Idle Remorse

Review: Snapple Real Facts Game

By On July 31, 2019 With 2 Comments

Review: Snapple Real Facts Game
Publisher: Pressman
Year: 2004
Tagline: The game with an exciting charades twist!

Cover is mostly yellow with orange and shows some Snapple tops on the front

how we met

There was this time in my life when I never knew Snapple Real Facts Game existed and this time when I knew it did. In the middle of those times, I was in a thrift shop and I looked down and saw the side of Snapple Real Facts Game.

I have probably only had a couple of Snapples in my life, but the brand was pervasive where I was growing up in the 90’s. The beverage was out of my price range during their heyday, so I probably didn’t have one until I was much older and able to afford such luxuries. But I knew immediately that I wanted to own Snapple Real Facts Game. And at thrift it was about the price of a Snapple beverage!

how it plays

Snapple Real Facts Game is a cross between trivia and charades, with an electronic Snapple bottle as your centerpiece. All players get divided into two teams.

The Snapple bottle is red and has a label and everything
I know, right?!

Players add 20 REAL FACT DISKS to the Snapple bottle. You have two rounds in front of you, and those same 20 disks will be in play throughout. The color is not important (unless it is, we’ll talk about that later), so just stuff the first 20 you find in there.

Choose a team to go first. In Round One, a player on that team will turn the Snapple bottle over to try and shake out a REAL FACT DISK. The inside of the bottle is supposed to spin and spit out a REAL FACT DISK when you turn it over, but that part of the bottle was intermittent for us. Turning the bottle over does let the Snapple bottle know you are in play, and the audible timer starts. That part was very consistent for us.

NOTE: The rules are very clear that you should not stick your fingers into the Snapple bottle. I’m not sure if that means the middle part often stops moving, or just that you should generally not stick your fingers into mysterious, battery-operated things. Either way, good advice.

The REAL FACT DISK will state a trivia fact with one or two missing words in it. The active player should read this trivia fact, and just note “blank” for the blank bits. Then they need to act out the missing parts of the fact.

As an example the REAL FACT DISK might say, “More [blank] are grown around the world than any other fruit.” The REAL FACT DISK shows that the missing word is grapes. So the active player needs to act out grapes to their fellow team.

Examples of the facts
Since our copy was mostly unpunched I just took a lazy photo to show you some facts, with a spelling error on Mr. Rogers to boot

If the team guesses correctly then the active player continues until the Snapple Bottle indicates that time has run out. Record the number of correct answers your team got, set those bottle tops aside, and if you have one that you were in the middle of that was not guessed, place it back in the Snapple bottle without saying what the answer was. Remember, only 20 REAL FACT DISKs are in play, and every, single one gets played.

Play continues in this way until there are no more REAL FACT DISKs left in the Snapple bottle. After all of these turns, add up the scores on the score sheet.

Now we come to Round Two. In Round Two, put all of the 20 REAL FACT DISKs back into the Snapple bottle. Additionally put five WILD DISKs into the Snapple bottle.

In Round Two, active players do not use words at all. They pull REAL FACT DISKs out of the Snapple bottle like normal, but instead of reading the trivia they just act out the missing word. Their fellow players guess the charade based on their memory of Round One.

If the active player chooses a WILD DISK instead of a REAL FACT DISK from Round One, they continue to act out the activity on the disk. However if the players on their team suspect that this charade is foreign and not from Round One they just shout, “Wild!” They do not need to guess the actual charade. If those players are correct then the active player selects another REAL FACT DISK out of the Snapple bottle and continues play until the Snapple bottle indicates time has run out.

If a team yells, “Wild!” and are incorrect then a point is deducted from their score.

Play continues this way until no disks remain in the Snapple bottle. At the end of both rounds, the team with the highest score wins Snapple Real Facts Game!

how it went

Okay, don’t quote me on this but Snapple Real Facts Game is actually kind of interesting for what it is. It’s certainly more interesting than I expected upon discovery that an electronic Snapple game exists.

The REAL FACT DISKs are a bitch to get out of the bottle. But that is true for everyone. The plastic part in the middle only spun intermittently for us, so we either got a bunch of disks falling out or just a soft breeze on our hands. All I know for sure is you need to shake the hell out of that bottle until anywhere from one to ten REAL FACT DISKs drop into your hand and then put all but one back into the bottle, never looking at any of them, as you attempt to continue play quickly.

So the bottle didn’t work great, but it looked and felt great. It’s fakin’ it til it makes it, and I admire that.

The copy I found at thrift was unpunched and lovely. I punched only enough REAL FACT DISKs to be able to play a full game, so 20 out of 500. But here’s where I got real dumb. I also punched 5 random WILD DISKs and did not pay attention to color. The result was that anyone paying attention to the color of what disk was drawn in Round Two could tell for certain, if the color was different, that this was a WILD DISK. Meh, whatever.

The back of an unpunched REAL FACT DISK sheet showing all yellow caps
Our 20 REAL FACT DISKs were yellow, and our Wilds were yellow, purple, pink..

The result of using the same 20 REAL FACT DISKs in Round One and Round Two is that players with good memories could easily blast through Round Two. We still had a few back and forths, because there is only so much time, but Round Two moves much more quickly than Round One.

I am not a big fan of trivia, so I feel myself drawn to trivia games that try to even the playing field a bit. Snapple Real Facts Game is a great example, as it combines trivia with charades and, in Round Two, memory. I have half a chance at trivia if you can read the fact aloud, and I only have to guess one word or phrase that you are acting out.

We generally had a great time with Snapple Real Facts Game, as we do with most party games. Our scoring was relatively even, but in Round Two Bill and I ran away with it. And we won Snapple Real Facts Game!

Scoring sheet has Snapple bottle tops as images
Even the scoring sheet is very much on theme

play or pass

Pass for me, but this game might be perfect for you. This is a fun trivia game, has a weird electronic component, and doesn’t take long to play a single game. Snapple Real Facts Game requires you to play 20 disks in a single game but provides 500 of them. That, my friends, is replayability.

Review: deduction

By On July 25, 2019 With 2 Comments

Review: deduction
Publisher: Ideal
Year: 1976
Tagline: THE GAME THAT MAKES THINKING FUN!

Cover has a Sherlock Holmes-looking character smoking a pipe and looking over the board

how we met

When I can’t remember where I bought a game, I like to try and explain why I would have purchased that particular game. I know that I got deduction at a thrift shop because it still has the $1.99 sticker on it. But I don’t really remember when or where. So let’s talk about why.

The box is tall (20.5” to be exact) and awkward. The art is oh-so 70’s. Deduction is clearly a thinking person’s game, and Ideal rarely steers me wrong. I was seduced by the cover and ready to deduce the patterns.

how it plays

Each player gets 36 pegs, made up of nine pegs in each of four different colors. Each player has a PATTERN BOARD that is hidden from the other player’s view by a Divider Screen. The PATTERN BOARD has numbers along the left side and letters along the bottom. Then each player makes a pattern on their board with their pegs. In my opinion, the easiest thing to do is put all your pegs into the PATTERN BOARD and then arrange them. This hides your movement a bit better.

You can place your pegs on your PATTERN BOARD anywhere you want, with just a single rule. Pegs of a given color must be touching at least one other peg of the same color, either vertically or horizontally (not diagonally).

Once both players are ready with their patterns, gameplay can start. Each player has a DEDUCTION BOARD in front of them that will help them rebuild their opponent’s pattern.

My pattern is shown here
This is my pattern from our first game, ready for Bill to start guessing

On a player’s turn they have a couple of options.

  • They can ask for a peg using a location. For example, Player 1 can say, “Can you give me A4?” Then the opponent Player 2 takes the peg in their A4 location and gives it to Player 1, who places it in the A4 location of their DEDUCTION BOARD. That ends Player 1’s turn.
  • They can declare what a peg is from having deduced it through other gameplay. For example, Player 2 can say, “D2 is blue.”
    • If Player 2 is correct, Player 1 hands over their blue peg in D2 and Player 2 may continue play either declaring a peg or asking for one. Asking for one always ends that player’s turn.
    • If Player 2 is incorrect, no pegs change hands and the turn ends. But Player 2 needs to remember what they asked, as that information is still helping deduce the correct peg.

The goal is to slowly recreate your opponent’s PATTERN BOARD in your own DEDUCTION BOARD using their pegs as you guess them or ask for them. The first player to successfully gain their opponent’s last peg wins deduction!

how it went

Bill and I played deduction a couple of times in the last couple of weeks. I do love deduction games, and I love how [this game] deduction boils this genre down to the very basic elements.

Since we played at our dining room table, we both covered our PATTERN BOARDs with napkins. That made me more comfortable. The Divider Screen was fine, but we could move more freely by simply keeping something over our pattern and not worrying so much about our eyes straying.

I enjoy taking my early turns requesting fairly random pegs. If I find the beginning of a pattern that’s great, but I learn the most if I can jump straight to the end of that pattern and leave room for deduction in the middle. I had a couple of lucky guesses in our first play that let me clear out several pegs at a time.

Starting play shows me with just a handful of pegs in my DEDUCTION BOARD
This is me just starting to guess Bill’s pattern

You know that there are nine pegs in each color, and you know that they all have to touch. In our patterns, I would occasionally get presented with points that could have been either of two possibilities. And you should think about this when you plan out your own pattern. There were a few occasions when a point could have been any of three or, less often, four different colors! That almost forces me to ask for the peg and give up the ability to continue that turn with my mad deduction skills.

The completed pattern on my DEDUCTION BOARD, even though I lost
This is what Bill’s pattern looked like when I completed it on my DEDUCTION BOARD (after losing)

I was winning [this game] deduction for most of our first game, but Bill pulled out the win in the end. If it had gotten to my turn, I had it, but Bill won [this game] deduction!

play or pass

Play. If you are interested in a quick deduction game that does not require an app or several players, [this game] deduction has you covered. As I mention above, [this game] deduction boils the genre down to its basics. If you truly love the deduction genre, then [this game] deduction should not disappoint.

It’s probably worth mentioning that many of the BGG ratings note people’s fond memories of [this game] deduction from their youth, and that they are now enjoying playing the game with their kids. So if you have kiddos around you that is perhaps another reason for interest in [this game] deduction.

Review: Web of Gold

By On July 21, 2019 With 2 Comments

Review: Web of Gold
Publisher: TSR under license from Three Wishes Limited
Year: 1987
Tagline: A game of daring adventure in an abandoned gold mine.

The cover says Web of Gold in big gold letters with a giant spider and a man running down a mine holding a lantern

how we met

Web of Gold has what may be my favorite game cover of all time. I knew of Web of Gold as a thing, but the only time I ever saw it for sale was still in shrink for $30 a few years ago. That’s a decent price but more than I cared to pay. At this point I believe I will eventually find anything I want, so I have learned to be patient and hold out for thrifted games. And finally one day Bill found Web of Gold at thrift. It was in fantastic shape and only about $5 or $6.

how it plays

Your object in Web of Gold is to be the first player to collect six gold nuggets and escape the mine.

Each player controls an Adventurer pawn and a Spider pawn. The Adventurer moves first, can move 1-2 spaces, and must move each turn.

The Adventurer and Spider pawns
A closer look at the pawns

The outer area of the mine has green colored circles with numbers on them. If an Adventurer ends their turn on one of these spaces, they can roll the die. If they roll equal to or higher than the number on the space they have successfully discovered an item and may draw an ITEM CARD! These ITEM CARDs will help Adventurers in different aspects of gameplay.

Example ITEM CARDs like a Torch that allows you to break down two webs
The art on the ITEM CARDs feels like a departure from the cover, but they are also very cool. As you see

The gold colored circles act the same way, except a successful roll on one of these gets the Adventurer a GOLD NUGGET!

Each Adventurer gets this cool LANTERN that starts at full oil. At the beginning of their turn they decide whether the LANTERN is on or off. If they turn their LANTERN on, the oil tracker moves down one and the LANTERN is on until the beginning of their next turn. When the oil tracker gets to zero there is no more oil so that LANTERN stays off! So use it wisely.

A LANTERN that is on will give Adventurers +1 to their die rolls, making discovery of gold and items just a little bit easier. A lit LANTERN will also prevent a Spider from biting an Adventurer.

The lanterns show a tracker for oil, a tracker for on/off and a tracker for spider bites
The LANTERN is one of the coolest components. They track on / off, oil level, and spider bites

Adventurers can only carry six items, including ITEM CARDs, GOLD NUGGETs, and the LANTERN. It is likely they will need to return to their starting space at some point to “drop off” any collected GOLD NUGGETs.

The gold nugget chips
These are the nuggets. FUN FACT: the original German version of the game was called Gold Fever (Goldfieber)

After the Adventurer moves and completes their play, that player takes their Spider’s turn. A Spider can move from where it is to any adjacent pillar, but Spiders are not required to move. For example, if you decide to use your Spider defensively to protect your own Adventurer then you may not want to move it.

After Spiders move they have two different actions they can choose to take. They can either spin a web or bite an adjacent Adventurer that is caught in a web.

Overview of the board showing lines between the pillars
This is a shot of the board. It still has webs in it because I am lazy, but you can also see the white lines between pillars where the Spiders move

Spiders always spin 3 strands of web. If there is already a web nearby and you want to make it stronger, you can add 3 to it. Webs have a maximum strength of 6.

Adventurers will quickly need to move through webs in order to get around the board, and to accomplish this they need to attempt to break down the web. The Adventurer rolls the die then subtracts that amount from the number of strands (the LANTERN bonus does not apply to breaking webs). If the result is 0 or less then they are successful. The web is removed and the Adventurer moves into the next space. If they are not successful they get trapped in the web! And the web gets changed to the new number. For example if I am trying to take down a web with 6 strands and I roll a 4, I replace the 6 with a 2 and place my Adventurer on the 2 to indicate I am trapped!

This shows an Adventurer trapped in a web
The Adventurer pawns slide onto the webs when trapped, like the purple Adventurer here

If a Spider is next to a trapped Adventurer they can choose to bite them, as long as the Adventurer’s LANTERN is off. The player controlling the Spider rolls a die. If the result is less than or equal to the number of strands then they are successful! The Adventurer moves the BITE MARKER on the LANTERN up 1.

Adventurers perish with 4 Spider bites. If that Adventurer is out of the game, the player can still control their Spider. If all Adventurers end up dead of Spider bites, the player whose Spider has the most Spider bite markers wins. But there is no way to track this, so that was strange and hopefully does not happen often.

how it went

My memories of Web of Gold are colored by Keri’s delicious Whiskey Sours, so we’ll see how this write up goes!

We played Web of Gold during our regular game night with four players, and play went a bit long. Not too bad, but a few of the BGG ratings say that 3 or fewer players is best. I can see that.

Web of Gold is often called an unsung hero in vintage board games, a game that is little-known and deserves more credit. And, eh, I’m not sure I wholeheartedly agree with that.

The game is really cool. The art is cool. The components are amazing. The theme is dense and never wavers. And one of my pet peeves with vintage games is when they abandon the theme with a dumb win condition or something (for an example see me complain about The Miss America Pageant Game). So I give Web of Gold lots of props for picking a theme and sticking to it relentlessly.

The web tokens
The web markers are kind of cool because they show more strands as the numbers go up

The game does have more strategy than a lot of the games we cover here, which is a pretty low bar, granted. The Adventurers can be treated almost robotically – they have one job. The Spiders are more interesting to play as they can be offensive or defensive, and they move rather slowly so those decisions need to be made at the right times to make the Spiders useful.

This is an overview of our gameplay showing my green spider near my green adventurer
I was green and kept my Spider nearby toward the end of play to block the other terrible spiders

But even as you move around, you are really just constantly rolling the die to try and get a high number, or a low number. So at its core, Web of Gold is pretty simple.

Our mine got extremely webby. We actually ran out of the 3 strand web markers several times during play. The rules do not address how to handle this, so we decided to just use 2 strand web markers. It seemed the most fair option.

As our game winded down, I was facing a couple of webs in order to get to my starting space and win. And if I did not pull it off then Bill would get the win on his turn. Fortunately I had drawn my one and only item of the game the turn previously and received a Torch. So I was able to blast my way to victory!

play or pass

Play. I think the game is a little overrated in some cases, but I love a good theme and if Web of Gold delivers anything, it delivers theme. Plus if you find it at thrift you can sell it for a couple bucks. And that cover! 😍

Review: Grabbin’ Grasshoppers!

By On July 17, 2019 With 1 Comment

Review: Grabbin’ Grasshoppers!
Publisher: Tyco
Year: 1990
Tagline: The Jumpin’ Grasshopper Game

This is a tall cover showing a cartoon man with a net trying to catch cartoon grasshoppers

how we met

Grabbin’ Grasshoppers! was dirt cheap and complete, but I still was not going to buy it. It looks fun for a one-time play but is it worth standing in line to purchase? However it has some resale value and so made it into the trunk.

how it plays

Grabbin’ Grasshoppers! is as simple as it gets. Press down on the grasshoppers, let go, wait until they jump, and see who catches the most! The most difficult part of the game is pressing down all 8 of them at once.

An overview of the board with red dots to show where the grasshoppers go
The board has red dots to show where the grasshoppers can all fit

The player that catches the most grasshoppers wins!

how it went

Keri is better at this game than I am, and she won several times. Those grasshoppers can really fly! And I think my mistake was in often not getting my basket high enough into the air. But I don’t think anyone ever caught more than two.

A close up of a grasshopper. The legs are metal and the bottom has a suction cup
A close up of one of our heroes, the grasshopper. They have suction cups on their bellies. Pro tip: you can bend those legs to really make them fly high

FUN FACT: Games like this always cause Keri to recollect the time we were playing Elefun and I smacked her in the head with my butterfly net. It was an accident!! Even though she won at that too.

To make things interesting I offered Keri a bazillion dollars if she could get all 8 grasshoppers to stick at once. She tried really hard, but I knew that was a safe bet. You just can’t get all the grasshoppers to stick at once as one human person.

play or pass

Pass, as I thought. It’s a fun, dumb game, but not at all gamely. And the launch method is very flawed. And Keri lost a bazillion dollars. But if you have fond memories of the game, it still works really well 30 years later.

Review: Rodney Dangerfield’s Game No Respect

By On July 14, 2019 With 4 Comments

Review: [Rodney Dangerfield’s Game] No Respect
Publisher: Milton Bradley
Year: 1985
Tagline: A NERVE-RACKING, NUMBER-STACKING GAME OF SUDDEN DEATH

Rodney Dangerfield is straightening his tie and making a funny face on the cover

how we met

I have seen No Respect on forgotten game lists and vintage game lists and all kinds of lists for a long time. I just assumed that I would find it someday. It’s not all that uncommon to find, the trick is that most of the time you find it the seller is pricing something they assume is very valuable, like when you see an Elvis record at a flea market and it’s priced like it’s made out of gold. So I was happy when Bill found it recently at thrift, because I figured we would play once and resell it.

how it plays

The first thing you need to understand about how to play this game is that it has nothing, but nothing, to do with Rodney Dangerfield. The game is simple, but takes a bit of explanation.

No Respect comes with 80 little plastic number tiles, made up of 10 sets each that go from 1 to 8 (NOTE: this means that anything that looks like a 6 is a 6 and not a 9). All of those numbers need to get mixed up and go upside down in the middle of the game board.

The board with all of the numbers upside down, ready for play
Here we are ready for play

The goal of each player is to win in one of two ways: you can either complete all 3 of your columns, which the rules rightly point out is unlikely, or you can be the last player able to play at all.

Each player has three columns consisting of four circles with designs on them, and one bottom circle that is blank. The blank circles are your DISCARD area, and the design circles are where the magic happens.

On their turn, a player turns up one of the plastic pieces in the middle and will get a number from 1 to 8. Each column is independent, and any numbers you play on your design circles need to start at the bottom of a given column and the numbers must get smaller as you work toward the center of the board.

This shows my DISCARD full with a 1, 2, and 1 and then one columns starts with 7 and one with 1
So like this is terrible. I drew 1 after 1 and had nowhere to put them. The column with a 1 can be stacked on, but I can’t draw anything less than 1 so that column is no good to me.

You can also place a number in one of your precious DISCARD areas, or you can STACK it on another matching number in play. You can’t stack on the DISCARD areas, yours or opponents. But if you or an opponent has a number showing that matched the one you drew, you can STACK it on top of that number as long as it is the topmost tile in that column. A STACK is only two tiles high and the tiles must be the same number.

The goal of a STACK is to ultimately CAP a player’s column. If any of the topmost tiles an opponent is showing are STACKED and you draw a matching number, you can play it on that STACK to CAP the tiles and that column is dead. Nothing else can be played on it. A CAP is only 3 tiles high.

So if you draw a 4 on your first turn that kind of sucks because you either have to use up one of your lovely DISCARD circles or must place a 4 as your starting number in one of your tiles. This would mean that only 3 then 2 then 1 can close that column for you. If an opponent happened to have a 4 played that early, you best STACK it on theirs.

This shows a game where I got capped in two columns and finished the other
Here I started strong with large numbers at the bottom, but then I got capped on two columns. But I still have open DISCARDs!

As mentioned above, the first player to successfully complete all three columns OR the last player to be able to play wins No Respect!

how it went

No Respect brings me a tad bit of shame because I have read around 5,000 vintage board game lists and I was very aware of this game. I have seen it for sale several times, especially at toy shows, but they always want way too much money. It’s never been in my wishlist. I never even bothered to look up how it plays.

So imagine my surprise when we open it up and find 80 little number tiles. The only jokes are on the box! And the insert!

Rodney and a few of his No Respect jokes like "As a kid I got no respect. My yo-yo never came back."
This is the insert with some dated jokes and one of the two licensed photos

We enjoyed No Respect so much that we played a couple of games back to back. This is one of the cases, too, where I think playing more than once actually taught us something (not always the case).

The rules point out that it will be rare for a player to close all three of their columns. In our second play, when we knew that our goal was to try and avoid playing on our own space unless it made a lot of sense, the game was a tad more cut-throat.

No Respect still has luck involved. I mean you are picking a number from a bunch of face-down numbers. But there’s strategy too. In order to be the last man standing, you need a lot of options. Ultimately, whenever you put a number down on your space you have a target. The more columns you play, the more targets you have. Any target you have with a STACK is no good. Your DISCARD space is precious, but it needs to be used when it makes sense. And it’s important to follow any “take that” instincts that you have.

An overview of the board late in play with few numbers left
A look at our late play in one of the games. The 4 sitting to the side was drawn by Bill and he couldn’t play it, so he is out.

In our first game, John had to run an errand so we continued to play on his behalf, balancing his decisions between the three of us. And John ultimately won our first game in his absence! We played one more time that night and Bill got that win!

play or pass

Play. No Respect is a game I would probably play on my iPad if it existed in that format. Luck is a big factor, but you will be happy or sorry with the strategic decisions you make along the way. I am keeping this game in my collection, and I did not see that coming.

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