Family

Featuring high quality components and a simple but fun concept for a party game, “Snorta!” is a good game but better for larger groups.

Dixit is widely recognized as one of the best games to have come out in the last couple of years. Dixit Jinx is probably not as good as the original game, but it is still a very solid game.

A while ago I played a game called Wits and Wagers. Although not being a particularly deep game, Wits and Wagers was a lot of fun. Guesstimation tries to follow in the footsteps of Wits and Wagers. Unfortunately it fails to stand out in any way and in many ways is inferior to Wits and Wagers.

Despite being a roll-and-move game, Big Foot towers over most of its competition in the genre and is quite a bit of fun for families.

Pressman Toys’ “Silly Soup” is a fun family game but mostly just as an appetizer game you’ll play for 15 to 30 minutes every so often.

In 1987 Parker Brothers created a game called Instant Replay. In the game players create designs using up to eight tiles that the other players try to re-create as quickly as possible. While the idea had some potential, the game fails to be anything more than a short distraction.

Bejeweled is based on the popular PC game of the same name. If you just looked at the box, the game looks like a cheap cash grab. As it turns out Bejeweled the board game is surprisingly good.

Mattel/International Games Inc decided in 1986 to branch out the UNO franchise by creating the game UNO Dominos. Combining the card play from UNO with the tile placement of Dominos they tried to combine two classic games. Unfortunately the combination leads to a game that is too easy to provide any really strategy or challenge to the players.

Before Jenga hit the markets in 1983, the Ideal Corporation made their own tower building game. In 1967 Ideal released Careful The Toppling Tower Game. With its’ huge tower, Careful had the potential to be a great game. Unfortunately due to some issues with the components, the game never reaches the heights that it could have.

Looking at the box, Ladder Splatter doesn’t look like much. It looks like a cheap knock off of other balancing games like Jenga. While it has its’ own issues, Ladder Splatter was better than I expected.