We’re here with another hour of interviews from PAX Unplugged. But we’ll also talk about our highlights in gaming from the last few weeks, and a little bit of Backtalk!

What We’ve Been Playing

We’re only giving you the highlights because there’s a TON of games we’ve played in the past month, and we don’t have time to cover them all. Here’s our favorites:

Drop It from KOSMOS – it’s a fantastic spectator game, a lot like Maze Racers (it seems like forever ago that we interviewed Andy Geremia about his “brand new” game). Drop your tangram-style pieces into the vertical board. When your piece lands, try to avoid touching pieces of the same color and shape. Incredibly easy to learn, but with a fair bit of strategy. On top of everything else, it’s a game that can be setup, played, and torn down, without losing our four-year-old’s interest!

Palm Island from Portal Dragon Games – Nick previously interviewed the creator at GenCon. This is a solo resource-management game, played with 17 cards, all held in the palm of your hand. There are also 2 player competitive & cooperative modes, that we haven’t tried yet. Warning: not a great game for kids because their hands aren’t big enough to hold on to the deck while also manipulating the cards.

We celebrate Hanukkah, so we did play quite a bit of the dreidel game (with gelt, of course). Our kids are really drawn by the lure of cheap chocolate coins. Playing reminds us why we advocate family gaming.

Andrew’s favorite game from the past month is Spell Smashers from Renegade Games. A word game with a fantasy, monster-slaying theme – who knew? The fact that the game doesn’t take itself too seriously actually makes it a little easier to suspend disbelief and really get into the theme.

Pikoko from Brain Games proves that Andrew and Anitra are still awful at trick-taking games, even when we’re not responsible for our own cards. You can see everyone else’s cards (but not your own) and place bets on how many tricks each person will take in a round. We loved the cute peacock theme.

Backtalk

A few people have been asking us for gift recommendations – have you checked out our gift guide? There’s still a few days to buy and get games shipped to you before Christmas! Check out last year’s list as well.

Our picture of HABA’s Dragon’s Breath garnered several comments. We think the 5+ age range they list is about right, because it involves drafting a “bet” each round on which color gems will fall out of the stack as a ring is lifted off.

Is there a HABA game you really want to know more about? Tell us!

Giveaway Winners

The Mansky Caper: We strongly recommend you look up @manskycaper on Twitter and see the wonderful replies from Big Al Mansky himself.

The winner is Vicky McKinley! Her response to Big Al proves she’s a regular Robin Hood.

Home Alone Game: Our winner is Dexter Vorce!

PAX Unplugged Interviews

Labeled with timestamp for your reference.

(0:18:35) Thunderworks Games – with Keith Matejka

Andrew loves Roll Player, and asks Keith about playing it with kids. Playtesting with kids is an important part of the process. What’s the appropriate age range? What decisions make it too complex for certain kids?

Keith tells us how he layers the rule introduction to help kids understand basic play before they need to grasp t...