Mind Games 2000

A review by Ken Kaufman and JJ Armour

Disclaimer: As the above indicates, neither of us has any affiliation with any of the listed companies, save perhaps as customers.

The five winners of the Mensa Select award:

Finish Lines: A party game in which players try to complete well-known phrases, titles, lyrics, quotations, etc.
Ken's grade: 73. Essentially another form of trivia game, whose level of difficulty was usually a little low for my tastes. The board was unexciting.
JJ's grade: 88. Really just another trivia game, but with a pleasant difference. It's unclear whether the requirement for perfect precision in the answers was a good thing or not. I enjoyed seeing subtle differences in how people recalled things. The scoring method was awkward, with tiles subject to being knocked around. This game might get old before too long, with people remembering many of the cards.

iMAgiNiff : Party game in which players imagine what each other (or famous people) would be if they were a dog, car, color, etc, choosing the best of six offered answers. Those who select the answer chosen most often advance.
Ken's grade: 90. A lot of fun for a loose group; this game isn't likely to go stale.
JJ's grade: 97, though she later thought she might have graded this too high in the euphoria of the weekend's start. Very good party game! I wouldn't mind owning it or giving it to certain people as a gift. Like a lot of these games, it will only be fun if played with a group with the right frame of mind.

3 Stones: Abstract strategy game in which players try to get three pieces of their color in a row as many times as possible. Some of the pieces are neutral, in that they can benefit both players. The catches are as follows: You must play pieces in the same rank or file as the last one played, and, more importantly, pieces are drawn out of a bag, so on your turn you may be playing your piece, a neutral one, or your opponent's.
Ken's grade: 84. It worked well. The game can be frustrating when what you want doesn't emerge from the bag.
JJ's grade: 76. Even I thought this was a good game, because what I lack in abstract strategy skill is mitigated by this game's sizable element of chance. I think I would find it playable over and over again for that reason. I wouldn't mind owning it.

Time's Up: Party game in which, a la Celebrity Taboo, players try to get their teammates to name as many famous people as possible in a short period of time, but there's a serious twist: The game is played in three rounds. In the first, play rotates until all 40 names in play are guessed. In the second round, the same names are used and guessed, but cluegivers are limited to one-word clues, and guessers are limited to a single guess per clue. The final round is similar, but cluegivers are not allowed to utter a single word now.
Ken's grade: 86. Unspectacular packaging, but the game plays great, especially late at night when things get silly. The non-verbal needs really encourage lateral thinking. Update: We recently picked up this game, and it hasn't lost a step. Extreme fun in a creative crowd!
JJ's grade: 98. This is my favorite from this year. It is a combination of two of my favorite games: Taboo and Charades. The restrictions in Round 2, plus the opportunities for everyone to eventually guess at most everything evens it out. It should be playable over and over, but an expansion set would be welcome.

Zertz: Abstract strategy game in which marbles of three colors are placed on a shrinking board. Players try to capture marbles by jumping or by cutting them off from the rest of the board. A player wins by collecting marbles in one of several combinations.
Ken's grade: 75. The marbles are beautiful, but I didn't care too much for the board (essentially a group of small, open-bottomed cups organized into a hexagonal pattern).
JJ's grade: 41. Beautiful game, whose instructions were clear, but this game will only appeal to those who enjoy chess/checkers type games. Not my cup of tea.

The Rest of the Games:

Action Baseball: Baseball card game in which each player has a hand drawn from a deck. The offensive player selects a card to play, representing some attempted play, and the defensive player seeks a card to counter it into a much more favorable result.
Ken's grade: 87. An intricate game that plays very well, and while baseball familiarity is needed, someone with a reasonable amount of exposure can quickly fill in any terminology gaps and play. The scores seem to be run up as if it were Action Slow Pitch, but hey, the same thing's happening in the Majors, no?
JJ's grade: 77. I was intimidated and repulsed at first, but once I started playing it, I found it fun, even for someone with only a passable knowledge of baseball. However, if I had not had the opportunity to play this with a baseball expert, I would have been completely lost.

The Ball and Chain Game: Abstract strategy game in which most of the pieces are "prisoners" -- linked by chain to another one, thereby limiting mobility. The object is to trap your opponent's "guard" so that it may not move.
Ken's grade: 83. Some of the chains are shorter than others, and it's often hard to tell them apart. Still, an interesting game.
JJ's grade: 52. The first game is intriguing, but I fear the second one wouldn't be nearly so. It had a fun board and a fun concept.

Blame it on El Nino: Card game in which most of the cards represent countries or continents, and the rest are various natural disasters. Players try to get rid of their cards through judicious use of the disasters, which allow them to steal their opponents' continents.
Ken's grade: 84. A little simplistic, but fun. Can also be used as a geographical education tool, just by looking at the cards, or as an alternate game.
JJ's grade: 85. Fun and educational. Beautiful cards, easy directions, and very playable. I plan on purchasing it.

Border Patrol: A compact tringular wooden set splits into many geometric pieces and frames. Rules are offered for a two-player game in which players try to get rid of their pieces by adding to a central figure, as well as descriptions of puzzle shapes to be formed.
Ken's grade: 38. The packaging is a major turnoff. You unscrew some bolts, and the set most likely falls hopelessly apart.
JJ's grade: 12. Minimal directions, and the game fell to pieces as soon as the cover was unscrewed. No fun whatsoever.

Chaos Tiles: The pieces come in two odd shapes, convex and concave. Players add pieces to a central figure such that they avoid making the forbidden 20-degree angle, while trying to collect points by matching the colors on the pieces.
Ken's grade: 68. A pretty, well-packaged set. It is, however, difficult to gauge some of the angles being created.
JJ's grade: 79. Very, very pretty, and I enjoyed it once we figured out the angles. We found it very playable. Probably not a gift for anyone unless you know they've played and enjoyed it.

Checkers 2000: A variant on checkers in which each piece has a number from 1 to 12, and while able to move forward or backward, may only jump over pieces with lower numbers (friend or foe, capturing any foes it jumps).
Ken's grade: 77. A variant that held my interest. The key becomes setting up sacrifices that will result in the opponent's loss of higher value pieces.
JJ's grade: 30. Even though I don't care for checkers, this was a kind of nice variant with a pretty board. Its twists made it more interesting than regular checkers, but it's probably best for younger children.

Connexus: Players try to match tops and bottoms of pictures. The format is akin to that of Set.
Ken's grade: 85. An entertaining children's game. The pictures have a lot of amusing detail, and the matching isn't always trivial.
JJ's grade: 80. The cards were beautiful, and everyone in the family can have fun playing. I'd take their suggestions, if playing with younger children, and remove some of the cards. The tabs and slots in the cards didn't always fit together very well, and I think with children playing this game, they would be susceptible to ripping.

Consequential!: Players must guess words based on clues provided by their teammates. The cluegivers are handicapped in that all the words in all the clues they give must begin with a predefined sequence of letters determined by die rolls. For instance, if F and I are rolled, the first clue word must begin with F, the second with G, the third with H, the fourth with I, and back to F. Letters can be skipped, but that bars the further use of that letter in the round.
Ken's grade: 59. An interesting idea, but sadly, the examples provided with the game are misleading. The words to be guessed are seldom as easy, and it is likely that the sequence of rolled letters will provide prohibitively difficult cluegiving. We witnessed even a champion wordsmith finding this virtually unplayable.
JJ's grade: 43. This was way too difficult, and not fun for anyone in our group, all of whom appreciate word games. If any of the actual words were as easy to do as the examples in the rules, we would have enjoyed it. Meanwhile, our group of experienced wordsmiths was struggling to get their teammates to guess one word, never mind an unrelated five.

Double Play: A new word game using the invertable versa-tiles, in which each team or player creates a word from ten tiles (nine letter pairs and a blank), and passes the tiles used in the word to the opposition. Each side races to guess the other's word. The first one to succeed captures the tiles used in the other's word, with the side that captures the blank tile declared the winner.
Ken's grade: 49. It did not play smoothly, unfortunately.
JJ's grade: 28. It's a vast improvement from last year's versa-tiles, but I still don't care for it. The depiction of the letters remains very difficult.

Double Quick: A word game in which players race each other and a battery-operated timing device to form (ultimately) 22-letter crosswords. After each step is completed (which until the final one involves using all but one of your exposed tiles), players pass an unused tile to an opponent and expose two new tiles.
Ken's grade: 88. Challenging, invigorating, and fun.
JJ's grade: 85. I liked this frantic, fast-paced, initially confusing game. It's good for a group of 3-4.

Gobblet: Each player has three identical sets of four pieces of varying size, such that larger ones can engulf smaller ones. Each turn, a player can move a piece onto a 4 x 4 board to an open space or a piece occupied by a stack topped by a smaller piece, or may similarly move on the board a piece topping a stack. The object is to get four stacks topped by your color in a straight line.
Ken's grade: 48. The game played reasonably, but aesthetically, its $55 list price does not seem justified.
JJ's grade: 48. I just didn't get it. It's well-made and seemed to intrigue a lot of people, but it failed to provide enjoyment for me.

GRO: Battle for the Petri Dish: Low-budget abstract strategy game based on the behavior of germs growing in a petri dish. The object is to dominate your opponent's culture.
Ken's grade: 80. I really thought the germ analogy worked well.
JJ's grade: 30. For $5, how bad can it be? Certainly worth the money. A strategy game that I wouldn't want to play again, but I'd certainly consider purchasing it for some people I know.

Hoppers: What do you get when you cross Hi-Q with Rush Hour? This! Like Rush Hour, the game provides setups and solutions for 40 puzzles of varying difficulty. But these puzzles are essentially Hi-Q games with frogs serving as pegs.
Ken's grade: 83. Truly an attractive "board".
JJ's grade: 80. An attractive version of a standard solitaire game, it's very well-made. I'd consider purchasing it for someone else, especially children 10-14.

Icehouse:This set of pyramidal pieces is finally getting widespread distribution. The set on display consisted of a set of 60 pieces, plus rules to four games.
Ken's grade: 60. The games were either too complex for immediate playtesting, or they were not explained clearly enough. For the Ice Castles game, the green and yellow colors were not always distinguishable when stacked.
JJ's grade: 39. Very pretty, but the directions were not completely clear, and I just didn't care for the play.

The Kaleidoscope Game: Intriguingly packed in a large (roughly 2 feet high by 6 inches wide) transparent cylinder, this game involves players trying to land on and collect various colors of the spectrum.
Ken's grade: 79. Beautiful colorful board, although the indigo and violet are hard to distinguish. The play is extremely reminiscent of Monopoly, though there's not the same endless endgame.
JJ's grade: 70. Prettiest Monopoly game I've ever seen. I liked it because it had a definite end, and wouldn't go on until people fell asleep from boredom.

Leapin' Lizards: Another product of the Rush Hour gang, this set consists of 40 puzzles whose object is to jump up to five lizards among six lily pads (you can only jump to a free one, and not all pads are connected) such that each winds up on the pad matching its color.
Ken's grade: 55. This game really did nothing for me. It may be better for youngsters.
JJ's grade: 72. I had fun with this. It's very pretty and very well-made. I'd purchase it for children in the age 10-14 range.

Lunar Lockout: Another solitaire puzzle set from the makers of Rush Hour. In this one, an astronaut is trapped on the surface of a gravityless, frictionless heavenly body. To return to his ship, he must orchestrate himself and the robots (knowing that any move not blocked will result in an infinite trip into space) such that he can wind up at rest directly on the airlock.
Ken's grade: 68. We'll excuse the nutty physics, but Ricochet Robot did better with this idea.
JJ's grade: 66. This again is very pretty and well-made, and suitable for ages 10-14. I found it a little confusing.

Mad About Movies: Trivia board game focusing on the silver screen
Ken's grade: 47. Extremely derivative of Trivial Pursuit, and adds nothing to its Silver Screen Edition.
JJ's grade: 55. It's just the movie category of Trivial Pursuit. There are no twists, no turns, nothing different.

Mamma Mia!: A memory-oriented card game in which players try to fill pizza orders based on what's currently in the restaurant kitchen.
Ken's grade: 75. Nothing fancy, but it's a fun, sometimes frustrating game.
JJ's grade: 90. I can't wait to own this game. It's a quick, easy card game, a good time-killer, and very playable over and over.

Megallo: A game like those 3-D tic-tac-toes, with a couple twists: a die roll determines which plane you may place your piece on, and the four layers can be ordered in any way convenient to the players for the purpose of victory.
Ken's grade: 74. There were a couple flaws to this game, one being the shape and size of the board making it difficult to pass the die, and another being the presence of dead die rolls (when you roll your opponent's number).
JJ's grade: 41. A pretty game, but just another 3-d tic-tac-toe type game without a lot of originality. It might be good as an introduction of more complex games to young people, but while I preferred this game to some of its kin, it didn't really appeal to me.

Music Mayhem: A free-for-all Name That Tune with real music and a DJ (one of the players).
Ken's grade: 59. A decent idea, but the game demands a good music collection, and an appropriate collection of players. It doesn't play that well, though some of the proposed and unproposed variants are interesting.
JJ's grade: 36. Too much trouble! Way too expensive when you have to provide all the music and all the equipment to play it. The logistics of getting this game together were a total nightmare.

Mutual Mania: Simulates the mutual fund market. Players can buy and sell issues of varying risk, and watch their prices fluctuate.
Ken's grade: 66. Playing one game failed to indicate that anything other than luck was involved. In addition, the creators were apparently unable to come up with an endpoint better than "play for an agreed-upon amount of time".
JJ's grade: 25. Essentially just another Monopoly game, it could have some value as an educational tool to help people learn about the markets, but it would need some modification for that.

Octi: Abstract strategy game played on an ornate "carpet", whose goal is to capture the opponent's home squares. Can also be played as a partnership game. An unusual feature of this game is that resources must be expended to give or increase mobility to/of a piece.
Ken's grade: 70. In spite of the rave articles in Games magazine, it didn't excite us much. Perhaps this shouldn't be a surprise; the article ranked it comparable to chess in intricacy and subtlety, and frankly, if we were first exposed to chess in such a setting, with little time to learn and play it, we wouldn't have gotten much out of it either.
JJ's grade: 20. Another abstract strategy game that I just didn't care for. I thought the concept of enabling movement with inserted pegs was kind of neat, but they kept falling out.

Opinions: A Trivial Pursuit-like board on which players try to gain votes and be "elected" president. One of the main mechanisms for winning votes is to debate an opponent on a subject (and taking a position) assigned by the game, and be judged the victor by the neutral players.
Ken's grade: 66. I really liked the debate portion of the game, particularly the often-faced prospect of having to take an indefensible position on an issue, and making "lemonade" out of it. Unfortunately, while I saw this as an opportunity for creativity, some players approached such with dread, and could not get themselves to argue a reprehensible point. Sadly, the debates comprised too little of the game; players had enough choice of directions to move that they could avoid entirely the debate spaces, and win votes through the drawing of cards or landing on the right spaces. And when that happened, the game got boring in a hurry. Also, the game was a bit too short; someone could acquire the needed votes in about five turns quite easily.
JJ's grade: 88. This is fun for people who enjoy spontaneity and creativity. It can be painful for people who are shy, or lack the ability to be creative on short notice. The ability to concede, rather than debate, provides a nice easy out, but can also make the game kind of wimpy. Players also have the opportunity to win votes in ways other than debating, so theoretically a player can win without engaging in what is the heart of the game. I thought with some modification, this game could be a useful training tool to help get people comfortable with the idea of public speaking. On a lighter note, our group thought it would be fun to provide players with the option of buying votes, thereby buying their way into office.

Q-Turn:The "board" consists of 16 wooden disks, which are marked with arrows that dictate the directions(s) in which pieces on them may move. In addition, the arrows symbolize rotations that may be imposed on the different disks. The object is to get from one corner of the board to the opposite one, and back.
Ken's grade: 71. The game's not really thrilling, and the board's not too aesthetically pleasing, but it's an ok play. Not too likely to hold one's interest over time. I did like the compact container, as long as it doesn't get lost.
JJ's grade: 56. The pieces, when rotated, have a tendency to knock others around, necessitating significant realignment. One plus is that the set fits into your pocket, making it very nice for camping trips, plane rides, etc.

Reminiscing: The Millennium Edition: Trivia game based on events in the player's lifetime. An unusual feature is that players are sometimes called upon to relate a personal experience.
Ken's grade: 49. It just doesn't work. The point awards are inequitable for remembering vs. reminiscing, and the latter frankly kills the flow of the game.
JJ's grade: 45. A nice concept, slightly different spin on trivia. The real drawback was players having to drone on about stories, with the players getting the points regardless of the quality or interestingness of those stories.

Ricochet Robot: Four robots careen across a frictionless floor, only stoppable by walls or other robots. Players plan a sequence of as few moves as possible that will get a particular robot to a target point. It can be played solitaire; in a multi-player format, players race the clock to outdo an announced solution.
Ken's grade: 78. Strong emphasis on planning and visualization -- definitely not your run-of-the-mill game. A very good idea that suffers from some not-so-large flaws in design and layout.
JJ's grade: 51. I liked this more than I thought I would. The size of the playing area was intimidating, and it would be better if there was a smaller version you could warm up to. This game requires concentration, and can be a losing proposition when distractions are present. It would be fun to play as a solitaire game.

Rush Hour, Jr.: A near clone of the succesful Rush Hour solitaire kit, oriented toward children. The vehicles are children-recognizable, e.g., ice cream truck, police cars, school buses.
Ken's grade: 78. Extremely little difference from Rush Hour, save for the puzzles being a bit easier.
JJ's grade: 95. I liked it. It's not clear if it's really for children, or just a smaller version. At any rate, it was fun. Nothing original, but the same old Rush Hour, and that gets high marks from me.

Safari Rush Hour: Another near clone of Rush Hour, this one set in Africa. The obstacle vehicles have been replaced by African animals and termite mounds.
Ken's grade: 79. Cuts little new ground, but the set is beautiful. Of the Rush Hours I've played, these puzzles were the hardest.
JJ's grade: 87. I really liked Safari. It was beautiful, and I already know one person for whom I'm going to buy it.

Scambio: A card game in which players try to collect various holdings that are worth points. But be careful -- the play of some cards may change the values of those holdings.
Ken's grade: 69. The forementioned changes occur far too rarely. The game itself is a surprisingly humdrum experience.
JJ's grade: 35. Very disappointing. The gimmick for having the wild cards just didn't work. Having to roll to determine special cards was tedious, and having everyone looking for the same cards without enough to go around did not make for a fun game. Not very memorable.

Sense-Ation!: Players advance by using their five senses (plus ESP) to identify things or their properties. While not particularly intended as a children's game, this game seems to have been developed with older children as one target set of players.
Ken's grade: 54. Best I can say is this must have seemed a good idea at the time. But what were they thinking? Having 11-year-olds running around the house in search of the items on the cards, so that they can identify them? Or even 41-year-olds? Some of the cards (smell someone else's dirty laundry) will not be very palatable. And what about those wild cards? Will there be a lawsuit when someone is given something dangerous to eat?
JJ's grade: 21. I thought this game was juvenile and offensive. To quote someone else, I refuse to play a game that tells you to smell someone's dirty laundry.

Starters: Each player receives three cards, each with a letter on them. Players race the clock to find the shortest word that contains each player's set of "starters" in the order in which they were dealt.
Ken's grade: 60. The need to do all players' letters simultaneously was a severe drawback; this would work much better taking turns, with all people working on the same letters, maybe with a bidding system as was used in Ricochet Robot.
JJ's grade: 71. It looked like it would be fun, but it was too difficult keeping track of everyone's letters.

Tamsk:A game of diminishing resources, in which you move your three pieces around the board, but each space can only be visited a limited number of times. To complicate matters more, each piece is a sand timer -- each time you move a piece, you flip the timer, and if it expires, you lose movement for that piece. The player who can make the most moves wins.
Ken's grade: 85. Very different, and fun to play. This doesn't seem like it would go stale.
JJ's grade: 65. I thought this was fun for an abstract strategy game. It was appealing, the board was pretty and the use of the timepieces ... it was a refreshingly different game.

3-D Geometrex:A 10-block assembly puzzle.
Ken's grade: 59. Nothing new or intriguing here, not to mention the poor packaging -- the blocks fall out of their frame on zero provocation.
JJ's grade: 22. This is a very poor rendition of an old game. It was not fun; it was not well-made.

Wicked Words: Players try to get their teammates to guess the different words on a card.
Ken's grade: 75. As the description might indicate, this game is very much like Taboo, and will probably be enjoyed by fans of it. The differences are that the words don't have a taboo list; on the other hand, they're generally more difficult than the ones used by Taboo. Each regular card contains six words; they are all linked by a unifying theme, known to the guesser, which may be based on the meanings of the words, or on how they are spelled.
JJ's grade: 89. This was fun; like a combination of Password and Taboo.