Board Game News

In an article in the Poughkeepsie Journal, Anthony Farmer writes about playing Candyland with his 3-year-old son, and the lessons that both he and his boy are learning from the time they spend together.

For generations, boys and girls have enjoyed Candyland as their first board game. The color-themed game requires no reading on the part of the players and is easy for even the youngest of children to follow. Players move their primary-colored gingerbread people around the rainbow path, moving through the Peppermint Stick Forest by matching the color spaces to the colors on the pick deck. The player who reaches the Candy Castle first wins.

As a primary learning game, Candyland fosters a child’s exposure to following directions, taking turns, color recognition and count skills. The game promotes thinking as well as patience in the form of waiting one’s turn to play.

If you have a young child that hasn’t yet played Candyland, take the time to introduce him or her to this enchanting board game. It’s a great way to spend time together, both of you will be richer for the experience, and you may just help to start someone on a lifetime journey of fun and discovery.

Screenlife, creators of the popular Scene It? DVD games, is planning to add more than a dozen new titles to its collection this year.

American Idol fans can relive unforgettable moments from one of TV’s hottest shows as the American Idol-All Star Challenge DVD Game hits store shelves this March. The game mixes traditional board game play with real clips, exciting challenges and questions related to the show. The living room is transformed into a stage as players scrutinize the best and worst performances from the first four seasons of American Idol.

Also new this year from Screenlife is DVD Blast! This fast-paced trivia game challenges individual players or teams with real clips and puzzlers from hot Hollywood properties. DVD Blast! will be available in three debut titles: Family Guy, Austin Powers and Survivor. Featuring on-screen scoring and played entirely with the remote control, it’s perfect for parties, travel or a few spontaneous rounds at home.

Another exciting fall arrival will be Banzai, a DVD game based on the hysterical television show that’s quickly become a cult classic. Who’s more capable of catching a squirrel in the park with a fishing pole? And how many chocolate pies can a man in a shopping cart jump over? Players will get plenty of laughs as they wager sushi pieces on these and other bizarre Banzai stunts, using only chopsticks to fill the betting bowl.

New from the Scene It? line are several fresh titles packed with real entertainment clips, hundreds of trivia questions and on-screen challenges. Players who need an immediate pop culture fix can transport themselves to the Central Perk with the Scene It? Friends Edition, which debuted in January. The game includes all 10 seasons of the hipsters’ memorable escapades, and challenges players to prove just how well they know their Friends. Trivia questions like, “Which of Phoebe’s songs is made into a music video?”, “What is Joey’s signature pick-up line?” and “Who was the only Friends star to direct several episodes?” bring the Emmy Award-winning show back to life.

Set to launch this fall is Scene It? Nickelodeon Edition, a game that will keep younger players amused for hours as their Grossology knowledge is put to the test. Favorite clips featuring SpongeBob, Cosmo and Wanda, Jimmy Neutron, Danny Phantom, Tommy Pickles, Aang and other beloved Nick characters will be paired with trivia questions and on-screen challenges such as “Grosser than Gross” and “Slime Bucket.”

Screenlife will also introduce four original Scene It? Super Game Packs in 2006, incorporating some of the hottest properties from movies, sports and TV. Scene It? Comedy, NFL, Disney and The OC Super Game Packs each contain a game DVD, trivia cards and other accessories that, when combined with any Scene It? game board, supply an entirely new playing experience.

In total in 2006, fourteen titles will join the ranks of Screenlife blockbusters such as the Scene It? Harry Potter Edition, the top-selling board game of the 2005 holiday season, and the Scene It? TV Edition, named 2005 Game of the Year by the Toy Industry Association.

Laura Robinson, co-inventor of the popular party game Balderdash, is launching !dentity Crisis, a fast-paced, hilarious celebrity guessing game. The new game will be published by Mad Hatter Toys & Games, and was introduced at the Canadian Toy and Hobby Fair in January 2006.

!dentity Crisis, like its predecessor Balderdash, is based on a popular parlor game. !dentity Crisis brings teams together to guess the names of the famous (and infamous) – from Madonna to Tiger Woods, George Washington to Donald Trump. Three rounds of play become progressively more challenging and crisis cards add extra laughs.

“We’ve updated a concept called ‘Celebrity’ for modern gamers and thrown in a few curve balls to make it even more fun and exciting to play,” says Robinson. “It’s a riot!”

Balderdash, which has sold over six million copies worldwide, is the classic bluffing game where players try to out-bluff each other with daffy definitions for words in categories such as Laughable Laws, Weird Words, Incredible Initials, Marvelous Movies, and Peculiar People. You get to make up an answer that’s as silly or as serious as you want, and score points for guessing correctly and for bluffing the other players. With the real answers often proving even more outrageous than the bluffs, Balderdash is great fun for the family or a gathering of your friends.

Chris Haney, co-inventor of Trivial Pursuit, the world’s number one trivia board game, has developed Timetripper, an exciting new trivia guessing game with a past and an attitude. According to Haney, “With Timetripper, baby boomers, smart Gen-X-ers, and people everywhere can have a blast guessing the year of great events of the 20th century. A handicap cube heats things up because you don’t have to be exactly right with your answer. Players are amazed by memories that they might not have thought about in a long time.”

Timetripper was developed over a year of intensive research and design by Chris Haney, the co-inventor of Trivial Pursuit with friend and fellow journalist Scott Abbott. Called “the biggest phenomenon in game history,” by Time Magazine, Trivial Pursuit has sold more than 90 million copies worldwide since its introduction in 1982.

Timetripper, published by Mad Hatter Toys & Games, was introduced at the Canadian Toy and Hobby Fair in Toronto Saturday Jan. 28 – Monday Jan. 30.