Our staff reviews games to help your family find new games to play that are worth your time and money! Please see our review policy for more information.
Oh no! All the animals have escaped the barn and are hiding out. Can you fill your pen with the most valuable animals and avoid the sneaky crows? Barnyard Roundup is a simple bluffing game for 2-6 players designed by James Hudson and published by Druid City Games.
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For those of us who do remember the film, Back to the Future: Back in Time is a fun romp through a memorable setting in a legendary intellectual property. It eschews a hard faithfulness to the movie in lieu of making the game more fun…
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It’s time to bear down and start building! This week we take a look at one of the hottest games to come out of Origin this year, the tile-laying game Bärenpark from Lookout Spiele and Mayfair. We’ll tell you whether it’s a universally koality* experience, or if we think it’s a bit more polar-izing.
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Move over, Modern Art! It’s time for Avant Carde, an innovatively simple deck-building game.
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Aurum is a trick-taking game where players take on the role of alchemists melding base metals into gold. Earn points from gold and correctly bidding on number of tricks you’ll win. The unique trick-taking hook in Aurum is that players must not follow suit!
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A security guard caught you red-handed sneaking into the school library late at night for some before-the-final cramming. Your penance is to sort and reshelve all the books that need to be cleaned up! Athenenum: Mystic Library is a drafting and spatial planning game for 2-5 players ages 10 and up. It takes between 30-45 minutes to sort and shelve
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Arraial is the closest analogue to Tetris we’ve seen yet, but with player interaction and the ability to choose your polyomino shape(s)! The goal of the game is to attract the most visitors to your festival in the form of meeples.
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Crashing lightning, booming thunder, and thousands upon thousands of gallons of water pour from the sky. The drumming of torrential downpour on the roof of the Ark is calming in its regularity, as the unending rows of matched pair animals bray and paw nervously. There is a loud creaking as the rising water level begins to lift the massive boat
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Mapping a hidden city full of traps is the theme of ArcheOlogic, a new logic and deduction game from Ludonaute. ArcheOlogic is a deduction and polyomino placement game for 1-4 players ages 12 and up. A game should take a little under an hour. Setup In ArcheOlogic, players race to determine the correct placement of six buildings (represented by polyominos)
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Anomia is a word from a Latin root and means “without name”. It’s the term for being unable to come up with the name of an object. Anomia is also a game (from Anomia Press), in which players race to come up with a word that fits a certain category, ranging from “color” to “rock opera” to “shampoo brand”.
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It’s time for a safari with Animix! Collect animals of different types and make sure the ones still on the table are arranged in their favorite patterns.
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Gain the most influence in the Animal Kingdoms by placing Noble Beast cards that match each kingdom’s (randomly-chosen) Decree. Animal Kingdoms feels very “adult” but is definitely approachable for kids.
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Legends of Andor is an awardwinning lightweight adventure. But what if players need something simpler, more approachable for young children?
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“My family is better than yours!” That’s the premise behind Ancestree, created by Eric Lang and published by Calliope Games. Draft tiles and build a dynasty worth commemorating! Or will your lineage be merely mediocre?
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Manage your own Adventure Mart franchise in this deck-building card game. Buy stock, fixtures, and hire staff, then sell your stock for the best price to passing adventurers! Best for gamers who enjoy min/maxing with lots of discrete information.
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Call fellow adventures to the table and prepare for epic battles! Protect the realm from the dangers that lurk within the fog surrounding the banks of the great river. On your way, gather swords from the mountains and medicinal herbs from the forests. Will you heed the call to Adventure Land?
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Take on the role of a circus director who tours the United States at the end of the 19th century.
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Button Shy is a micro-publisher dealing exclusively in micro-games. All of their games are small enough to fit in a wallet. Although some of these games are quite involved despite the small number of cards, we’ll be looking at two of their lightest games: a travel game and a fast deduction party game. Cow, Tiger, Santa Claus As a child,
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10 Gallon Tank is a simple and fun drafting game that offers fans of “I-Split-You-Choose” an opportunity to use a favorite mechanism that is often overlooked in games.
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