for numbers to be called. Pure luck, and lots of waiting. (Have I mentioned that Al has a short attention span?) So when I saw Bing-Oh! Travel in the store, I decided it would be a great alternative.

It’s somewhat like traditional Bingo. You have a card with letters across the top, and numbers, and you have to place chips on the squares that are called, and you need to get a line of chips filled horizontally or vertically or diagonally. But Growing Tree Toys has added in some interesting twists to the familiar game.

Games: Farkle

This game is on facebook, so if you don’t have a facebook account … well, there’s another reason to get one. (I also just got a message from someone I went to elementary school with, who remembers my mother as “a nice woman” – I always appreciate hearing from people with positive memories of her.)

Farkle is a dice game, somewhat like Yahtzee in that you try to get three of a kind or other combinations. There are six dice instead of five, and ones and fives can get points even by themselves. Mostly you score by getting three of a kind, ones, and fives, but you can also get points for three pairs, or for a sequence of all six numbers. That last combination is of course the hardest to get and worth the most points. I’ve had three pairs two times now, but not one through six.

What’s different is that when you set aside one or more dice and re-roll the remaining dice, you don’t get to add them to what you already rolled, only to the points those other dice give. So saving two 5’s from the first roll gives you 100 points, fifty for each 5, and a third 5 on the second roll gives another fifty points, but it doesn’t count as three of a kind (which would be 500 points). So the only way to get the three pairs or the sequence one to six is on a single roll.

The other thing is that if you don’t get any dice that score when you roll, you “farkle” – which means you get zero points and the roll is over, even if you had scoring dice set aside before you re-rolled. This means that when you have dice that score, you have to decide whether to take the points you have, or risk losing them by re-rolling to try to get more points. Three farkles in a row, and you actually lose points. Ouch!

I’m not sure whether I’ll enjoy this enough to keep playing it the way I do Yahtzee. (I have an electronic Yahtzee that I like to play at bedtime – the intense focus on a video game screen helps me get sleepy.) But for now I’m having fun with it.

Games: In a Pickle

I went garage saling yesterday. I have fun just looking, but with my 9-year-old son with me, I knew I’d need to find at least one fun thing for him. He was quite disappointed with the first few sales, as they just had boring stuff like clothes and housewares and knickknacks. But in the end we came home with a wooden heart-shaped box with a trick lid, a Scene-It Jr. DVD, a very large teddy bear, and the card game In a Pickle. (Also two baseball hats for my husband.)

I’ve probably seen it in stores, and didn’t buy it because it’s for ages 10 and up. (The woman selling it explained that it had been a gift to her son, but as he’s only five years old, they decided not to hold onto it until he was old enough to enjoy it.) But with his tenth birthday coming in just over two months, and the game being sold for a fraction of what I would pay in the store, I decided to buy it without having much of any idea what the game was about.

Well, it’s all about what fits in something else. Each card has a noun on it, and in order to play a card, the noun on it has to fit inside the noun on the other card, or the other card has to fit in it. And they not only have to fit, there has to be some reasonable explanation for one being in the other (it can be creative, but it has to make some kind of sense). Plus, to win a set of cards, there has to be a sequence of at least four cards, so you don’t want to put something small in something really big, because you might not be able to find anything bigger to fit it in.

The fun part is trying to come up with creative ways to use cards when what you’ve been dealt doesn’t seem to fit with anything that’s been played so far. Can I put a bank in a tunnel? Can I think of some reason there would be a haystack in a hospital? How about in the jungle? I really wouldn’t want to put a book in a bathtub, would I? Oh, but it could be one of those plastic baby books. And then there could be a balloon in the book.

English being as flexible as it is, some words can be very big or very small. For instance, we had a diamond in a pocket (most likely on a ring, but I suppose someone could put a loose diamond in a pocket). On the other hand, I could have (if I had the right cards) put the pocket in a pair of pants (worn by someone) in a baseball diamond. Or maybe the baseball diamond was in someone’s pocket, because it was on a baseball card. (Players have to decide before they play whether to allow “on” as well as “in” relationships.)

I suspect this is a game I’ll enjoy even more than my son will. But I hope to get him to play it with me from time to time.

Games: Mr. Peanut Matchup

My brain and my body are both operating in low gear (I stayed home sick with a head cold), so I looked for something not too challenging to entertain myself before bedtime. Another of the spyware-free websites our computer seller recommended was planters.com, so I checked it out. And Mr. Peanut Matchup looked like about my speed tonight.

It’s different from most of the other match-three games I’ve played, in that you can’t move just a single tile, but rather a whole row or column. And you can only move it if it will match three (or more). So I spent a lot of the first game trying to move tiles that wouldn’t move. But I’m starting to get the hang of it.

I haven’t figured out yet whether or how much there’s room for strategy. Moving one row or column changes the position of other possible matches, whether positively or negatively. I  haven’t gotten to the point I can look ahead and figure out what else I’m going to be able to do next – I’m just trying to make all the matches I can before I run out of time.

Of course, being on a snack vendor’s website, the game does look very appetizing. The peanuts, not so much, but the cashews and pecans look delicious. (I’m not sure what the basketballs are doing there.) I haven’t much of an appetite right now, but when I’m feeling better a handful of nuts would suit me just fine. And I have to admit, Planters’ low salt varieties appeal to me more than the more salty store brands. (I don’t have to avoid salt – if anything I tend to have low blood pressure – but I just don’t like the saltier snacks.)

Games: Crazy Old Fish War

Finding a game that both my 9-year-old son and I can enjoy playing together is a challenge. First, it needs to be a game he likes, otherwise there is no point in playing at all. Preferably I find it at least somewhat enjoyable, or I will be reluctant to agree to play. (We do still occasionally play Candy Land and Snakes and Ladders, but the focus generally shifts from the game itself to the conversation between him and whatever character he has me pretending to be.)

The matter of skill level is a difficult one. The ones that require knowledge or skill or generally more interesting, but they make it difficult for him to win without me deliberately letting him. (I do usually ignore opportunities to take advantage of mistakes he has made, but I don’t deliberately make mistakes myself – though I do sometimes manage to make mistakes by not paying close attention.) If he doesn’t win close to half the time, he won’t want to play.

I tried getting the Young Players Edition of Trivial Pursuit to deal with this problem, and it is partially successful. The questions are still a challenge for him, but if I answer questions from the Genus edition, I have only a small advantage over him. We tried having me use the Baby Boomers Edition, and I will play it again if he asks me to, but I found most of the questions nearly impossible. For one thing, I was born at the very end of the Baby Boom (or past it, depending on whose definition you use). Plus it seems to assume that Baby Boomers’ interests center around entertainment, which is my weakest category (along with sports and leisure) in the Genus edition.

Then there is the matter of time. Sometimes I just don’t have the time to play a long game, and other times I do have time but would rather keep some of it for myself (such as now, when I have a cold). His attention span is also limited, though it has grown in the last couple years so that now we actually do finish games more often than not. But it is not uncommon for him to abandon a game in the middle (regardless of who is ahead) when someone else is doing something more exciting (e.g. playing a new PS3 game), or just because he lost interest.

Finally, there is the question of where to play. All horizontal surfaces in our house attract stuff, the way picnics attract bees, ants, and flies. I clear off enough space to play, but it takes very little time before it is cluttered again. (I could spend more time keeping things put away, but then I would have even less time to spend playing with him or having any time to myself. Probably not a very good excuse, but over the years that’s the choice I’ve made.) Most of our games are board games, and besides the board itself there may be stacks of cards, the “bank” (as in Monopoly and Life), score sheets, etc., requiring a fairly large playing surface.

Yesterday I found a game that seems to address all of these issues quite nicely. Just the name itself is intriguing. Crazy Old Fish War is, as you might guess, a card game that combines elements of Crazy 8’s, Old Maid, Go Fish, and War. The deck is made up of numbered cards (one to eleven) in five bright colors (except the eights, which are multi-colored), plus three “old mermaids” (they don’t look very old at all, really).