2025 Games - July

 After a few months of not playing any on the list, we hit the halfway mark of the year, and decided, you know what...let's try to catch up on this silly gimmick.

January

February

March

So... picking up, we started going thru the ones we had skipped for April, May, and June. These weren't necessarily played in the order that they were originally intended, but, at least they got played. Buckle up, this is gonna be a LONG post...

20. Fluxx - (avg score 7 ) - Card game where the rules can constantly change based on what cards are played. It can be a mixed bag. It can be chaotic and hard to keep track of everything going on, and can result in MASSIVE hands with a bunch of cards with long details of what the card represents/does...but it can also end rather abruptly. I don't know. It's fun. Mindless, heavy on the luck factor, but enjoyable enough.

21. Exploding Kittens  - (avg score 2)  - Steph HATED this game. It's.. essentially a Fluxx type game - cards that alter what's going on are drawn and played. Repeatedly, until an "exploding kitten" card is drawn, and if you don't have a card to "defuse" it, you lose. I think it thinks it's funnier than it actually is. Since it scored below the "keep" threshhold, we're gonna donate/get rid of it, and...I'm fine with that.

22. Family Challenge - (avg score 6.5) - This is one of those "Minute to Win It/Trivial Pursuit" mashup type games that is designed purely for families that really only have a slight interest in 'game nights'. Our kids have all outgrown this - the questions and tasks are really aimed at children probably 8 or under - and it was just Steph and I who played this. But... we somehow had a lot more fun with this than I think either of us planned to. I don't know that we'll keep it, because, like I said, we've aged out of it, really, and it probably should be donated so that it could potentially go to another family that will get more use out of it, but, it was enjoyable doing animal charades and racing Steph across the living room with a card balanced on our finger, and other silly activities.

23. Clue - (avg score 6.75) - Me, Steph, and Harper played this. The game actually ended pretty quickly, because...I just kind of got lucky with the first room I was going to being correct, and the suspects and weapons rapidly being eliminated from my list. So, not AS fun as nostalgia leads one to believe (and the movie, of course, does a LOT of heavy lifting, too.) but it wasn't horrible, either.

24. Codenames - (avg score 8) - Dude. I really do believe that Codenames is a masterpiece game. It's so simplistic and yet, due to the nature of the game, and the way people think, it's NEVER going to be the same game twice. It's better with multiple people (on teams) but you CAN play it with just two people as well, and that was what Steph and I did, and it was actually decent that way as well. (Which just also leads credence to my theory of how great the game is!) Gameplay for anyone who hasn't played this: A 5x5 grid of common words is laid out. The "spy master" has a coded card in front of them, so they can see which of the words are for your team, which are for the opposing team, which are essentially decoys going to neither, and which is the one word that, if chosen, ends the game. They then have to give one word clues along with saying how many of the words on the board that clue relates to. Their teammates then try to figure out which words the spymaster was trying to allude to. 

Really great game about communication, and gives neat insights into how the other person thinks. Good stuff all around.

25. Enchanted Forest - (avg score 5.5) - Essentially a kids game where if Sorry, Candyland, and Memory had a baby, it would be this. There's a bunch of 'trees' on the board that each have a different fairy-tale related image on the bottom. Race around the board landing near the trees to see what's there, then get to the castle to match whatever card is at the top with the corresponding tree. First to 3 wins. This is a fine game, although, like plenty of others, we've sort of aged out of it. Also, memory games for older people like myself are annoying. 

26. The Crew - (avg score 9) - Me, Steph, and Silas have been working our way through all 50 'missions' of this for a while. It's fun, even if we sometimes suck at it. (The round last night where I put down the pink 4 that killed us even though I had a perfectly fine pink 2 in my hand was prime example of a dumbass move that is typical, and hilarious.) This is a great game about cooperation, communication, and logic. We still have another 14 missions to get thru, and I'll kind of be sad when we do finish it up. But, there are spin-offs we could purchase, too....

27. Holiday Fluxx (avg score - 7.5) - It's ...Fluxx, but with Christmas and Thanksgiving and Hanukah and New Years and Halloween themed cards. Fun, but, essentially sort of like how Ms. Pac-Man was just Pac-Man with a bow.

28. Fairies Rule, Goblins Drool (avg score - 5) A card game, designed for children, but all ages can play it, but... ugh. I didn't care for this. You have to take cards from your pile, add them to the pot, to create rhymes and match patterns on the cards. I won, but it was mostly by lucking into it. (Although, near the end of the game, I did figure out what I was doing, but, still, overall, just not something that I'd choose to play.)

29. Get Bit (avg score - 4.5) card game where the little figurine dudes are swimming away from a shark. Place a card with a number to determine what order the line becomes, figurine in the back gets chomped and loses a body part. Pretty dumb game, overall. 

It also came with stickers to put on the people - which seems like it would be cool, but the stickers (especially those for the faces) don't stick! So, I just put them all over ME instead. 

30. Haunted Mansion (avg score 7) - themed on the ride at Disneyland, this had rounds where you move your piece into various rooms in the mansion, attempting to collect sets of ghost cards that gave you points at the end. There's a lot going on in this, but it mostly works. The limitation of only being able to take 3 actions per turn felt ...limiting. Or, not limiting, per se, but just...like it doesn't allow you to take full advantage of ALL the stuff the game has to offer, perhaps? I don't know. Still pretty enjoyable overall.

31. Headbanz (avg score 8) - You get a card with a thing (bear, table, lasagna, whatever) printed on it, and attach it to the headband you're wearing so everyone else can see what you "are". You then ask the group yes or no questions while a timer goes to try and determine what you are. First to get 3 correct wins. Silly game, but enjoyable for what it is.

I was a lollipop, on my first card, and somehow didn't manage to guess that.

32. Hey, That's My Fish - (avg score - 7) - Group of penguins on a tile board collect fish, thereby shrinking the board and the number of fish you can eat. So, it's a good way of teaching about climate change. 

33. Ice Cool - (avg score 7.5) - We decided to play this one right after, because it ALSO has penguins in it. (And fish!!) Where the penguins are in a school building trying to avoid getting caught by the "hall monitor" by flicking the pieces thru the rooms. Unique board design, but flicking the penguins does hurt a bit. Also, the randomness of where penguins end up going is often hilarious.

34. Hand to Hand Wombat (avg score 1) - crappy ass party game. The goal is to have everyone reach into the box with the plastic pieces and, with eyes closed, build these as towers before time runs out. But, one of the players is sabotaging the team. The pieces/box are too tightly enclosed, and perfroming the task is difficult enough without having someone else trying to secretly ruin it. We all pretty much hated this.

35. Cards Against Humanity: Family Edition (avg score 3.5 ) - Cards Against Humanity is like Apples to Apples, but risque. But this is the Family Edition, so, it's toned down. And... just largely not really funny. I feel like this is the sort of game where you need a bigger group, and possibly not just family members, to get the biggest enjoyment out of it.

36. Mancala (avg score 9) - one of those "early humans made it, kinda hard to improve on it" games. Although, I feel like every time we've played this, we've had slight variations in the way we've played - do the side mancalas count? Do you only count YOURS? If the ending cup is empty, do you take the opposite gems AND the one that landed in the empty cup? Eh.. They're all decentish ways of playing, so...we just kinda go with whatever we feel like doing at the time.

37. Mastermind (avg score 6.5 ) - pure logic game. I hated it.

38. Evolution (avg score - 7.5) - really fun card game where you create different species and eat plants ....and other species. 

39. Forbidden Island  (avg score -8.5) _One of the first cooperative games we ever got. And one we've gottne pretty darn good at beating. Might be that it's simpler, might just be that we've played it enouhg we know how to work together to get the treasures and not die. Pretty fun, but I think we MIGHT be to the point where we have gotten so good that it's not much of a challenge anymore. 

40. Horrified (avg score 8.5) - Another cooperative game, and this one has a LOT going on, although, once you get beyond the massive set-up (and re-learning the rules), it's actually not all that complicated. Plus, being the courier and being in character as we played was fun. (For me. I think Steph and Silas probably wished I'd stop saying things like, "Cheerio!" and "Extree, extree! Monster kills famous itchy-ologist!!") Still. We ended up managing to defeat both the Mummy and the Invisible Man with a relatively low body count, so bully for us.

41. Monopoly Deal (avg score - 7) - Who knew the best way to make Monopoly fun was to transform it into a card game? 

42. Labyrinth (avg score - 7.5) - Kids game that holds up pretty well, no matter how old you are. Move the pieces to make the maze-like board change shape, move around collecting the various treasures. it's pretty simple, but it works.

43. Merry Madness: A Nightmare Before Christmas (avg score - 6 ) - Dice game with, bafflingly, an overlay of A Nightmare Before Christmas. Everyone has various "toy" pieces, and we all roll die to determine what toy, how many, and what direction, to move them. Its chaotic, and makes my back hurt for some reason. Harper seems to enjoy it the most out of any of us.

44. Monopoly Gamer (avg score - 4.5) - AKA Mario Monopoly. Peach is overpowered, lol. 

45. Minecraft: Builders and Biomes (avg score - 5) We needed a bigger table for this, really, but, whatever. For a minecraft-themed tie-in game, this is ...halfway decent. There are flaws, but it was still ...a fine game. The mechanic of needing to try and strategize for the scoring methods of UPCOMING rounds is sort of interesting.

46. Imhotep (avg score -7 ) - Steph and I played this Egyptian-themed game that involves a lot of strategy (and a bit of luck, too) regarding moving blocks to various parts of the board to get points. (After it was all over, I realized that this game doesn't have any dice in it! That's... kinda cool, in a weird sort of way.) My biggest complaint was at how QUICK the 6 rounds went, as I felt like I was JUST getting into the groove of the game, when it was done. But, this is fun, and I defintely want to make sure we play it more often in teh future.

47. King of Tokyo (avg score - 7 )  - definitely a lot more luck based, though there's a bit of strategy involved as well, but really, it's sort of the inverse of Imhotep in that regard. We've played this plenty of times, and it's fun, although the two times we played this time were both really short - Silas died early on in game one, and I got killed after just a few rounds in game two - and games that kick people out of them always make me ...I don't know. It just puts in a factor of "well, now what is that person supposed to do, while the rest of the game happens?" which is not really FUN, ya know? But, those issues aside, KoT is still an enjoyable enough game, even if it's not perfect. 

48. Incohearant Family Edition - (avg score  - 6.75) - Me, Harper, Silas and Steph all played this. You hold up a card with words that SOUND like what you're trying to get the other players to say. They have to read it (aloud, preferably, but not necessarily needed) and actually say the phrase. (like "Talk oh twos stay" would be "Taco Tuesday") Some of these are really simple, some are ...not so much. And there's a lot of pop culture cards in here, so if you aren't up to date with who a bunch of celebrites are there could be a few cards that you're just ...not goin to get.  But, even so, this managed to be pretty silly and provided a good deal of laughs, so, that's a win.

49. The Chameleon (avg score 1.75) - Deception game that all of us pretty much hated. A card with a bunch of words on it is presented to everyone. One person is the chameleon who DOESN"T know what the key word is, but has to 'blend in' by hopefully saying a word that makes everyone THINK they know what it is. If the Chamelon has to go first, they're pretty much screwed. Plus, the system of knowing what the key word is is overly complicated. 

50. How to Rob a Bank (avg score - 6) - Players choose between being the guards, or being robbers. Then everyone chooses action cards to determine what they're going to do for each of their five turns in the round. So, if you're watching what 'moves' each person is able to make, and keep track of that sort of thing, you can plan accordingly and the robbers can succeed at 'stealing' the money.  I REALLY disliked this, because I feel that it's unbalanced, in favor of the bank/guard player. (And I say this despite the fact that when we played the first time, and I WAS the guards, I still lost.)  I don't know. This just ...made my brain hurt, and felt like an impossible task. Both getting the cash, and when I was the guard, keeping the other players from getting theirs. 

51.  Kingdomino (avg score - 8) Pretty fun. You take various tiles with different land types (rivers, deserts, fields, forests) and build your 'kingdom'. If you have connecting land types, you get points for them at the end. Pretty simple, and the pieces are well made. We should play this more, I think. 

52. Mountain Goats (avg score - 8 ) Very simple game wherein you roll dice to move your goat meeples up to the top of the 'mountains' in order to score points. Almost entirely luck, but it's quick, simple, and the goats are super cute, so I love this game.

53. Dixit (avg score - 8.5) - Sort of like Apples to Apples, but with images. Every player gets a hand of cards with a surreal, dreamlike picture on it. One person gives a 'clue', and places their card down, the other players submit cards that most resemble that clue, and then vote on which card they believe is the original from the clue giver.  Pretty simple. We've had this game for EVER, though, and the downside is that we've pretty much seen and know ALL the cards. Coming up with different clues that we haven't used before is part of the challenge... We keep meaning to buy expansion packs, and just haven't gotten around to it yet. Maybe for Xmas this year.

54. NMBR9  (avg score - 5 ) - Eh. You stack weirdly shaped tiles - which are the numbers 0 thru 9 - into towers, which are then scored at the end of the game. There's not much to this game, but it's ...not exactly fun. Kinda dull, to be honest, and feels like something that could be an app rather than a board game. 

55. Nomads (avg score 8.33) - Me, Silas, and Steph played this.  Your characters are gathered around a campfire (pretty cool little board) that have a 8 piles of tiles around it. Each turn you can move your discs, and collect tiles if your character ends up on top. The tiles are used to buy cards that have points. It sounds complex, but, once you get the hang of it, it's pretty simple. I just didn't do very well because my mind wasn't strategizing very well. But it was pretty fun, and playing it more often in the future is something we ought to do.