Picking boogers out of a giant, plastic head while trying not to make his brains pop out? That’s the gist of Gooey Louie, a new product of Goliath Games, makers of Doggie Doo.

In the game, you’re rolling a die to see if you need to pick 1 or 2 boogies from Louie’s nose, skip your turn, or pick 1 boogies and reverse the turn order. One of said boogies is hooked to a trigger mechanism that makes his eyes bug out and his brain pop out. Play continues until a player pops the brain.

Very simple, yet the theme of the game alone was enough to keep my kids playing for a long time, even after they figured out how to feel for the “trigger boogie.”

Will this game have lasting appeal? Probably not, but most kids will probably get the money’s worth out of it. It’s a novelty toy more than anything else.

Gooey Louie was provided free for review my Goliath Game.

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Walter Sharrow has created something. That something is called Mezmo, and he’s looking for feedback on his little project.

Walter says, “Mezmo is not a game. Or maybe it is a game.”

What it is, is a set of tiles that can be downloaded and printed for free, and then you take it from there. All the pieces link to each other from at least 1 side, and the images are pulled from several different themes.

I can’t say if Walter really does have a game here and wants people to find it, or has just created a really cool looking set of tiles and wants people to figure out their own games for use with them.

Either way, he’s got my curiosity. Now, can he get my attention?

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Penny Game Auctions is, as the name implies, a penny-auction website for board games. Penny auctions, if you’re not familiar with term, are a type of auction where participants pay for the privilege of bidding (in the case of Penny Game Auctions, 39-45¢ per bid, with volume discounts). Each bid raises the clearing price by a fixed amount, typically 1¢, and extends the auction by a short amount of time (in this case, 15 seconds).

Rising only a penny-at-a-time, the closing prices on products in penny-auctions can seem quite low, while the true cost must factor in the bidding fees applicable even to the losers. Many penny-auction sites have also come under fire for other deceptive practices, such as shill bidding.

Penny Game Auctions acknowledges that the business model is “widely known to be shady” but explains that it avoids the major problems in two ways. First, the full cost of bids used in an auction can be applied at any time during the auction, or for 6 hours afterwards, toward the purchase of the same game at a discount to MSRP. Second, the identity of all bidders is known because participants must register with their BoardGameGeek IDs.

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So here’s something interesting for our older gamers. DrunkQuest is a drinking game, that’s actually a game! DrunkQuest is a fantasy RPG-type game where you’re actually drinking as you play. They claim is the nerdiest way to get drunk.

The production values look superb, and the art on the cards is pretty awesome looking. The base game contains 66 Monsters, 118 Treasures, 16 Hero/Realms, and custom dice.

DrunkQuest has seen some success, and now they’re working on getting their first expansion, The 90 Proof Seas, funded through Kickstarter. The expansion adds new cards  including: ships, rare monsters, and combo-actions. Overall, the expansion adds 100 cards to the 200 card base set.

DrunkQuest is currently available on Amazon, though as of this post, is sold out. The expansion can be obtained by funding the Kickstarter project at the $20 level.

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Voted “Funniest Person on Twitter” by Comedy Central, Rob Delaney now has a board game being put out by All Things Equal. War of Words is, at its core, a party game revolving around Rob’s Twitter feed. Players will read aloud his tweets, voting on which is funnier. They’ll also be answering open-ended questions previously asked by Rob on Twitter, and drawing from a War Chest deck that will have various effects on the game.

Don’t use Twitter, or even know what is is? No knowledge of Twitter is required to play the game. War of Words is for 4-6 players, ages 18+, and will start shipping on May 15th with a MSRP of $24.99.

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I can’t say I went into playing Bejeweled thinking I was going to find a good game in this licensed product.

I was wrong.

The board game does an good job of capturing the feel of PopCap’s popular video game, but adds in some interesting mechanics to make it work in board form with multiple players. The goal in Bejeweled is to collected 3 coins each of 3 different colors. You do this by matching gems on the board. 3 gems gets you 1 coin, 4 gets you 2, and 5 gets you 3. After you take your turn, you slide all the gems that can be slid away from you towards the other side of the board. Sometimes this causes chain reactions, and you keep sliding. Once that’s done, you fill in the board with random gems, resolve any new matches, and play continues.

It’s the gem sliding mechanic that makes the game so interesting. In a normal game of Bejeweled, you always know new gems will fall from the top of the screen. Not only are you sliding gems away from your side of the board in this game, but other players are also. That means that every turn gems slide in a different direction, constantly shifting the layout of the board.

There’s a bit of strategy here, mixed with a good amount of luck-of-the-draw with new gems.

Overall, Hasbro put a pretty good game out there to market. One that my family really enjoys, and has already seen a lot of play in our house.

Bejeweled was provided free for review by Hasbro.

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Walter Sharrow has just released Cursed, a quick bluffing game for 3-8 players. Quick, as in 3-4 minutes per player.

Each turn one of the players is turned into a monster, and the other players must work cooperatively to drive back the monster until dawn. There’s a hidden dice roll element, so the monster can bluff to try and get the players to flee from it if it knows its rolls are low. There’s also cards tossed into the mix for more special actions. You can view the complete rules of the game here.

The game sounds like a blast, and the components of the game look phenomenal.

Cursed is available now for $40 + shipping.

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AEG is holding a Spring Sale.

For enough likes and follows, Noble Valerian will give away copies of HP and Pillow Fight.

A special promotional card will be available from participating retailers for Cryptozoic’s soon-to-be-released Batman: Arkham City Escape.

UGeek Media is giving away Munchkin Quest from Steve Jackson Games.

Save $10 when purchasing two of select Mattel games from Amazon.

Some of the other significant deals to be had from Amazon, include:

• Blokus To Go from Mattel at 41% off
• What’s in Ned’s Head? for 63% off
• Scene It? Seinfeld for 68% off
• Scene It? Glee for 69% off
• Zynga Words with Friends To Go Game for 74% off
• Frag Gold Edition for 58% off
• Redakai Championship Tin with Cards for 74% off
• Mr. Bacon’s Big Adventure for 38% off

Glimpse is giving away either Lids ‘n Lizards or MagneTalk Early Classifying from Super Duper Publications.

Misfit Momma is giving away the Angry Birds Star Wars AT-AT Attack Battle Game.

Thrifty Nifty Mommy is giving away GeoDice from Geotoys.

For 10% off an order of $5 or more from Precis Intermedia, use coupon code “M4XTSLNKKC”.

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After 2 days of competition, 8th graders Kevin Bowerman and Raymond Gao of Smith Middle School in Chapel Hill, North Carolina were declared the winners of the National School Scrabble Championship Sunday. The event, which took place over the weekend in Washington, D.C., hosted 89 student teams from across the United States and Canada.

School Scrabble is always played in pairs.

Bowerman and Gao finished the tournament with a record of 6-1 and a 717 point spread.

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Setup by Gamelyn Games, Fantasy Gaming Figures is a Kickstarter project for exactly what you think it would be for. Back at the $20 level, and get 30 wooden, fantasy meeples. These aren’t your ordinary meeples, though. These figures range from 19mm to 30mm, and are extremely sturdy and strong. There’s a good mix of heroes, monsters, and fantasy creatures in the mix, and you can get more figures at higher backer levels.

These look like they’d make a great addition to any RPG, or board game that uses generic tokens.

There’s still 42 days left for the project, and it’s already at $1,696 of it’s $9,500 goal.

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