Board Game News

After a marathon game-playing session, members of American Mensa named five new games as Mensa Select®. In alphabetical order, this year’s winners are:

• AmuseAmaze – At last a word game with a difference… where words don’t have to be biggest to be best… where even little words are winners. Race to spell your way through the maze. Use and pick up letters tiles as you go. block opponents and thwart their moves. Published by HL Games.
• Eye Know – It’s time to put your visual memory and general knowledge to work. Identify great images and place strategic bets on trivia to build your stack of chips. Challenge your friends and compete to collect the most game chips by identifying images and answering intriguing trivia questions. Published by Wiggles 3D.
• Jumbulaya – Jumbulaya is an addictive, multi-faceted word strategy game in which each player works with five letter tiles on his/her tray and all the letters on the board, rearranging, adding, and trading them, building and claiming longer and longer words each turn. Published by Platypus Games.
• Pixel – Don’t let the situation slide out of control in this fun strategy game of slide, point, align and win! Move a slider and place your piece in the intersection. But there’s a catch! Only one slider may be moved on each turn. Published by Educational Insights.
• Tiki Topple – Welcome to Tiki Island, home to nine colorful carvings all competing to be the top Polynesian Idol! In this fast-paced strategy game, try to maneuver your secret tikis to the top of the line by playing the right combination of action cards. Published by Gamewright.

Mensa Select winners are chosen annually at the Mensa Mind Games® competition. During the competition, Mensa members play and rate new board and card games. The five games that rate the highest are named Mensa Select and may display the Mensa Select seal on their packaging.

“You don’t have to be a genius to enjoy these games — you just have to enjoy a challenge,” said Pam Donahoo, executive director of American Mensa. “This year’s winners have earned the Mensa Select seal because they are well-designed, original and, best of all, fun to play!”

This year’s Mind Games competition was held in Phoenix, Arizona, with more than 210 players reviewing the 54 game entries. During the event, Mensa members also filled out thousands of comment cards, which will be returned to the manufacturers. Suggestions from the comment cards are often used to improve the games.

Based in Arlington, Texas, American Mensa is an organization open to anyone who scores in the top two percent on an accepted, standardized intelligence test. More information about the organization may be found at www.us.mensa.org. More information about Mind Games may be found at www.mindgames.us.mensa.org.

See Also: Mensa Select winners from previous years.

Mensa Select®, Mensa Mind Games®, and the Mensa Mind Games logo are registered trademarks of American Mensa.

The latest edition of Scrabble, the classic family word game gets an innovative new twist: instead of all players sharing one board, each player gets their own board.

In Scrabble Me, players build words simultaneously on their individual boards, and after each round, players have the option to choose a replacement letter from the bag or select one of the face-up tiles on the prize tile podium.

Another new feature is the wild tile. Each time a wild tile is played, the player who utilizes the tile must swap boards with an opponent, perhaps thwarting their strategy and turning the tide of the game in your direction!

When all 100 tiles have run out, the game is over and the player with the highest score wins.

Scrabble Me is the most innovative and fun way to play Scrabble since the original!

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View Scrabble Me rules (PDF)

In an announcement that spells F-U-N for SCRABBLE fans, WorldWinner has signed an agreement with the National SCRABBLE Association (NSA) to jointly promote the online game SCRABBLE Cubes to tens of thousands of SCRABBLE fans on the NSA Web site, as well as online and offline events.

WorldWinner is the leading provider of online game competitions for cash prizes. The National SCRABBLE Association represents thousands of word game enthusiasts throughout the United States and Canada and sanctions more than 250 local SCRABBLE tournaments every year.

SCRABBLE Cubes is an online variation of the classic crossword board game, and has consistently been one of the most popular games at WorldWinner since its launch in 2006. The NSA will introduce this new online SCRABBLE variation to thousands of SCRABBLE fans, and allow WorldWinner players the opportunity to compete against some of the best offline wordsmiths in the world.

“Playing the classic SCRABBLE game competitively adds a new level of excitement for any SCRABBLE enthusiast and we’re excited to introduce our members to WorldWinner’s SCRABBLE Cubes game, which allows them to compete online for cash prizes,” said John Williams, executive director, the National SCRABBLE Association. “Now, SCRABBLE fans can compete in online tournaments on WorldWinner whenever they’re looking for some friendly competition.”

WorldWinner will host an online SCRABBLE Cubes competition in 2008, in which the winner of an online qualifying match will compete against the 2008 National SCRABBLE Champion.

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Paradise is in the tropics, and here’s your chance to make a fortune with this prime time real estate in the latest DVD game from Hasbro, Monopoly Tropical Tycoon.

In the game, you take on a role like the Mayor, Police Chief, Developer or Surfer, each of which comes with different responsibilities and benefits, as well as special perks that can get you ahead!

The interactive DVD brings the adventure to life and allows you to make decisions that change the course of the game. Land on a Chance or Community Chest space and go to the DVD for news broadcasts to get a news story or perhaps part of a continuing one. During the game, the Banker will announce auctions with the property going to the highest secret bid. You’ll also be able to improve your properties and increase your fortune with beach houses, resorts, parks, piers, and casinos.

Your object is to build the biggest fortune by buying, trading, renting, selling, and developing island properties. If you can amass the most fortune points, you could own this island paradise!

For 3 to 5 players, Monopoly Tropical Tycoon includes a game board, DVD, 28 title deed cards, money and banker’s tray, 6 island pawns, 32 beach houses, 12 resorts, 3 casinos, 3 restaurants, 3 parks, 3 piers, 60 fortune tokens, 5 ID cards and instructions.

Learn more about Monopoly Tropical Tycoon

Winning Moves Games has produced a brand new version of the classic family word game of Scrabble - Super Scrabble: The Deluxe Edition.

This new edition is a follow-up to Super Scrabble, which was designed by Murray Eskenazi and released by Winning Moves in 2004, and which marked the first time that the game of Scrabble had ever been altered. Super Scrabble is an officially-licensed Scrabble product and it has been approved by the National Scrabble Association (NSA). The game features 200 tiles instead of the standard 100 and comes packed with the original 100 plus a 2nd bag of 100 tiles with a slightly different letter distribution than the original 100. The board has 3 additional rows/columns of spaces and the point scoring goes as high as quadruple letters and words.

Super Scrabble: The Deluxe Edition builds upon that game by improving the game board with a raised grid to hold the tiles in place, as well as a slick turntable design that places the game board on a rotating base with ball bearings on the bottom of the game board so it can be easily twisted and turned, and each player can get an optimal look at the board, without fear of scrambling the tiles on the board.

Super Scrabble: The Deluxe Edition is the ultimate Scrabble game experience!

There is a new downloadable Monopoly game, based on the latest edition of the classic family board game. Monopoly Here & Now is a modern makeover for today’s would-be billionaires. Load your account with millions, roll the dice, and move all-new tokens around the board. Buy and sell all-new properties featuring popular destinations from across the United States.

Just like the actual board game edition of Monopoly Here & Now, which came out in late 2006 (see New Monopoly is Here, Now), the download edition features a completely updated game, with new properties, new tokens, and new property values.

New properties include Boston’s Fenway Park, Las Vegas Blvd., Houston’s Johnson Space Center, Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry, and Minneapolis’ Mall of America. New tokens include the Toyota Prius, New Balance Shoe, McDonald’s French Fries, Labradoodle, Motorola RAZR Mobile Headset, and a Laptop Computer.

Today’s properties, today’s tokens, today’s millions, MONOPOLY HERE & NOW EDITION is timeless fun for tomorrow’s billionaires!

More information about Monopoly Here & Now
Download Monopoly Here & Now (15MB)

SCRABBLE Cubes is a new game from WorldWinner, and has quickly become one of the most popular games on the site.

SCRABBLE Cubes is a 3-D word game based on Hasbro’s classic crossword board game, in which players achieve high scores by connecting letters to find as many words as possible across the surface of an ever-changing arrangement of cubes. The game features SCRABBLE tiles with corresponding point values, giving wordsmiths everywhere the opportunity to compete in a modern version of their favorite word game for cash and prizes. Adding to the challenge, players are tempted with bonus cubes containing special values, such as “double word score” or “double letter score,” as in the popular SCRABBLE board game.

The games plays as sort of a three-dimensional Boggle, except that it uses SCRABBLE point values and bonuses. This is not just a straight conversion of SCRABBLE to online play. This is actually a game that could never exist in the real world, but it’s a perfect fit for the computer and online play.

You can play for free in practice mode as long as you want, or you can play in one of the many ongoing live competitions against real people from around the world.

SCRABBLE Cubes is a terribly addictive new diversion, and should please any word lover.

Play SCRABBLE Cubes Now

America has voted. No, not that overblown political thing on November 7th. We’re talking serious fun here. Board games. Specifically: Monopoly!

Earlier in the year, Hasbro asked players to vote for their favorite landmarks to be included in a new “Monopoly: Here & Now” edition. Americans cast more than 3 million online votes to shape the new edition’s game board and determine which landmarks from 22 cities made it onto the board, as well as the location of those landmarks on the board.

Now, the votes have been tallied, and here are the results:

• America has elected New York City’s Times Square to occupy the highest rent property space (traditionally home to Boardwalk) on the game board of the new edition. The Big Apple shares the coveted blue property color group with its northern neighbor Boston, which landed its Fenway ballpark on the space traditionally occupied by Park Place.
• The rest of the high-rent district (which includes the green color group) features the White House (representing Washington, D.C.), Chicago’s Wrigley’s Field, and the neon-glittering Las Vegas Blvd (aka “The Strip”).
• Orlando’s Disney World occupies the red space traditionally known as Illinois Avenue, which has proven to be the most landed-upon property space on the board during a game.
• Cleveland’s Jacobs Field and Dallas’ Texas Stadium are the most affordable properties for real estate moguls to purchase, occupying the dark purple spaces.
• Beyond the new property landmarks, the new game has newly appraised property values and rents (players who land on Times Square with a hotel will pay $20 million), larger currency denominations, and airports replacing the railroad spaces.
• The game tokens have also been updated, and now include an environmentally-friendly hybrid Toyota Prius, a New Balance running shoe, McDonald’s French Fries, a Motorola RAZR cell phone, an airplane, and a laptop computer.
• The Chance and Community Chest cards, too, have received updated scenarios. For example, winning $10 in a beauty contest has changed to winning $100,000 in a reality TV show, and players are sent directly to jail (without passing GO) for such misdeeds as identity theft and insider trading.

View all Monopoly editions

Legacy Interactive has announced its first downloadable game based on a television franchise, Law & Order Criminal Intent: The Vengeful Heart.

The world of the hit television show Law & Order: Criminal Intent comes to life on the PC as players take on the role of Detective Robert Goren to investigate a murder case. In The Vengeful Heart, the first episode of a four-part series, players scour the crime scenes for evidence, interview witnesses and interrogate suspects in hopes of tracking down the elusive killer. With beautifully rendered graphics and voices and likeness from members of the show’s cast, this thrilling third-person mystery/adventure game will have players feeling like they’ve stepped into an actual episode of Law & Order: Criminal Intent. And while players may think they have solved the first case, this dark and sinister tale isn’t completely solved until the fourth and final murder.

The game features celebrity voiceovers from Law & Order: Criminal Intent stars Vincent D’Onofrio (Det. Goren) and Jamey Sheridan (Capt. Deakins). You control Det. Goren’s movements throughout the highly detailed environments as well as direct his unique and psychological interrogation techniques. Creative and innovative puzzles are fully integrated into the storylines.

The Vengeful Heart is the first of four episodes to be released by Legacy Interactive.

About Law & Order: Criminal Intent

Law & Order: Criminal Intent, currently in its fifth season, takes viewers into the minds of its criminals while following the psychological approaches the Major Case Squad uses to solve the crimes. In addition to Detective Logan and his partner, Detective Barek (Annabella Sciorra), the Major Case Squad follows Detectives Robert Goren (Vincent D’Onofrio) and Alexandra Eames (Kathryn Erbe). Courtney B. Vance and Jamey Sheridan also star.

Law & Order: Criminal Intent is a Wolf Films production in association with NBC Universal Television Studio and is Dick Wolf’s third installment of the Law & Order brand, the second-longest running drama series in the history of television. Wolf, Rene Balcer, Fred Berner and Peter Jankowski are executive producers. The game is developed through a licensing agreement with Universal Studios Consumer Products Group.

Source: Legacy Interactive Announces First Episodic Game Based On Hit TV Franchise.

Download Law & Order Criminal Intent: The Vengeful Heart (99MB)

Each year, the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design (AAGAD) presents the Origins Awards recognizing the gaming industry’s top achievements and products released during the previous year. 2005’s nominee list included games from both large and small companies across the industry. Winners of the 32nd Annual Origins Awards have been announced and include the following:

Board Game of the Year

Parthenon: Rise of the Aegean - Immerse yourself in an exciting, competitive world filled with aggressive trading, perilous voyages, and the construction of grand monuments. Parthenon is a game of commerce for 3 to 6 players set in the islands of the Aegean Sea. The time is 600 B.C. and mainland Greece stands on the threshold of glory. The Aegean attempt to share in that glory and to thrive in an increasingly profitable (and dangerous!) world.

Gamer’s Choice Best Board Game of the Year

Shadows Over Camelot - A unique collaborative game featuring a malevolent twist! As the incarnation of the Knights of the Round Table, you join forces against the game itself in an attempt to protect Camelot. Your victory hinges on the successful completion of legendary Quests, such as the search for Excalibur, the Holy Grail, or Lancelot’s Armor; the tournament against the Black Knight; and numerous wars against the Saxons and Picts. But beware … all is not as it seems among these noble Knights. One of your number might yet turn out to be a traitor-in-waiting, biding his time while sowing havoc and destruction from the Shadows!

Read the entire list of award-winners in categories including Collectable Card Games, Traditional Card Game, Role-Playing Games, Miniatures Games, Historical Games, and many more.