International Games Week thanks Thinkfun Games for donating a bundle of games to one lucky winner this year. This bundle of ten games will enrich your library collection with games to challenge your mind.
Potato Pirates is a multiplayer card game where players voyage the high seas to save the Potato King. This innovative game teaches coding by introducing computer programming concepts on control cards that work to modify action cards to roast, mash, or fry the way to victory.
Potato Pirates is for 3-6 players, ages 7+ and takes about 20-45 minutes to play.
From potatoes to cows! Invasion of the Cow Snatchers is a magnetic logic game. Use the UFO magnet to move around the grid to pick up all of the cows in the correct order. Dexterity and precision are needed to dodge the farm building, hay bales, and fences as you gather up all of the cows before you zoom back off into space.
Set up is guided by 50 challenge cards from easy to super hard! This game is for 1 player aged 6+.
Heads Talk Tails Walk is a great game of silliness for ages 3+. In this game, players try to match up body parts to the correct body. If the parts don’t match the players act out the animal body while making the sounds of the animals head.
This game gets everyone up and moving and quacking as they try to win with the most accurate matches. Heads Talk Tales Walk is for 2-5 players and takes about 5-15 minutes to play.
Swish is another matching game that requires speed and accuracy as you practice your spatial awareness. Sixteen cards are laid out on the table. At the sound of “GO!” you get to search the cards until you see a match. When you see it yell “Swish” and pick up your cards but they must stack exactly for you to keep the cards. The game continues with new cards added to the table as you go. The person with the most cards at the end of the game wins.
Swish comes with instructions for beginner to expert play. This game is for 2-6 players aged 8+ and takes about 10 minutes to play.
Another great game in this bundle is Rush Hour, a traffic jam logic game. In this game, you must drive your red card through traffic to win. Rush Hour includes a board and 40 challenge cards that range from beginner dealing with light traffic to difficult where the player is caught in a traffic jam.
Rush Hour is great for ages 8+ and can be played almost anywhere with easy setup.
Gravity Maze is another single-player game that requires logic and reasoning to complete. This marble maze game is for solo play. Players set up a board according to one of the 60 challenge cards. They must then use strategically placed towers to move their marble from the start at the top to the target tower near the bottom. Each tower has unique ramps and bridges so players must be observant to succeed on the first marble run. Keep trying, but if you get stumped each card includes the solution on the back.
Gravity Maze is for a single player aged 8+.
Put on your hard hat and engineer a roller coaster in the game Roller Coaster Challenge. In this game, players choose one of forty challenge cards to set up the starting framework of a roller coaster. They must then use additional suggested pieces to fill in the gaps to make a working roller coaster where the car makes it from the start to finish successfully. Once you have completed all forty challenges you can keep building coasters to test your new-found engineering skills.
Roller Coaster Challenge is for a single player age 6+.
Zingo! Is a fast-paced matching game that includes pictures and words to help develop reading, matching, and memory skills. In this game, players race to add tiles to their cards and be the first to fill their card. A filled card is revealed with a yell of “Zingo!” This game includes two levels of play with double-sided cards and 72 double-sided tiles.
Play on green beginner to learn how to play then flip to red to up the challenge. Up the challenge again by playing some of the game variations listed in the rule book.
Zingo! is for 2-6 players ages 4+, and takes around 5 minutes per game.
Time to balance your beans! Balance Beans is a logic and math game where users carefully place beans on a seesaw. A teetering seesaw leads to danger. Follow the challenge card, set up the pieces and then use math and reasoning skills to balance your beans.
This game includes 40 challenges to get you started balancing beans. Take it further by setting up beans to practice your math skills. Each time your beans are balanced you’ve balanced an equation.
Balance Beans is for 1 player aged 5+.
Last but not least is Cat Crimes, a game of mystery. In this logic game, the player needs to find out who committed a crime such as torn up shoes or a swallowed fish! Use one of the forty challenge cards to guide you. Determine who is the culprit by deducing who was sitting where at the table. Beginning cards are fairly easy but the difficult cards require much more observance and deduction to determine which cat is the criminal.
Cat Crimes is for a single player aged 8+.
Although Thinkfun marks many of these games as solo play, they are often fun for a group. Players can aid each other in find the winning moves.
International Games Week wants to thank Thinkfun for being a sponsor and creating innovative ways to play!
