Hey, Pete:

When my sons were little, we spent many hours playing board games. They're a thing of the past over here, since video games came out. Last night, though, it was deja vu all over again. My 10 year old grandaughter and 8 year old something or other once removed had finally become bored with tv and video games and started snooping around in the cupboards. They found a Sorry game that I bought for just such a purpose a couple of years ago, and they were lying on the floor, deep in argument over a move one of them made. Made it feel like the '60's again. Or the '40's. Sorry was my oldest son's favorite board game and I gave one to his son last Christmas. They live a thousand miles away (doesn't everyone?) so I don't know if they ever played it. My grandson amkes the Tazmanian Devil look calm, so I don't know if he could have come to a complete halt long enough to play it. Of course we played monopoly, and when the boys were little an Uncle Wiggily game. I was an Uncle Wiggily fan as a kid (not the game, which didn't exist back then as far as I know. When I got sick, my mother would buy me an Uncle Wiggily game. A bonus for getting sick. Who could resist Petty Bow-Wow and the Puppy Chaps? Those Rascalls! We also played Parcheesi a lot, and Chinese Checkers. In college, I became addicted to Go for a few years.

When I was in college, my roommate gor on a game inventing kick. I developed an evolution game, being a geology major. You had your choice of being a Sabre Toothed Tiger,a Mammoth and two other extinct animals I've since forgotten. To move, you drew a card from the gene pool. There were climate change cards (an evolutionary Go To Jail Card,) too. If you were a Wooly Mammoth and someone drew a tropical climate card, you genes for thick fur suddently would earn you a negative move. The game was over when someone reached their apex of evolution, but you could also go extinct if the climate was
wrong for too long a time. You could keep backing up until you went off the board.

And then there was the mountain climbing game, with the simplest of strategy. The game board was very elongated with several possible paths to take to the top. Some were riskier than others with icy ridges subject to avalanches. A more sophisticated Chutes and Ladders. Strategy depended on whether you took a safer, longer path, or a shorter more dangerous one. You could also sabotoge each other my loosening each others pitons or intentionally starting an avalanche. "Ma, Jimmy loosend my pitons again!"

On a safer lever, I did a scavneger hunt game, with the board laid out as the streets of a neighborhood. Everyone would draw a list of items to find, and they were on small squares placed upside down on the outlines of houses. You ahd to drive around to the houses and see if they contained one of your items. If not, you left the card turned over so no one else would know what was there. To make life more interesting, there were traffic jam cards that slowed you down if you happened to be driving on that street, road under construction cards, and even a reversal of direction on one way streets. Just like real life.

Sorry, Pete. You asked about games.

Now someone could create a Mudcat Cafe game...

Jerry