Three months until the 2010 World Cup, and we have yet another South African soccer/football game, Sokhazania, designed by graphic designer Carel de Beer.

The game is straight roll-and-move, with no decisions or knowledge of soccer required, which the ad trumpets this as selling points.

For other recent games trying to cash in on the World Cup, see Supersport, Starplayer, and a game by ODMasia. RTL Games also planned a South African World Cup Destination game before it went into receivership.

For its release, Macmillan is also publishing a board game (not a CCG!) themed on the book and based on the game … CandyLand. Actually, the game appears to play – and I say this without exaggeration – even less interestingly than does CandyLand. You can download the complete game from the publisher.

I’m more hopeful about the book.

(source)

At least three Native Americans are upset about the upcoming game King Philip’s War from Multiman Publishing, because they are apparently unaware of the fact that “game” does not equal “trivializing”. (source)

Source is not entirely appalling, but not very illuminating either. I’m not sure how these guys found out about the game, nor how large a group of people were upset about it.

Ad copy from MMP site:

King Philip’s War 1675-1676 was a momentous example of New England frontier savagery. A loose coalition of angry tribes inspired by King Philip (the Wampanoag sachem, Metacomet) burned and sacked settlements throughout the colonies of Massachusettes, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and the then separate colony of Plymouth. Ultimately, more than 2600 Colonials were captured or killed, Twelve Colonial settlements were completely destroyed and six more heavily damaged. Boston itself very nearly came under attack. At the same time, countless Indian villages were burned and 6000 Indians were slain or captured, and sold into slavery.. In all, 1,200 homes were burned, and vast stores of food destroyed. Metacomet himself was eventually ambushed, beheaded, and quartered.

A $123,000 lacquered “urushi” set, part of an exhibition of urushi sets. (source, image is a sample set from the exhibition, not necessarily the one that costs $123,000) From Alexander Gelman, more about his Chess work on his site.

A non-working facsimile of The Millennium Falcon chess set (the lights flash and it plays a clip from the movie). (source)

Tobey Maguire will be playing Bobby Fischer in the upcoming movie about Fischer, Pawn Sacrifice. (source)

On a related topic, world champion Backgammon player Tim Holland passed away. (source and further info) After Backgammon fell from popularity, Holland moved to Bridge, which he played until the end of his life.

The Berlin Brain-Computer Interface shows mind-controlled pinball. (source, via, via)

Harcos Laboratory hacks a MindFlex game to deliver electronic shocks whenever your brain activity rises too high (some bleeped out language in the video). (source, via, via)

Jane. World Without Oil. Evoke.

Bonus: A TED video on the importance of play from 2008/9, in case you missed it:

This combination, while pretty straightforward, can yield a very engaging experience. I started my first game expecting something quick and easy but ended up spending the next 45 minutes in a fair degree of concentration. It’s one of those games where you can get so involved in setting up your own moves, that you neglect to notice killer moves set up by your opponents. I’m ready to play some more!

I do have one small complaint, and that is with one part of the game’s components. On the one hand, the tiles are solid, with nice artwork, and the game comes with thick cardboard reference cards to remind players of each tile’s special powers. On the other hand, the pieces used for keeping score are a little difficult to track visually. The colors on the scoring markers don’t stand out very well, and the score board has a number-track lined-up in such a way that it’s difficult to read. Still, I wouldn’t consider this a major issue and it’s easy to work around. Also, Bucephalus has told me that they recognize the problem and already have plans to correct it in the next printing.

While Kachina is clearly an abstract strategy game, I also very much appreciated Bucephalus’ choice for the little theme that is there. The company could easily have gone with something standard, like medieval knights. Instead, the game is about Hopi spirits and the power struggles among them. I doubt you’ll find that subject matter already covered by another game on your shelf.

A copy of Kachina was provided to me for free by Bucephalus Games.

• Adam Jury (confirmed on his blog and Twitter) and Jennifer Harding (confirmed on Dumpshock) have left Catalyst
• Jennifer has stated publicly: “However, I will state that on Monday, March 15th, I resigned from working as CGL’s bookkeeper and office manager, due to a conflict involving my personal ethics. The Operations Manager resigned the week before that, for similar personal reasons.” (we assume that the operations manager referenced is David Stansel-Garner, though this is unconfirmed)
• Some freelancers have indicated that payments are running behind, though others have current accounts (this could be nothing – inconsistency in the timeliness of payments is not uncommon for small businesses that rely on freelancers)
• Conversation on the ClassicBattletech forum seems to be non-existent (some threads on the topic have been removed), but a few of the Catalyst folks are talking on the Dumpshock forums
• As a reminder, ShadowRun and Battletech are both actually owned by Topps, Cthulhutech is owned by Wildfire and Eclipse Phase is owned by Posthuman Studios
• Jason Hardy (line developer for Shadowrun) has indicated that a release from management should be forthcoming shortly and has asked people to avoid speculation

To be clear, there was a fair bit of debate on our internal discussion list as to whether we should even post this item. That said, there’s so much speculation going on and we’re such big fans of the work the company has done (I mean, seriously, have you seen the Shadowrun 20th Anniversary Edition? It’s gorgeous!) that we wanted to be up front and only print what we’ve got from first hand, reliable sources and hopefully bring a bit of calm to the situation (we have also sent a request for comment directly to Catalyst). I for one am hopeful that things are being blown out of proportion and that Catalyst will continue putting out more of the high quality products we’ve seen over the last few years.

Update: Franklin in the comments was the first to post a link to the official CLG response.

That’s right. Shanya has won our awesome Read an RPG in Public prize pack!

We’d like to thank everyone who participated in our largest contest yet. We’d also like to thank all the companies that provided products to go into the prize pack.

Shanya, please let us know your information so we can get those prizes out to you!

Ravenous Games will be developing the app using the open-source Cocos2D engine for the iPhone.

PowerMage 54 is fairly light with some good strategy, and I can see it porting nicely over to the platform.

The more board/card games ported to iPhone/Android, the more exposure the hobby gets.  That’s can’t be a bad thing.