Many Short Games: Part the First
Welcome to Many Short Games: Part the First. Many short games is about lots of games that don’t take very long to play. Games you can play if you get to the theater early. Games you can play when you don’t want to devote a large chunk of time to gaming. Games you can schedule 8 of to play in a typical 2 hour U-Con game slot. For this first installment, I’m going to highlight 5 card games in the Games Library that take 15 minutes or less to play.
7Ate9 (Out of the Box Publishing): This is one of those “Get Rid of Your Hand First” type games. Except there is also maths. Each card has a yellow big number on it, and smaller numbers with +/- 1, 2 or 3. You have to put down a card from your hand on a central stack that is either +X or -X from the large yellow number of the top card on the stack. Then your card becomes the top card. And so on. And Maths. AUGH!
Fluxx (Looney Labs): I have lost track of how many Fluxx themed decks there are. Seriously! Take a look at the Looney Labs Fluxx page. 22 versions are out there (and this does not count the foreign language versions: German, Dutch, Spanish, Portugese, and Japanese) and I don’t think that includes the two new decks that recently dropped: Star Trek and Star Trek:DS9. It’s a little crazy. Anyway, Fluxx is an interesting game in that it doesn’t start out with an endgame trigger. It doesn’t even start out with an endgame; just your basic rule: Draw a card, play a card. Throughout the game, you will play New Rules cards, Action cards, Keeper cards and Goal cards (your endgame criteria) and some expansions throw in Creeper cards and Surprise cards.These cards shape the play as you go. If it’s a little overwhelming, may I suggest starting with Zombie Fluxx? It’s, in my opinion, the most solid of the variations. Zombie Fluxx came out before Surprise cards so I grabbed a Surprise card from Star Fluxx for the picture. You can see that the font is different-which means you can mix Fluxx decks fairly easily. I don’t recommend playing a 13 deck Fluxx extravaganza but you can if you want to because breaking the cards back into their respective decks isn’t so bad. Or so I’ve heard.
Spot it! (Blue Orange Games): Spot it can be played five different ways – which makes it a great game to bring with you if you happen to have an 8 hour layover in Toronto. Or wherever. Spot it! cards have eight different symbols on them in random placement as well as size. The basic object of all the Spot it! game variations is to match a picture on your card, with a picture on another card. One variation is the typical “get rid of your cards”, where everyone plays the top card of their blind stack of cards to match a card face up in the middle. The first person to match a symbol puts their card on the center card and draws a new card from their blind stack. Everyone now has to find a match for the new center card. Another variant is to collect the most cards from the middle stack by matching the symbol on the top of the stack of cards you are collecting. Yet a third is sort of a hot potato game of trying not to collect cards by offloading your cards onto your opponents stack.
Sushi Go (Gamewright): Sushi Go is a combination of drafting and set matching game. The object is to get the most points by either having the most or second most of a set of sushi, collecting pieces of sushi each worth X points or not being the person with no puddings. Puddings are essential. Or at least tasty. The game is played in 3 rounds where you pick cards to keep and then pass the rest onward. Except for the puddings. Don’t pass your puddings.
Timeline: Inventions (Asmodee): Timeline is another “Get rid of your cards” game but the trick here is that you have a whole pack of inventions from ‘taming fire’ to ‘laptop computers’ and you have to figure out where in a growing timeline your invention sits. The center card(s) are placed date up, but your stack of cards do not have their date of invention showing. You take turns guessing where your inventions sit in comparison to the timeline in the center. It’s pretty easy if “bronze” is your starter card and you have to figure out where “automobile” fits in history (hint: it will go to the right of bronze). It gets a little harder when you have to decide between “pressure cooker” and ‘tuning fork’.