Products

Outfoxed is an excellent cooperative deduction game.  Someone has stolen Mrs Plumpert's prize pie and you and the other players have to work out which fox is the guilty one. At each roll of dice, you get a chance of finding a clue or revealing a suspect.  If you are unlucky or you make a mistake, the fox moves three steps closer to getting away.

Children like this game because it's fun.  Parents like it because it also encourages the children's logic and memory skills.

Each game takes about twenty minutes.

Age suitability: 5 +

2-4 players

Here is an excellent review on Youtube from Tom Vasel of the Dice Tower:

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Here's a board game with a difference.  There's no board.  Instead the players create their own planet, by sticking desert, mountain, ice, water or forest tiles on a magnetic dodecahedron, an ingenious feature of the game.  You do this in a way that creates the most suitable habitats for animals.  So for example penguins would need a large area of ice next to water whereas an arctic wolf would need ice but not water.  Each game lasts about half an hour.

2-4 players

Age suitability: 8+

Here's an excellent review from Tom Vasel of the Dice Tower on Youtube:

and a video from the game designers:

Rat-a-Tat-Cat is a quick and fun card game that should not trouble most people intellectually even though it has been endorsed by Mensa. A good memory helps though.

The aim is to assemble a hand of four cards that, when revealed, add up to the lowest possible number.  Cat cards are low number cards and so are good whereas rat cards have high numbers and should be discarded.  The problem is that you are only allowed to look at two of your cards and then only at the start of each game.

At each turn, you have a choice.  You can take the discard card and swap it with one of your cards.  Of course you know at the start the value of two of your cards but not of the other two cards, so it's a risk that you might be discarding a low value card.  You can take the unknown card off the top of the park and, having seen it, decide whether to keep it or put it back in the discard pile face up. Alternatively you may draw a 'power card' which could enable you to have a peek at one of your cards or swap one of yours, sight unseen, with one of your opponents.

When someone thinks they have assembled a winning hand, they call out rat-a-tat-cat and everybody has to add up the value of their cards to determine who has won that round.

Tha game takes about 20 minutes.

2-6 players

Age suitability: 6 +

Rummikub is a tile game and claims to be the UK's no.1 family stategy game.  The tiles are numbered 1 to 13 in four colours. Each player starts with fourteen tiles and tries to discard them in sets, three or more of the same number but in different colours, or runs, three or more consecutive numbers in the same colour. The first to clear his tiles is the winner.

Rummikub was invented in Romania 70 years ago by Ephraim Hertzano following the Romanian government's decision to ban card games.  It works on a similar principle to a central European card game called Vatikan, played with two packs of cards, with tiles substituting for cards.  Initially Mr Hertzano made every game himself, carefully cutting and painting each tile by hand in his little workshop.  Word spread about the game and it slowly began to be exported.  In 1977, it became one of the best-selling games in America.  In 1980 it won Game of the Year in Germany and other awards in Holland and Poland in subsequent years. It is now exported to more than 50 countries from a high-tech factory in Israel still run by the Hertzano family.

2 - 4 players.

Age suitability: 7 - Adult

Here is an excellent youtube video explaining how to play:

Rummikub is a tile game and claims to be the UK's no.1 family stategy game.  The tiles are numbered 1 to 13 in four colours. Each player starts with fourteen tiles and tries to discard them in sets, three or more of the same number but in different colours, or runs, three or more consecutive numbers in the same colour. The first to clear his tiles is the winner.

Rummikub was invented in Romania 70 years ago by Ephraim Hertzano following the Romanian government's decision to ban card games.  It works on a similar principle to a central European card game called Vatikan, played with two packs of cards, with tiles substituting for cards.  Initially Mr Hertzano made every game himself, carefully cutting and painting each tile by hand in his little workshop.  Word spread about the game and it slowly began to be exported.  In 1977, it became one of the best-selling games in America.  In 1980 it won Game of the Year in Germany and other awards in Holland and Poland in subsequent years. It is now exported to more than 50 countries from a high-tech factory in Israel still run by the Hertzano family.

2 - 4 players.

Age suitability: 7 - Adult

Here is an excellent youtube video explaining how to play:

Scrabble is one of those games that has been around for ages.  You either love it or you don't.

We sell it in this, the bonanza version,  or in a junior version.

2 - 4 players

Age suitability: 10 - Adult

Introduce the delights of Scrabble to younger children.

For children starting to spell, one side of the board has pictures and clues for children to guess words that are already on the board (for example f--h paired with a picture of a fish).

On the other side of the board, older children can play a more conventional game of Scrabble, making up their own words but with bigger tiles and simpler scoring.

Contains : Double-sided board, 84 word tiles, 30 counters for scoring, and instructions.

2 - 4 players.

Age suitability: 6+

Here is a video from youtube with a very American voiceover:

Sleeping Queens is a card game in which the first player to wake up four of the 12 queens is the winner.  So you lay out the 12 queens face down (sleeping) on the table and deal five cards to each player. The stack of remaining cards is placed (face down) in the centre of the table.  When it's your turn, you must play one of your cards.

Playing a king means that you get to wake up a queen; a knight enables you to steal one of your opponents' queens unless they hold a dragon card which counteracts a knight; a sleeping potion card is used to send an opponent's queen back to sleep unless they can negate that with a magic wand card; jokers allow you to pick up another card from the pile number cards can be discarded singly or in multiples. At the end of your turn you pick up fresh cards so that you always have five cards in your card and of course you hope to pick the useful cards that will enable you to win more queens.  Sounds complicated but it's not really.  Each game takes about 20 minutes.

2 - 5 players

Age suitability: 8+  (although the game was invented by a six year old and many children below 8 will be able to enjoy the game)

 

 

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