Sum Wars on Kickstarter...

My family has been subjected to many games over the years and there are a few that can get a bit rowdy, particularly with my mother.  She's a sharp player and picks up rules very quickly, but throw a frantic game at her where everyone plays at once and she comes out swinging.  HA!  My sister and I can recall many rounds of Dutch Blitz which got way out of hand.  Another game which was a frantic, violent favourite of ours is called Pick Two.  It was basically Scrabble on speed.  Players draw two tiles at at time to add to their crosswords and once one person uses them all everyone immediately has to draw two more, whether they want to or not.  It's a riot. 

Well, a new game Sum Wars is currently campaigning on Kickstarter and it's kind of like the mathematical heir to Pick Two.  And since I loved Pick Two and I studied math in university for far, far too long, I am particularly interested in this game.  In Sum Wars, the crosswords are now built with simple equations and you always have access to the addition, subtraction, and equal tiles.  There are also bomb tiles which allow you to remove other players tiles and will add more to the interaction and nastiness.



I'm an avid supporter of math education and if Sum Wars does for numbers what Pick Two did for spelling, then I imagine it would be an excellent addition to any math classroom or even just your own board game collection.  Check out the video above or the Kickstarter page here for more info.

Ideal post-secondary institutions....

If game design is your thing and you don't already have a ridiculous amount of useless degrees like me, then this post about gamer-friendly universities might help you out.  It's mostly video game-related but there is at least one instructor mentioned who makes her students play Clue to sharpen their skills (although I think could name at least a few much smarter deduction games than Clue....)

Gaming for understanding....

This is an awesome response to a child who asks about slavery.  It takes a few minutes to get into it but it is totally worth it.  Yes, yes, yes, games have educational value.

"We're not going to make it." Amazing.

(Thanks for the tip, Andrew.)