37 – The Family Gamers Podcast – The Toy Fair Marathon
Andrew went to NY Toy Fair last week. He saw more than we could possibly talk about! We try to give you the highlights in this extended edition of The Family Gamers Podcast.
What we played this week:
Ark & Noah (review coming soon)
some games Andrew brought home from NY – more on that later.
Our friends and contributing writers, Ray & Liz, were at TotalCon this past weekend!
Notes from NY Toy Fair:
Andrew ran into an old college roommate: Brandt Sanderson, host of the Portal Gaming Podcast, which is also part of the Dice Tower Network! Small world.
So many games!
Playroom Entertainment – publisher of Unspeakable Words, Killer Bunnies games, and Geek Out! trivia games
Mayfair Games – well known publisher of European games for the US market (they are the publisher that brought Catan to the USA). Mayfair publishes Agricola and Patchwork. New games: Fight for Olympus, and a 2-player version of Caverna. Also, good news, the 2-player version of Agricola (All Creatures Big & Small) will be reprinted!
Mayday Games – one of our favorite Kickstarter-heavy publishers. Walk the Plank!, Get Bit!, and Dead Man’s Draw.
Goliath Games – this publisher owns the Pressman toy brand (Mastermind). We saw Smath (Scrabble with equations) and Ultimate Mastermind (4 players)
Blue Orange – publisher of New York 1901, Brave Rats, Battle Sheep; they introduced Dr. Eureka last year and spin-offs this year: Dr. Microbe and Dr. Beaker. Also a new game called Clear for Takeoff.
UnitedHealthcare Children’s Foundation – doing great work to raise money to help sick children and their families, in part through selling sponsored games/toys. Our personal favorite? Digit’y Do
IELLO – publisher of King of Tokyo, were showing their new game The Mysterious Forest.
Winning Moves Games – publisher of an adorable kids game called Nibbled
HABA – A lot of the new HABA games don’t look like the old ones! Lots of rich art – Before their art was always functional and perfectly fine, but not standout. Andrew saw a game called Heroes of Kaskaria where you have gryphons and cliff cats and you’re racing them to try to get a treasure chest – The mechanics felt balanced, as I expect, but the experience was very different than other HABA games we’ve tried.
Dude Games – bringing Canadian and European games to the US. We have Sushi Dice which we will be reviewing.
Education Outdoors – publisher of Toasted or Roasted. We saw Camp – a boardgame with trivia related to camping. Well-designed for families; every card has questions that are thematically related, but with several different difficulty levels. Also publish Snipe Hunt – perfect to get kids moving, but quietly!
Klutz – the juggling experts now have licensed LEGO products and stop-motion video kits.
Once Kids has building bricks made of wood! Called Eco-bricks, they are compatible with LEGO and can be painted, colored on, etc.
Griddly Games – Lots of educational games and toys for kids. “Just Add Sun”, “Just Add Glue”, etc. We will be reviewing a game called Wise Alec, a family trivia game.
The Creativity Hub – Andrew met Rory, of Rory’s Story Cubes fame! Also creators of The Extraordinaires Design Studio – fantastic game/toy for teaching design skills and getting kids (and adults) to step into someone else’s shoes.
Phone Phever – a game where using your smartphone is not cheating, instead it’s encouraged! Designed, published, sold by a single family – a true family game.
Hoyle – the iconic card publisher is branching out and trying to build some brand new kids’ card games as well.
Card Caddy – a very neat tool for traveling with card games.
Twizmo Games – Emoji Wars (a battling card game) and Tak Tak (a strategy game a bit like checkers)
Buffalo Games – We know them from Watch Ya’ Mouth (a mouth-guard word-guessing game) but they demonstrated Silly Street, a great game to get players moving by doing extremely silly things.
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