Playroom Entertainment seems to be working its way out of some recent challenges. Production and distribution is getting back on track and several games should be heading out to retail over the next few months.

Joining an already successful line of geeky trivia games will be Geek Out! The Big Bang Theory (May, $20) with questions based mainly on the show. The Geek Out! games challenge players to see how many answers they can provide for each question.

Costume Party Assassins is a murder-mystery deduction game with meeples in disguise. Players roll dice to move those meeple characters around the board but the rules of movement are relative to a player’s own secret character.

Snorta (June, $20) is a reprint of a former Out of the Box party game that has players making animal noises and trying to remember who made which one.

New in Playroom’s series of Bright Idea Games for kids is the cooperative Bird Day Party (May, $10). In this one, the idea is to find a bird card whose back side matches either the color, or gift, or both of the next turned-over invitation card. If it doesn’t match at all, that bird leaves the party. As the field of bird cards narrows, though, it does become somewhat easier to remember the features of each, which is good, as the goal is to get through the invitations before all the birds duck out.

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Toy Fair New York 2016If nothing else came out of Toy Fair for Playroom Entertainment, it’d still be great news that production of Killer Bunnies has resumed and the whole line of murderous-rabbit card games should be back in-stock on store shelves soon.

But of course that wasn’t the only news from Playroom. The company is moving ahead with several new products in 2016.

Pass the Pandas (spring, $12) is a light, cute dice game with the simple goal of getting rid of all your dice. Everyone rolls. Pandas are passed. Water dice are out. Blanks you have to keep. And any that land bamboo go in to a kind-of roll-off to see with whom they end up.

Playroom’s Geek Out line of trivia games gets an edition, Geek Out Family (spring, $20), populated with questions that should be easier for kids.

Another trivia game coming from the company plays off the current obsessive concern with spoilers. In Spoiler Alert (June, $20), players attempt to get their partners to guess the names of movies, TV shows, books, and songs. Every one they can do within 60 seconds, not using a list of specific “spoiler” words, earns 10 points. Alternatively, they can go ahead and use one of those words, which will certainly make the guessing easier, but at a penalty of 1 or 5 points, depending on how good a clue it is (proper names are never allowed). For example, if the title is Star Wars, then “light saber” is a giveaway at -5 points.

Costume Party Assassins (spring, $30) has players trying to guess which character meeple belongs to which player based on how they move the other meeples around the board.

Three Little Birds (May, $20) is a cooperative game for young children. The goal is to get the birds back to the nest. But with every card offering two or more ways to move them, the players must discuss and come to agreement on which they choose together.

Sherlock Deluxe (May, $15) plays the same as Playroom’s previously published non-deluxe memory-and-move card game. This one, though, has a few additional cards and a cute Sherlock, dog detective, pawn.

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Playroom Entertainment continues to expand the Geek Out! trivia party game line in 2015 with Geek Out! Family and Geek Out! TableTop Limited Edition. The former will feature less geeky general knowledge questions and should be available in May for $20. The latter is scheduled to release on TableTop day in April, also at $20, and adds to the original new geeky cards developed by the producers of the video series. If you want my opinion, this is the one you should get. I’m told that one of its questions is:

Can you name two games that include purple pawns?

After a highly successful Kickstarter project, Playroom will also be releasing a special Unspeakable Words Deluxe version later this year (summer, $35), though it won’t have the purple Cthulhu pawns we love.

Two new games coming from Playroom are based—or at least themed—on internet culture. w00t (May, $12) is a card-passing game where the goal is to collect the letters W-0-0-T in one color. You Got Pwned! (May, $20) has players collecting sets of pawns, either from the center or by stealing them from each other.

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Geek Out

Geek OutGeek Out is a trivia game from Playroom Entertainment with geek-friendly categories. Cards ask the current player to name a set number of items in one of five subject areas: games, comic books, science fiction, fantasy, and miscellaneous. Other players, however, can attempt to out-geek the one who’s turn it is by bidding up the number of items they will name (sort of like Name That Tune).

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