27 Feb
Posted by David Miller as Card Games, Electronic Games, Modern Board Games
For Hasbro’s 2014 product lineup, let’s start with the company’s most famous brand… Later this year Hasbro launches My Monopoly, a version of the game in which property spaces, tokens, and some of the cards can be personalized with the My Monopoly app or website. Images can either be uploaded directly or drawn off of popular web services like Facebook and Instagram—the latter option making it particularly easy to personalize the game as a gift. At $20 retail, My Monopoly comes with enough labels to sticker over the default board four times.
A simplified Monopoly Junior game ($15, available spring) for children as young as 5, limits money to just $1 bills; switches out the Atlantic City properties for an ice cream parlor, zoo, and swimming pool; and ends when the first player goes bankrupt.
Monopoly Angry Birds ($20, available fall) incorporates characters from Angry Birds, Angry Birds Space, and Angry Birds Go, as well as an action component. Players launch tokens at targets in the center of the board in order to score money and property bonuses.
More Angry Birds games also grace the TelePods line this year, in fact, a whole series in the fall for Rovio’s Angry Birds Stella. The Tree House Playset Game ($35) and Piggy Palace Playset Game ($25) introduce a new action element—the pigs must be knocked off their perches for the tree house or palace door to open. The Angry Birds Stella Birds Rock Together Collection ($20) requires players to knock pigs off of instrument stands so Stella and friends can form a band. And Angry Birds Stella Multipacks ($10 for two birds, one piggy, and accessories) and the Angry Birds Stella Friends Assortment ($6 for one bird and one piggy) allow people to build a collection of 20 Angry Birds Stella characters. All use the Telepods system for scanning figures with a mobile device and “teleporting” them in to the digital game.
Borrowing from mobile games, Simon Swipe ($20, available fall) is a slight update to the classic pattern-matching challenge. Now in addition to pressing a color, sometimes the player will have to swipe a finger along one of the pads.
Three of Hasbro’s party games get electronic treatments this year. Taboo Buzz’d, Trivial Pursuit Hints, and Catch Phrase Decades ($20 each, available late summer) replace the boards, cards, and score-sheets of the original games with battery-powered devices. For the most part, game-play is the same. However, Trivial Pursuit Hints will provide players up to three hints per question. For each hint taken, though, fewer points are scored. Catch Phrase Decades allows players to choose phrases from the 70s, 80s, 90s, or today.
In 2014, Hasbro is updating basic Scrabble’s graphic design and launching Scrabble Electronic Scoring ($20, available fall), which comes with a doohickey for recording scores and setting time limits on player turns.
Various Disney-licensed board games will see light in 2014. These include (available in the fall) Minnie Mouse’s Sweet Treats Candy Land ($15), Jake and the Never Land Pirates Operation Treasure Hunt ($20), and Sofia the First Monopoly Junior ($15).
Disney properties will also feature in a series of pop-up, three-dimensional board games this spring. All are basic spin-and-move games for ages 3+. The centerpiece of the series (literally) is the Disney Princess Castle Pop-Up Magic Game, which comes with plastic figurines of Ariel, Belle, Rapunzel, and Snow White for $20. Other entries in the series (all $13) are the Disney Princess Frozen Pop-Up Magic Game, the Disney Princess Cinderella’s Coach Pop-Up Magic Game, and the Disney Princess Tangled Pup-Up Magic Game. Playable separately, all four can also be combined in to one extended game by clipping the boards together.
Another new game for the young set (ages 4+) is the Play-Doh Launch Game ($20, available fall). It’s played by forming Play-doh in to different little shapes, then flicking those shapes in to the top of the canister rotating in the center. Pretty much like older kids do, but in to a neat container instead of at each other.
Finally, Hasbro is launching this year a game series that to me seems to have a little bit of a retro vibe, Battle Masters. Be calm, Warhammer fans, besides the name, this has nothing to do with the Milton Bradley title of the early 90s. Instead, it’s more like Rock Em Sock Em Robots, though without the requirement for a board or table. Plastic figures mount on trigger-grip or D-pad style controllers. Transformers Battle Masters will start selling in the spring, Marvel Battle Masters in the fall. Sets with two figures and two controllers will be priced at $25, sets with one figure and one controller at $15, and individual figures at $10. Yet the game isn’t entirely retro. Every product in the line includes a code for some sort of mobile game tie-in.