Anitra Smith is the managing editor of The Family Gamers, and co-host of The Family Gamers Podcast.
Explore the reviews and podcasts she has contributed to.
The Tea Dragon Society now has meetings in board game land! Does the game hold up to the tone and message of the comic? Is it still fun to play if you’ve never read the comic? Yes to both!
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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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But have you noticed that simply holding a pencil encourages nearly everyone to doodle? Why not make it a game?
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What’s a word that starts with A and contains a P and then an L? Maybe you thought “apple”, but how about “application” or “anthropology”?
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The bakers in Sprinkleton have a big problem – monsters keep stealing all their donuts! Can you pick out the suspects and help the bakers recover their donuts? Monster Match is a new collaboration from the team that brought us Happy Salmon – designers Ken Gruhl & Quentin Weir, with art by Linda DeSantis. As with Happy Salmon, Monster Match
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Robot waiters gather food and bring it to customers. But can you deliver the food combinations your customers need?
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“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” – William Shakespeare In Fairy Tile, you create the map of the kingdom and move the fairy tale characters through their story. Use the Pages in your Book to recount the adventure of the princess, the knight, and the dragon.
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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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Sometimes, you just want a simple game to pass the time. It’s even better if you can learn a little bit while you’re playing. For decades, Top Trumps has been doing its part to fill this need in the UK, but after being acquired by Winning Moves, they are now available in the US. With hundreds of different decks, did
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We’ve all had that friend. The one who bellyaches about how poorly he’s doing in a game. In adults, this behavior can be amusing, and even if it’s not, we can choose to exclude a sore loser from our gaming circle. But what about our kids? Learning to put up with disappointment is part of growing up.
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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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Playing puzzle games with children can be frustrating. If it’s mildly challenging for me, it may be impossible for my 7-year-old; but if it’s the right level for him, it’s far too easy for me. I don’t want to hold back: I want to beat my children fair and square. What to do? Match Madness gives us a possible solution.
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The rules are so simple and intuitive, even a toddler can understand them. In fact, since the game is easy enough for toddlers to understand, this makes it a great game to play with them. You can slowly introduce them to strategy, and the materials are resilient enough to handle whatever it is that makes their hands sticky all the time.
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As a city planner, you naturally want to make the most beautiful and crowd-pleasing city. But watch out! Other players may offload their problems to your beautiful city, even as you upgrade your buildings to become more useful. Will you flip for Flip City, or is it more of a flop?
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Arr, mateys! We be pirates, sailing the high seas in search of Loot. We play cards to capture or defend merchant ships. Loot is one of the earliest games from designer Reiner Knizia. It’s been available in the United States since 2005 from publisher GameWright, but the newest version has updated artwork and comes in a metal tin.
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A rare video-game review! Harmonix is known for rhythm-and-music video games such as Guitar Hero and Rock Band. We love every game they have made (we regularly rave about Amplitude), so when they announced their new game for Switch, Super Beat Sports, we were intrigued. Sports in a music game? How could that work?
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BLANK is basically a starter pack for the interested designer; it provides a template to create rules and effects to make the game your own.
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Birds and flowers and fish, oh my! This beautiful abstract game has players work together to make a beautiful garden. But will the garden be most pleasing from your perspective, or will your opponents have a better view?
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Remove windows from the Macroscope and be the first to guess the picture correctly. Did Macroscope reveal hidden depths, or was it out of focus?
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Did you know that ghosts can scare each other? Neither did I until I played BOO, a compact game for two players from Perplext. Did this ghostly game grip us, or were we perplexed by this petite phantasmal puzzler?
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