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When Buffalo Games first announced and showed their prototype of Ruin at the past New York Toy Fair in March I received a bunch of emails with questions of when it was coming out.  All I heard was that it would be released by the end of the summer.  Well now I can let everyone know that Ruin is now available for purchase at your local specialty game shop or online.  Just like I did in my Likewise post, I’ll also let you know where to get your light strategy minded hands on the game yourself.

I had a chance to play Ruin this weekend with some friends and it played very well.  On the box it describes the game as an interchangeable board game.  I think an easy way to sum up the gameplay is think Sorry with the addition of strategy and the chance to change the board itself to move yourself ahead and send your opponents back in the race to get the treasure of Ah Kinchil.  The box also states that this is a ruthless race to fortune and glory.  This is a fitting statement because when we played I witnessed some players being more ruthless than others in getting to the treasure.  But you have to balance being ruthless and sending players back and also helping yourself and even others to avoid them getting all ruthless on you 

Ruin is for 2-4 players of ages 10+.  It is categorized as a family strategy game.  The game comes with 50 path cards to change the game board, the board itself with the plastic temple area, explorer pawns and one ultra cool chunky 20 sided die.  Keep this big guy away from your explorer pawns, unless you want to re-create the rolling boulder scene from Indiana Jones.

Ruin in stores

Below I’ll list a couple local and online ways to purchase Ruin with the prices at the time of this post. So pick a price or your favorite store and click away to ordering.

Online :

Puzzle Buffs is selling it for $28.95

Funagain Games is selling it for $26.95

The Good Toy Shop is selling it for $24.99

Local specialty stores : (Buffalo, NY)

Specialty game stores tend to get the latest games sooner than the larger retail store chains.  You can support your own local games store by simply giving them a call to find out price and availability.  Many times you will find they have the same or cheaper prices than online and no shipping costs.  It’s also a great way to chat with fun folks that love games and they can even introduce you to other games you may not have know about. You can easily find game stores in your local yellow pages.  So calling two of the local specialty stores in my area I found the following.

The Good Toy Shop, Inc
CrossRoads Centre at Five Corners
3217F Southwestern Boulevard
Orchard Park NY 14127
(716) 674-4001

Price : $24.99

Clayton’s Gifts & Toys Incorporated
5225 Main St
Williamsville, NY 14221
Phone: (716) 633-1966

Price : $20.99

Review :

The Good Toy Shop has written about their impressions about Ruin after their first play through of the game.

“Catherine started out ruthless, sending Jerry back spaces as she pulled the floor right out from under him. But with his usual aplomb and good fortune, Catherine’s attempts were thwarted by the innocent yet awesome die! Our game play lasted about 40 minutes, laughing included.”

Read the full review here

At the start of the summer season I posted about Board Game T-Shirts and now I have some board game related tshirt updates to help fill your tshirt drawers and show your board game love.

The first up is an update to the popular Game Ink website.  They are getting ready to roll out a new batch of t-shirt designs and want our help in deciding which designs actually see print.  Voting will be open until midnight on Monday, July 21st. The top three vote-getters will be printed.

Click here to vote

People that have read the About section here know my Dark Tower love and they have a great Gary Gygax design too… among many other interesting designs.

Next is a Cafe Press site with my favorite geeky face from Likewise.  And hey… geek is the new chic… or so my fellow geeks tell me  :)   You can see all the Likewise shirt styles here.

I was also contacted by Matthew that there is an extended cafe press shirt store, in addition to the one I highlighted in my last Board Game T-Shirt post for all different games, board game attitudes and game types at their Uberbadger site.

If you have a favorite board game related t-shirt website out there, let me know.  Also, feel free to send in pics of you in your favorite board game related t-shirt.

And don’t forget you can play a board game AND create your own funny t-shirts with the party game The T-Shirt Game.

About a month ago I posted about the 2008 Mensa Select winners and since then several people have contacted me with their own fun experiences with the winning games.  One of my MySpace friends, Timbits, sent a link to the Mind Games 2008 Games Directory .pdf file with all of the 54 games entered this year for Mensa Select.  They are listed with pictures, age ranges, price description and links to the website for each game.

I’ll be adding more updates to other posts soon. If you have any updates, added info, pictures, etc based on past blog posts, feel free to send them my way or leave a comment in the post, don’t be shy 

Click here for the full directory

Since I started this casual game blog I have received many comments and emails about the behind the scenes type of posts and the want of more behind the scenes posts.  So I will be starting a new series of posts about my adventures wandering the halls and offices of Buffalo Games.  I’ll document, to the best of this adventurer’s ability, what I see.  Maybe we’ll come across a secret or two, or a better understanding of some of the people that bring the game goodness to us.

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As I cautiously wander into the dwelling of Kristin, one of the graphic designers at Buffalo Games, I quickly snap a picture to capture the initial moment.  Looking around the office for a better understanding of this graphic designer and possibly a hint of a secret, I see a Halo video game poster and a Heroes tv show calendar.   I then get distracted with what looks like a different iMAgiNiff… design on the board but I can’t quite make it out.  I’ll have to examine that closer in another picture.  I do see Likewise! shown and what’s this?… a Fling Monkey?!  I posted about the fun fling monkies in my Stocking Stuffer post, nice to see one ready for action.

I was then drawn into this cubicle like dwelling and tried to resist the urge to hit one of the buttons on a Princess Bride talking keychain.  My will power was low and after pressing one of the buttons I heard the phrase “Hello. My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”  It was worth the push of the button 

Hanging on the cabinets I can also make out the Muffin Man image I used on the last game night poster.  It’s not too visible at this angle but I really liked the image to the right of that one showing the progression of a design, starting with a yellowish lava lamp image that goes through all different colors and styles and then ends up right back at the original yellowish design.  Ah, the roller coaster ride of design.

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Taking another quick shot of the office area I now get to see a clearer image of this new iMAgiNiff… design.  I even see what looks like new cards for it.  After seeing these, I did some more research (aka : asked some questions) and I’ll post my findings about this new iMAgiNiff… stuff next week.

I started to get tired so luckily there was a comfy puzzle shaped seat to rest at.  While sitting there I could then try to figure out why a puzzle shaped seat would find a home at Buffalo Games.  I’m sure there is a logical explanation.

Here is a picture of Kristin in the wild, enjoying a game of Likewise!

Look for more behind the scenes type posts, my office adventures and an interview or two in the future with the Buffalo Games folks as well as a couple other game developers.

With a nice holiday weekend coming for many of the blog readers out there, you may have more children running around looking to be entertained at various family get togethers :)  Here is a nice crafty type activity and board game fun all wrapped up together.  Most people have heard of the film Wall-E and are familiar with the basic game mechanics of Candyland.  So this is an easily accessible game.

All you have to do is go to the Wall-E treasure race website and download and print out the game board, die, a few cards and game pieces and instructions.  Then you can cut (don’t worry, no small pieces to try to get the scissors around) and easily put the die and pieces together.  The directions state using the raisin boxes as the game piece base but you can easily cut an extra white space at the bottom of the game piece and fold it over in the back, like an “L” shape and you’ve now got a base.

The game plays a bit like Candyland with some added elements with a few cards.  Feel free to let me know if you try this game and let me know how it went.

PS : The official Wall-E site has some nice family friendly online games and a nice little build a bot activity

source

I have to admit that two of the more popular posts on the blog have been for the free flash games of Hamster Flight and Filler.  These addictive flash games are easy to play and fun.  So I’m hard pressed and feeling the pressure to offer up another addictive flash game diversion that meets this criteria.  Browsing games at Kongregate, the site that offers up Filler, I believe I have found a nice new addiction.  It won’t replace Hamster Flight and Filler but you’ll find yourself passing the minutes by with this one.

The game is called Micro Olympics but has little to do with the olympics you may be thinking of.  This game is a trajectory game that is simple in concept, but very addicting. The goal of the game is to shoot your airplane out of a cannon and get further than the distance of your competition. You have three tries to beat their distance. 

The distance changes with each level and starts out pretty easy, but quickly jumps in difficulty.  Here are the basics of play to get you started.

When you go to the Game Link, listed below, just simply click on Start and then Play.  The screen will show a Distance to beat and you simply click anywhere on the screen to continue.  At this point look at the meter in the bottom left part of the screen that contains an arrow for the direction you shoot and the power for how hard you shoot out of the cannon.  As the arrow moves you click the mouse again on the screen to stop the arrow at the angle you want.  Then the power option will pulse behind the arrow and you want to click the mouse again on the screen to get the highest amount of power.  Then your little plane flies out of the cannon. The image shows a good angle and the highest power range you can get.

Each time you shoot out of the cannon you get money. The amount of money differs with each shot. Spend all your money on upgrades like skis and calling a fish to bounce you farther.  Freaky fish is actually the best power up to buy after your first round if you can get at least 65 dollars.  Later rounds you’ll be buying more fish and eventually more gunpowder.  To activate skis, or thrust or the fish you click on that button on the play screen as your plane gets near the water. 

I played for a half hour and the time went quick as I tried to figure out the best angle and power ups to use on the different rounds.  The first couple rounds are easy but later rounds get very hard, so get as much money as you can early on. 

Let me know your thoughts on the game… is it worthy to share the same area of space as Flight of the Hamsters and Filler?  Feel free to send your own screenshoots as well. 

Game Link

Or the Title should read “Ticket to Ride on Xbox Live Arcade this Wednesday… probably, most likely  :)”  I say this because the release date status on the Xbox live arcade page for Ticket To Ride is still at TBA (To Be Announced) and us bloggers were teased with a non dated press release of Ticket To Ride on Xbox Live Arcade a couple months ago leading us to believe it was releasing about then. 

So… I have held off on reporting about it’s release, other than my initial post about it’s announcement, until I was more certain of it actually coming out.  I am 95% sure it will release this Wednesday.  If it is *crossing fingers* I look forward to the thoughts of people about this new Euro type strategy game.  If you have an xbox 360 I suggest trying the free trial… it’s a fun game for any strategy lovers. 

Jimmy Kimmel… Celebrity Scrabble champ

A celebrity doubles tournament was held last week to celebrate Scrabble’s diamond anniversary.  Jimmy Kimmel was joined by 23 other stars including Seth Green (Buffy), Skeet Ulrich (Jericho), Milo Ventimiglia (Heroes) and more to make up 12 doubles teams. Kimmel and his producer, Daniel Kellison, won the event by beating Ulrich and Green in the final round.

Following the game, from June 12 – 30, Scrabble fans are encouraged to visit clothesoffourback for the chance to bid to own the diamond encrusted Scrabble board as well as other boards from the competition, signed by the celebrities.

Scrabble Diamond anniversary edition

On Jimmy Kimmel’s June 13th episode, you can watch it now at ABC’s website, he explains how fun the Scrabble tournament was, he’s a longtime Scrabble fan having Scrabble related guests and mentions on his show,  and jokes on this episode that they spelled his name wrong on the award :)  He shows it misspelled as “Jimmy Kimble.”  Out of curiosity I did a Google search for “Jimmy Kimble” and surprisingly found many articles, blogs, etc misspelling his name. 

Chessboxing is a hybrid sport you may not have heard about.  Chessboxing consists of up to eleven alternating rounds of boxing and chess.  The match starts with a four minute round of chess and then a two minute round of boxing.  There is a one minute pause inbetween rounds to change gear.  A winner is determined by knockout, checkmate, disqualification or if one player takes more than the allocated twelve minutes for chess.

Chessboxing was brought to life in 2001 and was inspired by the comic book Equator Cold from 1992. The World Chess Boxing Organisation (WCBO) now governs the sport, whose motto is “Fighting is done in the ring and wars are waged on the board.”

Below is a nice 3 minute intro to Chessboxing.  Now I just have to ask… what mash-up of board game and sport is next?

More info

Tis the spring and summer season for weddings.  That means gifts and planning and wedding registries.  Wedding registries are now available at a variety of stores and opens wedding registry choices to traditional and non-traditional gifts. 

Looking at the well wrapped and placed wedding gifts in the image, can you tell me which one has the game in it?  If you’re Lisa and Bob, then you are hoping one of those finely wrapped gifts is the party game Last Word.  I recently received a message from fellow gamers and blog readers Lisa and Bob who placed Last Word on their wedding registry after playing it at a local game night.

“Sunday we went to Target to start our wedding registry there and put Last Word on our registry.”

Who else has placed games or have seen games on someone else’s wedding registry?  Let me know or leave a comment below.  I think it’s great to have fun non-traditional items on a wedding registry.  Mix it up a bit with your registry, include some fun items as well as the needed items.