Grid Movement

The classic detective game! In Clue, players move from room to room in a mansion to solve the mystery of: who done it, with what, and where? Players are dealt character, weapon, and location cards after the top card from each card type is secretly placed in the confidential file in the middle of the board. Players must move to a room and then make an accusation against a character saying they did it in that room with a specific weapon. The player to the left must show one of any cards accused to the accuser if in that player's hand. Through deductive reasoning each player must figure out which character, weapon, and location are in the secret file. To do this, each player must uncover what cards are in other players hands by making more and more accusations. Once a player knows what cards the other players are holding they will know what cards are in the secret file. A great game for those who enjoy reasoning and thinking things out.

Fluxx: The Board Game lives up to its card game namesake as this board game is all about change: changing rules, changing goals, and changing tiles on the board.

Players start the game with their three pieces in the center of a 3x3 grid of tiles, with each tile divided into four spaces and each space showing an icon of some type (chocolate, sun, cookies, etc.) or an octagon or a portal. Players each start with three cards in hand, and the overall goal of the game is to collect 3-6 goal cards, with the exact number possibly changing during play.

On a turn, a player draws one card, plays one card, then moves one space, with all of those values being subject to change during gameplay; depending on what's currently allowed by the rules, you can also use movement points to rotate or move tiles in the play area. If you have a piece on each icon shown on the topmost goal card in play, you claim that card and are that much closer to winning. Players can also claim goal cards they have in hand by, again, placing their pieces on the appropriate icons. Other cards in the game allow players to change the rules, the game board, the ownership of player pieces, and so on.

In CrossWays players want to be the first to build a path of their pieces from one side of the game board to the opposite side, but to build they need to use the cards they draw and have in hand.

On a turn, a player can lay down a single card (e.g., a red 9) and place one of their pieces on this space on the game board; she can also lay down a pair of cards with the same value and place two of her pieces in a stack on any space, including the white ones that are otherwise off-limits. If a player has two pieces in a row on a stack, no one else can play on top of that stack – but by playing a suited run of cards, a player can remove pieces already on the board, putting those spaces into play once again.

The little magician apprentices have lost some magic objects inside of the master’s maze. Now they try to collect them before the Master notices anything. However, in the maze there are invisible walls and only one of the missing objects is revealed at a time. So they have to make their way through the maze by means of a good memory and lots of skill.

Each player moves their magician over the board while trying not to bump the labyrinth below. Each magician is joined with a magnetic ball so if you hit a wall the ball drops and you have to start all over again.

Space Checkers adapts traditional checkers to the 3rd dimension. Instead of 12 men on an 8x8 square, each side has 8 men on a 4x4x4 cube. The adaptation is straight-forward: Black sets up near the south lower edge and can only move north and up; Red sets up near the north upper edge and can only move south and down. Captures and crowning are 3D analogs to the 2D case.

Rather than having 4 large levels, the board is split into 4 towers of 2x2 portions. This allows one to more easily reach the pieces at the interiors of each level, without interfering with the visualization of the complete cube.