Review: Crackers in my Bed Publisher: Parker Brothers Year: 1987 Tagline: FIND ‘EM, MATCH ‘EM, FEED ME QUICK GAME!
how we met
I found Crackers in my Bed at the toy shop in my local town. This town is small, but they have a sweet toy shop with dirt cheap games. Bill bought something worthwhile like Mego dolls while I picked up this and another baby game.
Why did I buy a game for ages 3-6 (with no reading required, which is usually a bad sign)? For some reason I thought I recognized the game from when I was very young. I should have used my eyeballs more to find the publishing date in the store because I was already too old for this game when it came out in 1987. But I bought it. And we played it.
how it plays
So simple! We had four players, so each player started the game with four cracker bottoms. On their turn, players spin the spinner and can choose a cracker from the bed that matches that color. If that cracker half matches one of their cracker bottoms, they match them up and feed them to the weirdo in the bed!
These are all of the cracker bottoms
If there is no match, play passes to the next player. The first player to match all of their cracker bottoms wins Crackers in my Bed!
This is how you play!
how it went
Gameplay was quick and relatively painless. It must have been painless because we played more than once in a row. I’m not sure why.
The spinner
Crackers in my Bed is a memory game. If a player draws a cracker half they don’t need that you do, it’s important to remember where that cracker half is. You might not be able to draw it right away since you might spin a different color, so it really does push memory during gameplay. This probably is a decent game for ages 3-6.
Our play in action
I didn’t write down any notes or even a winner from Crackers in my Bed, but I feel like I remember matching my final cracker bottom and stuffing it into that child’s face before throwing my hands in the air in victory. So I’m going to say I won Crackers in my Bed.
play or pass
Pass. Sure, pick it up for your 3—6-year-old. But for your adult gaming group that currently can’t stop playing Gloomhaven, this one is better left on the shelves.
Review: Shrieks & Creaks Publisher: Western Publishing Company Year: 1988 Tagline: ESCAPE FROM A HAUNTED MANSION THAT ACTUALLY SPEAKS!
how we met
Bill surprised me with Shrieks & Creaks last spring or so. He picked it up in decent shape at the Kane County toy show when I was not in tow. This game had been on my wishlist ever since I learned about it – presumably around the time I played Girl Talk: Date Line, but who knows. I can’t really remember. I was happy to have it, and it meant I get to use my audio cassette player for a second time!
how it plays
The object of Shrieks & Creaks is to be the first player to reach the tower in the haunted mansion. Then you win! (I’m not sure why the tagline says escape but the board leads you to a tower… in fact while I am nitpicking the tagline, it’s not really the mansion that speaks, it’s the ghosts.. ok I’m done now.)
The board showing the possible paths and Black Cat areas (more on those soon)
Each player chooses a character, and each character has a pawn as well as a key similar to the room keys. The Host character, Sir Simon Shriek, is not a player but is used to make sure the tape plays (more on that soon).
The player keys and Sir Simon Shriek, a little rough for wear
Place one Room Key in each room, matching the number on the key to the room number. Each row, or level, of rooms has the same number. It’s almost as though one of these keys will grant you safe passage and the rest will not.
The Room Keys. Note: I am missing one level 2 Room Key
Place the cassette tape into your player and press play. Then put Sir Simon Shriek into the Tombstone Speaker and listen to the introduction. After the introduction, remove Sir Simon and you can start play!
On their turn, each player rolls the die and moves that number of spaces in any direction they choose, but if they encounter a Black Cat they must stop movement. After a player lands on a Black Cat, they immediately take their Player Key as well as the Room Key they are on and place them into the Tombstone Speaker together. If no sounds are heard, the room is clear and they can continue movement by rolling the die again immediately. However if sounds are heard, follow the directions. These will typically send the player to another room in the house. Then their turn is over.
My copy is missing one pawn, but you can substitute anything
It’s important to remember which rooms make noise and are therefore haunted for your particular playing piece. A room that is haunted for me may not be haunted for you, so it does you no good to memorize what happens to other players. But the goal is to avoid haunted rooms, so remember what happens during your own turn.
Continue play until one player reaches the tower. That player wins Shrieks & Creaks!
how it went
Shrieks & Creaks had been on my wishlist for ever so long, and I was ever so excited to play it. And I was ever so disappointed.
Shrieks & Creaks works the same way and has the same components as Girl Talk: Date Line which I reviewed early on in my blog. And if you read that review and continue to read the spoilers, I explain exactly which characters always make the speaker work, which players don’t contribute any contact, and so on. And maybe that ruined the magic for me a little.
The components we are all here for
I like the premise of this game. The idea that you are looking for silence was cute, and a nice shift away from Girl Talk: Date Line where silence is no good. The combinations of keys causing rooms to be haunted for one player and not another was a neat idea. The problem is that players can probably figure out what is happening by studying key combinations during any turn and then determine visually which path is safe for them, because all the keys are showing all the time. And then it’s just a roll-off.
My copy is missing a single room key, so we just let players pass through that room for free. And we all took advantage of that. I don’t think it was a huge impact; we still had plenty of road to travel.
Our play with a spooky Mickey playing substitute pawn
Near the end of our gameplay we were all stacked up near the tower. Bill and John in particular were making a run for it. In the end Bill got better rolls, and Bill won Shrieks & Creaks!
play or pass
A hesitant pass. I love spooky games, and the idea of a cassette tape that plays hauntings of a mansion is right up my alley on paper. But we already played a game like this, and we already know the trick here. And more than that, the execution left us struggling to pretend we didn’t know exactly what to do.
Review: Four Sight Publisher: Invicta Games Year: 1975 Tagline: a game of the future where success is the power of
how we met
I found Four Sight at a thrift shop and could not look away. Just look at that stunning cover! I don’t care what’s in it, how many people need to play, what the ratings are. I am buying this one.
how it plays
Four Sight is a two player abstract game that challenges your spatial reasoning skills. But in a fun way!
One player chooses one of the KEY PLATEs and one set of eight TABLETS, which are either black or white. The other player chooses a different KEY PLATE and the other color of TABLETS. KEY PLATES are like square, colored plastic plates with four openings in them. The object of the game is to place your TABLET pieces so that you can take your KEY PLATE, place it over the pieces, and have three of your pieces and one of your opponent’s showing. Then you win!
Step 1: pick your poison
The player with the white TABLETS moves first and places their first piece in any of the 16 places on the board. Then black goes. Then white again. And so on.
This is your battlefield
Each player must keep their KEY PLATE in front of them and visible to the other player. So the challenge is being able to mentally picture your KEY PLATE in every which way so that you know when you accomplish your goal. But then also to picture your opponent’s KEY PLATE in order to foil their plans. The rest is being strategic in placing your TABLETS and getting lucky with where your opponent places.
The main point of the game is to challenge your mind to be able to move and rotate the KEY PLATE as needed without touching it. The rules do say that once you pick up your key plate you must place it. If you are correct then you win, but if you are not correct then you lose!
how it went
Bill and I played Four Sight some random summer evening. I was a little bit nervous to play because spatial reasoning is not my thing. I played black and chose the yellow KEY PLATE for no particular reason. Bill chose the green KEY PLATE and had white TABLET pieces.
We filled about 2/3 of the board before I excitedly placed a TABLET piece, picked up and placed my KEY PLATE and won Four Sight! With all the irony that I did not see that win coming. I’m pretty sure Bill wasn’t paying very close attention, but I’ll take this win.
My gorgeous win
play or pass
Pass for me personally, but I appreciate everything Four Sight brings to the table. And I’d play it again. I like the cheekiness of the name (winning requires foresight derp!). As you have heard me say many times in other reviews, I think this game borders on relying too much on a specific skill so having players with equal skill may be very important to enjoying gameplay. And that’s a bit of a drawback for me.
But Four Sight is simple and approachable by many different types of players. And if you like abstract games, it’s definitely worth picking off the shelves.
The Kane County Toy Show happens twice a year, in April and October. I particularly love to attend the October show because it is full of spooky toys, decorations and games. And I have seen Monster Mash! at the show 30 times in various states of disrepair, usually with a very heavy price tag. So I never picked it up.
But one glorious day Bill was at a thrift shop and found a beautiful, complete, wonderful copy for just a few bucks. And he brought it home. And that’s how we met.
how it plays
Monster Mash! gameplay is so simple that there are no instructions, just the box back that indicates players should push the button on the monster machine to show a random monster, then thwack that monster card hard with your THWACKER™ hand (a long plastic arm with a suction cup at the end)! The game includes 27 different monster cards that are laid out in front of the players for optimal thwacking. If an already-captured monster comes up then other players will attempt to steal it from you. The first player who captures five monsters wins Monster Mash!
The monster machine. Note the big button in upper right corner that will fetch you a new monster
how it went
Our gameplay was a long time ago now, but it was also stunningly violent and I remember it well.
The live portion of this photo shows a THWACKER™ hitting the table between those hands
We gave each player a damp paper towel to help their THWACKER™ hand pick up cards, and that worked very nicely. Highly recommend having those handy.
Because Monster Mash! has the rules on the back of the box only, the game is ripe for house rules. Things that you may want to house rule:
Does the first person to thwack the monster get it, or do they need to transport it safely to their area? We often had players try to steal the monster en route. Annoying, but probably fair.
Is there any punishment for thwacking the wrong monster? Many people play that a wrong thwack causes you to forfeit a captured monster.
Bill is not allowed to bodily block you from accessing the monsters.
Keep your elbows to yourself.
In terms of pattern recognition games, Monster Mash! is a really good time. The monster machine is a great way to randomize monsters, with the drawback that repeat monsters happen pretty consistently. But stealing someone’s captured monster is just another part of the gameplay.
Our heroes, the THWACKERS™
The challenge of Monster Mash! is obviously to quickly determine the monster you are looking for and then to find it. Drinking may not be a great idea during this game not only because you may easily knock your drink down, but you can’t afford any delayed reaction if you hope to win.
Three of the 27 possible monster combinations
Throughout our play we all thwacked a good share of monsters, each other, the air, the table, and especially the other THWACKERS™. Bill won our first game heartily.
play or pass
Very much play! I’m not sure I would describe Monster Mash! as elegant or anything, but it’s such brutal fun. This game is kind of expensive if you try to hunt it down. I think it’s worth keeping on the wish list though, and you may just stumble upon a bargain at thrift like we did.
If you know of another game that implements this type of lively pattern recognition, please comment and let us know!
My card game Panic Mode! arrived on my door step in March, and that was rather exciting. It is hard to describe the feeling of seeing it. I almost felt overcome with apathy, or I felt an emptiness where I expected to feel relief and joy. I think it had to do with the fact that having the game “done” and on my doorstep means the ball is 100% in my court, and the marketing part is the part I don’t love.
M’pallet
But boy is my game pretty. But more than that, Panic Mode! forced me to stretch the edges of my comfort zone in 2019. Here are a couple of things that happened:
i was on a podcast!
Yes, and a good one too! I was invited to appear on the Indie Board Game Designers Podcast after the creator, Patrick Rauland, received an unsolicited copy of Panic Mode! in the mail from my biggest cheerleaders, who happen to also be mutual friends, Keri and John. John signed me up to appear before he told me, because he knows me and knows that my guilt reflex is likely stronger than my don’t-look-at-or-listen-to-me reflex.
Anyway, I was just very happy I did not vom during my appearance. But I think it went okay. And I met Patrick Rauland, who is lovely. I listen to his podcast pretty regularly now, and I love how it allows people from all sorts of backgrounds tell their personal stories related to game design. Patrick captures voices in game design that no one else does. Which is amazing.
i went to a convention!
I recently attended DreamHack Atlanta in the Indie Tabletop Spotlight area to demonstrate and sell copies of Panic Mode! Someone reached out to me a few months ago and suggested that I apply to attend, and it was such an amazing opportunity. DreamHack has pretty big attendance, and the attendees might be attracted to my branding (I mean, a tower computer on fire?). So I applied and got accepted and I went!
This forced me to get my shit together in a lot of important ways. I needed to be prepared to take payments, I needed to decide how many games I could sell, I needed to make a banner, I needed business cards, I needed to think of any other fun things to attract people to my booth, I needed to order blank cards so people could make their own Panic Mode! cards, etc etc etc.
Ultimately Bill and I decided to drive to Georgia from Wisconsin so that we had more freedom generally. When to arrive, when to leave, how many games to bring, etc. The weather cooperated and everything was fine.
DreamHack was fascinating to me. I am not very aware of esports so it was so interesting to see esports around me. Across from our booth we had Twitch streamers and even just watching the lag time was interesting, to say nothing of their content. We could see part of the screen where speed runs of old games took place all the time, and that was amazing. To go to the bathroom we walked past the Bring Your Own Computer area. And everything I mention here was a teeny tiny fraction of the event. DreamHack was awesome.
But there was one thing that I was in my element on, and that was tabletop games. I was so crazy impressed by the caliber of tabletop games at the event! I bought just about everything available. Here is what they had:
Dual Clash Poker (really this was people representing Oink Games selling their games, so I got to learn about Deep Sea Adventure, A Fake Artist Goes to New York, etc)
It was really fun to explain my game in a short pitch to people all day long. I sold a number of games. And there are sometimes people that read my cards and walk away, shaking their heads. I consider those victories too.
A pyramid of panic
A lot of times I describe Panic Mode! as a niche game. I do this because usually the audience I am speaking to is gamers, and Panic Mode! is not necessarily for them. But one thing DreamHack taught me is that Panic Mode! is not a niche game at all. It’s just a game. Educational, simulation, real-time, cooperative, card, etc. But not niche.
I get very inspired by people getting a kick out the concept of my game and laughing at my snarky humor. This experience really inspired me to work harder at selling Panic Mode! and at working on an expansion. And to stop waiting for things to fall in my lap. That plan worked in 2019, but I can do better. 🙂
work was busy!
I have a day job, and 2019 was inordinately busy for me. I only mention this because it felt like the year went quickly and I spent less time on my personal goals than I typically do.
i wanted to write!
Last IRL post I talked about wanting to return to my novel. And I did that, a little bit. I went in a few different directions.
I did make some progress on my novel. I also read a novel that was eerily like the novel I had started and tangled with the feelings that brought out in me. I ultimately decided that I would keep going because it felt different enough. But I remain unsettled.
Another exciting thing that happened this year is that my friend Erik released a story on Amazon. The story is called Cuervo and it’s creepy and atmospheric and fantastic. I definitely encourage anyone interested in the slow build type of creepy writing to check it out.
But the point is that I was so jealous. I have known Erik for a long time and we have shared our writing back and forth for many years. And he self-published. This changed everything for me. Erik is pulled in a lot of different directions and his best intentions always included publishing, and he did it. I am so proud of him, and I settled into the inevitable self-examination that his accomplishment brought out in me.
I ended up picking up a lot of my shorter pieces and revisiting the idea of a collection that I could get “out there” to be done with it. I improved on a couple of those. But I still feel – a fucking year later – the pull of my blob. And I think it’s where I should focus. So that remains my plan. I can juggle that with Panic Mode! expansions, probably. I have gotten some cool stuff done on top of my day job, but I still waste so much time. I am really good at prioritizing, and I can make self-publishing happen.
2019 catch up
Bill finished a section of our basement that now houses many of our cool sci-fi collectibles. We started playing Gloomhaven. My dog Gracelynn lost one eye on Valentine’s Day. 1,010 copies of Panic Mode! arrived on my door step. I started to sometimes use Twitter as @idleremorse. I even follow a person or two on there that I am pretty sure are just me, in different places, which is very comforting to me. Keri turned 39. I was on a podcast. John turned 40. Bill turned 40. I turned 40. We finished Betrayal Legacy. I had my first guest review which was Spy Alley by HappiMess Media’s Stef (she killed it, of course). Bill reorganized our game collection, Jenga style. I went to my first convention as a game designer. Our first Gloomhaven characters retired. Gracelynn went fully blind but gets around like a champ. We played Gloomhaven. We played more Gloomhaven. We continued playing Gloomhaven.
Soon we will remove the other eye and she will go from furever winking to furever blinking
stay tuned
I do this blog for fun, so I sometimes take breaks. Sometimes I can not foresee these breaks (although based on blog evidence they are around March and October each year). So if you see me disappear for a few weeks or so, probably I just am prioritizing something else. But if you ever worry, please do reach out. And if you ever want to guest post, I adore you already.
We have a lot of recently played games just waiting for their reviews. What did we love? What surprised us? What gameplay was just as anyone could have expected? What sought-after games are we excited to ditch? We still have to review Polly Pockets, Shrieks and Creaks, Which Witch?, California Dreams, Clarissa Explains It All, Harassment, Crackers in My Bed, The Black Hole: Voyage of Fear Game, and a bunch of others! Please stay tuned for our continued ramblings on these and more.
