Memory

Survive The Island

Survive The Island is a cutthroat game in which players seek to evacuate their adventurers — especially those of a high value — from a sinking island to maximize their score.

An island made up of forty hex-tiles is slowly sinking into the ocean as tiles are removed from the board. Each player controls ten people (valued 1-5) that they try to move towards the safety of the surrounding islands before the main island's volcanoes finally erupt. Players can either swim or use rafts to travel, but must avoid sea serpents, kaiju, and sharks on their way to safety.

—description from the publisher

Trio

nana, which was later reprinted as Trio, is a card game in which players are looking for three of a kind.

The deck consists of 36 cards, numbered 1-12 three times. Players receive some cards in hand, which they are required to sort from low to high, and the remaining cards are placed face down on the table.

On your turn, choose any single card to reveal, either the low or high card from a player's hand (including your own) or any face-down card from the table. Then, do this again. If the two cards show the same number, continue your turn; if they do not, return the cards to where they came from and end your turn.

If you reveal three cards showing the same number, take these cards as a set in front of you. If you are the first player to collect three sets, you win — except that a player wins immediately if they collect the set of 7s or two sets that add or subtract to 7, e.g., 4s and 11s.

Note that nana and Trio contain identical components, but nana is labeled for 2-5 players, while Trio is labeled for 3-6 players. Trio has slight changes to the rules, with players using all cards no matter the player count. Additionally, you play in normal mode — winning with three sets or the 7s — or "spicy" mode, winning with two linked sets or the 7s. Finally, Trio includes rules for playing in teams with four or six players.

Captain Flip

Ahoy, Captain!
Hoist your flag, recruit a crew, and fill your coffers with shiny, gold coins.

Captain Flip is a game of obvious simplicity explained in less time than a cannonball shot. On your turn, draw a tile from the bag. You like it? Keep it! You don't like it? Flip it! Then place it on your board to form your crew.

With its nine characters and four boards with different tactics, Captain Flip offers an immediate, fun, and subtle gaming experience.

—description from the publisher

Codenames: The Simpsons

Codenames: The Simpsons combines the hit social word game Codenames, while featuring characters and locations from thirty years of The Simpsons.

In Codenames, two teams — Team Homer and Team Bart — compete to see who can guess all of their "field agents" (identified by either a word or picture) correctly first — but those field agents are hiding in plain sight in a 5x5 grid that includes the agents of the other team, neutral words, and an assassin that will cause you to lose the game immediately if you guess it. One person on each team is a spymaster and only these two know which agents belong to each team. Spymasters take turns giving one-word clues that can help their teammates identify multiple agents on the board. Their teammates try to guess agents of the right color while avoiding those that belong to the opposing team — and everyone wants to avoid the assassin.

El Grande

In this award-winning game, players take on the roles of Grandes in medieval Spain. The king's power is flagging, and these powerful lords are vying for control of the various regions. To that end, you draft caballeros (knights) into your court and subsequently move them onto the board to help seize control of regions. After every third round, the regions are scored, and after the ninth round, the player with the most points is the winner.

In each of the nine rounds, you select one of your 13 power cards to determine turn order as well as the number of caballeros you get to move from the provinces (general supply) into your court (personal supply).

A turn then consists of selecting one of five action cards which allow variations to the rules and additional scoring opportunities in addition to determining how many caballeros to move from your court to one or more of the regions on the board (or into the castillo - a secretive tower). Normally, you may only place your caballeros into regions adjacent to the one containing the king. The one hard and fast rule in El Grande is that nothing may move into or out of the king's region. One of the five action cards that is always available each round allows you to move the king to a new region. The other four action cards vary from round to round.

The goal is to have a caballero majority in as many regions (and the castillo) as possible during a scoring round. Following the scoring of the castillo, you place any cubes you had there into the region you secretly indicated on your region dial. Each region is then scored individually according to a table printed in that region. Two-point bonuses are awarded for having sole majority in the region containing your Grande and in the region containing the king.