We have a jam-packed podcast for you this week! Tons of information about PAX Unplugged, plus a few extra games from before and after the convention.

We mostly followed our own advice from episode 70, especially about following up with our kids about what worked and what didn’t at the end of Friday. This allowed us to back off on Saturday and everyone had a better time.

Because this is such a long podcast, we’ve added timestamps, to make it easier to skip to the content you are most interested in.

What We’ve Been Playing:

(starting around 3:22) Biblios

Seikatsu (review coming soon)

Stop Thief!

Mmm!

Go Away Monster

Codenames: Disney Family Edition (with a special surprise for our children… here’s the video we took) We love the choice of pictures, words, or both, and the family-friendly 4×4 (no “assassin” or instant failure) as well as standard 5×5 layout cards.

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new expansion to Gruff: Rage of the Trolls – introduces solo and co-operative play!

Crosstalk (more below)

Forza Horizon 3

Super Mario Odyssey

PAX Unplugged

FRIDAY

(17:10) Steve Jackson Games – there will be a new version of Illuminati, one of our favorite “grown up” games. Kids loved Super Kitty Bug Slap (speed matching) and Simon’s Cat – a suit-matching game like crazy 8’s (or UNO), but with a 36-card deck and uneven number distribution. Each time a player cannot play, they take the discard pile as a “mess”. When all cards are gone, the player with the most messes loses.

(20:24) Nauvoo – Crosstalk: a party game in a similar vein to Taboo or Pictionary. Two teams of players are both trying to guess the same word or phrase. Each team starts with a private clue (one word), and then the clue-givers alternate giving public clues. There is a hint board that allows the clue-giver to give more information about the prior guesses and clues (good, ignore, A connected to B, etc.) Best for adults, but playable with older kids.

The Reckoners (Brandon Sanderson themed game) – coming soon to Kickstarter!

(22:40) IDW was showing Seikatsu, with the designer Isaac Shalev. They were pushing their new “Atari” series. Centipede is out now. Missile Command is slated to be out in January, Asteroids in March, and Joust was teased for later in 2018.

(24:07) Studio Woe – Gruff and Pirate Tanks of Skull Rock (dexterity game, flick coins onto “skull rock” or knock over opponent’s ships)

(26:51) Kids highly enjoyed some dexterity games from Mayday – Coconuts and Click Clack Lumberjack.

(30:00) We finally got a chance to meet James Hudson in person and actually play a (shortened) game of The Grimm Forest! Can’t wait to get our copy.

(31:15) Studio Wumpus showed us Sumer – a digital board game. It’s a worker-placement game played in real-time. 1-4 players, currently available on Steam and coming soon to the Nintendo Switch! (www.sumergame.com)

(34:00) Devir showed us Checkpoint Charlie (deduction, everyone is a dog detective possessing ONE clue to the identity of the cat spy), Fast Food Fear (cooperative speed matching/set collection game), and Dragons & Chickens (combines pattern recognition a la Spot It! with a hierarchy of several different actions)

(41:19) USAopoly showed us Codenames: Disney Family Edition, but also Super Mario: Level Up! Each player has a (secret) card of 6 characters. Take turns moving any character up the staircase of “levels” and revealing powerups.