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Ripple Rush

How many spaces can you fill on your scoresheet in Ripple Rush, a quick and simple flip-and-write game?

In the game, you have your own player sheet, which shows four columns of symbols (square, circle, triangle, hexagon), with eight symbols in each column. To set up the game, adjust the deck so that it contains twenty cards per player, with the cards being chosen at random. The full deck contains one hundred cards, with 25 cards for each symbol numbered 1-25.

On a turn, each player draws a card from the deck, then (if possible) you write the number on that card in the column matching the depicted symbol. Numbers must be placed in columns in ascending order so that within each column each number is higher than whatever is below it and lower than whatever is above it, but you can skip spaces in the columns when entering a number.

If you can't place your card's number on your player sheet in the proper column — e.g., you draw a blue 14 and you have no open spaces between a blue 11 and a blue 15 — announce this to everyone before they write down the number on their own card and place your card in the center of the table. After they write their own number, they can also write your number on their score sheet, if possible.

If you complete a row of symbols, then you immediately get the bonus shown on the left edge of the player sheet, either a number (5, 10, 15, 20) that you can write in any valid column or a symbol that you can fill with any valid number.

At game's end, for each column you score points equal to your longest connected sequence of filled-in spaces. In the advanced variant, you draw two of the eight bonus cards, each of which shows one of the rows on the player sheet; for each of these two rows that you fill in completely, you score bonus points.

Step To It

From the back of the box:

Here's a game that will have you walking, jumping, and hopping all around the house! Ask a player to give you a card with a specific number of steps to take. Then choose an object that you think you can reach in exactly that number. Can you walk to the fridge in 9 steps? How about hop to something that starts with the letter A in 15? Reach your goal and walk away with a win!

Ages 5 and up.

Kids learn estimating distance and spacial relations.

Leaps and Ledges

A 16-story tower is built, and players each receive four climbing meeples and a hand of three cards to play and replenish. Each player in turn plays one card and moves one of his meeples up the tower the number of stories shown on the card. A few special cards modify this rule. Meeples that are landed on fall to the bottom and start over. The first player whose meeples all reach the top is the winner.

The Mind

The Mind is more than just a game. It's an experiment, a journey, a team experience in which you can't exchange information, yet will become one to defeat all the levels of the game.

In more detail, the deck contains cards numbered 1-100, and during the game you try to complete 12, 10, or 8 levels of play with 2, 3, or 4 players. In a level, each player receives a hand of cards equal to the number of the level: one card in level 1, two cards in level 2, etc. Collectively you must play these cards into the center of the table on a single discard pile in ascending order but you cannot communicate with one another in any way as to which cards you hold. You simply stare into one another's eyes, and when you feel the time is right, you play your lowest card. If no one holds a card lower than what you played, great, the game continues! If someone did, all players discard face up all cards lower than what you played, and you lose one life.

You start the game with a number of lives equal to the number of players. Lose all your lives, and you lose the game. You start with one shuriken as well, and if everyone wants to use a shuriken, each player discards their lowest card face up, giving everyone information and getting you closer to completing the level. As you complete levels, you might receive a reward of a shuriken or an extra life. Complete all the levels, and you win!

For an extra challenge, play The Mind in extreme mode with all played cards going onto the stack face down. You don't look at the cards played until the end of a level, losing lives at that time for cards played out of order.

NMBR 9

Numbers aren't worth anything in NMBR 9 unless they're off the ground floor and looking down from above.

The game includes twenty cards numbered 0-9 twice and eighty tiles numbered 0-9; each number tile is composed of squares in some arrangement. After shuffling the deck of cards, draw and reveal the first card. Each player takes a number tile matching the card and places it on the table. With each new card drawn after that, each player takes the appropriate number tile, then adds it to the tiles that they already have in play, with each player building their own arrangement of tiles.

The new tile must touch at least one other tile on the same level along one side of a square. A tile can also be placed on top of two or more other tiles as long as no part of the new tile overhangs the tiles below it; new tiles placed on this same level must touch at least one other tile, while also covering parts of at least two tiles and not overhanging.

Once all the cards have been drawn and the tiles placed, players take turns calculating their score. A tile on the bottom level — the 0th level, if you will — scores 0 points; a tile on the 1st level above this is worth as many points as the number on the tile; a tile on the 2nd level is worth twice the number on the tile; etc. Whoever scores the most points wins!