Tsuro Game Review

 

January 12, 2012

By Retail Therapy Lounge

 

If you have a boy (or man) who is into role playing games or comic books – this is a game for you. Dragons – getting blocked from finding your path along the way….old fashioned fun.   It sounds complicated but the game is pretty simple.  For younger kids I think it can teach some lessons about how the choices you make can impact you….

About the Game

Create your own journey with Tsuro…the Game of the Path.Place a tile and slide your stone along the path created, but take care! Other players’ paths can lead you in the wrong direction—or off the board entirely! Find your way wisely to succeed. The rules are simple: you place a tile to build the next step for your stone to follow.


Paths will cross and connect, and the choices you make affect all the journey across the board. Stay the path—your journey begins here.

• 1 game board
• 1 Dragon tile
• 8 markers
• 35 playing tiles
• Tsuro is recommended for 2-8 players ages 8 and up.

About the company

At Calliope we develop and publish tabletop games for the “Family”. Calliope is focused on pulling families and friends back to the recreation room table in an era where occupations and digital mediums are constantly soaking up each minute of one’s day. It is our intent to facilitate communication of families and their relationships through analog tabletop gaming experiences.

As such, we are very aware of the burdens created by today’s economy. The reality is they are changing the way families are allocating their entertainment dollars. All Calliope games are priced to meet those restraints and retail at or under $30. More importantly, the games are fun for the entire family! In most instances, our games entertain 2 to 6 players and sometimes up to 8. They always play in under 60 min. but typically play in 40 min. or less. They are accessible by players of 8 years of age and up; in other words, we do our best to write the rules so that children as young as 8 years of age can read and understand the game without the direction of Mom and Dad. The key is this… Calliope branded games are games that Mom and Dad will prefer to play after the kids have long gone to bed.
Buy it & Get Social

You can use the store locator to find a place to buy these games and be sure to check out the Facebook page for more ideas, info and games. Amazon also has it for around $25.

Disclaimer: I was not paid or did not receive any compensation, but did receive samples to review and test out. The opinions in this post are soley mine

The Best Board Games of 2011

• By Jonathan Liu
• January 2, 2012 
• Categories: Board Games 
• Follow @jonathanhliu

The Golden Robots Award

2011 was a tricky year: my family went through a major move, from our tiny rural town in western Kansas to a bustling metropolitan center in the Pacific Northwest. For me, it meant scaling back on game nights as I was preparing for moves and — gasp! — sealing up my games in moving boxes. Probably the hardest part was having to leave them packed up and shoved in the back of the garage while some needed renovations were being finished. And then came the process of reconnecting with my old gaming friends and shifting gears from playing board games mostly with high school and college kids, and now playing with parents of small children and working out our mutual schedules.
Despite all of that, I still managed to get a good amount of board gaming in this year. (It’s never enough, but that’s a story for another time.) In fact, when going over my list, it was really hard to narrow down the list, because there were a lot of really great games. But here are some of the best board games reviewed on GeekDad in 2011, picked by myself, Jenny Williams, Dave Banks, and Michael Harrison.
Jonathan’s picks:

• Best Picture: Dixit — Gorgeous illustrations, and a clever scoring mechanic to boot. (review)
• Best Stunts: The Adventurers: Pyramid of Horus — No sequel-itis here! The follow-up to the treasure-hunting game is even better than the original. (review)
• Best Supporting Actors: Flash Point: Fire Rescue — Teamwork is essential to save the victims from the burning building. (review)
• Best Adaptation: Settlers of America – The classic gateway Euro-game becomes a trailblazing, rail-building race across America. (review)
• Best Short: Cambria — Euro-style gaming you can pick up and play in 20 minutes. (review)
• Best Action: Jab: Realtime Boxing — Strategy is important, but so is speed: take too long thinking about it and you’ll be KO’d. (review)
• Best Sci-fi: Battleship Galaxies — Entry-level miniatures wargame, plus it’s gotta be better than the movie adaptation. (review)
• Most Monsters: Castle Panic and Castle Panic: Wizard’s Tower — Co-op or competitive, this is a one-two punch that is great for kids and adults. (reviews: original game and expansion)
• Best Original Game Mechanic: Cornerstone Essential — The coordination of Jenga with the strategy of Carcassonne keeps you on your toes. (review)
• Best 2-Player-Only Game: Zoxso — Abstract strategy that feels like playing chess in two dimensions. (review)
• Honorable Mention: Eaten by Zombies — For combining two of my favorite flavors, deck-building and zombies. (review)

Game of the Year: I’m adding this category for my own picks. For sheer fun-factor, I pick Catacombs as my top game of 2011. It didn’t necessarily have the most plays, and I admit that it’s not a game for everyone. But it combines the roleplaying of D&D with Crokinole-style disk-flicking, and makes for an experience that has been a blast every time I play it, win or lose. Here’s the original review.
Jenny’s picks:

• Best Use of Random Element: Uncle Chestnut’s Table Gype – Get your pieces to the other side before anyone else, but don’t get stuck as an ear! (review)
• Most Laughter and Chaos: Shake ‘n Take – Search for aliens as fast as you can. (review)
• Best Gateway Game for Kids: Gubs – Get ‘em hooked and then play Munchkin! (review)
• Best City-Building Game: City Square Off – Great for parents and kids to play together, this game has players competing against themselves, as much as each other, to place the most tiles in their city. (review)
• Best Deck-Building Game for Beginners: Dominion -  Different each time it is played, yet its finite options makes it easy for new players to learn. (review)
• Best Short: Tsuro – Great for all ages and many different group sizes, this game is quick to play, and even quicker to learn. (review)

David’s picks:

• Best portable game: Hive – This play-anywhere strategic tile game will have you buzzing as you attempt to take over your opponent’s hive. (review)
• Best Cartoon Art: Food Fight – Food warriors go to battle on your plate in this humorously and gorgeously detailed card game. (review)
• Best Digital Board Game: Ticket to Ride – The simple and enjoyable railway game makes its way to the digital realm in the best iPad port of any board game to date. (review)
• Most Suspenseful Letters from Whitechapel – A detective game that will have you on the edge of your seat as you chase Jack the Ripper. (review)
• Best Picture(s): Pastiche – Recreate masterwork paintings by building colors on your palette in this fun, family-friendly game. (review)

Michael’s picks:

• Best Horror Game: Elder Sign – An exciting return to H.P. Lovecraft’s dread city of Arkham, but this time, you’re armed with lots of dice! (review)
• Best Monster Flick: King of Tokyo – A dice game full of madcap monster movie mayhem, as you and your friends compete for the top spot in Tokyo. (review)
• Best Short: Carnival – It’s quick, it’s easy to learn, and it combines dice and cards in a new and fun way. (review)
• Best Backstabbing: Launch Pad – The space race gets dirty in this fast and devious card game where you and your friends build (and sabotage) rockets and try to get them into space. (review)

Again, as with last year’s list, these are all games that were reviewed on GeekDad in 2011. So they may not have all been released this year (and there are some games that came out this year that’ll have to wait until next year for their chance). We also coordinated our picks to avoid duplicates, but there were actually a lot of ties involved… What about you — what were your favorites this year?
May 2012 bring lots of great board gaming and no massive earth-ending disasters!

Roll2Play Fund Raiser: Philanthropic Educational Organization

http://www.facebook.com/Roll2Play

Calliope Games

Posted by kevi007

 

Calliope Games is all about fun and they have generously donated some of the best family games on the market to Serious Fun 2011!  Calliope Games is a family run company that was founded in September of 2009 by Jordan and Dawne Weisman, and Ray Wehrs. Collectively, they have been engaged in the gaming industry for over 70 years!

Calliope’s main focus is the “Family” and it shows in the games they create and publish.  Calliope is focused on pulling families and friends back to the recreation room table in this digital age.

Not only that, but Calliope is aware of the burdens created by today’s economy and has priced their games at or under $30!  Check out Calliope and all their family friendly, affordable games by clicking on their logo found under our sponsor links on the right side of this page.

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Calliope Games Review

Posted by Amber

In 2006, John and I moved to Greenville, SC – 8 hours from our hometown in Ohio. The year we were there, we made some excellent friends, but for the most part, we were homebodies. About a month after moving there, we discovered an amazing little store in the local mall. The store was full of games for all ages. I’m not talking Monopoly or Clue either, although there were specialty versions of these too. There were thousands of games that we had never heard of. We tried about a dozen new games that year and a love of unique and different games was born.

We moved back to Ohio in 2007 and there just isn’t a store around here like that favorite game spot in Greenville. We both were excited at the chance to try a game from Calliope Games. Calliope makes several games for adults and families. Their goal is to create games that bring you, your friends and family together. The games help encourage socialization and connection in a world full of technology and stress.

We had the opportunity to try out Tsuro: The Game of the Path. The game is intended for ages 8 and up and for anywhere from 2 to 8 players. The artwork on the box and board are beautiful. We are both huge fans of Oriental-inspired artwork. The little game tokens you use to follow your own individual path also have little dragons etched into them. You utilize individual path cards to create different twists and turns on the game board. The goal is to force the other player off the board.

Set up takes less than a minute as you layout the board, each player chooses a colored dragon token and places it on one of the notches on the edge of the board. In turn, players play a path card in front of their token. To finish the turn the player follows the path on the new card. Learning the games takes little effort and play is quick and easy. Each game was less than 15 minutes. However, the strategy and forethought involved kept us from becoming bored with the game. Every game is completely different because of the endless number of paths you can create.

I highly recommend this game for adults and children who can follow the path concept. It was a lot of fun and I’m proud to add it to my collection of different and unique games. You can visit Calliope’s website to purchase Tsuro (as well as many other great games) for $30.00 plus shipping or locate a store near you where you can buy any of Calliope’s games. Or, follow Calliope on Facebook or Twitter.

Calliope Games - Tsuro Review & Giveaway! Share

At Calliope we develop and publish tabletop games for the “Family”. Calliope is focused on pulling families and friends back to the recreation room table in an era where occupations and digital mediums are constantly soaking up each minute of one's day. It is our intent to facilitate communication of families and their relationships through analog tabletop gaming experiences.

There is something special about being able to sit with your family and play a board game on the weekends, a time set aside where there is no more T.V., cellphones, or computers... just the family at the table enjoying their own laughter, creativeness and bonding. Calliope Games has a sincere belief in this ideology, to have families spend more time together through tabletop games designed for great fun and/or thoughtfulness. With games like "Got 'Em!" where you must outsmart your opponents through savvy card playing, Double Double Dominos where you must match up like dominoes on a game board without awarding your opponents bonus points, UGH! where you encounter the Stone Age life by pushing your luck against the deck and then there is Tsuro which is all about creating a journey and is the game my family and I had chosen to review.

 

Create your own journey with Tsuro…the Game of the Path. Place a tile and slide your stone along the path created, but take care! Other players’ paths can lead you in the wrong direction—or off the board entirely! Find your way wisely to succeed. The rules are simple: you place a tile to build the next step for your stone to follow. Paths will cross and connect, and the choices you make affect all the journey across the board. Stay the path—your journey begins here

What is so interesting about Tsuro is that it is about creating a path. You begin with your colored stone on a small dot on the game board and each card has different paths that you can take. The goal is to try to keep on your path for as long as you can because if your path hits the side of the gaming board then it is over. In a way it almost represented life, by the choices you make on your journey it leads you to another place with other choices. You chose wisely your footsteps for as long as you can, but you never know where you might slip up and take the wrong path.

Tsuro has been awarded the 2011 Game of the Year Award by Creative Child Magazine, The Major Fun Award and the 2009 Preferred Choice Award with Creative Child Magazine. It is a story and a journey and by far one of my favorite Family Games. It has an adult touch to it to keep it enjoyable for us "big kids" and yet is challenging and fun for younger children. I really think this would make a fantastic Holiday Gift for a family who loves to spend time together.

Connect:

You can connect with Calliope Games on their Facebook Page and/or @CalliopeTweets on Twitter.

Purchase: 

You can purchase Tsuro for $30.00 in Calliope's Store!

The Giveaway!

How would you like to win a Tsuro board game? Just fill out the Rafflecopter Form below!

Ugh! Is a Fun and Fast Family-Friendly Card Game

• By Dave Banks    November 7, 2011  |  Categories: Board Games  

Overview: Ugh! is not a game about fuzzy slippers from Australia or helicopters flown by cavemen. It’s an invigorating card game from Calliope Games that involves matching and multiplication with press-your-luck mechanics and a little light strategy.
Players: 2-6 players.
Ages: 8 and up (though scoring can be a challenge for younger kids).
Playing Time: 15 minutes.
Retail: $10 and available later this month (Edit: See shipment update at bottom of post).
Rating: Fun and fast.
Who Will Like It? Because Ugh! is so simple to pick up & play, it has appeal for non-gamers and, with a little strategy, will also appeal to serious board gamers looking for a little palate cleanser between longer games or while waiting for the rest of the group to arrive.
Components: In the pack, you’ll find 110 brightly colored cards of standard weight and a set of rules. The artwork is by GeekDad favorite John Kovalic and, as can be expected from Kovalic, is brilliantly funny.
Gameplay: You can find a pdf of the instructions on the game’s website, but here’s a quick overview of gameplay.
Each player wants to accumulate the most points by locking in sets of cards that represent one card from each of three color groups: purple, green, and orange. Play begins by a player drawing from the draw pile. Each player can draw up to four cards, discarding the first three cards face-up into one of three safety piles. Players have some choice in strategy, but want to find a card with a high number associated with it. If a player has opted to discard the first three draws into the safety pile, the player is forced to take the fourth card and put it in their pool. After drawing a card, players can then lock in a set of green, purple, and range cards, which are then protected from loss against steals or forced discards (more on those in a moment). Rather than draw from the draw pile, a player may also draw from one of the safety piles.
If a player draws an Ugh! card, designated by a negative number or set of instructions, that player’s turn is immediately over and that player may be forced to discard a number of cards equal to the negative number or the instructions. In the deck, there are also a number of Wild Cards, which allow a player to steal a card of corresponding color from another player.
Strategy will change from game to game, but it’s a good idea to lock up sets as soon as you can, especially when your hand has some high numbered cards. When the cards are gone from the draw pile, the game is over and the scoring begins. Players multiply the numbers in their sets and then add them up (4 x 3 x 5 = 60, 2 x 1 x 4 = 8 for a total score of 68).
Conclusion: Not only is Ugh! a of of fun, it’s pretty affordable. (When was the last time you saw a game for $10?) Because the artwork is funny, bright, and cheery and the gameplay moves quickly, Ugh! has become a staple during our game nights. The one difficulty is that for kids and some adults, keeping track of scoring can be a bit of a challenge. At our house, we welcome the challenge as a way for our fourth graders to practice their math – a little pencil and paper goes a long way.
Update: I’ve just heard from Calliope Games and, unfortunately, the shipment containing Ugh! has been delayed and Ugh! will likely arrive just after Christmas. Bad timing, but it was out of Calliope’s control.
Disclosure: GeekDad received a review copy of this game.

Dave Banks is employed by Cyberdyne Systems and is building a global digital defense network. When not on the job, he enjoys playing games and watching cars go really, really fast.
Follow @davebanks and @wiredgeekdad on Twitter.