Game University: Fastrack

One of my favorite childhood toys was my father’s old-school knock hockey table. It was a huge, solid-wood board with two hockey sticks and some hand-crafted wooden pucks. It was classic in every sense of the word. My dad George, used to play it with his brother John, and somehow along the line it ended up in my family’s play space.

My brother Andy and I spent countless hours hitting the puck back and forth and playing almost obsessively. We even had family tournaments where my dad would join in, too. It’s a vivid memory of childhood that was recently awoken by Blue Orange’s newest game, Fastrack.

Fastrack is a solid-wood game with a similar concept to knock hockey. It posesses all of the same obsessive qualities and allows for hours of fun. It's simple to learn and kids and adults alike love the fast-paced challenge of the game.

To begin, players start with the same amount of disks on each side. Using the elastic band, you must get all of the disks to the other player’s side by shooting them through the small opening in the middle of the board. It takes good aim and refined motor skills to perform well.

Because of its fast pace, excitement is high and you can play many rounds in a short amount of time. This makes it a great game to play with a group of people in a tournament setting. It's just as fun, however, for solitary play as well. Just put all of the disks on one side and see how quickly you can shoot them to the other. It's small enough to be portable, but large enough to be a challenge. The clicking and clacking of the wooden disks is oddly entrancing and adds a sensory element to the game. It's both memorable and appealing.

As always, we love Blue Orange Games because they are socially responsible and Eco-friendly. All of their games are designed in either California or France, and for every tree they use to produce their games, they plant two more. They are committed to producing the highest-quality and safest games for players of all ages, and their products are manufactured in family-run, well established factories in Asia. And, if you ever lose the pieces to your favorite Blue Orange Game, you can always order replacements. Brilliant!

Fastrack was just released by Blue Orange Games this month and was recently featured in our New Toy Alerts. It is now available at both aMuse Toys locations and at aMuse Toys online. It makes a unique gift for any fun-loving person in your life from age 5 to 105.

To see how Fastrack is played, check out this YouTube demo by Alice of Blue Orange USA. Happy playing!

New Toy Alert: Blue Orange Games Spring 2011 Releases

Blue Orange Games has long been one of our favorite game companies. We're pleased to announce their newest releases for Spring 2011. Most games are now in stock at both aMuse Toys locations, and we should be receiving the full line by the end of the month. We're excited to teach you, so stop in and play with us sometime!

FastTrack - Using the elastic cord, be quick and aim well to be the first to send all of the disks zooming. This high-action game is great for ages 5+ and is for 2 players.

Trigger is a fast-paced true or false game that really gets your brain going. Be the first to answer the tricky questions correctly and earn the cards as points. It's only been out a week, and it's already won a Dr. Toy Best Vacation game award! Great for 3-8 players age 8 and up. Click here to learn how to play Trigger.

Tell Tale sparks imaginations. Using the picture cards there are four fun, quick, family games that can be played. Great for telling unique bedtime stories and small enough to throw in a travel bag or purse.

Analyze Me! - Look into the minds and hearts of your friends. Make educated guesses about how they would react in certain situations and about their likes and dislikes. What would they do if they found a hair in their Caesar salad? If you are an astute judge of character, you have a chance to be crowned "Best Shrink Apprentice!"

Sketch It! - Sketch too quickly, and the others will be baffled. Sketch too carefully, and you'll miss your chance to score big. You don't need to be an artist to excel at Sketch it! With a healthy mix of accurate sketching and sharp guessing, you will surely triumph.

Pixy Cubes - These 16 beautifully engraved cubes can be used to play games as well as to design colorful pictures. You can choose to copy one of our many patterns or make up your own. A touch of imagination is all it takes to enter the wonderful world of Pixy Cubes.

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Game University: Trigger!

When Spot It! by Blue Orange Games was released last year, we knew it was going to be huge fun in a tiny tin. Since then, it's become one of our most commonly requested games. You can imagine our excitement when we were introduced to Blue Orange's newest game in a travel-friendly tin, Trigger!

Trigger is a fast-paced true or false card game that requires quick thinking and speedy action. It includes one target and 60 question cards. To play, shuffle the cards and put the target in the middle of the playing area. Deal five cards to each player and choose someone to be the first-round moderator. This person will be the one to determines the player that has given the correct answer to the stated question the quickest.

To start the round, the moderator takes the top card on their pile and reads one of the six questions listed. Each question has a different color behind it, which will be important later. However, for the first round the moderator chooses whichever question they please and reads it aloud. They range in difficulty depending on who is asking and in what context you are playing the game. Bear in mind that the use of the word "I" always refers to the moderator asking the questions, and the word "you" always refers to you. Here are some example questions so you can get the gist:

"The chair you are sitting on belongs to you."
"If Thursday is in two days, then today is Tuesday."
"At least one player here is more than 6 feet tall."
"At least two of the players' first names end with the same letter."
"The last syllable of this month is "BER."

The questions require information processing, observation, some knowledge of science or math and other common-knowledge facts. Often they are worded in such a way that you really need to think before giving your answer.

Giving your answer is where the game gets a little crazy. Your right hand is associated with "true" and your left with "false." As soon as you can, shout your answer and place the corresponding hand on the target. The order the hands stack up on the target is the order points will be awarded. The first player who has the correct hand down on the target earns the question card as a point. Before they pick up a card from the draw pile, they check what color the back of their point question card is. This determines the question they will ask on the next round. The winner picks up a card from the draw pile and reads the next question.

If someone has answered incorrectly, they lose point a card. No changing your answers! Once your hand is down, it stays down. The player at the end of the game who has collected the most cards wins the game.

Trigger is a great party game for 3 or more people ages 8+. It only takes a few minutes to play, and its small tin makes it easy to take anywhere. Please stop by either aMuse Toys location and play a few rounds with us. We know you're going to love it just as much as we do!

Make room for it in your travel bag, because Trigger has just won a Dr. Toy's Best Vacation Product award!

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Game University: Pengoloo

Challenging the limits of short-term memory, for children and adults alike, is one of the healthiest things you can do for your brain. Just like a muscle in your body, the more you exercise your memory, the stronger and more reliable it becomes. Pengoloo by Blue Orange Games is one of my favorite memory games that's just as challenging as it is adorable.

Pengoloo has incredibly dynamic game play — you can make it as simple or as difficult as you’d like. A few variations in how the game is set up, how many dice are rolled and the implementation of stealing penguins from other players increases both the strategy and challenge of the game.

The overall concept is very basic. Each player has an iceberg numbered from one to six. The first player to earn six daddy penguins to fill their iceberg wins the game. Players earn their penguins by rolling the colored die/dice to find the matching colored egg on which each daddy penguin sits.

When setting up the game for younger players, put the eggs out first without the penguins on top. After each player has a minute or so to form a mental image of the eggs, cover them. This brief visual foundation of where the colors sit in relation to one another acts as a mental roadmap on how to navigate the game.

For more advanced players, set the penguins out with the eggs hidden underneath. By beginning the game without a mental image, one must form it as the game unfolds.

To start, one player rolls the die/dice. Use one die to keep it simple, or two to make it more advanced. The player must choose a penguin with the corresponding colored egg of the color they rolled. When playing with two dice, if the player guesses correctly twice, they earn another turn. This variation makes it possible for one player to score up to four points during one turn, which increases pressure on the other players to score big.

For younger players, once the penguin is earned, they stay safely on their iceberg. If, however, you want to increase the challenge and incorporate a little alliance forming, you can encourage stealing between icebergs. This makes it so that all penguins are always in play. The ability for players to lose points as their pieces are stolen keeps the game active. It also encourages social development and good sportsmanship as well as makes the game more interesting for mature players.

As always, we love Blue Orange Games not simply because they’re fun and educational, but also because they’re eco-friendly, durable and have play value as well as relevance for a wide range of ages. For every one tree Blue Orange uses to create their games, they plant two new ones. And, if you lose a game piece or two, don’t worry! You can easily order replacement pieces to any of their games via their website. 

Here is a video demonstration of how to play Pengoloo from Blue Orange Games' Youtube channel.

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Game University: Spell It!

As soon as we stepped foot into the Javits Convention Center during our visit to this year’s NYC Toy Fair, we beelined it straight to the Blue Orange Games display. Toy Fair is an industry convention where we meet with toy and game company representatives, and they tell us about their newest products. Our excitement for the Blue Orange booth stemmed from the plethora of new game titles we had caught wind of in the weeks prior to the convention.

My personal favorite and the most recently released game by Blue Orange is Spell it! It’s a great older-player party game that really kicks your brain into high gear. Each Spell It! comes with five letter dice, various point chips and a tin in which you roll the dice.

To start, one person picks a category at the beginning of the round. Suggested categories are listed in the instructions, and they range from geography to household items; famous people to “no nouns,” etc... Or, you can opt to create your own.

Once a category is determined, one player rolls the dice. The first player to think of, shout out and spell a word that is related to the aforementioned category so that it utilizes three of the five letters on the dice, wins a point chip. The number of points they win is determined by the number of letters in the word that is shouted and spelled.

For example, if the predetermined theme is "around the world," and the dice are rolled as shown directly above, I could shout out and spell, "Duluth." That would earn me a total of six points because my answer contains six letters. The category for the next round is determined by the point chip the winner has just received. Categories are written around the numbers on the back of every chip.

The trick to the game is to be able to see words in the letters and to quickly categorize them. This requires your brain to sift through thousands of words and associations in milliseconds. The amount of mental dexterity it takes to consistently come up with appropriate answers is astounding. The more associations you have in the categories that are chosen, the more chance you have to win.

The quicker you're able to recall, verbalize and then spell the word, the better you'll perform. Sometimes, however, the first appropriate word you think of might not earn you very many points. Strategically you must determine if you use the answer that first comes to your mind to be the quickest, or if you'll think of a longer word (while simultaneously risking that someone else will think of a scoring answer in the meantime) that will earn you more points. Once all of the point chips have been earned, you tally them up and whoever has the most wins the game.

Spell It! is a great way to keep your brain active and healthy while maintaining and expanding your vocabulary. It also forces you to spell words correctly without a computerized spell check, which we rely so heavily upon these days. I've also found that people are able to recall rather obscure words to win, which gets everyone talking, laughing and learning.  

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