Idle Remorse

Review: Compatibility

Review: Compatibility
Publisher: Mattel (under license from Crown & Andrews)
Year: 1996
Tagline: Do Great Minds Really Think Alike?

Compatibility cover

how we met

In my opinion, the cover of Compatibility is pretty terrible. It looks like one of the many dime-a-dozen party games that my eyes fly by at thrift shops. But if I haven’t seen a game before then I am picking it up to get a closer look. The back of the box describes the gameplay pretty well. It sounded like fun in a silly party game kind of way. Plus I am a sucker for games with tons of photos in them, so I threw down my $2.99 and took it home with me.

Six people playing game

Photo from the back of the box that won me over. I want to be them

how it plays

The object of Compatibility is to be the first team to make it to the finish space on the game board. Teams move ahead by scoring points and are represented by little paper-doll-looking pawns that chain together.

Close up of pawns

Two of the conjoined pawns

Each turn one player rolls the die, flips up one of the TOPIC cards and reads out the word next to the number that was rolled. All teams play simultaneously. Each player has an identical deck of 52 cards with various pictures or words on them. Your job is to choose the photos that best match the word in play, with the ultimate goal of choosing the same cards your partner chooses. The space on the game board will indicate how many cards you are allowed to choose, ranging from one to five.

Example images

Some of the images from the deck

Your chosen cards should be ranked into relevance or choice order. For example, the top card is your first choice, second card is your second choice and so on. It does not matter how you rank the cards as long as you and your partner are organizing the same way. These cards remain hidden until all players have completed this process.

When everyone is ready, each player simultaneously reveals their cards one at a time. Teams receive two points for each correct match, or three points if the match is in the exact same ranking for both players. Teams then move their co-pawns ahead on the game board the number of points scored and another turn starts.

sample play showing cards for the word passion

Sample play using the word “passion” that would score 5 points: 3 points for the exact match of the couple and 2 points for matching red in different locations

how it went

One of the best things about Compatibility is that it allows all players to play at the same time. No one has to sit out. And the game includes an astonishing number of words. Some of them can be really difficult to choose pictures for. One example during our gameplay was “role” and we all struggled to interpret that in a way that would be common enough for matches. That being said, the challenging words make for some interesting results. Apparently all my fellow players think dolphins are pets. 🙁

sample topic cards

Nine of the 100 TOPIC cards

Our gameplay went pretty smoothly. The game was not too long. None of us spent too much time stuck on the same space. None of us had big fights. John and Keri maintained a pretty solid lead and ultimately won, but we weren’t too far behind.

overview of game board with pawns

The game board

A common complaint about Compatibility is that the pictures are dated and don’t work well. The pictures do have room for improvement, but I like that they are dated.

After completing the game once the way it was intended, we discussed ways to improve the gameplay. We decided it would be fun to play a new way where we see who matched best amongst all of us. We would use a single pawn and move it using the die roll, but we would keep to the number limitations it landed on. Then we would track scoring with everyone just on paper. I think that would be an interesting approach, particularly if you have players in your party that are not well acquainted. We’ll have to try it next time.

play or pass

Play. Even people who do not enjoy party games often find themselves playing party games just because of the nature of holidays and get togethers with a wide variety of people. This is not a bad choice for a group party game but supports only six players. I played it a couple of times recently and realized that the game may not have great staying power. I’m interested in creating new pictures to breathe new life into the game. Wait did I say new life? I meant wicked, inappropriate humor.

Review: Saved by the Bell

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.

Notes cards

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.

Date cards

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.

The spinner

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.

Completed date cards

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.

Sample pictures cards

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

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.

Car pawns at start

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.

Legend showing consequences of number

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!

Pawns near finish

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.

Game board

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.

License plate cards

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

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.

Angry neighbor and happy neighbor

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

Game board

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.

Potluck space explaining die rolls

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.

Paper money and pawns on game board

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

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.

Close up of pawns

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

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

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.

Waiter character

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.

Tokens representing different foods

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.

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