Idle Remorse

Review: NSYNC Backstage Pass Game

By jen On September 20, 2018 With 2 Comments

Review: NSYNC Backstage Pass Game
Publisher: Patch Products
Year: 2000
Tagline: LOADED with JUICY personal facts you won’t find anywhere else!

cover shows the boys

how we met

The sun was shining the day I found NSYNC Backstage Pass Game. It was shining over the whole flea market, and shining over me as I handed over $5 and walked away.

how it plays

NSYNC Backstage Pass Game is a spin and move game where the object is twofold. First, you must collect each of the five boys by visiting their fan club areas and successfully answering a trivia question about them. Then you must make your way to the stage and get past a bodyguard. The first player to do this wins!

Players start the game with a pawn of their choice and a white bar that holds the boys as you collect them. Players also each get a secret chip with a password on it. The bodyguards have matching passwords at the base of them that is covered by the mover. Place the bodyguards in their movers and mix them up so you don’t know which bodyguard is which. Then place the bodyguards in their areas near the stage.

A sampling of pawns

On their turn, a player spins the spinner and moves that number of spaces. You do not need to land in the fan club areas (or the bodyguards) by exact count, but other than this circumstance you must always move and complete your full movement.

If you land on the star you get to jump around the board to star spaces!

When you reach a boy’s fan club area, another player draws a card and asks you a multiple choice question corresponding to that boy. If you get the answer right, you get to review all the remaining boy pawns for that character, choose your favorite and place it in your white bar. You only collect one of each character, no matter how much you like Justin.

Overview of the board where the tracks make a stadium shape

The stadium

This is the other side of the board. It really is.

The first player to get all five boys places their white bar in the stage area to start the concert. This doesn’t mean anything. They don’t get anything special, and other players can still catch up and win. But it’s a micro-win and those are always fun, especially if your band has a goth look like mine did.

My boys mid-play showing Justin looking positively vampiric

Players with all their boys then approach a bodyguard and look at its base without revealing it to other players. If the bodyguard’s password matches the player’s password, that player gets the backstage pass and wins!

If you look closely you can see this bodyguard has a matching “I want you back” at his base which would be hidden

how it went

We played this game in public at the local Meadery on their first ever Game Night. They were probably hoping to see a variety of games, not necessarily Scrabble or Monopoly, and I think we delivered.

Those are my boys on stage!

I don’t like trivia games, as you know, and that extends to trivia about boy bands from the turn of the millennium. I was a little nervous about playing this game for that reason, but it worked out really well. Keri read most of our questions and it turns out she has this weird tick that causes one of her eyes to wink when she reads a right answer. We capitalized on this strange quirk and probably shaved half an hour off our game play.

Justin’s favorite game at this time was TriBond

We were generally able to collect the band members quickly, and the biggest variable was how well we spun. Once we approached the stage it was all luck. Bill was the first one tapping the shoulders of the bodyguards, but he visited two that did not match. I was able to get lucky by choosing the right bodyguard right away!

So I actually won this game, and John pointed out that it’s the best kind of win because we will never play again. And I think that did make me appreciate my win a bit more. And I recorded my win on the lanyard dutifully, albeit with some shame since I did not quite use my actual name.

Front and back of lanyard with two names listed

The two sides of the lanyard. Jamie had not recorded the year so not sure how old that win is

play or pass

Pass. If you are an NSYNC superfan then this might be very enjoyable. If this same game was reskinned for ABBA I would keep it forever and never let it go, and eat up the trivia. Can you imagine the outfits? But alas I never caught onto NSYNC. So I was left with spin and move trivia with a touch of luck at the end. Meh.

This is not the worst boy band game I have ever played. But I’m going to keep buying them, because I feel like there’s gotta be a better boy band game out there. We just haven’t met yet.

Review: Count Your Blessings

By jen On September 12, 2018 With 2 Comments

Review: Count Your Blessings
Publisher: Family Games Inc.
Year: 2009
Tagline: The Game with an Attitude of Gratitude!

Cover showing a cartoon town with a night sky over it

how we met

I found Count Your Blessings at my local town thrift shop. I bought a few other games that day; they seemed to have had someone drop off an abundance of light party games that I was happy to pick up. I have not gone in for a Chicken Soup for the Soul game before, but given the raging hellscape the world is these days we could probably stand to learn any skills that help us to count our blessings. Maybe it will be life changing. One way to find out.

how it plays

The goal of Count Your Blessings is to go from mad to glad, from tired to inspired, from stressed to blessed and from frazzled to dazzled. Players do this by spinning the spinner on their turn, drawing a card from the corresponding deck and doing as it says.

Players start with four tokens in front of them showing mad, tired, stressed and frazzled. For every two cards they collect – any type, just two cards – they can turn over one of these tokens to their more cheery sides. Once all four tokens are flipped for a player, they win!

Tokens showing mad on one side, glad on the other, etc

The tokens in their cheery and not so cheery states

The spinner has six spaces:

ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE: in this deck the player reads the card aloud and all players, including the active player, suggest a silver lining outlook on it. Then all players vote on which answer they liked best. The player with the winning answer gets the card.

COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS: this category has questions that the player answers from their own life experiences. It has the possibility of getting personal in this category. This category is also noted for including inspirational quotes from famous writers and celebrities on each card. If the player tries to answer the card then they win it; no judgment. This time.

THANK TANK: not to be mistaken for a think tank, the player reads the card aloud and all other players offer ways to see the situation as a blessing in disguise. The player then chooses their favorite answer and awards the card to them.

LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE: this is a very fun category because it requires you to wear the bright side glasses that come with the game. You also read a card aloud, answer it and collect the card. But not just that, you must wear the bright side glasses until your next turn. This empowers you to, “comment, make positive suggestions or assist with any other players’ response.”

SOUL FOOD: this category is straight up trivia about inspirational figures. You only collect this card if you answer correctly.

YOUR CHOICE: as described, you choose the category you want to tackle.

The outside of the spinner comes into play in certain cards. The part that is hard to read is the every-turn part

If you like, you can slow the game down more than it already is by using the HEADS OR TAILS coin. You do this by challenging a player (but only once per player per game) and doing a coin toss with the HEADS OR TAILS coin. The player challenged calls heads or tails and wins or loses accordingly. If they lose, they must turn over one of the tokens they already won.

Two sets of two cards with one positive token above each

Getting there, two cards equals one positive token

The first player to have all of their tokens flipped to the positive side wins!

how it went

As I mentioned, I don’t usually go in for this type of game. The version I found was unpunched, presumably for a very good reason. But my game group is the best ever, and we have fun in emergency rooms when we have to. We were going to show this dumb game a good time, even if it was not capable of showing us one.

This is not the type of game that pulled us out of our shells. It did not lead to much sharing or new information. For whatever reason, it just didn’t pull that aspect of the game off, where games like The Ungame and Loser! occasionally taught us more about each other.

Sample cards including THANK TANK where it says gas prices have risen again

In THANK TANK your fellow players have to name silver linings

We had some laughs. We try to mess with each other during play of all games at times, but it requires quick thinking and a straight face. One of us had gotten a SOUL FOOD trivia question related to Michael J. Fox, who is very inspirational. Then the next SOUL FOOD card that came up, the reader tried to make it sound like the answer was also Michael J. Fox. The timing was perfect, because we immediately hypothesized that all the SOUL FOOD questions were based on Michael J. Fox. This is absurd, of course, but we enjoyed imagining that world for a brief moment.

Example cards with questions like "Have you ever moved past a fear where it felt amazing?"

Umm Michael J. Fox?

FUN FACT: Count Your Blessings was one of four games we played this particular game night. Our play included tackling House of Danger, the choose your own adventure game. In Chapter 2 (no spoiler because this is what we did and not the wrong or right thing to do) we marched upstairs because of the reasoning “you gotta get up to get down.” Like perfect idiots.

The other situation that gave us a good laugh was when we realized that some cards are automatic losses. Starting the game, we assumed Keri would win because Keri went first and the cards were gentle enough that they are almost automatic wins. A couple of things happened to dispel this myth for us.

The first was the THANK TANK category. Speaking strictly as an asshole, THANK TANK is the worst category because you have no chance of winning the card. It only benefits your fellow players.

Overview of our play showing spinner and decks

A terrible photo of our play

And then some cards in every category are automatic losses. They just say that some negative thing happened and you must put the card back in the pile, so you are not given the opportunity to win a card. Not funny on its own, but this happened once, and then happened three more times in a row in different categories (probably because we didn’t shuffle and just used the cards straight from their plastic). Trust me, it was hilarious.

Sample LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE cards asking you to share about difficult times

Sample LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE cards, ick

I think we enjoyed the glasses and have plenty of pictures from wearing them. The two different eye frames are too close to each other, and they impede your vision while wearing them. But they look amazing.

A snapchat picture of Keri with the glasses on

Keri is majestic

I was trying to look angry but I got those dang glasses, didn’t quite pull it off

The designer of Balderdash contributed to the making of this Count Your Blessings game. She wrote a 3 page afterward that I would love to comment on, but I didn’t read it. I put enough time into Count Your Blessings as it is. I’m sure it’s lovely and well thought out, outlining the best of intentions that go into a game like this. But the next day I was still in this raging hellscape.

play or pass

Big time pass on this one. The bright side glasses did not seem to contain any special powers, the cards did not really push us to be vulnerable, the trivia was trivia and the only enjoyment was infused by our enjoyment of each other. That would be an opportunity to count my blessings, but I already knew that one. It happens even when we play decent games.

Review: Chicks battle the Dudes

By jen On September 8, 2018 With No Comments

Review: Chicks battle the Dudes
Publisher: University Games
Year: 2005
Tagline: A Face-off to see who is the smarter sex!

The cover shows a man and woman wearing boxing gloves. She is smiling but he looks serious

how we met

To my surprise, Bill brought this game home from a thrifting trip. We don’t play trivia games like this very often so we are generally all open to giving them a go as a nice light game. This one has a nice novelty in that it is a tug of war with shoelace ropes and everything. That’s worth a play through. Right?

how it plays

The game is boys against girls. Chicks sit on the chicks side of the board and dudes are on the dude side. The Chicks battle the Dudes token sits in the middle of the board to start, which puts the DUDES token and the CHICKS token in their respective START spaces.

Overview of the board showing pieces in place

Start your engines

From here teams take turns asking each other questions. Dudes draw from the chicks pile to ask the girls questions and Chicks draw from the dudes deck to ask the boys questions.

Example Chicks cards including question what is a stud finder

What is this stud finder you speak of? Derp

Example Dudes questions like which TV network has the tagline "Television for women" (it's Lifetime)

One easy card, one impossible card

If a team answers correctly they give their rope a tug and move the token towards their side of the board. When a team starts on the final space on their side of the board then the opposing team draws from the CHALLENGE deck to ask the team a question.

CHALLENGE cards can include:

Who Makes Me? where the team reads a product name and the opposing team must give the brand or manufacturer from the card

Spell it where the opposing team spells a word

Finish the Phrase where the opposing team finishes an incomplete phrase

and Thumb Wrestling where each team chooses a champion

The first team to correctly make it to the end and pass a CHALLENGE question wins! And on behalf of their entire gender, presumably.

Example CHALLENGE questions

how it went

We played this at the end of a random game night. It was pretty much what you’d expect. Questions range from really simple to impossible. Many of them had multiple choice options and some inexplicably did not.

This is not the first gender-focused game that we have played. Certainly there are questions where the other team knew the answer clearly while one team struggled, and you could argue that most of these are more common knowledge for one gender than the other. Speaking in large brush strokes here, which I don’t usually do.

I don’t quite understand the illustrations on the board. I mean, I get that if we are more towards our end then we are relaxed and in a bubble bath because everything is going well. And I guess it kind of makes sense that it’s time to sweat and we get pushed to the wrong side of our START space, and that this stress could be represented by having to change a flat tire. But then why is the stressful picture on the boy side fixing a roof in the rain?

Shows woman in bubble bath and woman fixing tire looking stressed

A close up of the Chicks side of the board

Close up of Dudes side of board showing guy grilling and guy fixing roof in the rain

It’s funny that the happy place for the Dudes is cooking

Putting people in boxing gloves on the cover was a weird move. How do you play tug of war in boxing gloves?

The tug of war component made of cardboard and shoestrings

A close up of the tug of war rope

Bill was so convinced that the CHICKS deck had more multiple choice cards than the DUDES deck that he encouraged me to count them. Both decks have 90 cards, and it turns out he’s not wrong. The CHICKS deck had 76 cards with multiple choice questions on them while the DUDES deck had only 68. I probably have a margin of error of 5 or so – it wasn’t my most thorough work. But I still think that is relatively even. It is worth noting that the cards have three questions on them and we always read the top question, so that could have introduced additional imbalance.

For awhile it looked like the boys had the game in the bag, but we were able to turn it around. Ultimately Keri and I won! Although I think if the boys had chosen thumb wrestling for our challenge each time we might never have won.

play or pass

Pass. Nothing special here, this is just another boys vs girls game with a little added novelty component acknowledging that those games are basically a tug of war. We had fun, but this one is going back into the thrift cycle to light up another hour for someone sometime. The gift that keeps being given.

Review: Casino Yahtzee

By jen On September 6, 2018 With No Comments

Review: Casino Yahtzee
Publisher: Milton Bradley
Year: 1986
Tagline: The High-Rolling Dice Game

Cover of casino yahtzee showing large plastic playing area

My cover is damaged

how we met

There are so many Yahtzee variants out there in this wide world. I like Yahtzee, but for some reason I don’t go in for the variants. The boxes are lovely and I do enjoy the game, so I’m not sure what it is. I am just grateful for any ounce of me that shies away from a new game purchase. But then I saw Casino Yahtzee on the bottom shelf of a thrift shop – probably because the box is so giant – and I was sold. Just look at it.

how it plays

Casino Yahtzee is commonly described as a cross between Yahtzee and Bingo, and that is pretty spot on. The object of Casino Yahtzee is to score points by being the first one to “close” certain score rows and columns. The player with the most points once all score rows and columns are complete wins!

Example board mid-play showing markers covering numbers and some scores

Example play using all black markers. The white numbers are scores and colored numbers are what you need to fill

There are five dice in Casino Yahtzee, each corresponding to a different color. Players fill their areas of the board by rolling five dice on their turn – any five dice they choose. In the beginning you will probably roll all five colors to start filling your open spots. As scoring opportunities become evident you may choose to roll the orange die five times, or the blue die twice and the red die three times. It’s up to you. Just roll five dice on your turn.

When you roll a color/number die combo then you mark it on your board, like Bingo. You are trying to close those scoring rows and columns before other players do.

Dice in the dice tray, each a different color face

My dice are old and tired and hard to read

The scoring sheet in Casino Yahtzee allows for only one player to score each row. So as your fellow players score different numbers you can block them on your own board to know that they are out of play. NOTE: there are two 25’s and two 30’s so we term them top and bottom for tracking.

The biggest trick to the game is calling your row when you’ve scored it; you only get the points when you call it, and only on your turn. It is surprisingly easy to overlook points so demand your time at the end of your turn until you are comfortable you are not missing any points.

A regular board at start of play, the same for all players

There are a couple of possible bonus point opportunities available during your turn. You can forego a regular turn and announce you are going for bonus points. Then roll each of the dice. If you roll all different numbers then you are awarded a bonus, the sum of the dice you rolled. These dice do not affect your board.

There is also an elusive Rainbow Bonus, which happens if all the dice you roll are in sequential order. In this case the numbers of the dice are added together and doubled to make your bonus, and you still get to cover the numbers you rolled on your board.

Score sheet showing the possible scores in column on the left and only one player captures each of them

Score sheet of our first play. Note the lack of bonus points

The game ends when all of the possible rows and columns have been scored. Then the player with the most points wins! Want to play again? It’s so easy. Just pull your Casino Yahtzee card cover out toward your empty tray and, voila, the markers crash to the tray and you are ready for a new game! It is so satisfying.

how it went

We played Casino Yahtzee at the end of a long game night. Its simplicity makes it a great fit for the end of the night. It’s possible some of us had been drinking at that point, and others not.

When we first got out our big plastic boards and started connecting them, there was talk of what the tray on the side is for. Bill had the best theory when he said, “This is from, what, the 70s? You are thinking about this all wrong. That’s an ashtray.”

We poured all of the markers into the dice tray and all drew our markers from there. In this game, two of us used all white markers while two of us used all black markers. The instructions say to use black to cover your numbers and white to cover the score rows. But whatever. I actually prefer not using white markers for the score rows because they are white circles to begin with; they feel more closed with black markers and help my eyes skip over them when I need to.

An overview of our play showing the giant plastic pieces together

Our first play: markers everywhere, even in the ashtrays

FUN FACT: Keri and I were constantly being accused of cheating during this game so Bill came up with the phrase Hottie or Naughty, which is now permanently in our vocabulary. We are about that age, you see.

In our first play of Casino Yahtzee I noticed we mostly rolled all five different dice each time, a circumstance of the hour as much as the strategy perhaps. But here’s the thing about Casino Yahtzee: it’s kind of fun. So we have played a few times now and our strategy has gotten more cut-throat and focused in later play (though I am not convinced that rolling all five dice is not the best strategy most of the time). A few days after playing for the first time the power went out at our house for hours, and Bill and I played Casino Yahtzee with headlamps instead of doing electronic, online things. And it was kind of perfect.

Overview of play with board unevenly lit by headlamp

Playing by headlamp

Keri won our first game during our first play. And it was the start of a beautiful game friendship. And the start of a paper crown documenting the winner henceforth. (More on that later)

play or pass

Play. We have pulled out Casino Yahtzee on multiple occasions, which is very high praise in this house. It is simple and fun, a nice filler as they say. And we usually play more than one time in a row. I can see this being the kind of game you grow up on that never gets old. I always knew there was a Yahtzee variant out there for me!

Review: The Game for Boys

By jen On August 26, 2018 With No Comments

Review: The Game for Boys
Publisher: University Games
Year: 2009
Tagline: The Official Handy Game

Cover of metal tin box saying The Game for Boys

how we met

I confess I have had this game for so long I don’t remember exactly where I found it. I feel like I found it on clearance at a discount shop back in Minnesota many years ago (I haven’t even lived there for six years). I am sure I bristled slightly at the implications of a game for boys and decided to pick it up. I like astronomy and gaming and code breaking, and The Game for Boys offers two of these three things!

how it plays

The object of The Game for Boys is to get your worm pawn from the start to 100 Boyzpoints by answering questions and completing tasks. The first player to 100 Boyzpoints wins!

The board art shows tree roots underground and the pawns are worms trying to get to the surface

A shot of our play

On a player’s turn they roll the die and take the top card matching the color they rolled. If they roll black they get to choose a card.

Players begin the game with six different chips – two each of red, blue and brown – that allow them to make choices. If a player is not comfortable with the card they drew, they can pay a blue chip to pass the card to the player to their left. They can also pay a red chip to choose a player to team up and split points with. They can also pay a brown chip to make their card all play and split points with all players. Chips do not replenish, so spend them wisely!

Small chips and a die showing colored blocks on different sides

The chips and the die

The game also comes with a deck of playing cards, a rope, a timer and a useful guide for boyhood (we’ll get to that later). And two sheets of glow-in-the-dark star stickers so you can make your favorite constellations in your room!

The star sheets, playing cards, timer and rope

The categories of the cards are as follows:

BRAINTEASERS: this category includes little riddles, word play teasers, tongue twisters and things like that. Their points are typically low, but they are often easier than other categories.

Examples include riddles and tongue twisters

This was my favorite category, but most worth only 5 points

KNOTS and NOT KNOTS: this category is challenging. The majority of the cards ask you to create a knot using the rope, but some demand a card trick or decoding a message. It’s funny to look at these cards after play because almost all we saw just asked for a knot.

Examples include magic trick with the deck of cards, tying knot, pattern recognition and dancing

The knot cards took up the majority of our play in this category

BOYZ LIFE: this category is a lot of trivia and obscure knowledge. These cards may ask you to identify animal prints, name all the Harry Potter books, list where the Summer Olympic Games have been held or dive into your geography knowledge.

Examples include naming insects based on drawings, naming the differences between crocodiles and alligators

Kind of difficult, but a nice diversity of cards in this category

ASTRONOMY: this category is the worst thing that ever happened. The cards list a constellation, the number of stars in it and ask you to draw the constellation from memory. There is no diversity in this category; every card asks you to draw a constellation for points.

These cards are all the same and ask you to draw constellations from memory

Draw a constellation from memory with 19 stars in it? You’re kidding right?

GROWING UP: this category has some funny things, like you may need to name items from a table setting, dance a Tango, say “I love you” in multiple languages, cite a tongue twister, match famous works of art to their museums and other random things.

Examples include naming place settings on a table, naming famous buildings by a drawing, saying "I love you" in different languages

Kind of a fun category

The cards will tell you how many points you get for a correct answer or task. And often the cards will assign a point value per answer – for example I may have to name ten countries that are in the European Union to get 20 points, but I can get 2 points for each correct answer. If you share the card, you share the points.

The first player to reach the base of the tree with 100 Boyzpoints wins!

how it went

The Game for Boys is based on the facts and skills taught in a book called American Boys’ Handy Book, which was written by an original founder of the Boy Scouts of America. We had not read this book, but surely we would find some fun in a game directed at Boy Scouts. Plus with the rope, the playing cards and the stars we were clearly in for a treat.

The first issue we noticed with the game was the board and how difficult it was to use the worm pawns to accurately track points. Keri implemented a pointing system and moved our pawns for us, so it worked out. But this is an example of a flaw so obvious that clearly no one tested play of this game with final components. It would be like if I handed you a ruler and told you to track the centimeters using a penny. You can make it work, but I am a terrible person in this scenario.

The size of the pawn takes up about 10 points of space

A close up of the worm pointz tracking issue

John was generous with his chips, so early on we had a lot of shared points while we tackled questions together. Very early on we got a question asking us to name the five oceans in order from smallest to largest. That was funny mostly because none of us got the memo that back in 2000 a fifth ocean happened, the Southern Ocean. Not even the boys knew!

We frequently got ASTRONOMY cards and usually skipped even attempting them. Eventually – probably much later than we should have – we stopped including the ASTRONOMY category at all. This improved the game considerably.

The KNOTS AND NOT KNOTS category was interesting. We assumed we were supposed to make a given knot from memory based on what it is called on the front of the card. But then this happened.

The image on the card shows a loop and the rope is in a loop

Keri showcasing her rope skills

And then John got a magic trick that he never could have completed without the instructions on the back of the card that walk you through it. These instructions even tell you what to say to your audience. So finally he proposed that those are meant to be read entirely and then the action performed, whether it is tying a knot, doing a dance or performing a magic trick. But not the entire category because some of them are questions. The instructions on the backs of the cards are labeled as Answers, which implies you should not be looking at them. The game instructions, of course, do not directly address when to read the entire card and when not to. I think it is cool to learn little tricks during play, like tying a certain knot, but if you are learning then the entire category should be that way – not mixed and matched. Again, this seems obvious to me.

The Game for Boys also has that one flaw that always irks me where success is measured by the judgment of all of your fellow players. This was not a problem for our game in particular but it is lazy design and a pet peeve of mine. I don’t mind games with judging or voting, but deciding whether you completed a task sufficiently bugs me.

Keri was leading the way during almost our entire game, and she ultimately won The Game for Boys! I mean, you saw her knot-tying abilities above.

This card asks the player to secretly tie a knot so they can trick fellow players into believing they did it one-handed

A favorite card. Let me just tie this knot on my turn with no one looking

After the game, we enjoyed perusing The Game for Boys: A useful guide for the trials and tribulations of boyhood. You can learn about all sorts of things in this useful guide. I will leave a picture of the table of contents here and let your imaginations run wild.

Sections include golf tips, building an indoor fort, the gettysburg address and other random things

I particularly enjoyed Fun Websites to Investigate and Stain Removal

play or pass

Pass. Neat idea, really, but terrible execution. I believe there is a similar game out there called The Dangerous Book for Boys Game that is also based on a book that aims to teach you about all the things the game asks you to do. I have been intrigued by that game at thrift, but it appears so similar to this game that I will not be picking it up now.

If you are unfamiliar with astronomy in general but decide to play The Game for Boys, please do not judge the subject of astronomy based on this game. That would be unfair to astronomy and unfair to you.

Review: NSYNC Backstage Pass Game

Review: Count Your Blessings

Review: Chicks battle the Dudes

Review: Casino Yahtzee

Review: The Game for Boys

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Review: NSYNC Backstage Pass Game

Review: Count Your Blessings

Review: Chicks battle the Dudes

Review: Casino Yahtzee

Review: The Game for Boys

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