Uncle Skunkle Toys makes some beautiful wood games. They look good, they’re well made, and they’re fun to play with. But as games they fall short, with simple strategies that obviously ruin the spirit of play. Think of them more as toys and you’ll be happier with your purchase.

For 2010, the company’s new products include Drawer Dropper, Gauntolot, and Spindow More.

Drawer Dropper is a large rotating cabinet with nine bottomless drawers on each side. In the first stage of the game, the cabinet is quickly rotated while players shove colored discs in to the slots found in each drawer. In the second stage, the players open drawers and place the discs that fall out, four at a time, onto pegs on top of the cabinet. The player with the fewest remaining discs at the end of four rounds is the winner.

In Gauntolot, players take turns as the builder, assembling a tower of blocks, that then the attacker attempts to knock down by rolling a ball down a set course. Meanwhile, other players act as the builder’s allies and try to interfere with the rolling ball using a ram, pendulum, catapult, and crossbow.

Spindow More is for four players and has those players turning wheels to get five of the same color in a row. The wheels, however, are shared between players, so that when one player turns a wheel, it also interferes with another player’s board. When five in a row are achieved, a player removes one of the wheels to count it as a victory point, and of course, putting a gap in the board that can make future moves more difficult.