Action / Dexterity

Four armies of alien micro-monstrosities clash in a challenge to the last jump!

In Micro Monsters, four races of horribly cute aliens – Autogators, Bigbears, Finbacks, and Turboturtles – face off, with each race wanting to close the rival monsters' dimensional gates. Using dexterity-based game play similar to that in MicroMutants and X-Bugs – and more commonly seen in Tiddly Winks – players in Micro Monsters "shoot" their monster tokens across the playing area by pressing on one edge of them with a "monster shooter" to send them flying. Land on an opponent, even with the tiniest bit of your monster, and you capture that opponent's token, removing it from play. Land on an opponent's gate, on the other hand, and you remove one of that opponent's energy tokens; take an opponent's final token and she must flip her gate to the damaged side. Land on a damaged gate, and that opponent is out of the game!

At the start of a player's turn, that player first rolls a die. If he rolls a monster, he takes his normal turn; if he rolls his race's special symbol, he uses his special alien power:

Autogators move two separate monsters on the same turn.
Bigbears move one monster, then place a trap on an opponent's monster to immobilize it until the next Bigbears turn.
Finbacks move the same monster twice on the same turn.
Turboturtles move one monster, then place a shield on it that prevents it from being captured until that player's next turn.

The last player to have an open gate – whether damaged or not – wins!

Katamino Duo – a.k.a., Katamini – is a junior version of Katamino, with two players competing on separate game boards (or possibly one game board divided into smaller spaces) to fill all of the empty spaces first. The game is played over a number of rounds, with each round becoming progressively harder.

Katamino Duo also works as a solitaire puzzle, with the solver trying to fit the pieces onto the playing area in different ways.

Bling Bling Gemstone features the same game play as Justin Oh's Toc Toc Woodman, but now players have more to aim for when they're swinging the axe.

To set up the game, players create a pillar of discs, with each disc having four colored plastic "gem" pieces slid into notches on its side. On a player's turn, the player takes two swings at the disc tower with a plastic axe. If any gems or discs fall from the tower, the player must keep them. Red gems are worth 3 points, pink gems 2, and transparent gems 1, while the center disc is worth -10 points.

When no discs remain in the tower, the game ends and the player with the most points wins!

In Suspend, you want to be the first player to get rid of your share of the 24 notched, rubber-tipped wire pieces that come with the game. How do you get rid of them? Throw them away? Hide them under a cushion? No – you must hang them from a shared tabletop stand, using only one hand to place the piece on an unoccupied space. If anything touches the table after you place your piece, you must remove and reposition it; if anything falls off, you have to keep those pieces and try to hang them again on future turns. The first player to suspend all of her pieces wins!

Catacombs is an action/dexterity-based adventure board game. One player controls the Overseer, controlling the monsters of the catacombs; the other player(s) control the four heroes who cooperatively try to defeat the monsters and eventually the Catacomb Lord. Each of the heroes has special abilities that must also be used effectively if they are to prevail.

The main mechanism of Catacombs is for the players to flick wooden discs representing the monsters and the heroes. Contact with an opposing piece inflicts damage, but missiles, spells, and other special abilities can cause other effects. When all of the monsters of a room have been cleared, the heroes can move further into the catacomb. Items and equipment upgrades can be purchased from the Merchant with gold taken from fallen monsters. The Catacomb Lord is the final danger that the heroes must defeat to win the game; conversely, the Overseer wins if all of the heroes are defeated. The game is designed for quick set-up and fast play within 30 to 60 minutes.