Tag: Origins Game Fair

It’s been one week…

It’s been a week of rain, reading instructions, rain, letting the dust settle, more rain and learning a new AR game.

Learning to play at Origins.

So far T has played Haba‘s Animal Upon Animal: Crest Climbers a few times alone. It’s a great solo game, offering spacial skills as well as fine motor skills for balancing.  He didn’t necessarily follow the rules, but I’m ok with him trying to build the biggest mountain he can. (Until our insurance and hospital are able to come to an agreement, this is as close to OT as he is going to get!) We also have the Animal Upon Animal: Small and yet Great version waiting. I got that one for when we were out and about. We haven’t gone anywhere other than the hospital for therapies! Such a total change from our usual routine. Now that it’s the weekend, I’m hoping that maybe we will get to play at least one of the games that I’ve read the instructions for. We have another Haba game on board, The Hearmees, to be played this weekend too. Maybe the listening skills required for that game will translate over to life. Ha! I will be posting a review on that game soon.

Also this week, Harry Potter: Wizards Unite was released by Niantic. We’ve been waiting for this game for awhile. We (mostly Halo42, but we join in on occasions) are still playing Pokemon Go, but we have added this to our mix. It definitely has a learning curve! The good thing is that from our house we can usually find a few “Confoundables” fairly regularly. The problem is having the energy to be able to cast the spell to get the back! Definitely a little different than the other game, but it is still fun. It was a lot of fun deterining what my wizard name was going to be (Iris Grace). I found a fun name generator online and was able to combine two names that I liked. With all of this HP excitement, it gets me into the mood to listen to the books and to play some of the games from The Op as well. They have released and will be releasing severeral HP themed games. I think T’s reading is finally up to being able to play the first book of Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle-a Cooperative Deck Building Game. I think he’s ready for Harry Potter Hogwarts Battle Defence Against the Dark Arts too, we just need to find it out in the “wild”!

 

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So many games!!

I knew there would be lots of games to see and play at Origins, but once we were there and saw everything, it was mind blowing! We went down on Friday and again on Sunday so that I could meet with some of publishers. We were able to try out a few games on Friday: Songbirds by Daily Magic Games and Everybody Loves a Parade by Calliope games. We also brought home a bunch of games to try out and review. Those will be coming in the future.

The artwork on the box was beautiful!

Songbirds was a lot of fun. The job is to end up with the card of the color of bird that is making the most noise. Clear as mud, right? Once we started playing the game, it totally made sense. The game is played in a 5 x 5 grid, with the “loudest” bird in each row or column winning points. (Adding points on cards of the same color in same row/column determine the “loudest” bird.) At the end of the game, each player is left with one card in their hand. If that card matches the loudest bird, they win.

The loudest/winning bird was the one with the highest amount of points.

The game was pretty fast and does require some strategy, but T had no problems with it at all. He caught on almost right away. We ended up having the losing bird colors, it it was still a lot of fun. I liked that there was strategic thinking and math involved. He wasn’t thinking that he had to add too numbers together and get a total. He was just trying to get the points. I love games that can get math involved without him knowing. He learns the concepts of math easier and I don’t listen to him complain.

I have many other games to talk about, my mind is just spinning! I am still trying to wrap my head around all of the amazing things we saw over the weekend. I’m pretty sure anyone could find a game topic there that they’d enjoy. I will be posting more in the days to come, stay tuned!

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It’s convention time!

The beginning of June brings my birthday and Origins Game Fair in Columbus. I had really hoped to make it down there this year, using either a media badge or a teacher badge. Instead, I will be attending virtually from home. I suppose our bank account will thank me…Anyway. I’ll manage and hopefully be able to still bring you news of new and upcoming games.

One of the new releases being previewed is Lanterns Dice: Lights in the Sky by Renegade Game Studios. I’ve been a fan of the original Lanterns game, I have the physical edition as well as the app on my iPad and phone. I’ve taught T how to play the app, he hasn’t played the physical game yet. I think it’s a little easier to see how to score points and obtain favor in the app. The new version being released is a dice version. I am really looking forward to seeing how they switch the game up from tiles to dice. I’ll admit, I’m a pushover for dice and tile games. It happens.

As the week goes by I will try to add more previews as games are released. I’m really interested in seeing everything that comes from this show, and I can’t wait to share it with you and the boys!

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