Game Night: Squint and Dicecapades

My favorite Sunday-afternoon pastime is playing board games, and today we had the chance to return to that tradition. Our friends Robin, Leigh and Paula came over to play today, and even brought me a chocolate cake to celebrate my birthday again!

We played two party games that I’d been given for Christmas but hadn’t played yet. The first was Squint , by the company Out of the Box (makers of the popular Apples to Apples).

There are lots of common “description” games, where the object is to get someone to guess the clue you’re giving - think Charades or Pictionary. This game has the same object, but the twist is that instead of acting or drawing, you are arranging black and white design tiles to create a representation of the object on your card.

For example, today we had clues like scissors and snowman and this was how we built them. Both the builder and the guesser earn tokens for a correct guess within the time limit - one token apiece for the #1 objects (easiest), two and three apiece for the harder #2 and #3 items. The group plays a set number of rounds - we played three rounds, with each person being the builder three times.

There are two good rules that make the game fun and light, not too challenging or frustrating. The first is that the builder is allowed to say “yes” and “no” to guesses, and also can say “hot” and “cold.” So when the object was crayon and Robin guessed pencil, I could tell her “hot” so she’d stay on the line of writing implements! That was very helpful. The other rule that is a big help is that the builder is allowed to animate the object being built, as long as the cards stay on the playing surface. That was a huge help for both my scissors and Leigh’s bumper cars.

I thought it was quite an entertaining party game - even 5 year old JediBoy got in on the fun, and he made some good shapes for us! I would definitely pull this one out when we have a big group and want something silly and fun.

Next, we pulled out Dicecapades , published by the Haywire Group. This one was a present from my Dad, who knows how much we love dice here.

This game comes with something like 130 dice! The board is divided into three main sections: Thinkingtown, Actionland and Triviaville. As you move your pawn along a spiral path through the three colored sections, you draw cards from the matching color stack. Each card has an activity or question.

In Thinkingtown (yellow), challenges included things like naming presidents or consecutive keys on the keyboard (how many you need depends on the number you roll), or describing or finding movies using the pictures on the six picture dice. (Leigh would like to know: can you think of a movie or TV show that uses a soda can in the title, or as a character, theme or plot device?)

In Actionland (blue), about half of the challenges are drawing (like Pictionary) and the other half are action challenges - performing charades, stacking dice, or (poor Leigh) stacking dice on one hand while standing on one foot!

In Triviaville (red) each card has 5 trivia questions, and you roll to see which one you have to answer. My main quibble with the game is that this whole section of the game doesn’t really use the dice.

I love the idea of this game - because we collect dice and get so much entertainment out of unusual dice. I was disappointed that a whole section of the game was trivia, but I did really enjoy the other two sections. I can see myself coming up with different dice games and challenges to fill up the red cards!

The only other drawback to this game is that the packaging is very poor. The dice are stored in flimsy plastic trays that don’t have lids, and the two dice trays have to fit in underneath the big tray that holds the pencils, pawns and timer. The board goes under it all, and ideally the whole pile then slides into the box. But the box is not quite square, so it’s too easy to slide the whole pile in the wrong way and have it not fit by a centimeter, only to have to pull it out and slide it in the other way.

I’m sure we’ll hang onto this game, and play it again, but we might start making up our own substitute activities for Triviaville. If you’ve got good ideas for quick challenges with dice of all kinds, please share them!

I’m so glad we had a chance to pull out some games for a group this afternoon.