(Pint Size) Games We Play

We love playing games as a family (obviously) but with a 2 and 3 year old sometimes it's pretty difficult to find things that we can all enjoy playing.  So here are our latest favorites...Hisss and Uno Moo.

 

 

Hisss - (Here's the Amazon link - though if you think it's a game you want to add to your collection, check out your local gaming or comic book store first!)

 

My cousin got this game for A for her 2nd birthday, turns out it's just a smidge advanced for her and all she wants to do is throw the cards around, but C absolutely loves it!  It reminds me of a cross between Tsuro (path building) and Uno (color matching), the goal of the game is simply to build as many snakes as you can until the draw pile (or player's attention span) runs out.  The cards are perfect size for little hands and the colors are nice and vibrant. This is an excellent game for working on color matching and fine motor skills. 

 

 

Uno Moo! - (Here's the Amazon Link)

 

This game happens to be A's favorite game at the moment.  We picked it up to help her learn her colors and it's great for that.  It's basically like regular Uno except that rather than cards you have little balls and rather than numbers you have animals.  You play by matching either the color or animal and you get to knock the ball into the barn before setting your ball up on the door.  This is a great game for working on color recognition and matching in addition to working on those fine motor skills.

 

Growing Games

Todays post isn't a geeky game but a growing game...

On pintrest a while back I pinned this link to a fine motor skill activity. 

 

I picked up some salt and pepper shakers at the dollar store, the die and toothpicks we already had at home.  We started out just putting the toothpicks in the shakers then shaking them out...

 

but then we came up with an idea to take it to the next level and make it into a game. I ran into grab a die... C would roll the die, then count the dots and put that number of toothpicks in the shaker.  Simple and yet it kept her busy and smiling for about half an hour plus we got to work on fine motor and counting skills.

 

 

Gloom

Back on Table Top Day we picked up Gloom figuring, it would be fun to get into some card games and it turns out that that was a great investment because this pretty much has to be one of the best games I have played in a while.  My husband and I played it by ourselves the first time so we could figure it out before introducing it to our friends, but after that first night we were hooked.  The best part about the game is really the story telling I think and while it was fun with just the two of us, it really is amazing when there are other players to bring more families into the mix.  

 

The object of the game is to make your family as miserable as possible before their "untimely death" while making the members of the other players families as happy as possible and the family with the least amount of points at the end of the game wins.  As I said up above the best part of the game is the story telling aspect, yeah you could just put the cards down on top of the other cards, but it is way more interesting when you can explain just how exactly Cousin Mordecai was walking through a forest when he got "mauled by manatees" or how Lord Slogar who is actually just a brain in a box met his untimely death by "choking on a chicken bone" you can seriously learn a lot about your opponents by playing this game :)

 

If you want to see Gloom in play here is its Table Top episode!

Tabletop Day 2013

Like many others I was ecstatic when International Tabletop Day was announced on Geek and Sundry  then I realized that it was to be held on the day before Easter and some of the excitement faded a bit when I realized we had a ton to do that day, still we did the best we could!

 

To celebrate the day we made our first trip to our local comic book store!  This is a place where if Tabletop Day didn't exist we probably wouldn't have found.   The shop is called Zombie Planet and I am so glad we did find it!  Having never been in a comic book store before I had no idea what to expect, when I walked in the door I was pretty amazed.  In addition to the comics (which are housed upstairs), this place has every game imaginable and they have weekly and monthly events.  We bought three new games (Smiles, Qwirkle Cubes and Gloom) and walked away with an insane amount of (self-imposed) guilt for ordering 3 other games on amazon last week, if only I knew!  Good to know though that there is a local small business that we can support in the future though!!

 

 

Hubby and the Girls (in their Easter best) checking out the game selection at Zombie Planet

Ending the day with a little Tsuro by fire and glow-stick light

 

Hello Again

Wow, just about a year since my last post...ah well life gets in the way.

 

Anyway...we haven't been doing much computer/console gaming lately but we have been doing LOADS of tabletop/board gaming. 

 

It's like a whole new world was opened up to us when I ran across a random episode of  TableTop by Geek and Sundry. 

 

And in other news we attended PAX East again this year!  We had an incredible time (more to come on that once I edit the pics) and learned a lot!  Well I did anyway...particularly when we attended a panel on education gamification, which I think gave me some new educator-parent ideas on how to teach through games. 

 

Soooo I guess the point of this post is that hopefully I will be dusting off this blog and posting reviews on games we play as adults and on games we play (and/or make!) with the kiddos.  No promises but hopefully it wont fall by the wayside again. 

 

And with that I leave you with some PAX East 2013 pics...

 



PAX East 2012

Alright, I know it's been a long time but hey life gets in the way sometimes.  We haven't been doing much gaming as of late what with the holidays followed by birthdays followed by finishing the basement in record time so we could have family stay with us.  Add in sickness and toddlers being toddlers and there you have it, my excuse for not blogging...

How ever, I do have something new to talk about over here, Yay!  Last weekend we left the kiddos home with grandma and traveled over to Boston for a micro mini vacation and went to PAX!  

We had a great time over all, the hotel we stayed at was pretty fancy.  It was a Police barracks that was turned into a hotel, so the building it self was pretty interesting, the bar (Cuffs, creative huh?) served some pretty great drinks and the food at the restaurant was very good.  The rooms were mediocre, it was extremely hard to control the heating/cooling and there was something rattling (not sure if it was a fan or light fixture) allll night long which made it sound like there as a rat going in a wheel all night.  Whatever it was didn't make for great sleeping conditions.  Luckily breakfast and the fact that we could leave our car in parking even after we checked out made up for it though.  

We got to the convention center right at 8 am.  We hit it just at the right time as people were being allowed to head into the building to the waiting area.  We were in the second line which was pretty decent.  The picture below is of the lines that formed behind us.

 

The great thing about having a 2 hour wait before the doors opened?  We had about a 20 minute head start on the vast majority of people so we could pick what game we wanted to play and get right to it, no lines no waiting.

M chose Fire Fall for the game he wanted to go to first.  And judging by the fact that he has been playing the Beta version with all his free time since we got back home I think he liked it :).  I have an account to play it as well since I tried it there for about 60 seconds.  So I suppose I'll try it more here at home and do a review on it?  Maybe if I get the time :).  I would have loved to try it more there, but owing to the fact that I'm new at this whole gaming thing and there were people who a) developed this game and b) who know how to play games like this watching over my shoulder I chickened out and gave up the spot for some one else who might get more out of it.

I did, however, find a game that I could play by myself!!  Yay for that!  It was Magic The Gathering 2013 playable on the Xbox 360 (also they have a version coming out that is going to be available on the iPad!) Couldn't wait to play it again so we downloaded the 2012 version when we got home.  So far I still love it, even though it's still on tutorial mode.  I'll post more when I get the hang of things.

Toward mid day we started loosing steam fast and furious and the crowds just kept getting more crowded.  Not being ones to stand in line for hours to play games for 10 or 20 minutes we decided we had gotten our money's worth out of the experience and so we headed home to our girls.  

Things that surprised me...

1)  The politeness of everyone there!  Seriously everyone that I ran into seemed polite and good natured.  With that many people there it was surprising to me how I didn't see any line cutting, pushing or shoving.  I also didn't hear any cussing or see any adult tantrums...

2) The prices really didn't seem all that ridiculous to me.  Merch and food seemed pretty reasonable.  But maybe that's because I've seen the prices for food at the Saratoga Race Track...

3) Cabs in Boston weren't  nearly as pricey as I was expecting...also the cabbies are not chatty at all...

4) People will wait for insane amounts of time in a line to play a game for 10 minutes, how do you even decide if you like the game in that amount of time?  Or is it just to be able to say you played said game at PAX before it was released to the world?  

 Things we learned for next year...

1) Get there early again!  Totally worth sitting in line for a couple of hours to get to play one game before the crowds really start picking up.  

2) We could bring the girls!  Next year depending on their personalities at the time we will probably be bringing the girls with us.  I was very surprised to see there were people there with their toddlers there!  What a great experience for them to be a part of.

3) If there is someone who you know is going to be there doing a signing and you would like to meet them...get in line for the darn signing...Totally missed out on meeting Felicia Day, next year though...

4) They have food upstairs, go and purchase it there.  Have a sandwich or a burrito for lunch, don't settle for snacks and a fried dough...

5) If you bring snacks and water don't forget to munch on said snacks and drink said water...you will be a much happier person for it, and probably wont end up crashing at 1:30.

6) Research some table top games.  We wanted to come out of this weekend with a game we could play at home since M sits at a computer all day the last thing he feels like doing lately is playing on one when he gets home.  They had "how to play" D & D sessions going on and we were going to do one of those, but we had each gotten a deck of Magic cards in our swag bags and I liked the xbox version so I think we are going to go with that for a while and figure it out on our own.  But walking by the Table Top section I realized just how much there is out there to try!  It would be fun to just hang out and play some while we're there and maybe meet some great new people!  

W.O.W. Wife

Sorry it's been so long since the last post, truthfully we weren't doing much gaming. We were reading ~ well, listening too ~ The Hunger Games, but I'll save that for another post.

Anyway...

So last night we picked up where we left off in W.O.W. , I figure it's much more fun to be a W.O.W. wife than a W.O.W. widow :) even if I just tag along on all the quests.

But that all that tagging along stuff changed last night...M made me take the lead on one of our quests. I don't think it was an Epic fail, but one thing I need to work on is my map reading abilities (I mean if Dora The Explorer can teach my 2 year old how to do it I should be able to do it by now right?), oh and my awareness of my surroundings needs to be worked on too. But I got us there and completed the quest with minimal (I think) questions asked.

And another thing that changed last night? I played the game by myself for a bit...that's right just me. I leveled myself (a Night Elf Mage BTW for anyone who cares to know) allllllll the way up to level 10.

The one thing that is irking me though is I have one quest to turn in that I did later than M and I cannot find out where to turn it in. I'm following along with the map getting where I think it should be and...nothing. Sooooo what am I going to do tonight while my darling husband is working on some work stuff?? Not laundry or dishes certainly...I am going to turn in that darned quest. Oye what in the world is happening here???