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Review: Farkle

This summer at my wife’s family reunion, her sister brought a game I’d never heard of (which is an unusual thing). The game consists of six regular six-sided dice and a cup to put them in and role them. Not very exciting for your $10, but I was willing to give it a shot. Farkle is a game in the “push your luck” category. I haven’t played many games in this category, but my current favorite is Can’t Stop

Flow of Play

The game simply consists of rolling the dice to accumulate points, which I’ll explain in a second. However, you DON’T want to role a Farkle, which is essentially a role where no points are available. The fun comes in pushing your luck as far as you can because if you role a Farkle, you lose all the points you’ve earned on that turn and play passes to the next person.

You start out your turn rolling all six dice. However, as you score points, the dice you score with are taken out of play leaving you with less dice, and therefore lower odds of scoring, on your next turn. If you happen to successfully role and score with ALL your dice, you get to role again with all six.

Scoring is as follows:

• Any 5 by itself scores 50 points
• Any 1 by itself scores 100 points
• Any 3-of-a-kind scores the number of the role times 100. For example, rolling 3 threes scores 300 points.
• For each role of the same number above a 3-of-a-kind scores that number times 100. For example, if you rolled 5 threes, you would score 300 for the initial three-of-a-kind, plus 300 for each additional three.
• A straight of 1 through 6 scores 1,500 points
• Three pairs in one role scores 750 points

The first person to reach 5,000 points wins.

Fun Factor

The funnest things about this game is playing it with a lively group of people. The tension and excitement can really be fun if people are into it. There is some skill involved in understanding your odds for each role. For example, the odds of being able to score are in your favor if rolling 3 dice or more. However, don’t expect to have much control over how you do. This is not a game to get upset over if you lose.

Play on Facebook

I recently discovered that you can play Farkle on Facebook. You start out playing solo trying to get your best score over the course of 10 turns. Once you play enough you “earn” the priviledge to play real-time against other players. I’ve actually had a lot more fun playing online than I did playing in person. You can see the scores of your friends and try to beat them. There’s an odd sense of pride when you get the highest score. You can see the high scores for the current week, month, and all-time. I’d recommend checking out Farkle on Facebook more than playing in real life.

Summary

In all honesty, I wasn’t very enamored with this game. Can’t Stop is a push-your-luck game with more substance and skill in decision making. However, given the simplicity and compactness of Farkle, it’s a great mobile game that could be great to take with you. In fact, if you get rid of the cup, which is unnesccesary anyway, you could fit the six dice in your pocket or purse. In fact, if you know the rules of the game, you don’t even need to buy the game. Just scrounge up 6 dice from existing games or buy six dice from a local game store for $0.50 each. There’s really no need to pay $10 or more.

When I looked at Farkle on Amazon, I found many different sets available; travel sets, “classic” sets, pocket sets, etc. The base set retails on Amazon for $9.27.

Give Farkle a try on Facebook before you buy. If you like Farkle, it could be a nice edition to your family game collection.

Ligretto – A face-paced card game that plays up to 12 people

The Purple Pawn blog recently posted about a game I’ve seen before but didn’t know anything about called Ligretto. It sounds like a party card game that is fast-paced and fun. The unique thing about this game is that you can play it with up to 12 players. Other than Mafia (a.k.a. Werewolf), I don’t know of any other games that can play so many.

I definitely want to give this one a try. We’ve had a number of get-togethers lately where we wanted to be able to accommodate a large number of people in our game playing. It’s hard to find games that can play more than 5 or 6 players. There is one catch with Ligretto; you have to buy three packs of the game to get up to 12 players since each set alows 4 players each. There’s a blue, red, and green set and as far as I can tell there’s no major difference between the three.

Jodi actually knows how to play a similar party card game that can use generic rook or playing cards. I’m not sure how many players it can accommodate, but I’ll try to get her to write about it and teach everyone how to play.

First Looks: Family Talk

I just learned about a game called Family Talk, published by Around the Table games. It’s an extremely simple concept and really can only loosely be classified as a game. The game consists of cards attached to a ring (really more like a carabiner). Each card has a question written on it and then the whole family can discuss it.

Here are some example questions:

• “If your house caught on fire, how would you escape and where would you meet once outside?”
• “What was dinnertime like when you were young?”
• “What is one thing about each of your family members that makes you proud?”
• “What makes you feel the most welcomed when you come home?”

While the concept as a game might seem a little bland, I actually love the general concept of having a set of questions to spark a conversation. My wife and I own a book called The Book of Questions which is essentially the same concept, but the questions aren’t necessarily focused on the family. Instead they often are outlandish questions that are entertaining in and of themselves. For example, “For a person you loved deeply, would you be willing to move to a distant country knowing there would be little chance of seeing your friends and family again?” We love to pull out this book while traveling or on vacation and start discussing them. It’s a great way to get to know someone better and we always have an enjoyable time.

The great thing about the Family Talk game is that it gets your kids to talk. I’ve heard that with teenage kids, there’s often a feeling that the parents have nothing in common with them. This could be a great way to start up conversations that are non-threatening and could help to open up the lines of communication.

This could also be a great game for road trips since it requires no board or pieces. It can be played virtually anywhere.

Around the Table Games actually has several versions of this game; for friends, camping, teens, and grandparents. They also have a second edition of the core Family Talk game.

Family Talk retails for $9.99 and is available at Amazon.com or the publishers website. The other games in the line can be found at the publishers website.

Family game night popularity increases; Games improve kids’ math skills

Here’s an interesting article published by the Pittsburgh Post Gazette on Sunday. It highlights the ability of board games to bring families together. At the end of the article, there’s a snippet that mentions a study conducted by a Carnegie-Mellon professor that shows that board games can improve math skills. Certain number skills increase as much as 40%. Just one more reason to get your family board games on.

Board game sales up 10%

From time to time we like to update our readers as to the state of the board game industry in general. Recently Market Watch reported that U.S. board game sales are up 10% in the first six months of 2009. The data was collected from the NPD research group.

This helps to confirm that board games sales tend to thrive during a down economy. The value you get out of a board game, particularly in terms of hours of entertainment, far outshine most other entertainment products. Board games are a great way for the family to get together for quality, interactive entertainment on a tight budget.

I expect that board game sales will continue to grow over the next 5 years quite dramatically. The new breed of Euro-games have yet to really penetrate the mass market. When they do, growth rates should spurt.

Read the original Market Watch article

Color Scheme: Great idea, bad execution?

Board Game News recently posted a review of the game Color Scheme published by Educational Insights. When I read this review I LOVED the idea of this game. It’s like Connect Four where you try to match several colors in a row. The unique twist of this game is that the color tiles are translucent and you can play multiple colors in one spot so that the COLOR CHANGES! What a great concept and a great way to teach kids about color basics.

I was sad then to read this review and learn that the game play and game construction were lacking. Most people don’t really realize or appreciate all the play testing that often goes on before a game is released to insure the rules work well and create an enjoyable gaming experience. It sounds like our friends at Educational Insights didn’t do enough game testing. Hopefully they’ll learn their lesson and republish this great idea down the road with the needed improvements.

Color Scheme retails for $34.99, but can be purchased new at Amazon for $23.45

Have any of our readers played this game? What did you think?

Heroscape Game Review

For my son’s fifth birthday recently I got him a present that was admittedly a win-win for both him and me. It was the Heroscape Game! Before I get into the review, let me justify my actions. I went to the local board game store a few weeks back with my son. He was very patient for a then four-year old as I talked to the salesman about various games. As I was talking, the salesman noticed my son getting a little antsy and showed him the Heroscape game, telling him how great it is for kids. Well, my son got so excited and for good reason. The box was big with cool pictures of dragons and various creatures. He wanted to buy it right then.

Fast forward a few weeks. I thought he would forget about the game completely, but when his birthday came around and we asked him what he wanted, Heroscape was always first on the list. So, as the loving father that I am, I gave in and got it for his birthday. I won’t mention anything about the fact that I had been interested in checking the game out already and was probably as anxious to play as he was. So that’s how Heroscape entered our lives.

Heroscape game overview

Heroscape is a all-out battle game. You set up a board with three-dimensional pieces, place your characters (most are painted figurines 1-3 inches tall) on the board and start battling it out. The last one standing wins. The game comes with several pre-set scenarios that tell you exactly how to set up the board and where to put the characters. You can just as easily make up your own board and choose exactly the characters you want. Each character has unique attributes and skills such as attack, defense, movement range, and health. There are movement restrictions based on how the board is set up. Since the board is 3-D, you actually move up and down hills and around barriers, etc. Battles are resolved my each player roling a set of dice – the player attacking roles attack dice and the player defending roles defense dice. It sounds more complex than it really is. The game mechanics are really quite simple and easy to learn.

The Heroscape game is very flexible for different ages

My favorite thing about Heroscape is how flexible it is for different ages. There are two sets of rules – basic and advanced – so even young children can understand how it works. The base requirement is that they know how to count to 10. Even kids who can’t count can play with the figurines. You could even have them ligitimately play the game and move the pieces and just resolve the battles yourself – just narrate the battle as you role the dice.

With the advanced rules, the game is enjoyable for all ages and adds quite a bit of depth and strategy. There are many variables to consider and despite the dice-rolling factor there’s a fair amount of skill involved. Advanced game play is enough to keep any-aged gamer happy, no matter how old or sophisticated.

Family Play

The Heroscape master set is large enough that you could play with several players and still have enough figures and board space. Just a warning – Many board games for families have a much more benign theme and there’s not much conflict. With Heroscape, get ready to battle against your family members. You can play with each person being independent or you can work together in teams. Boys against girls anyone?

Heroscape expansion

Heroscape has a large line of expansions available to increase the size of the board and the number of characters available. One Heroscape expansion set features marvel comic book heroes like Spiderman, the Hulk, and Dr. Doom. The expansions can be mixed and matched in any way with the base sets and still work seemlessly. You could literally have Spiderman and the Silver Surfer battling dragons and dwarves. These Heroscape expansions allow for a high degree of replayability and variety.

For boys only?

The one possible downside of Heroscape is that it seems to be a highly agressive game and may appeal more to boys. Some of the characters are kind of creepy-looking which also may turn off females. However, I’ve heard of some families where the girls love playing equally, so I guess it just depends on personality. The game includes female characters and you could buy expansions with more female characters of those appeal to the women in your family.

Price and quality

I was pleasantly surprised by the price – under $40 ($37 after tax) for the Heroscape master set which includes 30 figures and 85 board pieces. When set up, the board is quite large and takes up a good amount of space on my large kitchen table. I was very impressed with the quality of the game components. I have little fear of anything breaking, even with a rough five-year-old playing. The figures are painted and very detailed and fun to look at. Given the quality of the set and the quantity of pieces, I felt the price to be quite a good value. There are smaller starter sets as well that I’ve seen for as low as $27. They are a bit smaller, but still contain all the figures and board pieces necessary to play a full game.

Heroscape game summary

If you’re looking for a flexible, fun, colorful game to play with kids or adults (and especially with boys), the Heroscape game is a great choice. The quality components are fun to look at and play with. The Heroscape expansion sets add endless variety. The rules allow you to set your level of difficulty depending on who you’re playing with. All this for a very reasonable price. I’m predicting Heroscape will be a sound board game investment. As the game adapts to my son’s abilities we’ll be battling it out for a long time to come.

What are the best board games for families?

Choosing the right board games for your family can be harder than you think. There are so many board games for families out there that sometimes the mere prospect of choosing one is daunting. However, with an understanding of your kids age and level of development, you can increase your chances of choosing a game everyone will enjoy and reduce the risk of choosing a bomb. Here are a few tips that will help.

One of the first factors, and possibly the only one most people consider, is the age of any children that will be playing. Children can be split into roughly four groups. Choosing a game for any one of these groups is relatively simple. It’s much more challenging to choose a good game if you have children in more than one group.

Ages 0 to 4

The first group contains children from the ages of 0 to 4. This group of kids really won’t be able to play any semblance of a real game. However, they probably will be very interested in playing with game components. Many components are brightly colored and have interesting textures. So one way to get this group involved is to simply let them play with a few carefully selected pieces. Of course be very careful to give them only larger pieces that can’t be swallowed or digested. By involving kids of this age, you make it fun for everyone.

Suggested board games for families with kids ages 0 to 4:

• The Ladybug Game
• Candyland
• Chutes and Ladders
• Memory
• Go Fish

Ages 4 to 8

The second group contains children from the ages of 4 to 8. Kids this age can actually play simple games. Games that involve simple counting, colors, shapes, and memory can be grasped and enjoyed. Often you can take a game that would be beyond the comprehension of kids in this group and simplify the rules so they understand. It’s not uncommon for kids this age to just enjoy collecting, moving pieces, and matching up cards or other components rather than focusing on winning. Of course, kids really like to win too, but they seem to enjoy the process of the game equally.

Suggested board games for families with kids ages 4 to 8:

• Gulo Gulo
• Chicken Cha Cha
• Balloon Race
• Rattle Snake
• Cloud 9
• Games with geometric pieces. Kids often like building with them or making fun shapes.

Ages 8 to 12

The third group contains children from the ages of 8 to 12. Kids this age can grasp the full concept of most games. In fact, if you look on the boxes of most mainstream games not made for kids, the low age is usually 8 or 10. It’s rare to find a game with a low age recommended age above 10. Just about any game will work for this age group so you’ll mainly want to consider other factors.

Suggested board games for families with kids ages 8 to 12:

• Heroscape (mostly good for boys)
• Lost Cities
• Bohnanza
• Blokus
• Apples to Apples
• Monopoly
• Chateau Roquefort

Ages 12 and up

The last group contains children (or rather young adults) from the ages of 12 and up. The kids are capable of developing strategies and grasping higher level concepts. Don’t be afraid to push this group towards more challenging games. Having said that, teenagers can often get bored, so sometimes games that are lively and interactive are the best choice. Turn-based games can often be too slow so you might want to choose a game that keeps them involved non-stop.

Suggested board games for families with kids ages 12 and up:

• Memoir ‘44
• Dominion
• Race for the Galaxy
• Ticket to Ride
• Bang
• Puerto Rico
• Wits and Wagers
• Settlers of Catan
• Fits