family

Cryptid

You've studied the footage, connected the dots, and gathered what meager evidence you could. You're close — soon the whole world will know the truth behind the Cryptid. A group of like-minded cryptozoologists have come together to finally uncover the elusive creature, but the glory of discovery is too rich to share. Without giving away some of what you know you will never succeed in locating the beast, but reveal too much and your name will be long forgotten!

Cryptid is a unique deduction game of honest misdirection in which players must try to uncover information about their opponents' clues while throwing them off the scent of their own. Each player holds one piece of evidence to help them find the creature, and on their turn they can try to gain more information from their opponents. Be warned; give too much away and your opponents might beat you to the mysterious animal and claim the glory for themselves!

The game includes a modular board, five clue books, and a deck of set-up cards with hundreds of possible set-ups across two difficulty levels. It is also supported by an entirely optional digital companion, allowing for faster game set-up and a near-infinite range of puzzles.

—description from the publisher

Note: some copies have a delta clue booklet with misprints in eight clues:

2,#9,#13,#64 states cougar, should be bear
3,#63,#72,#95 states bear, should be cougar

The official website with an online tool to randomly generate more clues is http://playcryptid.com/

Pandemic: 10th Anniversary Edition

In Pandemic, several virulent diseases have broken out simultaneously all over the world! The players are disease-fighting specialists whose mission is to treat disease hotspots while researching cures for each of four plagues before they get out of hand.

The game board depicts several major population centers on Earth. On each turn, a player can use up to four actions to travel between cities, treat infected populaces, discover a cure, or build a research station. A deck of cards provides the players with these abilities, but sprinkled throughout this deck are Epidemic! cards that accelerate and intensify the diseases' activity. A second, separate deck of cards controls the "normal" spread of the infections.

Taking a unique role within the team, players must plan their strategy to mesh with their specialists' strengths in order to conquer the diseases. For example, the Operations Expert can build research stations which are needed to find cures for the diseases and which allow for greater mobility between cities; the Scientist needs only four cards of a particular disease to cure it instead of the normal five—but the diseases are spreading quickly and time is running out. If one or more diseases spreads beyond recovery or if too much time elapses, the players all lose. If they cure the four diseases, they all win!

The 2013 edition of Pandemic includes two new characters—the Contingency Planner and the Quarantine Specialist—not available in earlier editions of the game.

Pandemic is the first game in the Pandemic series.

Kitchen Rush

You've just inherited an old restaurant and you must turn it into a successful business! Hire personnel, order the right ingredients and be ready to serve the customers that enter your restaurant. The success will depend entirely on your efficiency in the kitchen!

Kitchen Rush is an innovative real-time cooperative game that simulates the excitement of a high-pressure kitchen environment. It does so through worker placement, using hourglasses as your workers. These hourglasses are used to take orders from customers, prepare their dishes, serve them on time, buy groceries, clean plates and make sure enough money is made each round to cover wages, expenses, upgrades and hopefully, leave a profit. Any worker placed on an action space may not be used elsewhere before the sand within the hourglass runs out, making each decision important as time is limited.

The game is for 1-4 players and plays for 4 rounds of 4 minutes. The fun, excitement and rush it brings to the table offers a full course for gamers and family members alike.

Snow Time

Snow is falling! Winter is finally here!
A joust is in the making: let the show begin!
You play as children, representing your village, and face your
opponents in a joyful competition around a marvelous tree.
Anticipate other players’ moves and guess their intentions.
Be crafty, collect strange fruits, and dodge the snowballs!!

Fruits appear randomly on the board at different levels of the tree.
The players will try to seize them and therefore will have to choose on which branch they want to climb.
Be careful though, a player will only be able to harvest fruits if he is alone on a branch, and if there is not a player in ambush just above him!
Thus, He will try to anticipate the choices of his opponents since otherwise a squabble will start, which will inevitably end up by the loss of cards, unless one of the brawlers dominates the fray.
Finally, the cleverest player will score a point for avoiding the fight by being the lowest in the tree.
Between racing game, bluff, and double guessing.

—description from the publisher

Treasure Island

Long John Silver's crew has committed mutiny and has him cornered and tied up! Round after round, they question him about the location of his treasure and explore the island following his directions — or perhaps his misdirections? Who knows... The old sea dog is surely planning an escape, after all, after which he will definitely try to get his treasure back.

Treasure Island is a game of bluffing and adventure in which one player embodies Long John, trying to mislead the others in their search for his treasure. The hunt reaches its climax with Long John's escape, when he will make a final run to get the booty for himself!