Uncle Chestnut’s Table Gype, designed by Christopher and Paul Nowak, published by Eternal Revolution and also available as a download, was inspired by a quote from G.K. Chesterson: “I myself cut out and coloured pieces of cardboard of mysterious and significant shapes, the instruments of Table Gype; a game for the little ones.” He is referring to a game that he claims that he and H.G. Wells invented. Nobody actually knows how this game was played, although Wells was a famed wargamer.

This game adds dice and chess-like movement to the game of Chinese Checkers. Every time you jump a piece, you roll the piece to see what its new movement abilities are; each of the six faces permits a different type of movement.

Another recent game that combines dice with a popular abstract game (Abalone) is Knockabout by Pair-of-Dice Games.

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Doggone Grief from the Aultman Health Foundation is a tool to get children involved in grief therapy (not a substitute for actual therapy).

Copy says that “There are four grief emotions children can verbalize: sad, mad, scared and happy. A colorful deck of cards depicts these emotions by showing dogs in various activities.” I would have thought that grief couldn’t be boiled down that simplistically; what do I know? After picking a card, players must share when they felt one of these ways.

$35 plus shipping, ages 3 and up, recommended that an adult supervise the experience.

(source)

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Infunitum is Family Feud crossed with Boggle. A topic is selected (what keeps you awake at a meeting?), each player writes down a bunch of answers, duplicates are crossed off, and the remaining answers score points.

I haven’t played, but I don’t quite get it. In Boggle, there is a limited number of legal possible answers. Here, there would seem to be an infinite number of possible answers. While you may want to write down a few obvious ones to ensure others don’t score them, you have only one minute, and you have to defend your answers as being relevant to the topic, it doesn’t look like it would be that difficult to come up with weird answers. Or maybe I’m just weird that way.

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Trivial Pursuit clone Bluegrass trivia game with 1200 questions. $30 plus shipping. That’s it. Y’hear.

(source)

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WonderChess, by Wonderchess, is Chess where the pieces are hollow and so can contain prizes or rewards. For instance, capture an opponent’s piece, open the piece, and find a jelly bean.

The also make Go, Checkers, a word game, and now a memory game.

(hat tip)

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Hot news of game sales.

Barnes & Noble brick-and-mortar stores are running significant sales on some of their remaining holiday stock of board games. Note that not all games are on sale, but if you look around you should find a table or two of games with red stickers. Last night, I purchased Masters of Venice, Travel Blokus, and Time After Time for 75 percent off! I understand that tomorrow prices might be lowered to $2 per game. Of course, stock will vary by store and is very limited. But if you hurry up, I left you several copies of Wits & Wagers, Red November, and a variety of Goliath Games in the Rockville, Maryland shop.

Besting even the Barnes & Noble discount, White Wolf is celebrating Read an E-Book Week (did you know that was this week?) by offering a PDF copy of the World of Darkness Rulebook (normally $25) for FREE!

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Finding Dulcinea pimps board games, Yottaquest, games in education, The Settlers of Catan, Board Games with Scott, and many other topics. (source)

The Visalia Times-Delta pimps retro board games in a column called “Down Memory Lane”. (source) Today she plays Bunco.

CrunchGear pimps Bubble-Talk, an Apples to Apples-like game of playing short phrases onto pictures. (source)

LEGO says that its new line of board games are what’s boosting its sales. (source)

The Hartford Courant pimps board games’ staying power. (source)

A blogger in the Phoenix New Times pimps the foodie board game What’s Cookin?. (source)

Dunstable Today pimps Tom Lennett, the designer of Numenko. (source)

South Africa’s BuaNews pimps Asiphile, a board game about sexual health. (source)

The Financial Mail Women’s Forum pimps girls …. hmmm, that didn’t sound right … by sponsoring a financial board game design challenge. Six girls aged 16 to 17 from Withington Girl’s school, calling their design group “Money Minded”, walked away with £3,000 for the first place design. (source) The game board is brain shaped and it has brain-shaped tokens.

An awesome interview [PDF] with Warhammer designers John Stallard and Rick Priestly in last month’s Battlegames.

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The Prisoner was a popular TV show, and a card/board game based on the show and published by UK sggc Card-Board Games. You go around the board trying to find the items you need to escape.

Card-Board Games aims to reduce the cost of their game production by creation games whose boards are created by the cards as you play. I.e. tile laying games, using cards.

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Brand New Games is a startup game publisher. Soon to be followed by two more, the company’s first game is Nay-Jay. It’s a fast-paced game of simultaneous card play, similar to other speed card games, but where players can build the central piles up or down, as well as change a pile’s color with a wild-card. Cycliste will be a strategic card game about bicycle racing and Bones of Ascension will be a fantasy-battle-themed strategic dice game.

Brand New Games was formed by a group of friends in Mapleton, Utah but its president, lead designer, and energetic spokeswoman is Naomi Tripi. In her own words:

I wanted to become a game publisher not only because I love games personally, but I love creating things. To have something in your head that is just a thought, an idea that you have is one thing, to actually see your idea take physical form and become an object that anyone can see and interact with is thrilling for me. So far, game publishing has worked out better than I had ever imagined.

On how it feels to present one’s design to the public at-large, Naomi says:

I get nervous sometimes, I hope people will enjoy the games, but I know that not everyone can like every game. Most of the time I’m just excited to share a new way to have fun with other people who share my appreciation for games. The first time I taught Bones of Ascension to a play-testing group my hands were shaking because I was so nervous, but after the first few minutes of game-play the nervousness was replaced by a kind of euphoria. It is just so rewarding to see people enjoying something that you created.

So far, accepting the public’s reaction to my games has been really easy because the feedback has been so positive. The harshest things anyone has said about Nay-Jay are “this game won’t appeal to serious gamers” and “It’s just like Nertz”. But this game isn’t targeting serious gamers, and I fully acknowledge Nay-Jay’s similarities to Nertz and Speed. It is a different game, but yes it is similar, so I took no offense to those comments.

Brand New Games is attacking the market with gusto. The company runs frequent in-store demos, crowned a 2010 Nay-Jay World Champion at the recent SaltCON in Salt Lake City, and is planning various additional events for Origins, Gen Con, and local shopping malls.

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Girlfriends’ Intuition by sggc Savvy Ideas is a party … uh … activity for girls. You can select among the questions to use before playing the game, so it can be played for all ages.

Essentially, you ask your friends questions (“What do you like your boyfriend to wear to bed?”), guess what they will say, and they answer. $30 plus shipping. According to the ad copy, the game is: ultimate, hilarious, best, sooooo fun, awesome, truly fabulous, uproarious, stunning, giggly, exciting, riotous, totally uplifting, reviving, energizing, strengthening, and perfect.

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