Sky News produced a set of Top Trumps cards called Politico Top Trumps, containing stats on 30 of the top politicians in Britain. Then they handed them out to delegates at the Labour conference this week in Manchester. (source)

The BBC reports, via The Sun, that the delegates are having a good time playing with the cards. (source)

Speaking of politicians on Tops Trumps cards, Chris Barnardo of Dad Can Do created a set of Tops Trumps called Plop Trumps, featuring pictures of the droppings of 30 different animals, along with stats such as frequency, hardness, length, width, smelliness and yuk factor. (source)

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All Things Equal, makers of Loaded Questions, have released The Joke Game.

Simple premise: hear a joke without the punchline: write down the punchline. Score if you got the real punchline, or if the judge picks yours.

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The Canadian television show (based on the book series) Gossip Girl gets its own board game: Never Have I Ever. Not to be confused with the drinking game of the same name.

It’s supposed to be available only from October, but here it is on Amazon.

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A Fist Full of Coins is a board “game” intended specifically for children with learning disabilities, language problems, and the like.

While the site makes some extravagant claims (e.g. the URL is “nomorelearningdisorders.com”), the game seems straightforward enough. It may not necessarily qualify as a game according to everyone’s definition: Each turn, you flip a card, follow the instructions, and gain coins based on how difficult the instructions are considered to be.

For example (source):

1. Level 1: Put the blue bird in front of the red heart box.
2. Level 2: Put the yellow square box behind the green oval box and a blue butterfly in front of the oval box.
3. Level 3: Put the orange diamond between the circle box and the heart box. Then put a green clover under the circle box and turn the heart box over and put the white star on top of it.
4. Level 4: Turn the oval box over and put it on top of the button and the flower. Then put the car on top of the oval box and a butterfly behind the oval box and the triangle in front of the oval box.

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GameCareerGuide, associated with Gamasutra, runs a weekly game design challenge.

This week’s challenge is to make Monopoly fun; create three rules that will make the game more fun, while fixing the “known problems” with the game, which include excessive luck, excessive length, and player elimination.

Are you up to the challenge?

(challenge)

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Last year, Irving Finkel published a collection of articles from the 1990 colloquium on board games at the British Museum. That’s a long time to wait between a colloquium and its collection.

The collection is chock full of great authors on the subject of games: Finkel, Edgar Pusch, R.C. Bell, and many others. Topics include everything from ancient to near-modern, many types of ancient game from every part of the world, and articles that cover both the games and their origins.

The Bryn Mawr Classical Review gives it a good once-over for us.

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Can you tell the made up board games from the real ones?

Mental Floss challenges you to select “real” or “made up” for a series of eleven alleged board games. I scored 9 out of 11.

(challenge)

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