A house with 36 rooms hides four ghosts who are determined to inflict as much damage as possible before the ghost hunters can find them, and each side is controlled by two players (never mind what the box says, the game is really only playable by four). The Phantom Society (Iello, $40, 2-4 players age 8+ 20 min.) This beautifully crafted game is a type I'm particularly fond of, family-friendly games of logical deduction. There's not much more than that going on, but it's a fine introductory game for the young, and the packaging, made to resemble a storybook, is delightful. Players throw dice, Yahtzee style, to form houses out of straw, wood, or brick, which the wolf can blow down with varying degrees of effort. The Three Little Pigs (Iello, $30, 2-5 players age 7+ 20 min.) The classic fairy tale makes a deft transition into this kid-friendly (if slightly thin) game version. The rules are easy to learn, and the cardboard meat and teeth tokens add a nice touch. The trick is to make sure you've got enough hunters to keep your people fed, explorers to find caves for them to live in, and visionaries to invent new technologies - including ultimately fire, which is the victory goal. Players build up their respective tribes by adding members on each turn, bidding for the first chance at new arrivals. None of it is too head-scratchingly deep, but there's just enough complexity to keep you thinking.Ĭavemen: The Quest for Fire (Rio Grande, $25, 2-5 players age 13+ 45-60 min.) As long as you don't mind portraying a prehistoric tribe of hominids subsisting on dinosaur meat, this whimsical card game offers a lovely balance of ease and depth. Your opponent can also sometimes play on your side of the board, upsetting your plans. All it involves is playing cards to grab the candy from one of the four piñatas laid out between the players - but the catch is that the candy goes alternately to the high scorer and the low scorer, so your high-point cards can quickly switch from an asset to a liability. Piñata (Rio Grande, $30, 2 players age 13+ 45 min.) The world needs more casual but rewarding two-player games, and this one fills the bill superbly. The result is an elaborately coded dance, a bit like bidding in bridge, and the more you play the better you get at it - which makes this an extremely addictive undertaking. On your turn, you can either give your partners information about their holdings, or try to gain points by playing from your hand, with possibly stiff penalties for playing wrong. Each player holds a hand of cards facing outward, so everyone but you knows what cards you have. Hanabi (R&R, $11, 2-5 players age 8+ 30 min.) The year's other great new family game is also a cooperative one, based on a simple but ingenious premise. With each turn you take, the desert sands around you not only rise, but also shift in the wind, so you have to shovel extra fast - and ration your water carefully - to make it out alive. The goal is similar - players use their different abilities in tandem to retrieve hidden relics from a shifting landscape of cards - but the dangers are more varied and more nail-bitingly tense. Now comes Forbidden Desert, which keeps everything that was great about its predecessor and bumps it up a notch it's the "Godfather Part II" of board games. Forbidden Desert (Game- wright, $25, 2-5 players age 10+ 45 min.) Three years ago, Gamewright introduced the marvelous Forbidden Island, which put cooperative gaming on an approachable, family-style footing.
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