Set collection

A game of outrageous bluffing, honest haggling, and crafty negotiation. It's Halloween! Time to don your scariest costume and run through the neighborhood shouting "Trick or Treat!". Collect costume and treat cards, and you're on your way to winning Halloween Party. But beware - your opponents may play tricks on you!

Simple enough. But is it? Halloween Party has a ghoulish Twist - You can't play your own cards! You must trade with your opponents, playing the cards they give you, and letting them play your cards. Can you trust them to trade the cards you want? Probably not. But that's where the fun begins...

A winner of the 2000 Concours International de Créateurs de Jeux de Société.

In one of his sillier games, Karl-Heinz Schmiel casts the players as semi-psychotic cooks attempting to hone their culinary skills. Each player receives a miniature pan and a hotplate. Then each turn you can either attempt to turn up the heat, season your dish, or attempt to steal another cook's recipe in the making. Heating your hotplate is a random affair with a die, and could raise the heat on everyone's plate. Spicing the dish is heart of the game and done by up-ending small bottles filled with little colored wood pellets. When the pellets tumble out of the bottle (sometimes, if they do), the number of pellets can't exceed two, because over-spicing the dish ruins it and you have to throw it in the trash!

The 2009 version includes some changed rules, a new victory condition, additional recipes and some new mechanics in comparison to the 1989 version.

In Ristorante Italia, each player owns an Italian restaurant, a restaurant that he wants to make better than everyone else's in order to have the most points at the end of the game. To do this, a player must set up the menu, draw recipe cards, go to the town markets to collect needed ingredients, improve and enlarge the restaurant, improve the staff's cooking skills (as indicated by the cook-o-meter), and otherwise do whatever is necessary to have the most exemplary restaurant in the city.

Ristorante Italia lasts four phases, with each phase being comprised of three rounds. In each round, players can perform two actions from this list: draw recipe/wine cards, buy ingredients, buy rooms, take a "personal touch" cube, buy a bonus card, or buy a cooking training course. Special events during the game include VIP visits, culinary reviewer visits and the final National Cooking Contest, in which players will compete with their best recipes.

To achieve victory, players can follow an economic strategy – focusing on a menu which provides a strong revenue – or a quality strategy, in which the restaurant features special recipes matched to unique wines. Both strategies can lead to victory, and a balanced strategy can also be a good idea.

Ristorante Italia, scheduled for release in October 2011, can be played in two versions: Recipes for Novice Cooks (lighter version) and Recipes for Great Chefs (complete version).

From the publisher's website:

It's rush hour at the Ring-a-Ding Diner and you must hurry to serve a table full of hungry customers! Roll the die to add dishes to your tray. Roll a Free Meal or snag the Special of the Day to help fill your order. And if you roll a bell, it's a mad dash to grab your grub before another player beats you to the lunch! Be the first to complete all your orders and - DING! - you're the winner!

The players are building a research station at the bottom of the sea, trying to find Atlantis, recover sunken treasures, and extract raw materials. The board shows the sea floor as a grid with shades indicating the levels of depth.

Each round consists of three phases :

-expanding the station : extra research stations will be added, these give advantages depending on their type, cost to build depends on the underwater landscape on which they are placed. More stations in use of the same type give better advantages. They must be occupied by a scientist before any advantage can be enjoyed.

-deploying scientists : players must pay to bring them into the game. They can be moved around to start using the research stations. Once deployed they remain at this station. When using a station built by another player there is a cost.

-exploration : Up to 3 submarines can be launched when certain requirements are met. These explore outside the base searching for scientific and financial treasures as well as trying to find remains of Atlantis. The amount of built research stations and deployment of scientists greatly aid in the performance of the submarines.
All players have special goals, consisting of sea discoveries that provide more points when recovered.

The game ends when certain tiles or all of the Atlantis tiles are found, when nobody buys/builds anything to expand the base and when not a single sea discovery was recovered.

Points are scored for recovered Atlantis chips and sea discoveries. Discoveries corresponding to the player's special goals score more points. The total of the discoveries is multiplied by the points gained from the stations. Extra points are given for left over money.