Shut the Box has a place in pubs and toy boxes

 I was surprised to see I’d never written about Shut the Box, even though it’s one of these games that I’ve played every once in a blue moon for years. 

Shut the Box is one of those pub games that can be played when you are blind drunk and the components can survive having drinks spilled all over them. There are different versions of the game but they all break down to rolling dice and flipping over numbered levers equal to the sum of the dice.

The classic version of the game has the levers in an actual box that you can close if you flip over all the levers. However, I have also seen instructions to just write the numbers on a sheet of paper and cover them with buttons. (That was in a book of kids games) 

I first came across it as a heritage edition-style game that was bigger than a Ticket to Ride box. The back, which also included the rules, said that the game originated on fishing boats where it could be played despite waves. Which is a delightful story but I haven’t actually found any evidence to back to up. It was a charming and pretty object but that couldn’t hide that there’s really not much to Shut the Box and it didn’t stay in my collection for long.

When you get past the novelty of flipping the levers, Shut the Box doesn’t offer very much. When you compare it to other pub-style dice games, like Farkle, it barely has a decision tree. The game makes more sense when you figure that its origins are in gambling. Money on the line always makes things more interesting. 

Despite that, I have gotten in the odd play, be it online or a simpler homemade copy since that heritage edition took up too much space on the game shelf. There is an odd fascination to Shut the Box for me, particularly as a historical item.

Recently, I made a set of Shut the Box cards because it amused me. More than anything else, it reminded why I don’t play it much. Yes, I play  brain fog games that I can play in a daze but Shut the Box is really too slight for even that. But a tiny handful of cards is something I can keep around.

Shut the Box is a game that will probably never be in my wheelhouse but it seems to have kept it’s home as a pub game and found one as a children’s game.

My July Gaming

July was a solid month for learning games for me. I finished going through Dr. Finn’s Book of Solo Strategy and Word Games. I got in some play testing, which always feels like a privilege. And I learned some other games.

I learned:

My Perfect City (Dr. Finn)

Paper App Galaxy

Cosmic Run: Mission Run (Dr. Finn)

Aqua ROVE

ROVE JR

Aqua ROVE - Dangerous Depths expansion (playtest)

Monster Dinner Party 

Around the World in 10-15 Minutes (USA and Europe maps)

I’ve really enjoyed Dr. Finn’s book. The games are really strong for casual play. They don’t last longer than ten, fifteen minutes and they’re easy to learn. At the same time, they deliver a definite game. I’ve been going back to them and I think I will keep doing that.

However, exploring the ROVE family was my big July experience. As I’ve said, I appreciated the design of the original ROVE, I didn’t actually enjoy playing it. Since I decided to play test an Aqua ROVE expansion, I had to learn Aqua ROVE and I decided to learn JR as well.

Both Aqua and JR meaningfully shift the movement rules in a way that are easier for my brain to handle. Aqua ROVE is arguably harder than the original game but being able to process it makes it more fun. JR is simpler, enough that it’s now on my casual play list.

Although it’s not on the list, I also tried out the dice-free variant of Paper App Golf. I appreciate that it exists but, unsurprisingly, it removes everything that’s interesting about what is already a very simple game. Paper App Galaxy, on the other hand, promises to be an interesting campaign game.

With some games, after I’ve learned them, I figure out what I’ve learned from them and I’m done. Which isn’t that unreasonable with PnP and prototypes. But last month, just about everything I learned, I plan to go back to.

My July PnP

 Huh, August snuck up on me. Well, time to write about what Print and Play Projects I made in July.

I made:

Dungeon Post

Concealed (zen mode board)

Par Out Golf demo

Rollway Station (basic map)

Aqua ROVE

Aqua ROVE - Dreadful Depths (playtest)

Battle Crest - Fell Woods

Battle Crest -Imperator 

Monster Dinner Party

One Card Maze

My original ‘big’ project for the month was Dungeon Post. I haven’t actually learned it yet but I know that I won’t play it if I don’t have it made lol

However, playtesting for Button Shy was what actually ended up being my crafting focus. I realized that I hadn’t actually ever made a copy of Aqua ROVE so I had to make a copy to playtest an expansion. And while I didn’t think I would playtest the new Battle Crest module, I made a copy of the base game and the solo module/AI so I could learn the system if I felt like it. (So far, I haven’t but having a copy makes it much more likely)

I can already see with the school year kicking in, my crafting time will be limited. But July let me make stuff that will be seeing some play.

Exploring new places in Around the World in 10-15 Minutes

 Last year, I tried out Around the World in 10-15 Minutes, a print-and-play game from No Box Games about world travel. My initial impressions of the game was that the mechanics were a little weak but it was rich with theme.

And, to be honest, my opinion has remained pretty much the same. I don’t find it hard to get a good score, at least while playing it solitaire. Having said that, it hits the table at least a couple times a month.

TransAmerica and Ticket to Ride were a big part of my early board gaming experiences and I still feel they are essential gaming. Around the World in 10-15 Minutes isn’t even vaguely in their league but it definitely has a similar flavor, which isn’t bad for a one-sheet Roll and Write. And since you sightsee and buy souvenirs as well as travel, the game just has chill, decompressing feel overall. 

I had been saving the expansion maps for a good occasion but I realized that it is human nature to always have more games than time. So I have now played the USA map and the Europe map, both of which have their twists.

The USA map is broken down into six areas like the original world map. However, it has four bonus cities (Anchorage, Honolulu, Washington DC and San Juan) They only have two paths each, cannot be used for souvenirs or exploring, but they are worth a fourth set of points. I can usually hit every city in the world map but adding four more cities ramps up the difficulty in a good way.

While the Europe map has 18 cities like the world map, it only has four regions. The twist is that you compete for who has the most cities in each region.

The USA map has become my favorite map of the series. It does what I want with an expansion map. It adds a new mechanic that seamlessly fits in with the mechanics and the theme. It also ups the difficulty, keeping the game from becoming too formulaic. 

On the other hand, as someone who is playing the game solitaire, the Europe map doesn’t interest me as much. Its twist is only for multi-player games. On the third hand, by adding a layer of player interaction (albeit indirect interaction), the Europe map is the one for multi-player. To the point where I’d skip the world map and go straight to it if I was playing the game with other folks.

I am actually surprised that I haven’t seen any fan-made maps. I think the system would be ripe for fan expansion. If they are out there, point me their way. 

The expansions of Around the World in 10-15 Minutes have the system continue to do what keeps me coming back: remind me why I got into board games while being engaging in its own right.

Monstrously Cute is unadulterated escapism

Hitting the random media button on TV Tropes (which I do quite often) let me discover the web comic Monstrously Cute. Which I proceeded to describe to my family as ‘Monster High if Sanrio made it’ To which my son replied ‘Sanrio already did that. That’d be Kuromi’ 

He makes a good point.

Monstrously Cute is a slice-of-life comic about a gorgon, a sphinx, a werewolf and a vampire who are roommates. And they are such chibi monster girls that I only got the vampire’s species right when I saw a cast picture. (Before I saw the tail, I felt the werewolf looked more cat-like than canine)

Monstrously Cute is so cheerfully benign that it makes Chi’s Sweet Home look like Berserk. It is relentlessly sweet and gentle. Heck, the vampire is even vegan.

The stories are about how the girls help and support each other out through life’s trials and tribulations. Their inhuman natures are simply used for gentle jokes like the gorgon’s snake hair getting stuffed up too when she has allergies.

… Actually, Kuromi is hardcore compared to Monstrously Cute.

At another time, Monstrously Cute would just be a blip on the radar for me. However, with the world not only constantly on fire but so many different flavors of fire, Monstrously Cute is wonderfully decompressing. 

Monstrously Cute’s biggest virtue may be escapism but that is a definite virtue.

https://www.monstrouslycute.com/

Mario Kart World is cartoon physics at its finest

I found myself struggling to write about Mario Kart World because I wanted to open with ‘Its Mario’s World and we’re just living in it’

The Mario Kart franchise is about video game characters racing in go karts with heavily exaggerated physics and incredibly unlikely random weaponry. Aaaand  you probably already know that.

I remember a PC gamer friend telling me that the Switch 2 having a party game as their big launch game was mistake. My reaction was ‘huh, I guess Mario Kart can be a party’ and ‘Isn’t Mario Kart 8 the best selling Switch game so wouldn’t that make Mario Kart a solid bet for Nintendo?’

And, at least for our family, Mario Kart World has been a winner. To be fair, we occasionally revisit Mario Kart DS and Mario Kart 7 and played tons of Mario Kart 8 Deluxe so we were always going to be an easy sell. But Mario Kart World may become our favorite so far.

(The idea of an open world Mario Kart still feels kind of strange. I personally am in it just for the races but I do like the option of cross county races.)

Instead of boring you with details about the game, since people far better qualified than I am have published plenty of articles about it, I want to comment on one key element. That Mario Kart World leans even further into the exaggerated physics, getting us even closer to a Looney Tunes cartoon.

You are now able to do jumps and flips simply by accelerating. You can grind in rails and even things like telephone lines, although I don’t know if grind is really the right term. You are a cartoon pinball and the world is your cabinet.

Something I have come to realize as I grow older as a gamer is that the casual audience is a quiet giant. I am paraphrasing but I remember James Ernst saying at a convention that a designer asking him if a pub game like Pairs had any sales potential and Ernst’s response being ‘Have you met people?’

Mario Kart World is not a work of literature in video game form (which definitely exist) but it is a ton of fun.

Pen Pals recycles old mechanics into solid gameplay

Pen Pals from Dr. Finn’s Book of Solo Strategy and Word Games is one of the strategy games, although the name sounds like it could have been one of the word games too. Instead, it’s about making animal pens.

Like every game in the book, it’s a solitaire Roll and Write. The play sheet has six by seven grid with pigs, cows, ducks and sheep sprinkled in the squares and two spaces in each row for possible water bucket placement. At the top has a twelve by two grid of different fence shapes.

You set up the game by rolling to see which of the two water bucket spots you’ll use in each column. After that, you start fencing. The border of the grid is a fence. The first placement has to touch the border and every piece after that has to be part of the same network. You also can’t flip or rotate a shape. 

Choosing the shape of the fence is a little different than the usual R&W formula. The table has two columns for each pip and the two rows are for even and odd. Roll two dice. Pick one for the column and one for the row. You cross off a column after it’s been used. If it’s impossible to pick a column, the dice become wild and you can pick any available column. After twelve turns, game’s over and you figure out your score. 

Animals have to be in a pen with a water bucket to be worth any points. If a pen has only one water bucket, you choose either to score how many different types of animals or how many of one type of animal. The more, the merrier. If there is more than one bucket in a pen, you just score one point per animal.

Pen Pals uses a lot of well trod ideas. Thematically, it reminds me of Raging Bulls. It has a lot in common with 13 Sheep, my go-to for introducing Roll & Writes in the classroom. And, frankly, drawing shapes on a grid practically feels like the default idea for Roll & Writes.

And the tweaks Steve Finn added aren’t that crazy. The even-odd rows, the fact that you can’t rotate or flip shapes and some more unusual shapes aren’t dramatic changes. 

But they are enough to make an interesting decision tree and an engaging game. Pen Pals is a game that keeps me coming back. The short play time makes it easy to come back to and the tough choices make it worth coming back.

It doesn’t remake the wheel. Instead, it is a very good wheel. If you’ve played when a few Roll and Writes, the learning curve is practically a flat line. But that doesn’t change the fact that the game play is good.

Something I keep coming back to when I look at this book is that Steve Finn has made a collection of games that are extremely accessible and very suitable for casual gaming. It is a book for a wide audience.