Finding word games is no challenge, especially with all the offerings on the Internet, but math? Not as popular, so maybe it bodes well that unattended gap be filled by King of 20, a game about creating equations.

The object of the game is to have the lowest score by the end of the game.

Two to four players get a rack and a set of five tiles. The latter show either numerals from one to nine or a mathematical operator: plus, minus, times, or divide (here they call it “over”). On his turn, a player plays some of his tokens on the 12 × 12 board to form an equation, playing off one or more of the tiles already present like a Scrabble board.

Their equation each turn is compared to the eponymous 20 and they want as few points as possible, so the trick is to get the statement to come as close to 20 as possible either way. Playing, say, 3 × 5 from one’s rack gets a result of 15; that garners the player five unwanted points, and playing 5 × 5 to get 25 achieves the same result. As equations stretch out over the board, players crisscross previous statements for their plays.

Bored of numbers? Board of numbers!

Given the previous play 3 × 5, someone could build 5 × 4 by using the 5 or the × (depending on which tiles they had on their rack), or the 3 could become 3 × 7. Extending an existing equation is also allowed. 5 × 4 can be modified by a simple “× 1” at the end of it (cheesy, maybe, but effective). Operators are no hindrance to play (if they were, the board would quickly become unplayable), so one need not absorb all those errant tiles on the board into the problem. Having a “times” tile you didn’t play in front of your otherwise beautiful equation is perfectly acceptable.

The player then fills his rack back up to five tiles and lets the next player go. If he cannot find something to put down he can trade pieces with the bag, but he takes a 10-point penalty for the turn. Play continues until there are no more tiles to be drawn, at which point everyone gets one final turn and the game is over. The lowest score wins.

Not content to share some of the same mechanics of play, King of 20 also has a Scrabble-like sensibility where its components are concerned. The pieces are all constructed of wood. The board is painted black with a white grid over it, and the crease in the middle is actually a brass hinge allowing it to fold up for storage – which is odd considering the massive box in which the game comes. The tiles are white with black lettering, and easily read, though as a minor nuisance the 6 has a line under it for clarification where the 9 does not. The operators are inexplicably words, not symbols, so it’s plus, minus, times, and “over” not +, -, ×, and ÷ (perhaps this is to forestall arguments about changes in symbology across disciplines or regions, though why language-dependent pieces are preferable in that case is hard to imagine). The racks are just large enough for five of the tiles; they fit snugly, though because of slight variations in manufacture a few of them won’t quite squeeze into the holder.

Some numbers stick out like a sore sum.

Rounding out the package is a lovely, crisply designed score pad; a one-minute sand timer (that, strangely, seems to vary between a couple seconds shy to a second extra); and a small cloth sack for drawing the tiles. Its mouth is small, so only slender folks are going to get their whole hand in it; others have to prop up the bag bottom and dig with their fingers. This copy looks like its drawstring sleeve has unraveled just a bit.

It’s an understatement to say there can be some analysis paralysis since players are tempted to check every possibility, but that’s why God gave mankind sand-timers. (At least one has no need to go through every possible word in the dictionary for the ideal play.) It still plays faster than its word-based forebears, and the simple math used makes it easier to put everyone on a more even footing during play. The benefits to kids improving their math skills are obvious, and simply put, the game is quite a bit of fun. There’s something that makes you want to challenge yourself, to come up with the best equation you can with your rack of options, and to do even better than that on your next turn.

The ability to interfere with other players’ chances is somewhat restrained, but it’s not nonexistent. If nothing else, as the board becomes more crowded you can see where the possibilities are – then take them for yourself. Using the words “times” and “over” and such instead of math symbols for the operators seems inelegant and unpleasing, but it all means the same thing during play. While it’s possible to debate the purity of the design when the similarities to Scrabble are so obvious, one cannot argue the results or the cleverness of tying the mechanics to the use of 20 as the single total. King of 20 is a whole (number) lot of fun.

“Well, we’ll show him! Especially for that purple monkey dishwasher remark!”

– Edna Krabappel, The Simpsons

Ever play telephone as a kid? Children pass a message, one to another, until the last person repeats it aloud. Invariably even the simplest message gets completely muddled by the end. If they could bottle it they’d sell it, and that’s what Telestrations attempts to do.

The object of the game is to score the most points . . . if you’re into that sort of thing.

Take one tablet and play it in the evening.

Each player (four to eight can play) gets his own flip-tablet for drawing, an erasable pen, and a small eraser cloth for getting rid of all the ink when the game is over. Spiral bound, the “pad” has tabs at the bottom to keep people in mind of what round it is and what they’re currently supposed to be doing. Everyone draws a card from the deck provided and someone rolls the six-sided die so you know which of your card’s six secret words or phrases you’ll be drawing. That goes in the front of your booklet. Now folks are ready for job one, which is . . .

Draw! The player has to sketch out his secret word, which invariably elicits cries of, “But I can’t draw!” Well, therein lies half the fun. If you could depict it with 100% accuracy there’d be no mystery for the next step, which is where everyone passes his tablet to the left and that player has to check the picture he was given and figure out what was drawn. He writes his guess down, then the group passes to the left again. Lather, rinse, repeat. Everyone alternates between drawing and guessing for eight rounds, and then and only then does everyone have a good laugh at just what terrible artists their friends are. Seriously, though, the results are usually far and away not what was expected or intended, and in this sense the game is really just a giddy pastime. But if you feel you need to determine who “won” . . .

The included point systems play out over three games; the booklets have a page set aside for keeping score. After each game players examine the art and text in their own tablet, and assign points to others either for the efforts they enjoyed the most (if it’s a friendly game) or to those who drew or deduced correctly (using a purely competitive system). When the third game concludes, the person with the greatest knack for sussing out what their friends are trying to communicate earns the most points and wins.

There’s no faulting the stuff you get in the box. The tablets are all miniature whiteboards; admittedly the area in which you have to create your masterpieces is small, but with the spiral binding, multiple pages, and tab system at the bottom, you’ve already gotten your money’s worth. The plastic spirals are even different colors, to help track who’s responsible for which board (though the red and the . . . brown? . . . are nearly identical).

A rainbow of flavors, in no particular order.

The pens are also a little short, so adults may find them slightly harder to hold than will the little hands in the household, but hey, at least no one’s expecting you to field your own stationery. The cards are sturdy and their hard-cardboard holder isn’t too bad either. The six-sided die is pretty standard, but the sand timer is marvelously accurate. Finally, there is a set of small cloth “shammies” for erasing the pads. They’re thin, almost a whisper of a suggestion, but then you can erase the boards with pretty much anything.

But hey, good luck with "New Jersey."

And game play? Okay, so maybe this is the sort of thing the family can do around the dinner table with a few sheets of paper and a little less hand-holding, but USAopoly’s formalized version of the old pastime isn’t just a cheap gimmick to cash in. The attention to detail on the tablets is wonderful: It saves on time and materials; the flip-book arrangement of pages makes sure there’s only one secret per panel; and most of the important things to know are printed right there as you go. And certainly, providing space enough at the table for eight is generous. They suggest flipping the pages over so no one sees what you’re passing to the next person – frankly it’s probably an unnecessary step since, if you can not only make out what other people in the game are passing but can work out what it is, you’re already some sort of savant. But hey, at least you have the option of super-secrecy. Having the card deck and its random element enter the equation levels the playing field a bit so no one has to come up with their own topics (and prevents folks from writing down something utterly outlandish).

Not to mention there aren’t many old social games that translate as well as Telestrations (you probably won’t be seeing Hide ‘n’ Seek on your local gaming shop’s shelves any time soon). The addition of a physical element to the festivities gives players something tactile to cling to and invests them in the action, and the points system gives it, well, a point, if you think that’s necessary to fan the flames of rivalry in your group. It does its part to raise the level of the cute stories one gets to tell about life around the tabletop, and Telestrations literally keeps everyone on the same page.

Ahoy, mateys! Time to set sail for new lands, ideally those that score you a fat bundle of cash. Mundus Novus, the new sailing and trading game from Asmodee, sends players on a quest to build fleets, gather stout explorers, and transport appealing cargo in their bid for gold during the age of conquistador colonization.

Two to six players become the patrons of their respective 16th-century merchant empires. They begin their investments with but a paltry hand of five cards, and the current Trade Master – a sort of “first player” position – names a number of cards from two to four. Everyone chooses and reveals that many cards from their hand simultaneously, to be used in trading. The cards show the various foods, goods, and spices everyone is after, and each “suite” has a number according to how rare it is.

We'd like your corn, indigo, vanilla, and any sacred gold artifacts you have lying about

Corn, for example, is a low number 2 because it’s easy to come by (there are 16 of them in the deck), while vanilla is the rare treat at number 9 and only eight of those are up for grabs. Finally there are several Inca relics to collect that serve as wild cards.

The player who unveiled the highest card total becomes the new Trade Master and decides whose card he wants. He puts the procured card into his hand, and the person from whom he chose gets the next selection. Players continue this chain, taking cards from each other, until all the face-up items are gone (there’s also a small market of extra cards with which the players may trade). With these new cards in hand, players can hopefully make a set of three or more of them, either all the same number (all 2s, for example) or all different.

If one can field different numbers, the return is in the form of Doubloons – four different goods are worth 5 gold pieces, but nine separate types would bring in 25.

All those doubloons buy a whole lotta smallpox

Alternately, a player who gathers a set of the same good can purchase a Development card from the table, and the higher the suite number is, the more choices he can pick from. Development cards offer bonuses and abilities that drastically change the way the game plays. For every ship added to his fleet, for example, he gets another card in his starting hand each turn, and warehouses let him keep cards from turn to turn so he can make better sets. The merchant cards allow someone to treat one good as though it were another – suddenly your two 5s and one 3 become a full set of 5s. No age of South American conquest would be complete without explorers, though, and they’re waiting to be discovered in the deck as well. Each imbues you with some special power, and most give you Doubloons each turn into the bargain. He may make your goods worth more for determining who becomes Trade Master, or he might protect you from events (some Development cards list events, and most of them are bad news like cargo-thieving pirates or fires that prevent warehouses from retaining goods).

The movers and shakers, circa the 1540s

Players grow their businesses until one of three victory conditions is met: reaching 75 Doubloons; presenting a perfect set of all 10 card types; or, should the Development deck run out first, having the highest Doubloon total.

The presentation of the game is really nice. You get a portrait of conquistador life courtesy of artist Vincent Dutrait, and the rules go into greater depth by giving a thumbnail sketch of each explorer’s life and accomplishments. The coins are thick, the cards seem sturdy, and the Trade Master token is similarly rugged. The rules are pretty well presented, and though it sports a few typos like many translations, nothing in it stops game play.

The rules are a reimplementation of the trading system from Mare Nostrum by Serge Laget and Descartes Editeur, with an able assist from Bruno Cathala. For such a small package, they certainly fit a whole lot of strategy into the mix. There are several paths to victory, and you can never get all the goods or cards you want to seal up the holes in your approach. There’s always something left to buy, and everyone else has a different idea on how to go about reaching the top. The actions of others may be tantalizingly within your grasp, making interaction possible but interference uncertain as you try to undermine their attempts at securing that “perfect hand” of ten or whatever other strategy they employ – you can see it, but it’s a close call whether you can do anything about it.

For anyone worried about the complexity of trading games, this is a pretty gentle way to get into one. It’s never overwhelming, and there’s not really a bad play to be made unless one simply doesn’t focus one’s efforts. It’s quick, so it won’t take up the entire evening (though if you want it to you can easily fit a game into an hour), but it does this without sacrificing opportunity and depth of play. Mundus Novus may be a retread of an older entry, but the lands it opens up surely feel fresh and fun.

Depending on who you believe – scientists, seamen, Ringo Starr – octopuses amass collections of debris, perhaps the remains of eaten shellfish, near where they live. Rather than just reference an untidy pile of refuse, they all decided it probably works better as an elegant metaphor. Hence the term, song, and, now, unrelated game: Octopus’ Garden.

The object of the game is to score the most points.

Players start with their own boards – called Gardens – full of adjacent circles arranged in an elongated hexagon; some crystal Pearls; and a few circular Oyster tokens.

There's no fresher fish market

The Marketplace, which resembles a tic-tac-toe board, is set up in the middle of the table and each space covered with another token drawn randomly from the cloth bag. Each chit has a picture of a specimen of undersea life, a numeral, and a “price” in Pearls.

On his turn a player can purchase any row or column of tokens from the market, if he has Pearls enough to afford all three, and place them on an open space in his Garden. If there are any Sea Stars in his arrangement, they move one space toward the nearest Oyster. Finally, each Oyster on his board produces a Pearl he can later use for purchases. If he can’t afford anything at the Marketplace, he just moves his Sea Stars and collects Pearls.

Sea Stars have the highest point values in the game but they also have a nasty tendency to eat your Oysters, the source of all your Pearls. You always earn at least one Pearl (this may be the one game where you literally “make” your money), but unless you plan on filling your Garden entirely with the dirt-cheap Coral it won’t be enough. More Oysters means more income, but they’re also -1 to your score at the end; you have to clear a comfortable “salary” while clearing space enough for point-scoring pieces.

There are other denizens of your Garden. Coral is beautiful and can be used to keep Sea Stars away from your Oysters, and beds of Seagrass and Anemones, in sufficient quantities, attract more sea life. There’s also some manmade junk at the bottom of the ocean: Garbage is free and reduces your score, but fanciful Relics build sets that increase in value.

The game ends when someone fills up all the spaces on his Garden with counters, or when the token bag is empty. Whoever has the highest point total wins.

Mary, Mary, how does your garden flow?

Valley Games has provided excellent components. The counters are thick and the artwork is gorgeous. The little crystals used as the Pearls are a fancy, frosted affair. Both the Marketplace and Garden boards are mounted, the rules are full-color, and they throw in the traditional cloth bag from which to draw new tiles. Even the box is a pretty sturdy item with a simple insert. About the only thing missing is the eponymous octopus – he’s on the box and rulebook covers, but makes no appearance in his own Gardens, the slacker.

What, you're just going to leave all this money lying around?

There’s a lot of strategy in this compact little package. Scores can vary greatly, and no one combination seems destined to sweep the seabed. Much love went into the graphics, with colorful paintings of the creatures and a wavy pattern like sunlight through a pond on the boards – forget convincing one’s stodgy parents to play, this is the sort of artful recipe even your grandmother might get into. It’s good introductory material for newcomers, though the strategy is probably complex enough to keep it from being an ideal “family” game that puts everyone on the same footing.

With hidden points that keep the ending in doubt and a high replay value, Octopus’ Garden is brief but meaty. There’s something here to like whether one is a veteran or a casual gamer; there’s as much tension playing out on one’s own board as there is between players. Ending the game by emptying the bag is mathematically unlikely in the extreme, so does that signal a potential supplement or sequel? If it does, it will be a welcome one.

During the summer months, keeping the bugs away is a daily chore, but at least now it’s a task found in convenient card-game format. Out of the Box Publishing has condensed the experience down to Bug Out, a fast-paced matching game to keep the kids on their toes. Literally, in fact, but let’s start by laying out the, er, ground rules (both jokes that make more sense by paragraph four). The object of the game is to be the first player to empty his hand of Bug Cards.

Not as easy as you thought, huh, smart guy?

The game comes with a deck of 36 square Leaf Cards and a set of matching, circular Bug Cards. Each player receives a hand of the Leaf Cards while the circles are scattered across the table. When someone gives the word, everyone starts pulling cards out of the deck in their hand and trying to lay them on the table. Since each leaf has a corresponding bug, the player has to locate the match on the table and cover one with the other. The first player to draw all his cards, lay them on the appropriate bugs, and call “Bug Out” is the winner. Having finished Bug Out, the participants can now spread the action out with BIG Bug Out. The game plays the same, but now the bugs are dispersed throughout the entire room on the floor. It runs just the same as before, but now players must traverse the room, maneuvering around each other, to find the right card.

The frosty bits are the raised logo on the case

Good things come in small packages, and in this case the package itself is pretty nifty. It starts in a larger, more colorful blister pack, but that’ll get thrown away. The whole caboodle fits into the plastic card case with the Out of the Box logo and motto raised from its surface. Inside, everything fits snugly (technically the contents benefit from having their little cardboard insert that cuddles up to the different “card” sizes). It’s disappointing to find how thin those cards are – little their feet may be, but kids are going to tread on the pieces sooner or later. (Were they not made of that stock, though, 72 cards probably wouldn’t fit in the hip little case.) The rules are brief (in fact they’re 26 words long and appear twice on the blister pack), and the delightful illustrations are not just a successful tango between similar color schemes and deceptively unobvious matches, they’re another win for artist John Kovalic.

A game in progre...hey! So that's where that little orange guy got to

Bug Out sidesteps the age gap, because Mom and Dad may find their skills aren’t what they thought they were – once the furor is in full swing, finding matches isn’t as easy as it looks. Therein lies one problem, that if someone does make a mistake and covers someone else’s bug it’s unlikely anyone else will catch it at the time and almost impossible to figure out the guilty party later. Even the perpetrator may not realize it in the heat of the hunt… This does makes it a fine fit for all age groups, though, since that kind of skill at association can vary widely regardless of demographic. If someone turns out to have more on the ball than anyone else, handicapping them is easy enough by weighing them down with more cards to match than their competitors. A small and unassuming piece, Bug Out is fun and has some of the hallmarks one looks for in a kids’ game like pattern recognition for the younger ones and a $10 price tag for the adults. Games take but a few minutes each so it can be played several times during an afternoon, though whether it’s engaging enough to hold the average five-year-old’s attention the whole day is something the family has to answer for itself. It can be played with as few as two or as many as six, allowing some intimacy between a parent and their child or some constructive anarchy with a whole passel of bug-catchers.

Dice. Your game table is lousy with them, so if a game company wants theirs to stand out, they know they’d better make it something special. That’s where Irondie comes in. Made of silver-plated white metal, dressed up in one of eight colors, custom-molded with different designs, and sold in sets of nine dice, they’re not just pretty, they’re also part of their own game. How does this stack up, both as an activity and a tool of the trade? An overview of play first.

The object of the game is to eliminate all the opponent’s Life dice.

Both players have a selection of nine six-sided dice, and these represent their ability to attack, defend, and stay alive. Opponents take up any number of dice from their “hand” and roll them simultaneously. You’re only in the game as long as you have one pip showing on one of your Life dice, so you need at least one of those to start. Throw as many as you like, but it’s a balancing act: Roll them all and you have no unused dice with which to respond to your opponent’s strategy, hold some back in the Reserve and his first assault may be enough to wipe you out. Attack dice beat on the enemy pieces while Defense protect other dice. A Basic Set has three of each kind, but these – and the various colors – can be mixed and matched to customize a set or “hand.” All of this keeps the game from being a straight-up dice comparison game.

Choose your weapons

Mind you, dice comparison is at the heart of the mechanics. The two players throw their dice: A player’s Defense total is subtracted from his opponent’s Attack total, and if there’s anything left over it gets through and does Damage to the Life dice. Sandwiched between the roll of the dice and the application of Damage, however, is a Skirmish phase. Here, any dice held in Reserve can be used for Duels – players alternate using special powers against each other in a chain of back-and-forth one-upmanship before the results are employed. Instead of straight Damage results, these dice use their special abilities to affect the game in other ways.

For example, one of the Attack dice is called a Smasher die; used in a Duel it zeroes in on any die already on the table. If it’s a higher roll it eliminates its target from the game before it has a chance to apply its effects (ties go to the defender). The Nullifier removes a die from play for one round, so the opponent could respond with that to negate the Smasher. Both players get to “reply” like this twice per Duel before applying the more simplified Attack-Defense-Life formula. Each color “specializes” in one of these dice, meaning it wins ties; every tone has its Smasher, but the black set’s Smasher can roll higher than or equal to. Colors are also characterized as Allied, Hostile, or Neutral to each other, according to a color-wheel chart, and Allies get even more bonuses from friendly dice that come up 1. For example, if one of your purple dice rolls a 1, it gives a +1 to an Attack and a Defense die – but only if those dice are red or blue. The strategy of “hand” construction is important even before the game begins, and smaller “boosters” are available that provide special rare dice with increased abilities.

If no one has succumbed to the loss of their Life, they go another round. Dice end up in Limbo when used, or the Abyss if destroyed; the former are renewed for the next round while the latter are out for the duration of the game. Players can reroll surviving Life dice in hopes of improving their numbers, but they must leave at least one on the table at all times. If ever someone has no Life they’re eliminated and their opponent wins, though results are applied simultaneously and leave open the possibility of a draw.

Sometimes the colors are hard to distinguish...

Blue-Star freely admits these dice are not scientifically balanced or accurate; you’re not going to see them showing up on tables in Vegas any time soon. Irondie is more like an objet d’art, albeit one you can toy with without museum staff pitching a fit. These metal chunks are satisfying to hold in the hand, their weight adding to the tactile delight they provide. The unusual shapes are fun and the die faces are pretty easy to read.

...and sometimes it's the shapes that blend...

Unfortunately the appearance of some of the dice is also the sticking point with this product. The biggest problem with the game function of Irondie is some of the dice are sometimes tough to tell apart without closer examination. Mostly this is an issue with the Defense class of dice, and the yellow and white hues look an awful lot like each other. Others are no trouble to spot, but players are easily taken out of the flow of the game if they have to stop and squint at the diagrams the company provides (even if you can tell one die from another, you still need to know which one is which on the chart).

...fortunately, that's why you have this

The game also provides a foldout playmat for one player. It’s printed with spaces for all the dice: not just the ones for Battle but also those used in Skirmishes, the ones that get sent to the Abyss, and so on. Players should have little trouble remember where they’ve committed their units, but it’s still a good organizational tool to keep everything straight with minimal fuss. The Chromatic Table (with all the special color bonuses on it) is on the opposite side where you won’t be able to get at it, but all this and more is easily downloaded from the website, including a more descriptive rulebook. The one included with the game is pretty good, insofar as it splits up the order of play and introduces concepts in a more digestible fashion. That’s a skill not all rulebooks have mastered, and should take note of.

Irondie is quite a bit to take in with each die providing so much information and all the rules to differentiate effects. These layered rules lend themselves well to strategy, though, offering enough ways to win that players who show a little interest may soon have a lot. A pack is pretty costly – $55 for a full set – but some stores have been breaking up boxes so players can buy in smaller, less expensive increments and customize their selection with a focus that collectible card games with their expansive, finely parsed rules can only envy. The company has plans for other “denominations” of dice outside the six-siders, though it’s not clear whether this represents a supplemental set of rules and options or if they’re meant to form a new game by themselves. And of course, even if you never play the game you’ve got one of the sweetest-looking collections at the table. Blue-Star has their market for Irondie figured out even if the consumers haven’t finished sussing out all the schemes available to them, both as collectors and players.

“All right, but apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?” – Reg, Life of Brian

Rome, to hear it told, was a pretty busy place, what with being the center of western civilization and all. People had loci to go, populus to see, and res to do. That’s where the players of Roman Taxi come in. They’re not the movers and shakers, they’re the ones who get the upper crust to wherever they need to be to do their moving and shaking. They’re Roman chariot taxi drivers.

The object of the game is to make the most points from transporting people around town.

Two to five players start the game with a Passenger card in their chariot – your current client – and a Taxi token. One board shows the town and its surrounding streets, a maze of multicolored spaces flowing between buildings.

"This . . . is the city."

The other is preprinted with rows for cards: Three Travel cards and an Event fit in each one. The big board is seeded with additional Passengers to pick up when the current fare gets out or, if one has the entrepreneurial spirit, to double up one’s chariot occupancy and make better time. Then again, it may just spell twice the failure rate.

Taking turns, players draw a face-up Travel card to make headway through the crowded city streets. Spaces in the road are various colors, and the driver must move to the next space that matches his Travel card’s color. He can turn down side streets if it helps, but U-turns only happen at intersections or with special Travel cards. Passengers are transported to important purple buildings dotting the town, but pulling up to the curb demands a card that matches the space outside your destination. Without one you might end up circling the block, hoping it’s sitting face-up on the board on your next pass. Travel cards don’t replenish until the row is empty, meaning someone has to eventually take the Event card at the end of that line, and these are usually unpleasant for the driver forced to take it.

These snafus pile up. For every turn a fare rides in a chariot his card gets a minute counter. These VIPs have places to be, and if you can’t get them there post haste your bottom line suffers. They patiently ride things out for a while, but they stiff you for half what you’re owed or hop out and take their chances hoofing it depending on how far over their printed time limit you go. Only an efficiently executed trip earns full payment.

As clients are picked up and delivered, new ones pop up among the purple buildings. The game ends soon after the Passenger deck is empty, and the driver with the most money wins.

The game has the best of intentions where graphic design is concerned, but it’s also one of the sore spots. The box and boards are all sturdy and the latter are mounted. The whole thing is quite colorful, but interpreting the board means adjusting to the sensory overload of the rainbow-hued path system, and there are a couple of spots where it takes a moment to reassure yourself you’re doing it right. The cards are simple (the text is hard to read when printed on the blue-card backgrounds), but the real buzzkill here are the Taxi tokens. Little wooden triangles, something like flattened pyramids, these have a dab of paint on the end to indicate their facing when placed on the board.

They don't know if they're coming or going; they're just roamin'

On the blue pawn it’s really tough to see and on the black it’s impossible to tell it’s even there, but in every case they don’t fit the board spaces well at all. It’s an inelegant way to mark your position and direction of travel, though it’s also hard to imagine a replacement that works better given the narrow lanes of the playing surface. There’s certainly no way for two pieces to be on the same space at once (if that’s even allowed – the rules don’t specify).

There are plenty of “you can’t do that” moves and areas to frustrate drivers. Game play is solid and boasts some strategy regarding grabbing fares, selecting Travel cards, and holding up traffic on the one-way streets (again, assuming opponents cannot pass through you). The Event cards, however, the ones meant to jazz things up . . . don’t. They’re pretty anemic, it turns out, and mostly revolve around getting more points. A couple have to do with movement or adding a minute to your fare, but since part of the strategy centers on who gets (or is forced to take) these cards, the results ought to be a bit more critical. As it stands it’s just a bit of a nuisance, not a game-changer.

The fares are fun to read; they’re a good mix of tongue-in-cheek descriptions, in-jokes, and lighthearted presentations of real-life figures from the period. No one’s going to learn a lot of meaningful Roman history from playing but it’s an interesting jumping off point given the designers make use of less-well-known personalities. The mechanics are as inviting to the older gamers as they are to the younger generation, so it can hit the family game table and still please hoi polloi. Eagle-eyed veterans are going to zero in on the flaws, however, and should find the halfhearted Events deck the weak point that keeps the action in Roman Taxi from being a real standout.

You know those tables you see at game gatherings where everyone is in rapt attention to what’s going on, and sometimes a roar of laughter goes up from that group? Stop by and there’s a good chance Donkey It’s a Kick! is being played.

Game play is pretty straightforward. There are plastic pucks in the middle of the table for all but one person. Everyone begins with a hand of four cards and the dealer puts the rest of the deck in front of him. When he’s ready he starts drawing cards. If he likes what he pulls he substitutes it for one of his four hand cards; otherwise he discards what he drew. Regardless, the castoff goes onto the table between him and the player to his left. That player draws from this smaller pile to draft cards just as the dealer did.

In this fashion the cards make their way around the table and into (or through) everyone’s hands. The cards are like a standard deck except 1s replace aces and the two jokers are wild. When someone has four of a kind (four 10s, four kings, etc.), he grabs one of the disks. That’s the signal for everyone else to try to snatch one as well, but like a game of musical chairs someone is left without a puck. That unfortunate soul has earned the D in “donkey.” It’s perfectly acceptable to fake a grab for a puck – if anyone falls for this ploy, the first person to touch a disk is penalized with a letter just the same.

To make things worse, the game adds in a Kicker every round. A card from this deck changes things up a bit. It might affect the play of the game, distract the players, or alter the triggering condition for success. Perhaps the players must get four of the same color. They may be required to hum a tune throughout the round as chosen by the dealer. It could be physical, like grabbing the disk with your chin. Or it might be as simple as forcing everyone to announce which number card they pass. Failure to do so means the perpetrator gets another letter – he could end up with two strikes in one turn, or two players might both get penalized.

Once someone has earned all the letters in “DONKEY” he becomes a Donkey; he can no longer win the game. (This barring other unforeseen circumstances – donkeys may become players again in this unpredictable little dance.) He keeps on playing, though, because his new mission is to be as big a distraction to the remaining contenders as possible. If he gets four of a kind he shows his hand and announces “Donkey!” with the usual resulting chaos amid the table, but he himself can’t grab a puck. He can’t touch his fellow players, but anyone tricked into speaking to him is turned into a Donkey as well.

When all but two players have become Donkeys there’s a Showdown. Each person gets half the deck, deals his opponent four cards, and they play without a Kicker to get four of a kind and win one last puck.

Donkey is graphically pleasing, but then there’s not much to illustrate here – the cards are bright and easy to read, and that’s the most important thing when trying to sort through them to find your match. The score sheets are kind of stacked up in the box (the next printing is supposed to have a pad); these show a row for players’ names across the top and the word “donkey,” one letter per line, running down the left side. The rules say to give everyone their own sheet even though there’s space for four people on one sheet. (Perhaps they expect you to play four games – in which case you’d still only need to put your name at the top once.) It’s a bit of an extravagance when you could just use scrap paper (bring your own pen in any case) or even simply remember who has what (assuming you trust your opponents to tell you).

The insert tries to keep everything in place, but it’s still easy for things to rattle around loose or even get under the cardboard. (The reprint is also supposed to switch to a plastic insert.) The most notable feature by far, though, are the pucks. About two and a half inches across and three-quarters of an inch thick, these aptly named items are made of sturdy plastic and are fun to stack, clatter, slide, spin, roll from player to player, play table hockey, and occasionally use in a game of Donkey It’s a Kick! It would be nice if the cards were as unyielding – they get quite a workout as they circumnavigate the table – but they hold up pretty well considering, and some card sleeves might alleviate the worst of it if the players are willing to trade slippery for sturdy.

If your pregnant wife has ever gone into labor in the middle of the night and you were left to look for your car keys and cell phone in a pile of stuff on your desk in the dark so you could get to the hospital, you have a pretty good idea what it’s like to start flipping through a deck of cards in Donkey to make four of a kind. The grunts of frustration and clenched-teeth curses flow into that metaphor pretty seamlessly as well. There’s no shortage of crazy card-snapping games on the market, but the addition of the cleverly coined Kickers keeps things fresh not just one round after another but one game to the next. You aren’t likely to see all the cards in just a game or two, and even then many of them require creative input from the players when they come up. Furthermore, expansions are planned to add Kickers to your set.

This is one of those games your friends go to great lengths to tell you how much they disliked . . . then when you show up the next week, demand to know why you didn’t bring that crazy Donkey game again this time. While it’s too adrenalin-fueled for most players to keep at this the whole night, it straddles the line between card game and party game (then again, it also straddles the line between controlled chaos and a bloodsport). This makes Donkey It’s a Kick!a good choice whether it’s a session with gung-ho gamers or just a soiree with friends or family and their casual interest in the brutal world of donkey-kicking.

I came across this article the other day. I’ve been playing desktop computer games since I was around 6 or 7 years old.

Jeff Vogel

Of course, back then they weren’t really home computer games, my Dad would let me play the games they had on the mainframes in his office. Funny part was, back then most people hadn’t really even played many stand up video games, but here I was playing these little shoot’em games on a green screen monitor, with only arrow keys and the space bar for a trigger. Best part was, since it was all mainframe stuff, it was networked across the country to other offices, and it was multi-player!

I’d sit there for hours playing these couple games he had access to, one was ‘Rats’ the other was a vampire type game.

So, I’ve seen computer gaming from its wee, baby beginnings. And, what confuses me a bit about the rant that Jeff Vogel is making is that… I thought almost any reasonably successful video game studio usually had the practice of re-using their engine code. Heck, I know that they were doing it back when I would purchase games on cassette tape for my Vic-20. Sure those games were no where near as intense on the programming side as even the most inane shovel-ware that you can find for $5 in Best Buy these days. But, still, I know the industry has been using a code re-use model for a very long time.

I would have to sit and think real hard to days when it wasn’t common for major games not to tout the engine that they were using as part of the marketing.

Maybe I am missing Jeff’s point here, but it seems that there is some other point that he wants us to gain from his writings. Since, from my perspective, it looks as if he is just looking for someone to pat him on the back for doing what I know people have been doing in the game industry since 1988.

I’ve been wrong in the past, but… this one just made my brain go into an odd spin.

What are some of your first video gaming memories? Do you ever get hung up on what specific video engine that a particular game uses?