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Are you Game?
Win or lose, board games bring families together
Keep Movin’ Games
 Penguin March and Match
Great American Puzzle Factory, $15
Ages 4 and up; 2 to 6 players
Parents and kids waddle around the room to reach
ice floats in this entertaining matching game.
Find the matching colored set of mom, dad and
baby penguin cards to win. Watch out for the
seal leopard card – players lose a turn! An
alternate version of old-fashioned Memory is
another option to this board game.
The Family Fun Game
Cranium Inc., $20
Ages 8 and up; 4 or more players
Spell a word backward without writing it down;
sculpt with clay and have teammates guess the
masterpiece; search the house to find three
selected objects before the timer runs out.
Complete the outrageous activities to advance
around the game board.
Games Preschoolers Adore
Crayola Color Chase
& Race Game
Great American Puzzle Factory, $12
Ages 3 and up; 2 to 6 players
Hover closely over the board and pay attention
in this fast-paced game. Using a color spinner,
the oldest player or rotating participants, call
out the color. All players move at once, so be
the first player to land on the nearest space of
that color. Game pawns can move forward,
sideways and diagonally, but first to the top
wins. Quick and fun, the game helps kids with
color recognition and physical dexterity.
Sounds of
the Seashore
Cranium Inc., $17
Ages 3 and up; 2 to 4 players
Listen to this one-of-a-kind seashell to hear
familiar seashore sounds, like the horn of a
boat or the bark of a seal. Match each sound
with a picture on a shell card, practicing
memory skills to uncover the buried treasure.
Monster Under My Bed
Fundex Games, $20
Ages 4 and up; 2 to 4 players
Bingo meets Operation in this high-suspense
game. Grab objects like a stinky sock or rotting
orange from under the bed, and match pictures to
a scorecard. The monster may pop out of the
headboard at any time, ending a player’s turn.
Kids’ anticipation of the monster popping up
during their turn is just as fun as the matching
game itself.
Word Games
What’s GNU?
ThinkFun, $15
Ages 5-8: 2 to 6 players
Build three-letter words as fast as possible in
this funky, vocabulary-builder game for young
readers. Players slide the clever “letter
getter” to reveal two letter tiles and attempt
to make three-letter words onto the word-starter
cards, which contain one letter and two blanks.
When the tiles run out, the player with the most
starter cards wins. (Added bonus: the website
contains a printable list of common three-letter
words in the English language to use as a handy
reference.)
JOT!
Great American Puzzle Factory, $25
Ages 8+; 2 or more players
Jot it down. Literally. This creative twist on
Scrabble doesn’t need tiles, and players choose
their own words, using markers on a wipe-away
whiteboard surface. Roll the dice, with its
60-second, built-in light-up timer, and add two
to six letters to this crossword-puzzle game
board. Special rolls allow players to wipe away
another player’s word and recreate. Points are
earned based on spaces used, and the winner is
the first to 75 points.
Strategy Games
Crackernomics
KSA Interactive Games, $35
Ages 8 and up; 2-6
players
With the help of an entrepreneurial duck, wise
owl and thieving raccoon, players travel the
globe investing in cracker mills and trading
with other players. With more than 24 countries
booming with cracker mills, players vie for
investment opportunities in this economic
simulation game. Players buy, sell and trade
cracker mills, but must manage investments and
negotiate trades carefully to win.
Ticket to Ride
Days of Wonder, $40
Ages 10 and up; 2 to 5
players
Travel by rail along North American train routes
in this cross-country adventure. Attempt to
collect enough of the same color tracks to claim
any train route of a matching color. Miniature
colored train playing pieces laid on the track
secures route ownership. Points are scored by
claiming individual routes, completing a path of
routes between two distant cities that match a
destination card, and completing the longest
continuous path of routes.
Zooreka!
Cranium Inc., $17
Ages 8 and up; 2 to 4 players
Create the ultimate zoo, racing around the board
gaining and losing animals, food and shelter.
Trade resources to collect habitats such as the
coral reef touch tank or orangutan junction.
Every turn keeps players thinking and planning
their way to Opening Day. The first to collect
four habitats declares her zoo open and wins.
Ringgz
Blue Orange Games, $30
Ages 8 and up; 2 to 4 players
Capture territories on the board using rings of
color. Each player is assigned a color and
places it on the board with a colored disk,
which captures the entire space, or with rings
of color. This all-wood strategy game becomes
more difficult and interesting as players learn
to block opponents with their own colored rings.
Khet!
Innovention Toys, $45
Ages 9 and up; 2 players
Lasers make this checkers and chess hybrid a
cool game for strategy and physics enthusiasts.
Using low-power lasers (claimed to be safer than
laser pointers), players move their
Egyptian-themed game pieces, which have moveable
embedded mirrors, around the board. Each player
has a laser built into the raised frame around
the game (safely locking the lasers within the
boundaries of the game board). Laser beams
bounce from mirror to mirror in an attempt to
hit the opponent’s pawns.
Artists’ Renditions
Stare! Junior
Game Development Group, $25
Ages 6-12; 2-10 players or teams
Stare at an image, such as a movie poster, funny
photo, comic or work of art on a card for 30
seconds. When time is up, players are asked a
series of questions to test how well they
remember what they saw. Originally designed for
the classroom, this game tests and enhances
players’ visual memory skills.
Luck of the Draw
Gamewright, $20
Ages 10+; 3 to 8 players
Artistic interpretations are amusing in this fun
game for non-artists. Players draw a card and
all players hurry to scribble a mini-masterpiece
in just 45 seconds. Players then vote on which
rendering fits in more than 100 categories, such
as ugliest, most likely to hang on the fridge or
most embarrassing. The player with the most
votes earns the Luck of the Draw.
Best for Tweens and Teens
Game of Knowledge
University Games, $20
Ages 10-15, 16+ versions; 2 to 6 players
It’s skill-building trivia, where young teens
answer questions like “Which is worth more – a
bucket full of nickels or the same bucket half
full of dimes?” Questions in categories like
science, sports and pop culture are divided for
two age groups, allowing players to compete on
their own level.
Bubble Brain
Patch Products, $30
Ages 10+, 4 to 8 players
Make up funny captions for a series of silly,
blank photographs in this creative bluffing
game. Players then try to guess which player
wrote which caption, producing some hilarious
one-liners. Be the one who can bluff the most or
the one who guesses the quipster to advance
around the game board to win. Added bonus:
Bubble stickers, like those used in comic
strips, are included to use with personal
photos.
Classic Remakes
Monopoly: Here and Now Edition
Milton Bradley, $30
Ages 8 and up; 2 to 6 players
Millions of Americans voted for their favorite
spots in this remake of the 1939 classic.
Twenty-two new properties were added to the
board, revealing a new Monopoly game that would
represent what Monopoly would look life if it
were invented today. Atlanta’s Centennial
Olympic Park takes the magenta-colored St.
Charles Place. New York City’s Times Square and
Boston’s Fenway Park take the coveted blue
property group, while Disney World takes the red
space of Illinois Avenue, the most landed-on
property space on the board. Even the game
pieces get an update with an airplane, laptop,
McDonald’s fries, cell phone and hybrid car,
replacing the outdated sewing thimble and
classic racecar.
Big Trouble
Milton Bradley, $20
Ages 6 and up; 2 or more players.
Hold cards tight in this twist on the classic.
Players are dealt cards, then press the plastic
“Popomatic” dome to roll the dice and find out
which cards to discard or add. First player to
empty his or her hand wins, but watch for the
colorful lights and the electronic machine to
threaten “Big Trouble!”
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