Time Track

Trapwords

The game is for 2 teams, divided into two approximately equivalent number of players and takes about 30 minutes to play.

It could remind you of the classic word game known as Taboo, but this one has an interesting twist on gameplay – the opposing team is the one who chooses the words you cannot use. With you having no idea which words are "traps", it’s like dancing on a minefield, when you’re trying to describe your assigned word to the rest of the team.

You take the role of a group of adventurers crawling through a fantasy dungeon full of traps and curses, with a Boss waiting for you at the end.
You have to successfully guess a word that one of your teammates is trying to describe to you. Sounds simple, but it is made fiendishly difficult by not knowing which words you can't say. Because both teams are simultaneously preparing secret traps for each other, words that you can't use. And further you get, the more trapwords you might expect.

Let's see the example of one possible turn when you are trying to give clues for the word "Axe":

You: "It is a thing that a dwarf can…"
Opponents team: "A-ha, dwarf! Gotcha!"
You: "How did you know that? Was it obvious I will use that?"

Or when you would try another approach it could look like this, the successful turn of your team:

You: "This thing is used by a man with a beard, in a checkered shirt...."
One of your teammates: "A coffee maker?"
[Everyone laughs]
You: "He uses it for work in nature."
Another teammate: "A chainsaw!"
You: "He makes smaller pieces from a big plant with it."
Any of your teammate: "An axe!"
You: "Yes! Very good!"

Could you avoid your opponent's trapwords when you don't know what you can't say?

Race to the Treasure!

The race is on! Can you beat the Ogre to the treasure? It's your job to make a path from START to the treasure and collect the three keys that will open the treasure's locks before the Ogre gets there. Strategize, cooperate, and build the path together.

Children as young as two can play this co-operative tile laying game. On their turn, the player draws one tile from the bag, and it will either show a piece of path or picture of the Ogre.

Working together the players need to first make a path to the three keys that open the treasure and then lay a path to the treasure itself. All the while, each Ogre tile gets him closer to the treasure, and the players losing.

Everyone works together on the tile placement and either they win together or lose together.

The game has simple rules and does not require reading, meaning that even kids as young as 2 can be involved.

Patchwork Express

Patchwork Express features the same basic gameplay as Patchwork, but with a smaller playing area and with larger and less complex pieces.

In the game, each player tries to build the most aesthetic (and high-scoring) patchwork quilt on a personal 7x7 game board. To start play, lay out all of the light-colored patches at random in a circle and place a starting marker in a particular location. Each player takes some buttons — the currency/points in the game — and someone is chosen as the start player.

On a turn, a player either purchases one of the three patches standing clockwise of the starting marker or passes. To purchase a patch, you pay the cost in buttons shown on the patch, move the starting marker to that patch's location in the circle, add the patch to your game board, then advance your time token on the time track a number of spaces equal to the time shown on the patch. You're free to place the patch anywhere on your board that doesn't overlap other patches, but you probably want to fit things together as tightly as possible. If your time token is behind or on top of the other player's time token, then you take another turn; otherwise the opponent now goes. Instead of purchasing a patch, you can choose to pass; to do this, you move your time token to the space immediately in front of the opponent's time token, then take one button from the bank for each space you moved.

In addition to a button cost and time cost, each patch also features 0-3 buttons, and when you move your time token past a button on the time track, you earn "button income": sum the number of buttons depicted on your personal game board, then take this many buttons from the bank.

What's more, the time track depicts six 1x1 patches on it, and during set-up you place six actual 1x1 patches on these spaces. Whoever first passes a patch on the time track claims this patch and immediately places it on their game board.

At some point during the game, dark-colored patches are added to what's available for players to take, and these pieces are smaller than the light-colored ones, making it more likely that they'll fill in holes on a player's board.

Professor Evil and The Citadel of Time

Professor Evil owns a time machine, and he's been ripping off all the best historical items from times both past and future. Your team has been charged with confiscating these items and returning them to their proper locations in time, so you now need to infiltrate the mansion and abscond with four items before Prof. Evil can secrete four of them in locations inaccessible to you. Thankfully the old soul is a bit daft and won't evaporate you should he catch you lurking through the mansion, but simply scoot you out the front door where he'll forget about you immediately.

On a turn, you first draw and reveal two cards from your tiny deck, then keep one of the cards based on what you think will help you this turn. You then take three actions, such as open a door in the room you're in, move from a room (or outside) to another room (assuming the door is open), disable a trap, or grab a treasure; using a card isn't an action unless it says otherwise. You can repeat actions as desired or needed, but you can't enter a room with Prof. Evil and you can't exit the house on your own (in order to run across the grounds to another window) once you enter. You're now committed to grabbing those treasures!

After you finish your turn, Prof. Evil now moves, but again he's not all there, so he doesn't necessarily move in a logical manner. To move him, you roll three dice: One die advances the secondary Prof. Evil figure on the clock on the board either five or ten minutes; the other two determine where Prof. Evil moves and how far. What's more, as he walks through rooms, he closes the doors through which he travels and reactivates any inactive traps he encounters. If you roll a blue and a 1, for example, he moves through the blue doorway into the next adjacent room; a red and a 3 will move him through three rooms, walking through the red doorway each time. A color and a particular signal will teleport him immediately to the treasure bearing the same colored marker.

Let's look at these treasures in more detail: Each treasure shows a time value and one or more traps on it. Three treasures are placed on the board, then a blue, red and green token are placed on the treasures, with a matching blue, red and green token placed on the game board clock on the time matching what's on the treasure. The Magna Carta might say 45 minutes, for example, and after placing a blue token on the Magna Carta, you place a blue token on the clock 45 minutes away from where the Prof. Evil figure is located. If Prof. Evil moves onto this token on the clock, then that treasure is lost — and if you lose four treasures, then you've lost the game. Remove it from play and replace it with a new treasure, marking the proper time on the clock.

Note that you can't just grab a treasure, however. Professor Evil can't be in the same room (of course), but you also must ensure that all the traps shown on the treasure are currently deactivated. The game board starts with eight traps on it — half active, half not — and you'll play tug-of-war with Professor Evil over keeping them in this status. Collect a treasure, and a new one will be added to the game board; collect four treasures before Prof. Evil does, and you all win Professor Evil and The Citadel of Time.

Code of Nine

The world is in ruin. Humankind is but a distant memory, and only now have you awoken. You are an automaton in possession of several fragments that once held the will of the human race. The other fragments lie in the hands of your fellow automatons. You must investigate and piece together these fragments so that you alone may fulfill the final will of humanity.

Code of Nine — first released as Old World And Code Of Nine or OWACON — is a card-based board game in which the goal is to puzzle together long-gone memories. Players battle for victory points (VPs), but what will generate VPs is decided by eight so-called memory cards that are dealt at the start of the game, with each player getting to look at only two of these.

Each round, players choose actions that gain certain items such as coins, books, statues or legacies, or perhaps to peek at the other players' memory cards.

After five rounds, the score is calculated, and whoever has the most points wins.