Party Game

Players divide into two teams: men vs. women. The goal is to move your team's pawns across the game board. Along the way teams will have to answer questions about the opposite sex in order to move. For example, "How many lugs are on the typical wheel?" or "Where is the Superdome located?" are questions that would be given to the female team. "How do you stop a run in stockings?" or "What type of nut is used to make marzipan?" would be given to the males. The first team to move all four of their pawns across the board wins.

In Concept, your goal is to guess words through the association of icons. A team of two players – neighbors at the table – choose a word or phrase that the other players need to guess. Acting together, this team places pieces judiciously on the available icons on the game board.

To get others to guess "milk", for example, the team might place the question mark icon (which signifies the main concept) on the liquid icon, then cubes of this color on the icons for "food/drink" and "white". For a more complicated concept, such as "Leonardo DiCaprio", the team can use the main concept and its matching cubes to clue players into the hidden phrase being an actor or director, while then using sub-concept icons and their matching cubes to gives clues to particular movies in which DiCaprio starred, such as Titanic or Inception.

The first player to discover the word or phrase receives 2 victory points, the team receives points as well, and the player who ends up with the most points wins.

From the publisher: "Torches are blazing, mists are wafting ... in the Holy Circle the High Priestess celebrates her ritual with her novices. They sing with all their heart, cuddle the artifacts, and rearrange them in ever new patterns.

"But what if you do not know the religious rules? The best thing is to watch what the others are doing and imitate them. But cautious: Maybe your neighbor just violated a taboo and made the High Priestess angry …

"Each player takes the role of the High Priestess once and determines the rules of her own religion. The other players are novices trying to sense these rules and thus gather as much karma as possible."

The "priestess" player secretly chooses four cards that determine which actions are rewarded and which taboo. The other players simply move a pawn on the board and are awarded points by the priestess based on how their actions (including seemingly irrelevant ones like body movement or tone of voice) correspond with the rules. At the end of a round the priestess receives the same score as the highest-scoring adept, encouraging her to make the rules difficult but not impossible to guess.

GiftTRAP won a special Spiel des Jahres prize in 2009, and was voted "Best Party Game of the Year" by Games Magazine in 2008, proving that while buying real gifts can be traumatic, giving virtual gifts to find out how people really feel is heaps of fun. Be prepared for some surprises! It's a conversation starter that will get you and your friends talking about things that matter. Unlike other party games you don't need skills in drawing, acting or trivia, so it works well when you have a crowd of mixed ages/skills. GiftTRAP is played over a series of rounds. Each round has the following steps: DEAL - deal random gifts from one of the 5 packs of gifts. Packs have similar monetary value. SHOP - think about how to match these gifts to the players. GIVE - give one of these gifts to each player (using gift tokens). GET - choose which gifts you want yourself (using get tokens: Ok, Good, Great & No Way). REVEAL - show people what you wanted and see what you were given by each player. SCORE - the giver and the receiver score for each gift (the giver gets GIVING points, the receiver gets GETTING points). The first to reach the end of both the Giving and Getting tracks is the winner.

Cranium bills itself as the "whole-brain" game. It's a party game that borrows from a host of other popular party games of recent times. Players have to successfully complete activities in each of four sections to win: In
- Creative Cat : A player must clue a word to his or her teammates by drawing it, sculpting it in clay, or drawing it with his or her eyes closed.
- Data Head : A variety of trivia questions.
- Word Worm : Players unscramble words, spell challenging words, guess definitions, identify words with letters left out, or spell words backwords.
- Star Performer : players must whistle a song, impersonate a celebrity, or act out a clue.

Cranium has elements similar to those of Pictionary, Charades, Trivial Pursuit, Celebrities, Huggermugger, Claymania, etc.

Expanded by:

Cranium Booster Box 1
Cranium Booster Box 2
Cranium New York Booster Pack

NOTE: Unfortunately, Cranium had to be removed due to the clay being a poor fit for the library. We were having issues with people sticking the clay to tables, other games, and food. Sorry for the inconvenience.
--Spielbound Management