ScottVee Gaming

We went up to the World Science Fiction Convention in Anaheim yesterday, on a last-minute "why not?" mission.  As always, I had terribly anxiety on I-5 driving up there, but we made it from 9 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. before the heat and endless walking wore us out.  We did finally find the gaming room where there was a library of hundreds of games, and maybe 10 people at four tables players having a good time. As a quiet place to relax, it was perfect.  The first few games we took out turned out to have a minimum of 3 players, so, um, whatever.  Then I brought over "Here, Kitty Kitty!" and it was a winner.  Easy to learn, with friendly art and some good visual gags on the cards. You start by choosing a house tile with three spaces (Yard, Porch and House), and you dump the 40 plastic cats into the space between the houses, a.k.a. the "Neighborhood". Each turn, you get two actions out of 1. move a cat one space, 2. play a card, 3. discard up to 3 cards and draw ...

The is a cute one-page jam game I found on itch.io.  It can be printed on a single sheet of paper and folded into a little 8-page booklet that would fit into a regular deck of cards.  I have seen a few of these now, and they are both cute and clever.  The creator's playthrough video is here . Meow.  We sat down and played it on Saturday, ironically just a few hours after taking my cat Mango to the vet. Since all the rules had to fit on one sheet of paper, it wouldn't be expected to be hugely elaborate.  Instead, these games give such clever basic frameworks, you can imagine scenarios and expansions in your mind's eye.  Here, you make a basic character with a name and four d6 stats, and this character is going to wander around town looking for cats to rescue. Roll dice to pick a few odd items that you can maybe roleplay into the game.  Then roll 2d6 to see which part of town you're visiting and another 2d6 to see what you're doing in that part of town....

I was exploring more games on itch.io and came across the most amazing bundle ... their Games for Scholarships bundle offers 324 games for $10 or pay what you want.  I paid $40.  I was going to do a wacky number like $43.21 but it only takes $5 increments.   These are mostly small games, and entries into one-page or one-day design contests, but still, I will gladly give them $2-$3 individually, so this is unbeatable.  I look for the ones with strange topics and quirky humor.  Things I have not seen so many times before.  And boy are there some unique things in here. I will quote their main pitch here: "Funds raised will provide scholarships for underserved youth participating in the Games for Change Student Challenge, a global game design competition that invites students ages 10-25 to create original digital and tabletop games about issues impacting their communities." I have already read PDFs for 4NC13ENTS, The Uninvited Guest, Finals (an arcane co...

We figured it would be good to look at all those apps for Card Golf games to see what the "core rules" really are.  A developer isn't going to spend so much of their time just to code some weird, unpopular, unknown variation.  There is definitely a pattern. There are 4, 6, 8, 9 and 10 cards layouts.  We could just as easily deal out 12 like in Skyjo. Every app asks each player to flip two cards face up to start the game.  A few start with a peek at the bottom row of cards.  The ones with the peek are more likely to be memory games where you don't expose cards until you finally go out at the end.  That is not a play style we enjoy, so we moved along. The default scoring is: Ace = 1, 2-10 = face value, J & Q = 10, K = 0.  Jokers are -2 if included.  If not, score the twos as -2 instead.  Vertical pairs or triples (in the 9-card version) cancel out and score 0. The game flows better when you can discard without revealing one of your face-dow...

Continuing from last time, here are more Card Golf android apps... 5. The next Android app we found was " Card Golf & 31: Scat Cards " by Gameyantra.  Last updated Aug 11, 2026.   This developer has over a dozen other games, including one that runs 14 popular card games from India. This one will play 4, 6, or 8 card games.  It had good basic game play but the screens rendered a little larger than the actual screen, so when I went to any Settings page there was no way to get back to the home page -- I had to restart each time.  You can go ad free forever for $0.99, or watch one ad for 60 minutes ad-free, but it can't keep getting stuck. 6. Next was " Golf Card Game " by JoshsGames.com Last updated June 14, 2026.  This app will play 4, 6 or 9 card games with 6, 9 or 18 holes.  Unlike most of the others, you can set the card speed, and choose whether or not to peek at the bottom row of cards.  There are 12 computer "players" to choose f...

After reviving many variations of Six-Card Golf (and Four and Nine card games) in my previous post, we went looking for Android apps to play them together. 1. We tried " The Golf Card Game " by Glowing Eye Games This ran a Four Card Game against two computer players and you could kill ads permanently for $2.99.  It was fairly solid but limited.  There were no real settings or options to play with.   2. Next came " Play Nine: Golf Card Game " by Bonfit This was also a solid play, and it had the best range of options, from single player to a Play With Friends mode where you create a room with 2-4 players over 3-9 holes, also Tournament and Multiplayer and an endless Journey from course to course.  It only did Eight Card Golf. But the ads were relentless after almost every hand, at could only be removed by a $12.99/year "club membership".  No.  $3-5 is fair for these.  I'm not going to be charged 11 months from now for something I forgot I ever downl...

When we reviewed Skyjo a few weeks ago, it reminded everyone of "Nine Cards Down", which we reviewed 5 years ago . This weekend, we tried out the rules for Nine Cards Down that I gathered for that old post.  Back then, we played it and it felt fine.  Today we played it and it was lifeless and dull.  What happened? I followed the links from my previous post and found that this family of "golf" card games is enormous, and you can skip from one page to another saying "some people score this way" and "other people do this instead."  I'm not sure there is anything even close to a standard game here. The basic rules (from last time) are: You start by dealing 9 cards to each player, and the players make a 3x3 grid of cards without ever looking at them.  Each player flips over two of their cards face up. The most basic scoring is: A = 1, 2-10= face value, J & Q = 10 and K = 0.  Skip jokers for now. The turns are simple: pick a card from the deck...

I first heard about Joker Jailbreak when I saw Mark playing it on his Riffle, Shuffle & Roll youtube channel.  The game was created by Ramon Huiskamp (roofkat) about 6-7 years ago.  The home page on itch.io is here. This is a fun little solitaire game with a standard deck of cards.  To setup, remove one joker and put the other joker in the middle of the table.  Now build the jail around the joker by putting stacks of six face down cards above, below, to the left and right around the center.  These are the "walls" of the jail.  Add corner stacks of two face down cards, then add a face-up card to all 8 of those stacks surrounding the joker.  The remaining cards are set aside face down as the remainder pile.  This setup uses 4x7 + 4x3 = 40 cards, so there should be 12 cards left in the remainder pile. The goal is to break through one of the walls so the joker can escape.  Clearing the cards from a corner is not an escape. On each turn...

Collapsi is a neat little quick card game from 2025 created and presented by Mark Ball on the Riffle, Shuffle and Roll channel. It only takes a few minutes to figure out, as there are only a few rules.  It's played on a 4x4 grid of regular playing cards (four aces, four 2s, four 3s, two 4s and two jacks).  You move pieces on top of the cards, with each of the players starting on one of the jacks.  On each turn, you move a number of moves equal to the value of the card you start on, with those starting jacks counting as one.  You can wrap around the rows or columns. After you move, you flip ("collapse") the card you started on.  You cannot move through a collapsed card or land on it.  The only other rules are: you can move through a card with an opponent piece on it but cannot land on an occupied card; you can change direction during your move; but you can't land on any card more than once during your move.  The last player who makes a valid move is th...

Chickapig looked cute when I bought it, but it sat on the shelf for a while because it also looked a bit dopey.  So, when we finally sat down to play we figured what the heck, it could be fun.  And fun it was. It's an abstract game where you try to get your little animals across the board.  There are chickapigs, hay bales, and a cow that poops when it moves.  Haybales can only move one space orthagonally, but your chickapigs can move in a straight line until they hit an obstacle.  They cannot stop halfway.  You roll a die to see how many moved you get, and you can choose any combination of pieces to move ... so you can smack into another piece then change direction, shoot all the way across the board and bonk into something else. If you roll a one, you have to move the cow instead.  In this case, you can move it to any other space, but it leaves a poop behind.  If you roll a two, you can either make two moves or take a card you can use now or late...

We took a crack at Looting Atlantis today, and really could not get into it.  On the box it sounded like  you place lava tokens and grab cards before the city burns down.  In actual practice, putting those 4 cards on every board space took up a lot more room than expected, and then the rules missed a lot of situations. Even how to place a lava token was not described well.  It was either "on the next space in a lane" or "moving out across city spaces" or you could start a new lava lane.  This could have been described as simply "on a space with a red triangle or next to any space that already has lava on it." We didn't see the note that for two players, you should place two lava tokens at the start of each turn, then take your two moves.  Or the note that after the lava hits a city space, you take three moves per turn for the rest of the game. We saw that the cards had special scoring rules and effects written on them, but they were a bit hard to read....

Anne's family had another gathering, and while we were still waiting for people to get there, I noticed the game Skyjo sitting on top of the usual stack of games.  I didn't think about it until after pizza, when a cousin said she found this neat new game on a trip to Guatemala.  The same Skyjo that we discovered a few weeks ago.  That was an odd coincidence, stumbling on the same game just a few weeks apart but in different countries.  Anyway, I covered Skyjo here , when we played it with just two. One of the players said it reminded her of Nine Cards Down, which we covered here  . The main difference was that Skyjo has simple numeric Uno-style cards one a 3x4 grid where Nine Cards Down uses regular playing cards in a 3x3 grid.  But yes, there were similarities. Since we could not get away before the gaming broke out, we ended up playing Skyjo with 7 players.  In my mind I wondered how much table space you would need for the full 8 players listed on th...

Butterfly Garden is a gorgeous hexagonal tile placing game.  I grabbed it because it reminded me a bit of Tsuro , but with a nature theme.  The game designed was Reiner Knizia, a name that sounded familiar ... I turns out he also created Botswana, which we reviewed recently . Among hexagonal tile placement path-building games, for simplicity Tsuro would win every time.  But there is a lot of room for variety.  In Butterfly Garden, the players have sections at the edge of the board marked as their "flower beds", and there are six fountain tiles around the edges that each start with one blue butterfly, and one tile in the middle where the remaining six butterflies start with the purple one flying last. As you place tiles, you try to guide butterflies to you own flower bed, then score them by placing them behind your player screen.  The blue butterflies count as one point each, pink scores two and the solos purpler butterfly scores 3. After the first few moves, the...

At our regular boba place, one of the owners brought in yet another odd game for customers to play with.  This one looked vaguely familiar but had no markings at all, no brand or name.  The lady who brought it in said she didn't remember what it was, either.  The place was busy and there wasn't a chance to ask more about it. It was a wooden box with a grid of holes on all four upright sides and about twenty plastic sticks pushed through those holes.  With the sticks in place, it left room for five or six wooden balls at the top.  Clearly, the goal is to either bring balls to the bottom or prevent the same. I was able to find the same exact game on Amazon and Temu, but with such generic names that they are clearly knock-offs of something else.  They were called things like Ballfall and Montessori Drop Game.  I do not link to sites that are full of knock-off games. Now, if you Google the phrase "game with balls and sticks poked through holes" the top con...

I was trying to burn through the last of my birthday gift cards this week and stopped at Barnes & Noble again.  Gotta go where the gift cards take you.  I got book 7 of the Expanse and a little card game called Skyjo.  I almost didn't pick it up because it looked like Uno without the fun cards, or just another Skip Bo.  I watched a how-to-play video last night and Skyjo sounded like a quick learn.  We brought it to the hotel where we were planning to stay out of town on July 4th to avoid the fireworks noise that always upsets the dog. Again, the hotel had no place to actually play a board game.  There was a table about two foot by four but with only one chair.  Again, we thought about gaming at one of the tables down in the lobby, but then people would walk by and ask bothersome questions. It turns out that Skyjo can be played by two players on a firm hotel bed.  Each players gets 12 cards, which they put face down in a grid of 3 rows, 4 colu...

We got to play a round of Wooly Wars in the back yard today, under the shady canopy.  Our little round table was barely big enough to hold it, and the last few tiles had to be put somewhere else because we ran into the edge.  Here is the BGG page . This is a simple tile-placing game, trying to build the largest enclosed sheep pen of your color.  You oddly start off without showing which color you are playing. A sheep pen is enclosed by fences or forests, and if a wolf is placed in that adjacent forest, all connected pens are threatened, though a hunter tile can cancel out a wolf tile.  In the end, the protected pen with the largest population wins. There are some odd extra rules that happen in the middle of the game, like exposing which color you are playing.  With two people, it felt irrelevant.  Then there is the shepherdess tile that lets you change colors, also irrelevant.  You can also choose to stop placing tiles and take a bonus; I think the fir...

This was just hilarious.  It's a very simple game for kids, but one of the cutest ideas we have seen in a while.  Your goal is to collect five different colors of acorns.  You spin the spinner, and it says to either pick an acorn of a specific color, or 1 or 2 acorns of your choice, or steal one, or lose a turn.  That's all. There is a large squirrel prop in the box, and it turns out to be a big pair of pliers.  You use that thing to pick up the acorns in its squirrely hands and put them into the matching color holes in your stash. The presentation of the game in its big tree-shaped box with all the colorful pieces and pet squirrel inside -- it made us feel like kids again. That's the whole game, but the game was so darn cute, it was hard not to chomp on Anne's fingers with that big squirrel toy.  This one is going straight to the 4-year-old grand-niece (sort of) who needs a squirrel to play with.     The squirrel even helped us put the pieces bac...

After a two-day trip to Temecula found no worthwhile games in any thrift shops, and no game shops in the area, we hit a jackpot on the way back from a haircut in Vista today.  The Goodwill shops in Temecula had hardly any games of any kind, and a disgruntled guy explained how they "sell everything good on their website these days," but the Goodwill in Vista says otherwise. We found Chickapig (which looked like a strategic piece-moving game), Shut the Box (because we've mentioned it a few times recently), a rudimentary molecule model kit (my house feels oddly empty without one ... once every few years) and the Sneaky, Snacky Squirrel Game! (which qualifies as a WTF find). Then we went to Pair-a-Dice games again, because the Leggs gave me a gift certificate at my birthday party.  Of course I overdid it.  Gift certificate times 5.  These days, one of the challenges in shopping for games is trying not to buy something that's just an expansion you can't use.  There ...

We finally got to play Diced Veggies at a hotel room.  Sadly, while the preview photos of the room showed a long desk, there was only one chair, so there was no comfortable place to try a new game. Boy, this does not work on a bed.  The main gimmick is to set up the 35 dice in the square frame and trim off some dice with the cardboard cleaver.   You start with two recipe cards and a booster card.  Basically, each turn you try to carve out some dice you need from the grid of dice and match the colors to the colors in one of your recipe cards.  If you can match the numbers or sums on a booster card, you score those points too.  As I recall, at the end of a turn there is a max of two recipe cards, two booster card, and 8 dice that you can keep.  The rest have to be discarded.  The dice go back into the rectangular frame.  And when you complete a recipe, those dice also go back into the grid.  Each card scores around 4-5 points. Each pl...