Sushi. Drafting. Set Collection. I’m a simple man, and it doesn't take much to get my attention.

Attention doesn’t immediately mean praise or endorsement, but it does mean I am going to give it a shot, and it’s hard to say no to a game with a presentation this sleek. While sushi-themed games are hardly new these days, especially since I just reviewed Wasabi not too long ago, not many of them use a wooden board or a conveyor belt system. Also, this is probably the first sushi game that uses plates as game pieces, and stackable ones at that. This might sound like complete fluff, but surprisingly, it actually has a gameplay purpose.

Before I dive into the gameplay, there's a story behind this cardboard sushi competition. You and your friends are at an all-you-can-eat sushi restaurant, and you want the best evening ever. This friendly battle is measured in victory points earned by eating a variety of sushi, collecting color-coded plate sets, ordering side dishes, and tipping staff.

Fortunately, the mundane backstory ends there because the game’s entire presentation is truly on its own level. The wooden game board serves not only as a place for players' pawns to eat sushi, but also as a dynamic conveyor belt for the sushi plates themselves. At the start…

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“It’s like Memory, combined with scribbled pictures. Wanna try it?”

This was my intro to the kids to get them to try That’s Not a Hat (2023, Ravensburger) after a long week of car travel for spring break. My daughter will generally try anything, but games that feature pictures usually make her jump, so she was on board.

My son was a slightly tougher sell. “Is it cooperative?” he asked.

“No. We’ll each have a couple of cards in front of us, but the goal is to try and remember what everyone has in front of them. If you don’t, you’ll take on ‘penalty points’ and the person who has the most penalty points triggers the end of the game.”

My son turned skeptical. “I’ll play if it’s quick.” (Apparently, he had a hot date with the LEGO set perched nearby.)

That’s Not a Hat is, in fact, quick—10-20 minutes in most cases with three or four players. Longer than that, and then you have a different question to answer: is this a gift worth giving?

Bluff, Then Re-Gift

That’s Not a Hat is a bluffing game laced with elements of the game Memory for 3-8 players. To begin play, each player has a single card in front…

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Imagine with me the gravity of sitting down to a table for an exercise in social engineering. There are six spheres of children in need of companionship, and you’ve been given the task of bringing them together. Because this is a competitive endeavor, you must accomplish the task before everyone else. However, you’ll have to start by finding them all.

Of course, these are no ordinary children. They are children of the trees, Kinoko. Translated to English? They’re mushrooms. Goofy looking mushrooms. Wait a minute, is that mushroom holding a basketball? What sort of game is this?!

Kinoko is a tiny box game from Helvetiq and the mind of Tim Rogasch in which players attempt to bring families of mushrooms together based on their common interests. Let’s find out what can be done with 24 cards, a few dice, and almost as many linguistic variations of the rulebook as there are scoring tokens.

There are 8,000 types of mushrooms in the world

The cards of Kinoko come in six varieties: Athletes (Red), Musicians (Orange), Artisans (Yellow), Scientists (Green), Public Servants (Blue), and Artists (Purple). Their occupations couldn’t matter less in terms of gameplay, but my goodness do they keep the game bubbly. Each color has a set of numbers, one through three. Players receive one of each number,…

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Kolossal Games (Reload) is heading to Kickstarter this month with a campaign-style cooperative deduction game titled Almost Innocent. In many ways, this preview is unlike anything you’ll ever see—including what you’ll find in the retail version of the game. Allow me to explain. 

Legacy and campaign-style games that depend in any way upon story face a distinct challenge in this early preview stage because of potential spoilers. Kolossal has attempted to dig up this roadblock by issuing a prologue to media outlets. This preview covers three scenarios that exist independent of the game that will hit retail next year, so nothing you see here will spoil your experience. 

Instead, the scenarios in the prologue offer a peek into the progression of game mechanics in a way that entices without laying all the cards on the table, so to speak. 

For the prologue, players take up the role of pub-dwellers who find themselves trapped inside when the owner learns that someone inside has been harassing the town and causing trouble. In order to escape, each player must deduce a story capable of buying passage to the ground above suspicion—proving themselves almost innocent. Success comes only if everyone at the table solves their individual conundrum. 

Scenario #1

Almost Innocent takes place in a central book that serves as the…

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Right now, the Bell household is knee-deep in the world of Harry Potter.

My wife loved the Potter books. Now that my daughter is reading-age, she has pounded her way through all seven of the books herself. We took her to Universal Studios in Orlando last fall and she had to be physically ripped from the park by the end of our vacation there. Every time we go somewhere that has Harry Potter toys, Harry Potter LEGOs, Harry Potter clothes, Harry Potter school supplies—you name it; she wants it all.

It should be no surprise, then, that a board game featuring wizards trying to get to a wizarding school before a ghost catches the players would be a massive hit in our house.

Enter Wizardry to the Power of Three (2016, Pegasus Spiele), a game that casually borrows from the world of Hogwarts then adds the element of the game Memory to the proceedings. With flavor text like “to…see the flying brooms…they heard the grown-ups talk about”, referring to “wizard students”, I don’t think anyone is confused about where we are.

And that works. Games borrow liberally from other worlds all the time, and for a light, 15-minute affair, Wizardry to the Power of Three (Wizardry for short) landed well with the family.

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I ran into Nora Meiners from Gamewright while strolling the exhibition hall at GAMA Expo. After she sold me on giving Sushi Roll a spin at Gen Con last year, she had nice things to say about some of our other Gamewright reviews, such as Happy City.

“Have you played Sleeping Queens? It’s a classic.”

I hadn’t even heard of Sleeping Queens, a 2005 release from Gamewright that got re-released a few years ago for its 15th anniversary. I was traveling later that day but the Sleeping Queens box was pocket-sized, so I slipped it into my carry-on and wished Nora well.

Now that I’ve played it a few times, I have to admit: Sleeping Queens is a fantastic light card game that fits on any game table and gets quality family fun into a 10-to-15-minute package.

Why have I not heard of this game before now?

Play Kings, Get Queens, Win Game

Those are essentially all of the rules to a game of Sleeping Queens.

Combining a mix of math, Memory, and some light combat with cards that play offense or defense, Sleeping Queens plays 2-5 players and can squeeze between almost any game you are going…

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“I bet I can make a bigger leaf pile than you!”

     “Oh yeah? Well I have more acorns!” 

“I’ll let you go through this pile of leaves for an acorn!” 

     “Hey! You can’t move that pile once you set it down!” 

Just about any activity can become a game with a few stated restrictions, a well-designed objective or two, and a playful attitude. The question in the end is whether the backyard shenanigans were just a strange moment or whether they can be whittled down into an experience that begs future visits. 

Momiji, a card game collaboration from Deer Games and Japanime Games, takes this playful backyard approach into that dreamy Japanese garden and asks what happens if peaceful leaf collection suddenly grows a competitive backbone? What if acorns become the fiat currency of the garden? Can the enjoyment of nature withstand such frivolity for a span of thirty minutes? Would folks come back for more? 

You may not yet know Dario Massarenti, one of the…

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