The Family Gamers Podcast

We’re talking this week with Ryan & Erin Gutowski and Ric White, the people behind One Board Family website. Why do they play games? What are a few of their (and our) favorites? This podcast episode happened because of a football bet. Andrew bet Ryan that the New England Patriots would beat the Jacksonville Jaguars in the playoffs. We’re glad to know Ryan & Erin, and even happier to have them on the show! One Board Family started about two years ago as a way for Ryan & Erin to share their interest in board games with other people. Ric helped critique Ryan’s writing and then started doing some writing of his own. We all want to introduce people to new games that they will love. Ryan and Erin have three kids: 14, 13, 10. All have grown up playing games with the family, and they have gained insight into their different personalities. Favorite games of all time: Ryan: Dead of Winter Andrew: Lords of Waterdeep (with expansions) Ric: Sherlock Holmes, Consulting Detective Erin: The Bloody Inn Anitra: Bring Your Own Book Favorite Filler Games: Qwingo Fuji Flush – a fast-moving game by Friedman Friese, for up to 8 players Pyramix Incan Gold (or Diamante) What’s Up Stroop Super Mario Level Up! (based on “King Me”) Duple Batman: The Animated Series Dice Game Sushi Go! Ancestree (which we reviewed recently) Deep Sea Adventure Magic Maze Find One Board Family online: oneboardfamily.com; look for the One Board Podcast, and find them on Instagram (@oneboardfamily), Facebook (@oneboardfamily), and Youtube.   Don’t forget, there’s still time to fill out our survey for a few more days! thefamilygamers.com/survey And find us online: facebook.com/familygamersaa Community: thefamilygamers.com/community Twitter: @familygamersaa Instagram: @familygamersaa PLEASE don’t forget to subscribe to the show, tell your friends about the show, and leave us a review at Apple Podcast or whatever your podcast subscription source is. Sponsor: The Family Gamers Podcast is sponsored by Wild East Games. Find Wild East Games online at WildEastGames.com, or @WildEastGames on Facebook, Twitter, and

We’re revisiting the topic of two player gaming. Plus, two items of news that will affect board gamers across the United States. What we’ve been playing: Brew Dice Silly Street Zitternix Quoridor Gobblet Gobblers Smash Up The Grimm Forest Dinomals Kingdomino Keyflower Video games: Claire finally beat The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker and has started playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild – and is LOVING it. (She has 3 horses now, and named each of them “Epona”.) One last thing we did, not a game: We visited the New Hampshire Ice Castles. It was cool. News: Mayfair Games is closing. They have sold the rights to all their games to Asmodee North America. Barnes & Noble laying off lots of people, even apart from store closings. Beginning of the end? Sponsor: The Family Gamers Podcast is sponsored by Wild East Games. Find Wild East Games online at WildEastGames.com, or @WildEastGames on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Two player games: We’ve talked about two-player games before (episode 38), but it bears re-visiting. Kingdomino (7×7 variant especially) Gruff Jaipur Bärenpark (see our review) Potion Explosion (see our review) Onitama (see our review) Fight for Olympus (see our review) Pocket Ops Caverna: Cave vs. Cave (review coming soon) Baseball Highlights 2045 Okey Dokey What games do you like playing with two players?   Check out our latest review: Sticky Chameleons: More Sticky or More Karma? Don’t forget, you can still fill out our survey until the end of February. Win a game from our collection! thefamilygamers.com/survey PLEASE don’t forget to subscribe to the show, tell your friends about the show, and leave us a review at Apple Podcast or whatever your podcast subscriptio...

We interview Josh Patton, Josh Wegner, and Theresa Wegner. The three friends created Animo, a card game currently on Kickstarter. Animo was born out of a desire to create something beneficial for their kids. They were especially interested in trading cards (baseball, football, Pokemon, etc.) and even memorized many of the attributes. These parents wanted to turn this around to help their kids memorize useful information, particularly Bible verses, through play. Josh Wegner first created a few cards for his children, who shared them with their friends and neighbors. More and more people started asking for cards, and they realized they needed to create something with substance. There are three ways to use the Animo cards: 1 vs 1: “Sharpen Your Sword” battle game Family style game: “Hide it in Your Heart” memory / card-swapping game Parenting tool: Talk to your children about character traits and give them Bible verses that they can carry in their pockets. The team debated whether to make Animo a collectible card game (randomized booster packs) or a living card game (expansion sets, playable right away). In the end, they decided that the goal was to get it into people’s hands rather than make a lot of money, so they went with the LCG concept. The starter deck (54 cards) can be split into 2 balanced decks to allow both the 1v1 or the family game right away. The 2 expansion decks (also 54 cards each) allow adding on or customizing the decks for more variation in play.   We also talk about favorite card games! Josh Patton (also his children’s favorites): Sushi Go, Best Treehouse Ever, Dominion, and Wing It (a storytelling game). Josh Wegner: Ninja, Monsters Boom, and Star Realms. Theresa Wegner: Golf (rules on Wikipedia). Anitra picked games she wishes we would play more: Guillotine, Anomia, and Smash Up. Andrew tried to pick games that wouldn’t be on other lists: Machi Koro, Duple, and Illuminati. Honorable mentions: Hanabi, Purrrlock Holmes (our review).   Find Animo online: facebook.com/AnimoCards Twitter: @AnimoGames www.animocards.com   Don’t forget, there’s still time to fill out our survey! thefamilygamers.com/survey And find us online: facebook.com/familygamersaa Community: thefamilygamers.com/community Twitter: @familygamersaa Instagram: @familygamersaa PLEASE don’t forget to subscribe to the show, tell your friends about the show,

Welcome to the Family Gamers Podcast! This week, we talk about a few of our favorite role-playing games, as well as what we’ve been playing, backtalk, and Andrew’s most recent “for science!” adventure. What we’ve been playing: Bärenpark Magic Maze Sticky Chameleons “Strike a Pose” prototype Cursed Court – by Andrew Hansen, published by Atlas Games Stroop Crosstalk Ancestree Viral OK Play (see our review) The Grimm Forest (can you tell we’re excited?) Gave the three-year-old his own account to play Mario Odyssey. Interesting to see how he interacts with it differently than the rest of the family. News Gamewright is going to be releasing a sequel to Forbidden Island and Forbidden Desert: Forbidden Sky (see the trailer here) Nintendo Switch JoyCons discounted by $9. (Not a great deal, but the best you’ll get right now.) Nintendo news: They’re finally launching an online service. New mobile game coming soon: Mario Kart Tour. Working with Illumination Studios (Despicable Me, Secret Life of Pets) to make a Mario movie. The Legend of Zelda: Clockwork Realm: a cooperative game for 2-4 players (It’s a print and play. Download the files from BoardGameGeek.) Backtalk * Mini-painting tips. Magic The Gathering: Arena of the Planeswalkers, and Arcadia Quest are both good places to start. * @bradsour recommended Dream Home to us, by Rebel & Asmodee. We’re going to check it out! * Anitra wrote a guest post on MummyConfessions.com on board games to play with very young children. For Science! Andrew waxes poetic about Whole30. We both complain about added sugar in everything. Role-playing games Children know how to role-play naturally! But you, the adult, may need some help. We discuss different ways to approach role-playing, from no-prep (less structure) to lots of prep (and more structure). Easiest to jump in: Story Cubes Untold (which uses Story Cubes to help drive your story) Robit Riddle (our interview with Kevin Craine in epsiode 29 / the Kickstarter for pre-order) Plaid Hat Games make RPGs that are bit more involved. Someone needs to know the system, but the game provides everything you need: Mice & Mystics Tail Feathers Stuffed Fables A more conventional RPG, but stripped down for kids: Hero Kids (we interviewed the creator, Justin Halliday, all the way back in episode 5.) And of course, many adult-level systems exist for creating your own story: Dungeons & Dragons (we’ve heard great things about the current version “5th edition”), GURPS, Sentinels of the Multiverse RPG (a superhero universe coming soon from Greater Than Games), Paranoia, MouseGuard, Pathfinder, etc. Final Thoughts We’re keeping our survey open for a few more weeks. (

This week, we are talking to Chris Leder (Director of Fun at Calliope Games) and Ken Franklin (designer of The Mansky Caper). Listen in on our discussion of their new game The Mansky Caper as well as what both of their families do for fun. They’re going to make you an offer you can’t defuse. The Mansky Caper is set in 1925: All the other criminals are wanting to get back at Big Al Mansky, the biggest gangster in the country. We are working together to ransack his house and steal all his treasures… but he has rigged his safes with TNT! Players call in favors to use other players’ special abilities. Although everyone is working together, they are also all trying to get a little more treasure than everyone else. The meat of the game is the interaction between the players, due to the “favor tokens”. In fact, two players may decide to work together when it’s not even their turn, in order to mess up the active player. In Episode 80, we talked about what makes a game fun. A major component was keeping all the players engaged on every turn, and it sounds like The Mansky Caper does that. Calliope Games has long believed that people want to be able to open the game box and play right away. So the 3-D safe boxes, tokens, etc. are already pre-assembled and placed into their final locations in the game box. If you are the type who loves assembling components, you can add an extra $15 in the Kickstarter for lovely wooden safes from The Broken Token that you can assemble yourself. Rather than starting the Kickstarter with the game priced out as cheaply as possible and adding stretch goals for better components, Calliope wanted to make the best game they could that could still sell at retail for $40 or less. The Kickstarter for The Mansky Caper ends soon (February 10), and if you buy it through the campaign, you’ll get it at a discounted price of $32 instead! That price even includes shipping to the United States. We are certainly going to jump on that deal. Ken has been designing games since he was in first or second grade. The Mansky Caper is a labor of love , and it’s also a family affair – Ken’s son Matt did all the artwork for the game. Ken’s first wife, Terry, encouraged both her husband and her son in their artistic endeavors. Ken’s second wife, Debi, first came up with the idea of the favor tokens. Since Chris is the “Director of Fun”, we asked him what games he thinks are really fun (other than Calliope games, of course). His family’s favorites include Rhino Hero Super Battle, Kingdomino, and the deck-building race game The Quest for El Dorado. All of these are very accessible games (Chris plays them with his six-year-old) and get people telling stories about the game afterward. Ken tries hard to pick just three games: Lords of Waterdeep (also Andrew’s favorite), Terraforming Mars (which he loves because of the communal feel – you are all working toward a common objective, even though the players compete against each other), and Roll for It! – “Yahtzee with bayonets”. We decide to mention a really fun Calliope game as well – we are absolutely loving Ancestree.   Find Chris on Twitter: @leder88 and @calliopegames.

What makes a game fun? Andrew and Anitra explore this topic. Although many games are enjoyable, we are trying to call out games that are fun in the moment. What we’ve been playing: Sticky Chameleons (We had a ton of fun with this. See our Facebook live video.) Match Madness – a neat but hard puzzle game. It contains five different levels of difficulty, and we’ve tried several ways to compete while using different difficulties. Shutterbug (We have a Facebook live video of the setup.) Contact – a verbal game requiring at least three players. A summary of the rules we used. This would be a great car game! Stretch your brain to give clues that other guessers can use, but that the word-holder won’t figure out in time. A variation of Intrigue (see Board Game Geek), a game of negotiation, bribes, and area control. Concept – a word-guessing game where the clue-givers use iconography to indicate a primary concept and sub-concepts (as needed). We love the scoring mechanism here: two players are giving the clues, and everyone else is guessing. Successful guessers get 2 points and successful clue-givers get 1 point. The clue-giving “team” rotates each round. Ancestree – We are loving this game. Expect a review soon. Loot (see our review). We highly recommend the newer version, where the art is much improved. Go Away Monster Top Trumps – we tried two variations: Mischievous Cats & Shopkins. This is a modified War card game that does use a bit of strategy. There are lots of variations, including several educational decks. Video games too: Horizon Zero Dawn for Andrew, Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker for Claire, Mario + Rabbids and Seedship (free online text-based game) for Anitra. We digress for a few minutes on the topic of tutorials or other “help” to get through a video game. Sponsor Thanks to Wild East Games for sponsoring this week’s podcast. Find them @WildEastGames on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Backtalk Our listeners suggest a few games that their families think are the most fun: Any Fluxx Loony Quest (CORRECTION: not made by Looney Labs, oops!) Superfight (we discuss the differences between this and Clusterfight, which we prefer) Survive: Escape from Atlantis We’d love your opinion. What makes these games fun for your family? We Like Fun What makes a game fun? While there are no hard and fast rules, (otherwise there would be very few “fun” games), there do seem to be some guidelines. We are aiming for the games where we can’t ever remember somebody...

David Wilkinson is the designer of Castles of Caladale, a unique tile-laying game, designed with family play in mind. Castles of Caladale was published last March by Renegade Games. We were first introduced to it at PAX Unplugged. The original design was inspired by Dave’s youngest son, who was using big chunky wooden blocks to build towers and castles while Dave was thinking about tile-laying games like Carcassonne. Three themes: stone castle, Tudor manor, and fairy tree. Players draw tiles from a face-up set of 9; themes have to match themes (much like Carcassonne). The goal is to make the biggest castle and have a complete castle (sky all around). You are allowed to re-arrange your tiles at any time – an idea that came directly from Dave’s kids. Available at Barnes & Noble – “the national friendly local game store”. Look for it there! Time Cross Arena: A real-time card-based game for 2 players. Two gladiators are fighting to impress the crowd and gain the most glory. The time-keeping mechanism is “the time cross” – two sand timers mounted perpendicularly in a frame. When one timer is running, the other one is paused. Each round is only 2 minutes long! In the Blink of an Eye: a fast-moving social deduction game for 4-8 players. Each player has a “target” to contact, but someone is also trying to target you! There is a 90-second window in which you try to make contact (winking, nodding, talking, etc), while also looking out for who else is trying to contact each other. The person who can deduce the most connections correctly wins the round. Dice Runners: real-time dice rolling game. Escape an alien ship, running through several (randomly-selected) rooms to make it to the escape pod. Starts cooperative and usually devolves to semi-cooperative (depending on how much space there is in the escape pod). Each player has five dice, to be rolled until you get the result you want. Then grab an initiative token and choose how to use the dice result. If the aliens catch you, you become “infected” and exchange a normal die for a green “alien” die. If you are infected too many times, you become an alien and start working against the rest of your (former) team. Still in early play-testing. We are The Family Gamers, so we have to ask you what a family game night looks like in the Wilkinson household. Mrs. Wilkinson prefers abstract games or old-school classics such as Scrabble, Yahtzee, and Quoridor. Dave and the boys like Pandemic Legacy, King of Tokyo, Tokaido, Takenoko, and Carcassonne (of course), among others. Dave’s website: wilkgames.weebly.com Twitter: @wilk1dave Email him: wilkdave@gmail.com   Don’t forget: Fill out our survey (www.thefamilygamers.com/survey/ ) to let us know what you think about our podcast and website. You might even win a game from our personal collection! Thanks to Wild East Games for sponsoring this week’s podcast. Find them @WildEastGames on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Find us @FamilyGamersAA on Facebook,

No interview this week, but we have some announcements we wanted to get out, so this is a very short episode. Backtalk: If you or your kids had a snow day this past week, what games did you play? Announcement 1: Sponsor! TFG podcast will be sponsored by Wild East Games for all of 2018. We’ve been a fan of their games in the past. Check out episode 73 for our interview with Brian and Jill Bollinger and learn more about their games. Announcement 2: As proud members of The Dice Tower Network, we urge you to check out The Dice Tower 2018 Kickstarter. Support Tom Vasel and the rest of his crew. (We do not receive financial support from the Dice Tower.) Ends January 31. Announcement 3: The Family Gamers has passed 500 likes on Facebook! Yay! In honor of that, we want to know what you like about TFG and what should change. We’re also not above bribing you… Fill out our survey (http://thefamilygamers.com/survey/ ) for a chance to win one of five games from our personal collection.   Lastly, we also have new review on the website of the classic game Loot from Dr. Reiner Knizia. It’s recently been re-released with new artwork and it looks great!   As always, please subscribe to the show, tell your friends, and leave us a review at Apple Podcasts or whatever your podcast subscription source is.

We’re back! As the first show of 2018, we wanted to share our top games from 2017. Return of special guests Claire and Asher, who share their favorites as well. Note: These games are our favorites of the year, not necessarily the most critically-acclaimed. But first, what we’ve been playing! We had some concentrated tabletop game time in the week between Christmas and New Year’s, and it shows. Flip City (review coming soon) Okey Dokey (adorable co-op puzzle) Crosstalk from Nauvoo Games Magic Maze Onitama Stroop – a prototype dice game – Ill-tempered Tikis OK Play PDQ – a speed word-building game from Gamewright BLANK Untold: Adventures Await – we interviewed Rory O’Connor when Untold was in Kickstarter and also interviewed Michael Fox at PAX Unplugged. Spyfall Dicey Peaks Bring Your Own Book Viral Ancestree Rack-O – with special powers added to the prime numbers! An interesting minor change to the game. Baseball Highlights 2045 Mouse Trap Carcassonne Evolution: The Beginning Ticket to Ride: Nederland Family Fluxx Our Top 10 or so Games of 2017 On to the favorites! We start with our special guests. Asher’s favorite: Untold: Adventure Awaits (and Mouse Trap). His top 5 would also include Viral and Chimera Station. Claire’s favorite: BLANK (as mentioned above), and Batman Fluxx. And now, the top ten(ish), in no particular order: * Downforce (Corey’s review) – wonderfully approachable. Great for adults, kids, or both. * Magic Maze – the simultaneous movement with little-to-no communication is so different from all the other games out there. The way the scenarios build up the game rules bit by bit keeps it fresh and keeps players from being overwhelmed all at once. * Silly Street (Anitra’s review) – the best game for families with little kids. All about your family getting together and having fun. *

This week, we talk to Isaac Shalev, co-designer of one of our new favorite games: Seikatsu. Isaac co-designed Seikatsu with Matt Loomis, with art from Peter Wocken. “All the players will score all the tiles, but they will do it differently.” Isaac and Matt played around with this mechanism for a while before settling on the 3-axes, different perspectives idea represented in Seikatsu. All the birds and flowers in the game are native to Japan. The koi obliquely references the legend of the koi turning into a dragon. Isaac expands on his relationship with IDW, publisher of Seikatsu and soon other games designed by Isaac and Matt. He also tells us about Crimson Sails – an upcoming game that uses “liar’s dice” as a core mechanism. Coming soon from Mayday Games: Flip the Table, a dexterity game. Also coming soon, Daimyo – an action selection / role selection game. You are gathering classes to be appointed the daimyo (Japanese feudal lord). Everyone knows the cards you have used, but no one knows which cards you have kept to score points at the end of the game. Isaac talks about his design philosophy when teaming with Matt: wide breadth of game types, but trying to provide a great experience with very elegant, stripped-down mechanisms. Isaac also is part of a podcast: “On Board Games”. Although the podcast began nine years ago, Isaac joined about three years ago. Part of the Inverse Genius and Dice Tower networks. Find them on twitter @onboardgames. Get Isaac directly @kindfortress and check out his blog kindfortress.com. That’s it for this time. Don’t forget to check out our review of Seikatsu, and until next week, play games with your kids!

On the road again… just can’t wait to get on the road again… We’ve talked before about screen time and setting limits. (All the way back in episodes 3 and 4!) But we’ve been doing a lot of traveling over the past month, and wanted to acknowledge that the rules change when we are away from home. Stay tuned for our thoughts on how we handle screen time when we’re traveling. What We’ve Been Playing: Cow Tiger Santa Claus – a travel game from Button Shy, specifically for road trips. BLANK (review coming soon!) OK Play – a five-in-a-row game designed to be playable anywhere. No box, pieces made of sturdy plastic that can be washed if it gets dirty. Onitama – we are absolutely loving this elegant two-player game. Expect to see a review soon. Stroop – can’t wait to play this with more than two players. Pow! – a super hero tile-drafting game with a push-your-luck element. Gameplaying at DisneyWorld: Sorcerers of the Magic Kingdom – collectible card game, played at “portals” in the Magic Kingdom) Wilderness Explorers – like the scout in the movie Up. Kids collect “merit badges” around Animal Kingdom, while learning more about animals and habitats. Agent P’s World Showcase Adventure (in Epcot). Didn’t work well for us. Jedi training – at Hollywood Studios. Simplistic but fantastic fun for the young Star Wars fan(s) in your life. And of course, video games! Super Mario Odyssey and many others. Kids played more video games than they normally would. We are OK with that, as we explain below. Our Philosophy of Screen Time While Traveling Normal rules: No more than an hour of screen time, after chores & homework completed. We start with a strict baseline, which allows us room to relax the rules when we feel it’s warranted. No screens in bedrooms (ie. screen time only in public places). Travel rules: Screen time allowed in the car and during downtimes, as long as it’s not distracting/disruptive. If we are trying to be social, no screen time. They learn to plan ahead to ration out “personal screen time” (Nintendo DS), because we do not let the kids bring chargers. On longer trips or trips with a lot of non-social downtime, we may allow chargers, but screen time is still limited to times when it is not disruptive. Screen time is generally limited to “home base” (hotel room, in the tent at a campground) once at our destination.   If you have some ideas for how to treat screen time while traveling, let us know on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or comment on the show notes. Don’t forget to check out our Holiday Board Game Gift Guide. Clicking through the Amazon affiliate links helps The Family Gamers to keep producing quality content for you!

This week, we’re bringing you all the interviews we recorded at PAX Unplugged. There are a lot of interviews, so it’s another extra-long show. But first, some special guests – Asher and Claire! Asher’s favorites: Lazer Ryderz, The Grimm Forest, Sentinels of the Multiverse RPG Claire’s favorites: Sumer and BLANK * correction: The art for The Grimm Forest was done by Mr. Cuddington. *   (7:20) Steve Jackson Games – Super Kitty Bug Slap (available soon) and Simon’s Cat (12:50) Nauvoo Games – Crosstalk, Stockpile, and The Reckoners (from Brandon Sanderson’s series) (19:20) Devir Games – Checkpoint Charlie, Fast Food Fear, Dragons & Chickens (23:30) USAopoly – Codenames: Disney Family Edition, Super Mario Level Up (30:15) Dr. Finn’s Games – The Little Flower Shop (available soon), Let Them Eat Shrimp, COG. Coming soon: Cosmic Run Rebirth, Waters of Nereus. (40:00) The Creativity Hub – Untold: Adventures Await, BLANK. (1:00:12) Arcane Wonders – Viral, Onitama, Spoils of War (1:13:45) Gigamic – Yogi, Galapagos, Quarto, Quoridor, Katamino (1:17:05) Genius Games – Cytosis, Virulence, Peptide, Covalence, Ion, My First Science Textbook books, Science Wide Open (Women In Science) books (1:23:22) iello – Claire & Andrew interview Alison Haislip – Mountain of Madness, Sea of Clouds, Sticky Chameleons (1:28:55) Bezier Games – New York Slice, Werebeasts, Whistlestop, Palace of Mad King Ludwig (1:33:40) Fireside Games – Hotshots, Kaiju Crush, Here Kitty Kitty (1:38:55) Big Potato Games – OK Play, The Chameleon

We have a jam-packed podcast for you this week! Tons of information about PAX Unplugged, plus a few extra games from before and after the convention. We mostly followed our own advice from episode 70, especially about following up with our kids about what worked and what didn’t at the end of Friday. This allowed us to back off on Saturday and everyone had a better time. Because this is such a long podcast, we’ve added timestamps, to make it easier to skip to the content you are most interested in. What We’ve Been Playing: (starting around 3:22) Biblios Seikatsu (review coming soon) Stop Thief! Mmm! Go Away Monster Codenames: Disney Family Edition (with a special surprise for our children… here’s the video we took) We love the choice of pictures, words, or both, and the family-friendly 4×4 (no “assassin” or instant failure) as well as standard 5×5 layout cards. BLANK new expansion to Gruff: Rage of the Trolls – introduces solo and co-operative play! Crosstalk (more below) Forza Horizon 3 Super Mario Odyssey PAX Unplugged FRIDAY (17:10) Steve Jackson Games – there will be a new version of Illuminati, one of our favorite “grown up” games. Kids loved Super Kitty Bug Slap (speed matching) and Simon’s Cat – a suit-matching game like crazy 8’s (or UNO), but with a 36-card deck and uneven number distribution. Each time a player cannot play, they take the discard pile as a “mess”. When all cards are gone, the player with the most messes loses. (20:24) Nauvoo – Crosstalk: a party game in a similar vein to Taboo or Pictionary. Two teams of players are both trying to guess the same word or phrase. Each team starts with a private clue (one word), and then the clue-givers alternate giving public clues. There is a hint board that allows the clue-giver to give more information about the prior guesses and clues (good, ignore, A connected to B, etc.) Best for adults, but playable with older kids. The Reckoners (Brandon Sanderson themed game) – coming soon to Kickstarter! (22:40) IDW was showing Seikatsu, with the designer Isaac Shalev. They were pushing their new “Atari” series. Centipede is out now. Missile Command is slated to be out in January, Asteroids in March, and Joust was teased for later in 2018. (24:07) Studio Woe – Gruff and Pirate Tanks of Skull Rock (dexterity game, flick coins onto “skull rock” or knock over opponent’s ships) (26:51) Kids highly enjoyed some dexterity games from Mayday – Coconuts and Click Clack Lumberjack. (30:00) We finally got a chance to meet James Hudson in person and actually play a (shortened) game of The Grimm Forest! Can’t wait to get our copy. (31:15) Studio Wumpus showed us Sumer – a digital board game. It’s a worker-placement game played in real-time. 1-4 players, currently available on Steam and coming soon to the Nintendo Switch! (www.sumergame.com) (34:00) Devir showed us Checkpoint Charlie (deduction, everyone is a dog detective possessing ONE clue to the identity of the cat spy), Fast Food Fear (cooperative speed matching/set collection game), and Dragons & Chickens (combines pattern recognition a la Spot It! with a hierarchy of several different actions) (41:19) USAopoly showed us Codenames: Disney Family Edition, but also Super Mario: Level Up! Each player has a (secret) card of 6 characters. Take turns moving any character up the staircase of “levels” and revealing powerups.

This week’s podcast, we talk to Brian and Jill Bollinger from Wild East Games. We have mentioned their games Pie Rats of the Carob Bean Farm and Pitman in previous episodes. They have a new expansion for Pie Rats, out on Kickstarter now. Newest Wild East Games Pie Rats: Curse of the Farmer’s Wife, expansion with new characters and poison – check out the Kickstarter: only 3 days left! $11 for just the expansion or $35 for the bundle. Or check out the original Pie Rats of the Carob Bean Farm. Pitman – A press your luck bluffing game, closest to a combination of poker and liar’s dice. We liked this at Boston FIG. Coming to Kickstarter spring 2018. Ill-Tempered Tikis – A light set-collection game, easy to pick up and understand. According to Brian, it “passes the mom test”. Already went through a Kickstarter earlier this year, and is currently available for purchase. We ask Brian about designing games, and he tells us about how games and game-names come about. (For Pie Rats, the name and theme came first; Pitman was exactly the opposite, as it was almost entirely complete before it had a name.) More games! Slap Down – Created by a teenager. Match pairs of cards with dice and be the first to slap both cards in the pair. “The unfriend-maker” – coming soon. Lightning Dice – Everyone plays at the same time; match your dice to cards. A great quick filler game that keeps everyone engaged. Available now. Find Wild East Games online at WildEastGames.com, or @WildEastGames on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You can also email them: brian@wildeastgames.com and jill@wildeastgames.com   Don’t forget that you can find The Family Gamers @FamilyGamersAA on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram too. Please subscribe to the podcast (Apple or with your podcast provider of choice) and leave us a review!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year – time for board game presents! If you’re wondering what to get the gamer(s) in your life, we can help. We recently put together our holiday gift guide. For this year’s complete list, go to thefamilygamers.com/holiday2017 But first! Anitra shares a random math fact she just learned regarding factorials and prime numbers. What we’ve been playing: We’ve actually been playing a lot of video games! We give you a quick run-down. Jackbox Party Pack 3 (Trivia Murder Party, Tee K.O., Guesspionage, Quiplash 2) We love the ease of play – instead of needing extra controllers, each player uses an internet-connected device (smartphone, tablet, laptop, etc.) that syncs up with the game seamlessly. Super Beat Sports (Nintendo Switch only) from one of our favorite video game publishers, Harmonix. SNES classic: Mario Kart, Yoshi’s Island, Donkey Kong Country iOS Colt Express Leo’s Fortune (available for iOS and Android) Cuphead – Andrew loves the soundtrack; you can buy it on Bandcamp for $10 Zelda: Breath of the Wild But of course, we’re also getting ready for PAX Unplugged, by playing more board games! Match Madness Sagrada Macroscope (Here’s our review) Mars Open: Tabletop Golf (here’s the Facebook video Andrew mentioned) – plenty of time left on the Kickstarter! Magic Maze Kids are playing some games without input from Mom & Dad as well: Kingdomino, Monopoly Jr, Chicken Cha Cha Cha, and Silly Street. Gift ideas We quickly run through all the games on our holiday gift guide; most of the list is new since last year, but there are a few evergreen recommendations as well. Check it out on our website at thefamilygamers.com/holiday2017   Happy holiday shopping, and play games with your kids!