Three Games with Physics

Plakks

I picked up Plakks because it was on sale. And I also bought it because it reminded me of a game that I saw on the Dice Tower as part of their Essen Spiele unboxing. But Plakks is just a soccer dexterity game. You take turns flicking a wooden ball to get it into your opponents goal. And there are some rules about taking out your defenders as you go, but you don’t need to play with those.

Plakks is really a dexterity soccer game that is barely a game. And it’s a game that as you practice you can get better at skill wise. You are able to line up shots better in order to either leave the ball in a tough spot for your opponent to to angle into the goal yourself. I like this one quite well, as an activity, but if it’s a great game, I’m not sure.

Viking See Saw

Viking See Saw is another one that I’d likely never known about except for the Dice Tower. This the one that keeps the list from being dexterity only. Viking See Saw is a a game of balancing items on a boat and trying not to be the one to cause it to tip. If you do, you grab luggage from it and you keep going. The first person to get rid of all of their pieces is the winner.

This one is also kind of in that half activity and half game sort of range. A lot of dexterity games are like that. What intrigues me about this one is the different weight of the items that you have. So you need to be smart as there are two blocks that are pretty heavy and ball bearing. On the flip side the meeple is very light as well as the aluminum cubes. So there is strategy in what you place and where you place it on the boat. And I like the amount of game that there is for it.

Dungeon Party

Finally we have Dungeon Party. I bought this a little while ago, and haven’t gotten it to the table. It’s basically a dungeon fighting/crawling game where to hit the monster you are playing quarters. I’ll say that the bounce is a bit lacking on the table. But this is a game that is really a skill based dexterity game. You need to know the repeatable motion of bouncing a quarter to be good. If you don ‘t, you’ll die fast.

And that’s the fun and issue of the game. I might get the skill down and do great with it, or I might not. There is not mitigation in this game. And, also, some of the loot, not quite as good as the other loot that you might get. Finally, I will say, don’t get the starter set. I’m tempted to pick up the big box for it and I just liked it pretty well. But the starter set is not that playable. There are a lot of keywords that are missing and a lot of details missing in the rules. Enough to get you started and then realize that you can mainly play the game, but not fully correctly.

Final Thoughts

I like the style of all of these games. I enjoy playing dexterity focused games. But some of them are definitely better than others. I think that Dungeon Party is the one that I’d give the lowest grade to. I think it could be a very fun time in the right group. It is also a game of skill more than a lot of dexterity games. If I don’t do well at Plakks, it’s still fun because I’m still playing the game. Same with Viking See Saw, if I make it tip all the time, I’m still playing the game. If I miss in Dungeon Party, I’m mainly not playing the game.

That really does make it into the one of the dexterity games that I’m not likely to be play again. I’m tempted to get more of it, make it a bigger, clearer game and use it in Dungeons and Dragons or really in an RPG system of some sort. Make it a game like that to play with some friends. But I’m also thinking that it’s a game that just won’t see much play and I shouldn’t. It’s tough sometimes to pick.

But, with that said, I had fun with each game. Atter we did a bit of quick practice, Dungeon Party got better for me. It is just not quite the game that I was hoping it would be. Or, I think, it is the game that is most group dependent of all of them.

Which would you want to try first?

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Pros

• Penguins
• Dexterity
• Aesthetic
• Price and shipping

Cons

• No Kickstarter History
• Kickstarter Exclusives
• “Uno” rule

Thoughts On The Page

I really like how this page is laid out. There’s a kickstarter standard of where you put things, what sections are expected, and for a first time kickstarter company/individual, they have done a good job. I’m also impressed when I see multiple languages done well on a page.

The game play itself seems fine. I think that they do a good job of laying out how the game works on the page. The game looks hopefully simple, which dexterity should generally be. I’m hoping that the amount of symbology is easily clear in the game. It does have Uno rules of having to say something or draw more, and to me that is not a good thing.

Back or Brick

For me this is a brick. In terms of penguin games, I already have Icecool, in terms of dexterity games, I have Icecool. What makes it tempting though is that the game seems quite simple, which I want dexterity games to be. So a cute little game. But the fact you call out “Penguin” when you’re down to a card and if you don’t you have to draw a new card, that is not a good rule. I think that the game probably would just end up being a kids game when all is said and done because of how it works whereas something like Icecool works well with kids and adults.

Is this a back or a brick for you?

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In Tokyo Highway, you are building roads up by stacking disks and connecting them with what basically is a grey Popsicle stick. If you go over an opponents road or under it, and you are the first person to do so, you can place a car on the section of the road you just placed. Just be careful that you don’t accidentally knock everything over. The first person to get all of their cars placed is the winner of the game. However, you can’t touch your opponents cars or roads when placing things, but you have yellow disks that allow you to increase or decrease the height by more than one or split the road. If you end up knocking something over, you have to give some of your pillars to the opponent whose things you knocked over.

Tokyo Highway is not a difficult game to learn, but it is a bit tricky to play. Not only you are balancing what is basically Popsicle sticks on what ends up being disks about the size of penny around, but there are buildings to work around as well. And eventually, the whole game area is a mess of roads and it’s hard to place things, and you don’t want to use your yellow disks, but sometimes you need to to clear that road you before an opponent would. So, for a pretty simple stacking game, there is definitely a bit of strategy.

There are a couple of things that I really do enjoy about the game. The first is the look of the game. When you’re done, you end up with a very pretty looking game set-up. It’s one of those games that you want to take pictures of, because it looks almost like an art piece on the table when you end. The pictures in the article are ones that I just snapped on my phone quickly while we were playing, and you can see how everything cross over each other. And a lot of that comes from the quality of the components. Everything in the game is made from wood, so it feels well made because it is. I did notice that one of the Popsicle sticks had a slight warp to it, but that didn’t affect the game, and I think just setting it under something heavy would flatten it.

The other thing is that when you are placing something, if you knock stuff over, you aren’t out of the game, or that doesn’t end the game. In other stacking games, like Jenga, if the tower goes over the game is done, and you end up with a loser, not necessarily a winner. In Tokyo Highway, sure, things might get too knocked over to place correctly again, but more often than not, you’ll end up with a winner, versus just having one person be the loser. That’s fun for a stacking game, because so many of them work on the Jenga mindset, where knocking things over is the end of the game.

Now, is this a game for everyone? I don’t think so, first, stacking games and games where you stack in a small area aren’t great for everyone. Some people just naturally have shaky hands. Other people just have larger hands and it’s trickier to place things in small areas. However, this game will also be a hit for a lot of people because it is beautiful on the table, and it isn’t difficult to teach. The first time I played it, I got a rule or two slightly wrong, and it still worked really well and was a hit at the table. And we’d stop between things being placed to take pictures as the city was built up.

Overall, this is a game that I really like. It’s a good light game that is fun to start off a game night with or to end a game night when people don’t want to play anything too heavy. And it’s accessible to gamers and non-gamers alike, which is fun. I do think it might be a bit light for some gamers, but if you enjoy dexterity games at all, this is a fun game.

Overall Grade: B+
Gamer Grade: C
Casual Grade: A

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Most people know Jenga because it’s been around for a long time and there are have been different versions or looks to it that have shown up in stores like Target and Wal Mart, but dexterity games don’t stop there, and are actually a pretty big and cool genre, because it offers, most of the time, and easier gaming experience, but a completely different type of challenge than most board games.

In dexterity games, you might be trying to stack things or place things around other objects or flicking things across the table or across a board. There are a number of different things that you can and there are certain rules you need to follow, even within the different types of dexterity games.

My favorite dexterity game is Ice Cool/Ice Cool 2 where you are flicking penguins around a board. What makes this game work is because, like many a dexterity game, you have stand-up moments. You almost literally have to be standing up at the table in order to be able to flick things around and get the angle that you need on the table. But when someone makes a great shot and hits a couple of penguins, jumps a wall, or spins it through a couple of doors, people cheer those shots. That’s what makes dexterity games, generally, quite unique as most all of them have those moments.

Now, Tokyo Highway, you are placing things on the table, the different pillars, roads, and cars that you have. So you don’t get that same thing of watching an amazing shot happen, but instead you are holding you breath wondering if the person is able to get everything back where it should be. It’s very challenging and planning on how you want to place everything and if you can get the angle so that you can over a road, or if you can slip a road under another road is always a challenge.

In my opinion, a good dexterity game is generally pretty simple to play. The more complex a game is, such as limiting how you can put something down or forcing you to figure out if you can do something, that’s not as interesting. A dexterity game should focus on what you can do with the dexterity piece and give you a few simple options. With too many rules, it slows the game down too much and you lose those breath holding or stand-up moments that really make dexterity games. In my opinion, dexterity games should also focus mainly on the physical element of the game versus the mental element. Yes, you might have to think about the angle and spin of the shot in Ice Cool, but unless you’ve practiced a ton, it probably won’t work perfectly, so it’s better to just go for the shot and not overthink it.

Now, there is a downside to this as well, some people are just not going to be that great at it. But that is again when those cheer moments happen. With a flicking game especially. With a balancing game, some people won’t be as good as it, so it might not be the right one for your table. But in a flicking game, if someone is doing poorly, when they have a great shot because of luck, people will cheer and it’ll be that stand-up moment in the game.

But there is one last good upside, and that is that most of these games are going to be good for a younger crowd. Now, there might be some with too small pieces that you don’t want to play with kids, but if you are playing as a group, it’ll work well. And games like Ice Cool and Rhino Hero Super Battle are intentionally built for kids, but they are still a lot of fun for adults. So if you have a more diverse table in terms of age range and skill level, especially around the holidays, dexterity games can be fun for the whole group.

So just to recap a little bit, dexterity games can be a lot of fun, though stacking ones won’t be for everyone. Flicking style dexterity games really work well for all age groups, especially the simpler ones, and in my opinion, those are the best. But if you’re looking for a game for the holidays, I’d really recommend a game like Ice Cool, and it would be something fun and different for the whole table.

What is your favorite dexterity game? Is there one that you’re really good at, or one that’s tough for you?

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***Disclaimer***
These rankings are the opinion of yours truly, and if you don’t like them, that’s okay. We all have different tastes in games and that is great. There are some games that I’ve only played as a demo, and I felt like I got enough of a feel to put them on the list, thanks GenCon for all the demos. These are living rankings so next year I’m sure that things will change, so I’ll probably be doing another one next year. Thanks to Board Game Geek for letting me enter/rate my collection and games I’ve played. Thanks to Pub Meeple for creating a tool that pulls in those games that I’ve rated and creating a ranking tool. Again, the numbers and names will be linked to Cool Stuff Inc and Amazon if you’re interested in the games.

30 – Star Wars: Imperial Assault
We’re back into a bigger and heavier game. In Star Wars: Imperial Assault, you can either skirmish two sides against each other, but the more fun way to play it, in my opinion, is to play through the missions. In the game, you can play through missions either as a one against all game where one person controls the Empire who are trying to hunt down the Rebels, or you play as no name Rebels who are trying to survive. You can play through different missions, like a Jedi finding a lightsaber, maybe, or more. Either way, if the players win or lose, the story progresses in some way, because the Empire’s objective isn’t always to just kill off the rebels. Or, you can use an app and basically play the same thing, but instead of it being a situation where one person is the empire, the app takes care of that and directs their activations and the players move them on the board using a set-up that lets them know what actions to take based on distance. The game has a lot of little pieces to it, but the game feels like Star Wars, and feels like you’re part of a big story. If you’re a Star Wars fan, it would be a good one that is worth checking out.

29 – Village Attacks
There are a lot of games where you play the villagers or heroes who are going out to defeat the monsters. But do you ever really think about those poor monsters? Maybe they are just trying to live their lives and the villagers are just in the way, do they really deserve to be attacked by these villagers with their cruel intentions with pitchforks and torches? The answer is probably yes, but in this tower defense style game, you play as the monsters who are fending off hordes of villagers who are trying to complete some objective or attack the heart of the monsters lair, which would of course cause the whole building to crumble, bringing doom to the monster and all those around. This is a fun miniature, dice combat, tower defense game. I got to play a special scenario made at GenCon, and then I found out that it wasn’t available, which was annoying, because I really enjoyed it, and the cooperative play is always a good thing. Thankfully, it is back on kickstarter, so the pack that I got for the game with that scenario and some other goodies won’t go to waste and I’ll eventually be able to play the game. If you like playing as the bad guys, this game does a good job with that, but also without it feels too grim.

28 – Photosynthesis
Photosynthesis is one of those aesthetically pleasing games, not to say the others on this section of the list aren’t, but with Photosynthesis, it jumps off the table as being pretty. In the game, you are growing trees, collecting light points to help your trees going more and hoping that you’ve set stuff up correctly so that you will be able to harvest your trees when they are old in order to get points and then start the process again. The game is really an abstract puzzle as you figure out where to place your trees and how to grow them, but it does have some thematic things as well. The sun travels around the forest, so that at some points in time, certain spots will get sunlight and spots won’t. That part is cool, and how you tell if an area doesn’t get sunlight is if there is a shadow being cast on it, which you can tell by where the sun is, and how tall various trees are on the board. This game can actually be a little bit mean, because you are probably going to be blocking other peoples trees at times from the sun and they doing that to your trees, so it’s possible to get no sun points if you are unlucky. But the game itself doesn’t feel that mean, because the theme of growing trees isn’t that confrontational. I really have enjoyed playing this game. I think that all the pieces look great and the concept of it works really well and even manages to feel thematic.

27 – Letter Jam
Letter Jam, when I saw it played, was going to be a game that I loved. I knew it. It’s a word game and a puzzle as you are getting clues about what letters you might have and trying to guess them as time goes on to figure out the word that you have. So I demoed it at GenCon, and the experience was bad. It was the first day at GenCon, one of the other people demoing didn’t want to be there, the person running the demo didn’t want to be there, and one of the people, because of the person running the demo didn’t realize the game was cooperative until half way through. So that was a poor experience, but then I tried it again with a different person running the demo, and it was a ton of fun to sit down and play the game, I was just sad that they were sold out at that point. In Letter Jam, you have a word made of between 4 and 6 letter cards (I believe), that are face down on the table. At the start of the game, everyone puts one upright away from themselves, and then people give clues as to what the letters are. So to do that, you spell out a word using tokens that are placed in front of peoples letters. But, of course, you can’t see your letter, only the other players, so you might get the word “F*IGHT”. If you got that word, and your letter is the asterisk, you can guess that your letter is probably an “L” or an “R”. Once you think you know what your letter is, you can flip it down and go to your next letter trying to figure out your word. But everyone is trying to do that, so everyone has to give clues. The game is a ton of fun, plays quickly, and I really love word puzzles.

26 – Hats
Another GenCon release, this one I did pick up. I wrote a TableTopTake on it a while ago. This is an Alice in Wonderland themed game that is a bit trippy, which is something that I am always looking for. In the game you are at the Madd Hatter’s tea party, and you are trying to get the best scoring collection of hats. To do that, you are playing down a hat from your hand and putting it in place of a hat on the Madd Hatter’s table. The trick is, to replace a hat, you need to either have a matching color or a higher number. And the scoring of the game is interesting as well. You only score the colors of hats on the Madd Hatter’s table, and it’s possible that certain colors won’t end up on the table at the end of the game. So the work that you did collecting them might be worth nothing if you can’t hold back a card so that you can make sure that color is being scored at the end of the game. The other trick to the game is that the cards in your hand are cards you might not use for scoring for yourself, in fact, your opponent(s) might get all of them. So how do you manipulate what is in your hand to end up with the scoring that you want and to use what is on the table to help drive your strategy. I feel like every game of this is different and a really good puzzle.

25 – Sword & Sorcery
And after a small game in Hats, we have Sword & Sorcery, a massive dungeon crawler with characters with cool powers who are heroes of old and brought from the past in order to stop something that is horrible that is happening now. There’s a lot going on in the game, and you can find information about that in my TableTopTakes post. But it’s a dungeon crawl game where you are rolling dice to fight monsters, looking for soul gems to level up your characters or to bring them back if they turn into ghosts. The game has a book of secrets as well that helps the story unfold without making it linear in each scenario because you have different things that you can do. And I’m not sure, maybe some of the choices you make in the earlier games can influence the future, we finally had something that felt like it might do that, or possible two things in this past scenario. The game, I wouldn’t say, is extremely difficult, or with a little bit of luck in terms of what treasure you get, it can make it easier. We’ve also done a good job rolling dice, so getting lucky, that has made them easier, but it’s still a lot of fun to play through the game, think about combat and go through the scenarios. If you want a big dungeon crawl where you are chucking dice, this one is good,.

24 – Small World
Small World, as I normally put it, is Risk, but fun. In Small World, you are trying to control areas with your fantasy race, collect coins, and at the end of the game, have the most coins. But, Small World is a ton of silly fun. In it, you are picking from various fantasy races, like Elves, Dwarves, Giants, Tritons, etc. and they are paired up with a power. So you might have something like Seafaring Elves or maybe you have Wealthy Dwarves or Flying Giants. These combos change up every time, which makes the game really diverse. You place your race tokens on the board taking over territories and once you’ve expanded or been attacked enough that you can’t go any further, you put them into decline and then pick a new race. The game is good silly fun, because, unlike Risk, if you get wiped off the board, you can always come back in. And if people are attacking you, you can put your race into decline and then come in with a new strong race and attack the people who attacked you, and that’s going to happen in every game. It’s fun to figure out all the different combos and which one might be the best from those available. This is another good gateway game and a gateway game for people who like Risk but maybe find it too long or too mean.

23 – Criss Cross
The smallest game on the list, Criss Cross is a little roll and write. However, it is one of my favorite roll and write games. In Criss Cross you are placing different shapes onto a five by five grid based off of what comes up on the dice. There are two tricks to this game. The first being that you are scoring symbols that are next to each other in both the columns and the rows. So if you pay too much attention to the columns, you won’t score well in the rows or vice-a-verse. The other thing is that when the dice are rolled, and everyone uses the same die rolls, you have to place the two symbols next to each other. So you might end up with two symbols that work perfectly or you might end up with one symbol that you really want and one that you really don’t. So you have to figure out where to put them to give you the most scoring chances and also make sure that you don’t accidentally end up with a space by itself, because if you do that, on the last roll, you won’t be able to place the dice symbols since they need to be next to each other. The game goes by really quickly and I rarely play less than two games in a single sitting. I would say that this game is a bit tricky too teach, because you can place the dice symbols anywhere, but the two symbols need to be next to each other, and people either think that you have to always put the symbols next to another symbol you’ve written, making their game harder, or they try and split up the dice, or they forget that symbols score when they are next too each other. It’s not a complicated game once you get it down, teaching this simple game, for some reason, is just tricky.

22 – Just One
This should be the highest party game on my list, and the newest party game on my list. In Just One, it’s cooperative and you are all working together but separately to get the guesser to guess their one word answer. Maybe they picked, unknown to them, the word “Emergency”. All the players, separately, have to write down a one word clue. So everyone does that and then, without the guesser looking, the players compare their clues, and any of them that are duplicated are hidden, so say, for “Emergency” that two people wrote down “Hospital”, the guesser won’t see either clue of “Hospital” and will be left with whatever other clues might have been given. The game plays fast, but it’s a fun challenge. in many ways, it has a bit of a Scattergories feel where you are trying to be clever with your clue, but not too clever so that no one can guess the word from it, or too clever that you match up with someone else with went that clever route. And you don’t want it so that, in the case of the word “Emergency” that no one puts down the helpful clue of “Hospital”. It leads to some great moments where people guess a word based off of way fewer clues than you would think that they could. I remember the first time that we played it, a friend guessed the the word “Karate” based only off of the clues “Discipline” and “Style”. Those moments make this game work well, and with the limit set on how long the game is, 13 word cards total, it doesn’t overstay it’s welcome.

21 – Ice Cool
I had Ice Cool 2 lower on the list, but Ice Cool is almost a top 20 game for me, and I would play it anytime. I love how silly this game as you are flicking around penguins trying to either catch those silly penguins who are skipping class or the class skipping penguins trying to get their fish snacks. I’m waiting until my son is old enough to play this, probably 3 years from now, where we can just flick the penguins around and have fun with it. But the game is also a blast with adults. I’ve had it out at several board game nights and it’s always a success. I love that you can now combine it with Ice Cool 2 and play a massive eight player game. Since I’ve talked about this before I don’t have as much to say, but if you want a game that is just a lot of silly fun, Ice Cool is amazing for that, and the fact that you can get the penguins to jump over walls, if you do it right, or you can put spin on them and get them to go through multiple doors or a spin towards a penguin who is skipping class who thought they were safe, it’s just a blast. I know this game won’t work for more serious gamers, but if you have a group that is up for a fun time, I highly highly recommend this game.

I get to play one of these games tonight as my bi-weekly Sword & Sorcery game will happen. I’m excited to get it to the table, and now I want to play some of these games again. Maybe I can make a way to work them into the next board game night coming up in a few weeks. I really love all of these games and hopefully you can find some on here that you want to try as well.

Thank you for keeping up with this list with me. Let me know in the comments below if there any of these games that you love or that you really want to try.

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