Christmas games

Yesterday afternoon and evening we played a selection of family games with friends.

We started with a new game that I had received for Christmas, The Awkward Storyteller.

This is a game for up to 11 players and is probably more suited to a large group. We got a couple of rules wrong, but it was a laugh nonetheless.

We followed this with another new game: Who knows where? (our gift to our guests).

In this game players must identify the location of cities, places or photographs on a world map. We played the so-called “easy” version using the 10 degree grid, the labelled political map and the easy questions. It seemed that every third question was somewhere in Italy. Difficulty can be increased by using the unlabelled satellite map, 5 degree squares and the difficult questions, or any combination of these levels of difficulty.

Recommended, but please manufacturers can you include six sets of playing pieces for family games? We improvised for five players.

Next we tried our guests’ gift to us: Villainous , produced by Disney/Ravensburger.

This game initially looks incredibly complex, and one of us gave up during the reading of the rules. It is an odd combination of an interactive game with each player having their own game board and packs of cards. After a few rounds the play became easier, but I think would soon pall because the six (Well done the makers) players always have the same individual objective which is public knowledge, so it’s mainly a case of drawing the correct cards to help yourself and frustrate the others.

My verdict? It may be deeper it appears on the first play. Familiarity with the rules will no doubt speed up play, as there are a lot of options for each player turn.

We finished the evening with a couple of rounds of an old Ravensburger classic: Labyrinth.

This is a simple “find the object on the card” game for up to four players. The board has 16 fixed tiles and 34 loose tiles that sit between them on a 7×7 layout. (See the photo). Some of the tiles have the sought-for items printed on them.

Each turn a player uses the spare tile to push one of the three moveable rows or columns across by one space, thereby changing the layout of the labyrinth. They may then move their playing piece as fas they wish along available routes. First to collect all their items wins. Players may only draw their cards one at a time, rather than seeing the whole hand and choosing.

A quick game that rewards forward thinking, watching where other players appear to be aiming and making devious moves yourself.

All in all these games occupied about five hours.

I also received for Christmas PSC’s ancient battles card game Milito. Unplayed as yet, this is a two player game that looks easy to play and hard to win.