Creepiest Kids Board Game Ever? Voodoo

Don't make fun, but I like to go antiquing. Not only is it like stepping back in time, but you can find some really amazing pieces of home decor, clothing, and even board games. Plus (bonus!) most antique dealers don't know the value of board games whatsoever. Most would probably charge more for a Dukes of Hazard game than they would for a copy of Big Boggle. Suckers. So you can either make big, fat cash for games you find, or you can pick up some playable treasures on the cheap. Win-win.

But on Friday, at an antique store in Livonia, the Greatest Husband in the World found a board game treasure worth more than mere currency. It HAS to be the reigning champion for the creepiest damn kids game ever made. Seriously.

Gamers, meet Voodoo. The game where you poke pins into a voodoo doll until you anger the witch doctor and he comes after you.

The game was published in 1967, at the height of American cultural sensitivity and an era of compassionate nurturing of our youth. </sarcasm> Now there are a couple of things that really strike me as both terrifying and delightful about this game:

1. The marketing. It's really marketed heavily to kids, in that the box actually reads "Voodoo Doll Game for boys and girls". See? They even print it on the plastic game board. As if the clarification was really needed.

2. The box art. This had to give a lot of kids nightmares. The cartoon voodoo doll on the cover--the one with the fangs, black finger nails, red eyes (and a lovely pearl necklace)--is compelling you to stab her with large pins. And those have to be the BIGGEST, scariest damn pins I've ever seen, since they're apparently as big as a bongo drum or a small witch doctor.

Side note: Does anyone else remember Halloween III: Season of the Witch when that company tries to sell Halloween masks that will hypnotize and then murder all the little kids in the world on Halloween? I keep getting that feeling about this game. I played it once today, and now tomorrow morning I'm worried I'm going to wake up and find my husband punctured with dozens of knitting needles in the bed beside me. My hands will be covered in blood, but I won't remember what happened. It's all black.

3. They set you up to scare the living crap out of your playmates. During game set-up, you have to activate the mechanism that makes the witch doctor pop out of his hut by secretly placing tiny metal pins into the holes of the doll device (helloooooo, choking hazards!). Each opponent takes turns doing this in secret, away from the prying eyes of her friends. Then blammo, you're responsible for giving the other little kiddies a heart attack when they punch your landmine.

4. The witch doctor makes me shit my pants. Okay, not really. But close. Too close. So you play this game by taking a bunch of plastic pins and poking them into the plastic molding of a voo doo doll girl (the one with the fangs). If you poke her in the wrong place (dirty!), the witch doctor comes popping out of his hut (presumably to eat your vital organs, starting with your eyeballs). And that witch doctor is SCARY. He comes flying out with such a large POP! that I jump every time.

Then again, I'm the person whose nerves are too tender to play Operation. So maybe don't take my word for it.

So why did I buy this game? Well, first, it was only $5.00. The box is there, and the mechanism still functions perfectly. But also, how cool is it that this game was made to frighten children in such a gruesome way? They NEVER would make this game today. The whole premise is to get kids good and creeped out, force them to play voodoo priestess, poke a doll with play needles, and then POP! Surprise, you lose. It's a horror movie experience, all wrapped up in a clever simple little board game. Wicked awesome in a box.

I've already played it enough times to make myself giggle, and to chase my husband around with the box lid yelling that it's going to eat him. So I'll be putting this for sale over at BGG, in case anyone's interested in a little piece of frightening Americana. I highly recommend it for a dark and stormy night!

Last Chance for Origins Early Registration Discount

Hey gamers, if you're cool like me and plan to be at Origins Game Fair this June, this is your notice that you have TWO days left to qualify for early registration discounts. Gaaa! Two days! PANIC!

Here's what this means for you: Up until January 15, you can register for Origins at the discounted rate of $55. After this Saturday, you will have to pay $65 per person for registration. (Egads, that's one less Quiznos order to have delivered to your gaming table!) If you're ready to take the plunge and register (and you can bet your feather hat that we're registering tonight!), you can do so by clicking on THIS LINK to the official Origins website.

This year's Origins is being held from June 22-26 at the Greater Columbus Convention Center in Columbus, Ohio. Last year over 10,000 nerds showed up (including one bare-breasted chica I spied walking down the main hall). There are lists of hotels that cater to the event right on the Origins website, and TRUST ME, it doesn't matter how close your hotel is since the shuttle conveniently runs all the time.
Hope we'll see you there!

Interview: W. David MacKenzie from Clever Mojo Games

If you've never heard of Clever Mojo games, then please let me be the first to introduce you, for you will surely hear a whole lot more about them in coming months and years. Most notably for fans of this blog, Clever Mojo is the game publisher that brings us Alien Frontiers (among other titles). The retro-stylized, dice-thick space adventure game was recently reviewed here on this blog, and I'm not bashful about saying that I've quickly become a huge fan and champion of the game. Over at BGG, I was greedily excited to post my review, not realizing that the actual game designers may be digesting my words. But to my delight, W. David MacKenzie--owner and head designer over at Clever Mojo Games--left a note of thanks on the review post. Pretty exciting, right? Well, I just had to seize on the opportunity and take advantage of his graciousness by asking to pick his brain about what's coming up in the Clever Mojo world. And wouldn't you know, he was kind enough to reply right back to me and answer a slew of questions that I now have here to share with you.

First, just a little background on Clever Mojo Games: The gaming publisher primarily consists of three game designers, Mr. MacKenzie, Tory Niemann (designer of Alien Frontiers), and Fred MacKenzie. Alien Frontiers is the third game generated by the outfit, which is based out of Edmonds, Washington. For more info about the publisher and their other games, you can visit their website at: www.clevermojogames.com.

Okay, enough background. Let's get on with the interesting answers, teasers, and insight! Below is the email interview from W. David MacKenzie, in its entirety. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

   When will the second print run of Alien Frontiers be available?

We signed off on the proofs for the second printing a few days before Christmas so they're busily churning out Alien Frontiers components right now and we're aiming at having the games in people's hands by the end of March, 2011. That sounds like a long time but it takes nearly a month to get the games out of China over to America on a container ship, and checked in through US Customs. Also, we're up against a little bit of a brick wall in that we're trying to get our order onto the boat before the Lunar New Year on February 3rd. China basically closes down for a full week, all the factory workers go home for the week-long holiday, and many of them never come back to the cities and the factories. Often the factories will take two or three weeks longer to hire and train new workers before they can get back into production. So, we're racing the clock a little to make it to the boat on time.

   ...and how large will the second print run be?

We've ordered 3,000 copies for the second printing.

Editor's note: It looks like pre-order sales are now open on the Clever Mojo website. I wouldn't suggest waiting on this one.

   Do you plan on using Kickstarter.com for the Alien Frontiers expansion, "Outer Belt"? Or for any future projects?

Kickstarter was a great adventure for us and, if possible, we would love to bring more projects to life via Kickstarter's crowd-sourced funding system. Still a little too early yet to say which projects will get the Kickstarter treatment, though.

   Speaking of the Alien Frontiers expansion, "Outer Belt", when do you expect its release?

The latest rules build for Outer Belt was just turned in to me this week. Randall Bart, one of our chief play testers, has been working on it for several months now and we'll be bringing Outer Belt to the play tester in WA and AZ later in January. If it plays well and if we can get Mark Maxwell started on the art, we should be able to release it late in 2011.

Editor's note: Maybe in time for a certain  fan's 31st birthday in September?...Hmmm?

   How would you summarize your overall experience with Kickstarter.com?

A bit humbling, actually. We were all stunned and how eager people were to get in on the ground-floor of our game project. In truth, we would have found a way to publish Alien Frontiers regardless, but the platform that Kickstarter gave us to gather and build our backers and fan made it all so much easier. I watch and support a fair number of projects on Kickstarter and while many make it to their funding goals, some really great ideas seem to languish. I really worked hard to put out a huge number of updates, send out art samples to our backers, involve the backers in the design process, and even enlisted them in the proofreading tasks.  Some people suggested that I was going way overboard on the almost daily updates, but I think that nearly all of our backers really enjoyed the flood of info and felt like they were integral parts of the project...and they were!  We love our Kickstarter backers.

   Will Clever Mojo Games be represented at major game conventions this summer? Particularly at Origins?

As a matter of fact, I am nearly certain that I will be at Origins 2011, though whether I'll be working a Clever Mojo Games vendor booth or just running Alien Frontiers demo games in the board room is still up in the air. I'm a real convention noob and I'm not ashamed to say that I'm a little bit scared of an event the size of Origins. I'm kind of hoping I can find another small-press game publisher and we can share a booth and help each other out. I need someone with some experience to guide me though my first big convention. But yes, in one capacity or another, I'm going to be there to fly the Alien Frontiers flag.

Editor's note: Exxcellent. I had to specifically ask about Origins since The Greatest Husband in the World and I are already squirreling away our nickels to fund a trip down to Ohio for the con in June. Can't wait to see more from Clever Mojo!

   What can you tell us about some exciting upcoming Clever Mojo Games projects?

We've got several games percolating through our design and play testing processes. My brother is designing a highly interactive deck building game called Dragon Frenzy, I'm working with a New Zealand game designer on the early stages of a Steampunk-themed adventure board game called Arkopolis Engines, and Tory's got an interesting mobster-themed game called Caporegime that blends deck building and board gaming in some pretty interesting ways. I don't know if any of these will see production in 2011 or not, though. Everyone involved with all of these projects have day jobs and Tory and his wife Melissa just welcomed the arrival of their first child, Penelope, on Jan 2nd. We're a busy busy crew and there's a lot of work to do before any project is ready for publication.

Editor's note: Congrats, Tory and Melissa! And welcome to the world, Penelope! I hope your mommy and daddy have gotten you some giant fuzzy dice to start rolling.

   What are some of your favorite board games of all-time?

Of all-time? I grew up on Risk and Scrabble. I went through high school and college with Dungeons & Dragons. I spent family gatherings playing Scattergories, Pictionary, and Mexican Train Dominoes. I was reborn into strategy gaming via Settlers of Catan. My current favorites are Tobago, Snow Tails, and Alien Frontiers.

Well, there you have it, folks! Lots of exciting things revealed here. Clever Mojo's presence at the game cons will be a blast, and I know a lot of people who will be psyched that Alien Frontiers could be in their hands as early as March. (By the way, who knew so much chaos and international cultural dealings went into getting games into Americans' hands? Fascinating to a noob like me.) Oh, and to the Misters MacKenzie, you both had me at "dragon frenzy" and "steampunk". Purrr. Caporagime has me drooling a little, too. Now I have to arch my hands together and tap my fingertips expectantly for the rest of the year until we hear more.

I would like to thank W. David MacKenzie for his time, his thoughtful answers, and his willingness to humor a slightly off-center blog like this one. We look forward to hearing much more about him and his games in the future!

Excellent Thrift Find: King Oil

Dig through enough piles of antique mall and thrift store board game garbage, and once in a great while you'll unearth a shining gem. This weekend, with family in tow, I plowed through booth after booth of musty antiques and mildewy books, tossing aside valuables to see the few board games stashed among the over-priced treasures. And BINGO! I found an excellent game from the 1970s that brings back nostalgia for a lot of people, forgotten among some Little Orphan Annie dolls and Carpenters records.

King Oil is a Milton Bradley game that was only printed for one year in 1974, and then vanished from store shelves forever. The game has an intricate plastic board with a unique mechanism, and its adult gameplay  captured a lot of imaginations in an era when board games were shifting more and more to child's play. Here's the BGG description of the game:

"This MB game comes with a plastic "board". Its size is dictated by the three randomizing discs embedded in its base, which are used to generate a new playing area every time (there are 1,728 (12^3) different setups possible). You buy properties, drill for oil, link properties with pipelines so as to collect royalties and try to be the richest player. Event cards complicate matters. Drilling is resolved with a little rig whose plunger is pushed up if it doesn't go through the hidden disc; if it pushes through all three, the well is dry. Deeper holes cost more, of course. Pipelines can be bought once you have 4 producing oil wells on a property; they reach across that property's boundary to another player's property, and are used to siphon royalties from him every turn. This is a clever mechanic that accelerates bankruptcy and keeps total playing time within reasonable limits. Once all players but one are pushed into bankruptcy, the remaining one is the winner." (source)

Interesting, no?

King Oil has always been a bit scarce though. The short print run certainly didn't help, but also there's the small flaw that the disc-randomizing mechanism that is seated under the plastic board tends to break with even minor abuse, rendering the set virtually unplayable. Lucky for me, the set I found hidden under a copy of The Flying Nun and The Bionic Woman board games is in excellent shape. The mechanism is still working, and the hundreds of teeny-tiny plastic pieces are all accounted for. Even the box is looking great, with no split corners or major damage (aside from some minor shelf wear).

So basically, I was stoked to find a gem like this, and now I'm glad to return this to the pool of board gamers who will love and care for this game and give it a good home. Maybe buy it a pony and take it to the zoo.

If you know anyone who's feeling retro and wants to check out the listing where we've posted it for sale on BGG, here's the link: King Oil. Otherwise, please enjoy this little peek back in time at what cool board games used to look like.

Fa-La-La-La-SPLAT!...My Holiday Gaming Summary

Somewhere around December 29 I heard my brain ping and then splat. That may have been the moment when I officially hit my gaming threshold for a one-week period. Maybe. Or perhaps that was the morning after The Greatest Husband in the World, my brother-in-law, and I all decided that the grandest finale to our board gaming bender was to drink non-stop Appletinis and White Russians (a lovely digestive combination, by the way), loop The Big Lebowski on the flat screen, and play a blitzkrieg of games. Yeah, maybe it was the aftershocks of one too many "Get a JOB, SIR!" shouts at the dice. Lazy dice.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The purpose of this post is to recap my holiday of gaming while I nurse my raw, stripped stomach back to health with lots of milk and Jell-O. Here's what went down, by the numbers:

Number of days brother-in-law-who-loves-board-games was visiting from Florida: 7

Number of different board games played: 13

Number of overall completed game plays: 38*

Number of games started...and then demolished, or forgotten in drunken stupors: Hard to say, maybe 5

Number of times The Big Lebowski was watched in one evening: 3

Number of hours it took for us to learn how to play Dungeon Lords: 5

Number of times a game required one of us to call other players "varmints": About 11

Number of fruit-themed games I was banned from playing with my family ever again: 1

Number of board game reviews I managed to type and publish during this time: 1 (yea, me!)

From the moment we got home from airport pick-up duty, we were gaming--at the kitchen table, at a coffee table in the living room in front of a movie, or at a card table in front of the fireplace (because damnit, it was cold!), we were gaming. Here's a roll-call of the games played (in no particular order):

Apples to Apples - 1
Clue: Master Detective - 2
Boggle - 2
Bananagrams - 10 (...guess which fruit-themed game I was bananned from?...get it? Ahh, fruit humor.)
Infinite City - 1
Alien Frontiers - 3
Mad Magazine Card Game - 3
Dungeon Lords - 3
Pompeii - 4
Go - 7
Puerto Rico - 2

And also add to that an unspecified number of games of Pictionary Man and Scattergories that were played Christmas evening with my lush of a sister. Probably dozens. Hard to say. After you've heard one Scattergories "penis" joke, you've heard a thousand.

So at the end of the holidays, did I scratch off every line of my Holiday Gaming To-Do List? Nuh-uh. Not even close. (Poor Small World.) But I think we may have set a new record in our household for number of games played in a 168-hour period. And if it wasn't for that last terrible night of dice tossing, when a rocks glass sat in each person's left hand, and a martini glass in each person's right hand, it might've been a spectacular--nay, glorious--holiday gaming blow-out. Instead, it was the worst long-term gaming + alcohol hangover I've ever had.

Sorry readers, you might need to give me a few days before I'm back in gaming form again. Happy New Year!