Chalenj (pronounce with fake French accent) is a game of boasting and challenging.

A task is revealed, such as “How many Star Wars characters can you name in 30 seconds?” The person who bids the highest gets challenged to do it. Tasks cover the spectrum of activities, and include singing, dancing, and so on.

Part of the proceeds are donated to Whiz-Kids, a UK charity for disabled children.

(info)

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Conquering Hollywood is a game about the trials and tribulations in Hollywood, naturally.

There isn’t a complete set of rules on the site, but the game expressly mentions that everything you do while playing the game, including out of game actions such as going to the bathroom, has an effect on the game:

Say someone gets up and goes into the kitchen to get a beer and you say, “get me a drink while you’re up, will ya?” That’s not simply a side comment or question. That counts as part of the game and you could lose one of your chips for saying it.

That could be either really cool, or really stupid. I’m leaning toward the latter. The base of the game appears to be some sort of roll-and-move mechanism.

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I saw Trapdoor Checkers from Goliath Games on two of the gift guides in the last post, so I decided to check it out.

Some of the spaces have trapdoors, which allow you to kill pieces on those spaces. When do these doors open? When the spinner says so.

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• Chiacgo Tribune – AmuseAmaze, The Chain Game, Dominion, Illium, LoYo!, Pictureka, The T-Shirt Game, Trapdoor Checkers, Treasure of the Lost Pyramid, Wordquest
• Canadian Press (picked up by several papers)- Jungle Speed, Zooloretto, Say Anything, Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries, Incan Gold, Pandemic, Battlestar Galactica
• Citizen Times – Labyrinth, Spy Alley, Animal Soup, Blokus, You’ve Been Sentenced!, 10 Days in Africa, Blunders, The Way Things Work, Great States, Flibbix
• Deseret News – Lost Cities, Tzaar, Aquaretto, Through the Ages, Acquire, Tayu, Pentago, Kayak Chaos, Turtlemania, Rolit, It’s Alive, Wits And Wagers, Time’s Up, Loaded Questions Political Party, Word Sweep, Arthur Saves the Planet, The Adventures of Riley: Penguin Rescue, Pengoloo, Horton Hears a Who, Fancy Nancy Posh Bedroom Game, High School Musical 3 Senior Year, The Naked Brothers Band Game, Mall Madness Hannah Montana, Game of Life – Pirates of the Caribbean, Monopoly Here and Now World, Clue Harry Potter, Risk Godstorm, Trapdoor Checkers, Operation, Trivial Pursuit 25th Anniversary, Ticket to Ride the Card Game, Race for the Galaxy, Rapscallion, plus some local LDS games
• Vue Weekly – Carcassonne, A Theory of Fun
• NJ.com – I Love the 80’s, Rolit, Exago, Word Sweep, Gather Round Dinner, Wordquest
• SF Chronicle – Dominion,Witch’s Brew, Sorry! Sliders, Qwirkle, Illium, Trivial Pursuit 25th Anniversary, Word Sweep,Yahtzee Free for All, Rolit, Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries, Crosswise, Wordquest, Ticket to Ride the Card Game, Change Horses, Stone Age, Agricola, Chinatown, Vikings, Toledo, Darjeeling, Totem Land, New World, Ninja Versus Ninja, Horus, Wasabi, Utopia, Gift Trap, Backseat Drawing, Humm Bug, Naq, Hue Knew?, The Origin of Expressions, Take Your Best Shot, The Chain Game, Say Anything, The Game of Things
• Grand Rapids Press – Ticket to Ride, The Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, Crokinole, Can’t Stop!
• CTV: Bananagrams, Eye Know, Blokus 3D, Cranium, Amazing Labyrinth, The Settlers of Catan, Apples to Apples, Link-O, Quelf, Theories

so far …

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Following a similar experiment in Kalmykia, the region of Pskov established a Chess program in 100 basic schools and then the kids down to play on October 10.

60,000 kids played games, some watched photos, and some prepared theatrical plays. 2,000 of the children played games directly against the local authorities (some of the latter played several games at once).

(source and photos)

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Artist Moritz Waldmeyer has created a lock-picking game that builds on the concept of the old board game Operation.

There are great similarities in keyhole [laparoscopic] surgery and lock picking, you need to be very precise in your movements and you can’t see what you are actually doing. All of these skills are reflected in the game, where you have to enter the key into a three-dimensional maze without touching the walls. You can study the maze before as a 3D file on your laptop. Every touch is being counted, the person with the smallest number wins!

(source)

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X-Ceter-O, another imminent release from Endless Games, is a packaged game nearly identical to the age-old game Three Men’s Morris.

Each player has three numbered pieces: O’s are numbered 1,3, and 5, and X’s are numbered 2,4,6 . Players alternate placing or moving the stones on the board, in numerical order, starting again from 1 when all stones have been moved or placed.

Aside from the strict numerical ordering, this is Three Men’s Morris. But it’s packaged as “an imaginative twist on the classic game [of Tic Tac Toe], incorporating elements of chess and other strategy games,” with a claim that a tie is not possible.

(source)

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Still waiting for Talisman Revised 4th Edition from Fantasy Flight Games… But while we wait there’s news from the company that preorders of the Reaper expansion through local game stores will be rewarded with two exclusive promotional cards, Instructor and Doppelganger.

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From Radioactive Press, the same fine folks who brought you Vehicular Homicide, comes another specialized tactical miniatures combat game, Bilge Rats. This one allows players to assemble a crew of pirates and take on other pirate bands for control of the high-seas.

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