Pattern Recognition

Codenames: The Simpsons

Codenames: The Simpsons combines the hit social word game Codenames, while featuring characters and locations from thirty years of The Simpsons.

In Codenames, two teams — Team Homer and Team Bart — compete to see who can guess all of their "field agents" (identified by either a word or picture) correctly first — but those field agents are hiding in plain sight in a 5x5 grid that includes the agents of the other team, neutral words, and an assassin that will cause you to lose the game immediately if you guess it. One person on each team is a spymaster and only these two know which agents belong to each team. Spymasters take turns giving one-word clues that can help their teammates identify multiple agents on the board. Their teammates try to guess agents of the right color while avoiding those that belong to the opposing team — and everyone wants to avoid the assassin.

Dungeons & Dragons: The Yawning Portal

The Yawning Portal is an iconic inn that attracts fascinating adventurers with two things in common: They're famished, and they have unique tastes in food.

As part of the tavern's staff in Dungeons & Dragons: The Yawning Portal, you need to feed them by matching up food tokens with the orders pictured on their hero card. You earn colored gems (and points) for every matching food token, and a bonus for completing an order. The colored gems that appear most frequently on the board receive the highest value, so strategize to tip the scoring scale in your favor — and don't be afraid to use potions to make patrons love your food! Collect more points if you're the first to achieve an objective challenge or earn an endgame bonus. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins.

Junior Labyrinth

Junior Labyrinth, the beginner's version of Labyrinth and part of the Ravensburger Labyrinth Games series, is a maze like no other with twelve different treasures waiting to be found within the paths of the labyrinth, which shift with every turn.

Thankfully, the players have some control over how the labyrinth walls move. Each turn, the active player takes the free labyrinth tile and pushes it along one of the rows or columns marked with an arrow on the game board. This action inserts that tile into the labyrinth and pushes the other tiles one space, popping one tile out of the labyrinth to be used by the next player on her turn. By shifting the walls, the player hopes to be able to move his token along the paths to land on the treasure currently being sought. If the player does this, he claims the treasure card and a new card is revealed; if not, play continues until someone grabs that treasure.

Once all the treasure has been collected, the game ends and whoever nabbed the most treasure wins!

Outnumbered: Improbable Heroes

Combine forces to thwart evil in Outnumbered: Improbable Heroes, a math-based cooperative strategy game. Absolute Zero and his minions are loose in Megatropolis, trying to capture the powerful Infinity Generator! Assemble your team and strategically plan out your sequence of attacks together. As waves of Villains advance, you must use math skills and unique Hero Abilities to hit target numbers, repelling your nemesis and his minions. Overcome their counterattacks and impose order over chaos!

—description from the publisher

Outnumbered is a cooperative math strategy game for 1-6 players. Waves of oncoming minions are advancing, each one showing a number on it. On each player's turn, they will roll 3 dice, then use math operations and their "Hero Power" create the values shown on the minions, defeating them. Minions will continue to appear and move down the board, defeating the players unless they are stopped in time. Players also have the opportunity to earn Bonus Cards by targeting specific minions, and must withstand Events that will increase the minion forces.