Idle Remorse

Review: Saved by the Bell

By jen On December 11, 2017 With 2 Comments

Review: Saved by the Bell
Publisher: Pressman
Year: 1992
Tagline: Spend an outrageous day with the “Saved By The Bell” gang!

Saved by the Bell cover

how we met

My copy of Saved by the Bell hails all the way from a thrift shop in Dubuque, Iowa. I normally like to explain a little bit about why I choose to purchase a particular game. But for Saved by the Bell, I don’t think anyone is wondering that. I’m having Hot Loops, Trapper Keeper and Lisa Frank flashbacks just looking at the box, and I hope you are too.

how it plays

Saved by the Bell is a roll and move game where your object is to go out on a series of meet-ups worth various points until you have succeeded in dating both Slater and Zack as well as scoring 30 points. The first player to achieve all three of these objectives is the winner!

Each player starts the game with three NOTES cards. They are cute and are designed to look like notebook paper handwritten by one of the gang asking you to meet them in a given location, which is represented by a space on the board. If you land on that space by exact count, you get to take as long as you need rummaging through the PICTURES deck of cards to choose an image of the person you met in that location. Then place it on the NOTES card to indicate you have completed it, and you now have as many points as are indicated in the corner of the NOTES card.

What is Lisa doing in the gym?

Each player also begins the game with a DATE card. This is like a NOTES card 2.0. It is always written from both Zack and Slater, always includes lipstick kisses and is always worth 10 points per boy. Unlike the regular NOTES cards that can also come from Zack and Slater, these dates can only be obtained by landing on the single DATE square on the board. Twice. Completing both of these dates is part of your winning condition, so don’t slack.

Hmm, I’m the one vs water park. So high school

Apart from the DATE space and a few spaces for the meet-ups, the rest of the board is made up of neon yellow lockers. When you land on a locker space (which is almost all the time), you roll a die to determine what will happen. You may get an additional NOTES card, you may get asked a Bayside trivia question, you may be allowed to move anywhere or you may get to spin a spinner to once again determine what happens.

Roll and move was not bad enough for Saved by the Bell!

The game also includes six biographical cards of the actors who play the gang. These are completely superfluous to gameplay.

how it went

This game is easy on the eyes, and I think we are about the perfect age for The Max appreciation (see what I did there?). But this game is blah.

My chosen one and my water park buddy

Saved by the Bell requires you to land by exact count in order to get ahead, and that is a problem if you only have one or two places you need to be. Did you miss it? Get ready for one more orbit around the board and hope you can score a GO ANYWHERE roll.

Also the trivia. If you are a die-hard fan then you may love this game and love the trivia questions. If you have not watched Saved by the Bell recently or do not have a perfect memory then the trivia is a bummer. As all trivia is.

The glamour shots are nice. Saved by the Bell has a lot of visual appeal. And the game doesn’t call the NOTES card meet-ups dates, but I feel like they are. Just not good ones since they are often in Driver’s Ed or Math class or something. And I always love a game that causes you to date indiscriminately.

There’s so much more where this came from

play or pass

Pass. The nostalgia was not enough to save the gameplay. From what I have read this is perhaps the best of the various Saved by the Bell games, so please accept this as a general warning.

Review: Vanity Chase

By jen On December 2, 2017 With No Comments

Review: Vanity Chase
Publisher: Patomike, Inc.
Year: 1988
Tagline: The Outrageously Fun Game You Already Play …

Vanity Chase cover

how we met

I found Vanity Chase in a small shop in an even smaller Wisconsin town. In fact the shop had two copies, neither in tip-top shape. I opted for the copy that appeared to have all cards even though it was missing some pawns and the timer was broken.

I enjoy puzzles and word games, so this really seemed like a game I would enjoy. Plus the late 80’s have been pretty lucky for me from a random gaming standpoint.

how it plays

You are on a road trip through California, and your goal is to reach the FINISH. However your car may not move unless you are able to guess a license plate correctly. All spaces on the board are either white or blue, representing the color of card that you need to answer before continuing your drive.

Players start in the START place, which is considered a white plate or level 1 difficulty. At this level you simply guess what the plate says. If you are successful then you may roll and move; your play continues as long as you continue to accurately guess the license plates. If you roll a zero then you do not move, obviously, but may continue play.

Start your engines! My copy did not have all the pawns so we dug some up

Blue is level 2 difficulty. You must guess what the license plate says as well as an additional bit of trivia about the driver based on a category hint you get on the front of the card such as hobby/occupation, celebrity, vehicle or sports. For example the license plate might show KPMLAFN and say hobby/occupation which means Keep ’em laughing and represents a comedian.

Spaces on the board may also have numbers on them that could be positive or negative. The game board has a legend that indicates what happens when you land on a given number. You might have to send someone else back, send all players back, move ahead, etc.

The number legend

When you reach the FINISH you are at black plates and level 3 difficulty. This is it. The culmination of the road trip. Black is the same as blue level 2 difficulty except that you do not get a hint of the category for the extra fact (the hobby, celebrity, vehicle or sports). The first player to successfully answer a black plate at the FINISH wins!

A snapshot of our play nearing the end

how it went

The path from START to FINISH looks pretty short, so we decided at the outset to be strict when it came to answers. If an answer was not fairly exact then that player would not get to roll. That helped the game last a bit longer.

The game board, pretty short really

Despite the difficulty levels indicated by the card types, the difficulty felt random. There were definitely some softballs in the cards, but there were some that had us confused even after reading them.

Our gameplay did improve as we went along. You start to pick up the tricks for how things are represented. Our play also got less formal and we would ask to guess each other’s cards before reading the answers. There were times that the plate starts out looking like utter nonsense and you are able to work out what it says, piece by piece. That is very satisfying, kind of like a really difficult algebra problem that suddenly snaps into focus.

The license plate cards. Note the categories in the corners of the blue cards

The game does show its shelf life in certain cases, primarily the blue celebrity and vehicle cards. In some cases the celebrity was iconic, like Marilyn Monroe, and could fairly easily be guessed by our age group. Other times it was very dated and downright hopeless. Like Maytag Repairman, who is not top of mind for me.

Sometimes it had weird specificity too. For example a vehicle might be something general like a sports car or convertible. Other times it might be Mazda RX7 or Pontiac Firebird Formula One. That was a weird move. License plates and cars are related, no doubt about it. But if you wanted to make a car game, make a car game. Don’t tease me with a word game and then ask me to know cars. I don’t give a tinker’s cuss about cars. But John does, so it was not lost on the group entirely.

play or pass

Pass. Maybe my hopes were too high with the concept, but ultimately I was disappointed. I started out enjoying Vanity Chase and kept slowing it down by sending people backward when I could. None of my fellow gamers seemed to appreciate the game as much. OK they mostly couldn’t stand it. I wish more consideration was given to the cards’ relevance in the future. Then we might have enjoyed it more 30 years later.

By the time the game ended we were beyond ready for it to be over. I think we even cheered when someone won, so that was nice.

Review: Neighbors

By jen On November 26, 2017 With 1 Comment

Review: Neighbors
Publisher: M&P Distributors
Year: unknown but 1998 is my guess based on a quick trademark search
Tagline: (none)

Neighbors cover

how we met

Neighbors is very much the kind of game I would purchase. It has poor to mediocre cover art, almost no BGG reviews and no information on the box. It is obscure and cumbersome and heavy. And it was $1.99.

how it plays

The cover of Neighbors shows a happy slob with a run-down home and an angry, bitter man with a well-kept home. The game is all about trying to be the best neighbor you can. Each player is given $500 as well as five SLOB cards to start the game – these represent negative traits to the state of your home and the vast majority include a number such as 10, 20, 30 or even as high as 50 or 100.

Wait, which one is winning the game of life?

If a player collects as many as ten SLOB cards, they place them on their house and pick a SLUMRUNNER card which is worth 100 points (points are bad). The player then gets a new hand of five SLOB cards and play continues.

The round ends when one player runs out of all SLOB cards. When this happens, the player with the most SLOB cards adds up those points and pays the winner that dollar amount. Then a new round begins.

The idea of the game is to play multiple rounds until finally one player goes bankrupt. At that point the game ends and the player with the most money wins.

During play, pawns land on different spaces of the board that accomplish different things. Examples include:

1. Landing on their own home, the home of another player or an unoccupied home has different outcomes
2. CLEAN spaces can result in a positive outcome
3. SLOB spaces can result in a negative outcome
4. Lose turn
5. etc

The game board. Bonus: it’s gigantic

The game also includes a POTLUCK space, which is a cute name since it really is about luck. You may have to pay in, gain money or throw away SLOB cards, among other things.

The potluck space definitely caused some reversals of fortune

Neighbors also includes some very special rules including NOSEY NEIGHBOR where if you quarterback the game you get five SLOB cards as punishment and ASSAULT CHARGE where if you pick up another pawn by accident you roll the die and pay that player 10x the amount that you rolled from your bankroll.

how it went

I made slight alterations to the rules we played in order to speed up bankruptcy for everyone in the event we played multiple rounds – namely having each player pay the bank their SLOB cards at the end of the round rather than having one player pay the round winner. It doesn’t matter much as we only played one round anyway.

For a roll and move game, the rules of Neighbors are overly complex. This is largely due to the fact that landing on any given square often requires you to roll a die, which then determines what actually happens. For example, if you land on a SLOB space you roll the die and if you roll the number of your own house then one thing happens, roll a different occupied house (another player) and another thing happens or roll an unoccupied house (no player) and still another thing happens. So even if the board seems to only have a handful of different spaces to land on, many of those spaces are multiplied by 3. I do not have the desire or skill to memorize this number of what-if’s so the box lid stayed in front of me for the entire game.

It has paper money so you know it’s a good game

Some of the cards seemed unbalanced, which is nit-picky to point out but was noted by nearly all of us. Presumably the higher the number the worse the offense, since the numbers count against you if you have the card when the round ends. Surely a dangerous broken window would outweigh beer cans thrown in your yard?

Sample SLOB cards – remember higher numbers are not good unless you can play them on your neighbors

I did enjoy the pawns. Each one is different, and they are just kind of bizarre.

It was very common for houses to be referenced, and you needed to know whether a house was occupied or unoccupied. That sounds simple, but for some reason I struggled with recalling which colors were taken and who was which color. My game group is not the brightest tool in the shed so we do not do things like always play the same color. Sometimes I feel orange, sometimes I feel green.

I think it would have been a nice touch for the designer to give each house a cutesy little name. Normally I am opposed to cutesy but anything to help my poor, dingbat mind remember something about which player I am (and the others are) would be very welcome. Green Gardens or Burgundy Bungalow or Mustard Manor or.. you get the idea.

The neighborly pawns

play or pass

Pass / run the other way. This is a Monopoly-esque roll and move complete with the free parking variant to cause you to pay in or get an influx of cash. Except all you own is a house of eye-sores unless you are lucky enough to ditch your cards.

This game was such a chore to play that I actually looked up the designer to try and learn more about his background. I didn’t learn much; all online reference to the game has virtually disappeared and even a few youtube videos where he appeared did not give me much info. Not about the game anyway. But I don’t think he even plays games. I don’t think a person that enjoys board games as a hobby would have ever designed a game this…ungamely.

The game designer did include a short note in the box on the genesis of Neighbors, how it was born out of his constantly having to deal with “sloppy and apathetic neighbors” and how his family suffered “numerous moves” to find a neighborhood more his speed. Yikes! The common denominator in those neighborhoods is clear.

I am going to hang onto the game for awhile yet. It might be a great foundation to make my own cards and house rules and turn it into a game perfect for our group.

FUN FACT: After writing this review I wanted to do a quick sanity check that this is indeed the worst game our group has played together thus far. I texted Keri to check. Initially she said neither her nor John remember playing it at all. Please note, reader, we played this as the first of three games during a long game night. But just last weekend. Then she immediately remembered and said oh yeah, but “it wasn’t even memorable in a bad way.” Then she said, “The way Wicker Man is memorable.” Need we say more?

FUN FACT: The Wicker Man is not a board game, at least not yet. But if you were ready to google it just to be sure then we could probably be friends.

Review: Don’t Tip the Waiter

By jen On November 20, 2017 With No Comments

Review: Don’t Tip the Waiter
Publisher: Colorforms
Year: 1979
Tagline: Be Careful, Too many Dishes Tip the Waiter.

Don't Tip the Waiter cover

how we met

If you thrift on a regular basis, you are probably very familiar with the feast or famine nature of the hobby. I found Don’t Tip the Waiter at thrift in a strange feast situation. The store contained all of the usual suspects but then an inordinate number of odd, old games. Some strange person seemed to have dumped their collection.

In addition to Don’t Tip the Waiter I bought Showbiz and another copy of Heavenly Body that I can gift to some lucky gamer. There were also a number of old, unusual games that don’t meet even my threshold of gaming standards. Yes, dear reader, those games do exist. In abundance.

how it plays

Don’t Tip the Waiter is a dexterity game. The waiter is a 3-d cardboard character who pivots at the waist. Each player starts the game with three Colorforms dollars, and your goal is to hang onto your money. Players take turns adding another dish to our hero’s tray in hopes that he remains upright. When the tray spills any food items, the player that caused the spill must tip the waiter one of their Colorforms dollars by sticking it on him anywhere.

Colorforms dollars

Then another round is played until the waiter is tipped over, and then tipped a dollar. Then another round, and so on. A player with no money left is out of the game. The last player to have money remaining is the winner.

how it went

This game was light and fast, and set up is surprisingly easy for a 3-d cardboard character. The game is from 1979 and, while my copy is not mint by any means, it is in surprisingly good shape. I had a wet paper towel so we could wipe down our Colorforms dollars before sticking them to the waiter, and that worked beautifully. There were no sticking problems whatsoever.

The pivot of the waiter is interesting. He frequently seemed to move in counter-intuitive directions so it was difficult to predict how he would handle more dishes or where the best balance would be.

Tipped

It seems unnecessary to have the huge variety of dishes that the game offers, but it was a really nice touch. We each took our turn picking out the exact right dish to our liking before placing it.

Pickles and sundaes and pizza oh my

And I love a good pun, so I do have to recognize that the title is nothing less than amazing.

play or pass

I think pass. I don’t have experience with a lot of dexterity games, but I have to believe there is better out there. The cover of the game and the waiter himself are cartoonish and fun, but I’m not sure this one will get played again by our group.

Don’t forget to tip your wait staff. And please don’t knock them over.

Review: Trailer Park Wars!

By jen On November 19, 2017 With 1 Comment

Review: Trailer Park Wars!
Publisher: Gut Bustin’ Games
Year: 2007
Tagline: Live the dream… be a Trailer Park Manager!

Trailer Park Wars cover image

how we met

My introduction to Trailer Park Wars is unique amongst the meet-cutes I have written about so far and will write about in future. Like most board game enthusiasts, I frequently look up games on Board Game Geek and read through user feedback. I was reading a review of Mystic Skull and the user noted how much they adore games that could not be made today. As you can imagine, I don’t find a lot of kindred spirits in the board game world. I clicked on the name to read through their reviews and found that – lo and behold – I had already read so many. So many. Mystic Skull, Snakes Alive, Girl Talk Dateline, Mall Madness, Heartthrob – and more modern games like Viticulture and Blood Rage.

Based on my perusal of this person’s reviews I purchased Trailer Park Wars from the Geek Market and sent her a note of thanks for all the game feedback she has written. So while I didn’t stumble upon this game at thrift, I did stumble upon it.

how it plays

Trailer Park Wars is a humorous card game where your goal is to be the best Trailer Park Manager. You accomplish this by having the best trailer park in beauty, represented by pink flamingo decorations – accomplished by having the best tenants, like a Firefighter or a Frugal Millionaire, and the best amenities, like a nearby tavern or a cigarette machine.

Sample trailer park mid-play

The first step of the game is to choose three cards from a face-down collection, labeled 1, 2 and 3. The 1 cards are proper names, like Del-Mar, Buena Vista, or Dump View. The 2 cards are descriptive and include words like Gypsy, Rectangular or Leisure. The 3 cards are logical endings to a Trailer Park name, like Holler, Gulch or Estates. Choosing these cards should net you a unique name for your Trailer Park, so you can start to make it all your own.

Cards showing Chicken Neck Rectangular Gulch name

Chicken Neck Rectangular Gulch, my labor of love

All trailer homes are divided up between players and then placed in front of them in a rectangle or circle.

Each player maintains a hand of seven cards and is allowed to play two cards per turn. Card types include tenants, amenities, natural disasters and action cards.

Sample action cards

Sample amenities

Tenants can be positive (pink flamingo icon) or negative (black flamingo icon) and can be placed on any open trailer in any park. So generally you are playing positive cards on your own park and negative cards on your neighbors, and constantly trying to find the balance between offense and defense.

Sample tenants

Additionally, tenants have their own limited statistics and may not interact positively. For example the Angry Old Guy turns even more negative when living next door to Young Tenants, Bands or tenants with animals.

At the beginning of each turn (save the first turn), each player adds up the net positive points that they have and gets a pink flamingo decoration for each one. The game ends when all 100 flamingos have been placed. The player with the most flamingos has the best trailer park and is the best Trailer Park Manager and therefore the winner!

how it went

This is a fun, cute game and is very easy to understand. Initially the pile of flamingos is daunting and you think the game will go all night, but turns are pretty short and soon each player is picking up anywhere from zero to eight flamingos per turn and the game ended up a perfect length. It did not overstay its welcome, but it was enough time for you to grow attached to your trailer park and really plan its future.

The flamingos are novel and fun. They are a perfect complement to the sardonic humor of the game.

Flamingo pile

And trust me, nothing draws all eyes to your trailer park like a huge amount of flamingos. The idea of them is to be attractive and draw the eye, but the player with the most flamingos can hardly hide them and is constantly the target of fellow players, so the lead changes frequently. You may jump ahead initially but before you know it a tornado hits your park, an arsonist moves in and you have a roach infestation. Even a communal hot tub can’t overcome that mess.

Sample disasters

play or pass

Play. I do love a quirky game and in the words of everyone’s favorite Trailer Park Manager, “You can’t change the spots on a shit leopard.” Rest in peace John Dunsworth.

One of the criticisms of this game is that it may not have a ton of longevity, and I can see that. But the combination between cards does do a good job of increasing replayability. It’s probably not a perennial game that will hit your table weekly or even monthly. But still it’s a fun, sarcastic little game and we will definitely play again.

Have you ever taken a chance on a game based on the recommendation of a stranger? Comment and tell us about it.

Review: Saved by the Bell

Review: Vanity Chase

Review: Neighbors

Review: Don’t Tip the Waiter

Review: Trailer Park Wars!

About me

Recent posts

Archives

Review: Saved by the Bell

Review: Vanity Chase

Review: Neighbors

Review: Don’t Tip the Waiter

Review: Trailer Park Wars!

About me

Recent posts

Archives

Tags