Board Games

Reversi

Reversi is a strategy board game for two players, played on an 8×8 uncheckered board. There are sixty-four identical game pieces called disks (often spelled “discs”), which are light on one side and dark on the other. Players take turns placing disks on the board with their assigned color facing up. During a play, any disks of the opponent’s color that are in a straight line and bounded by the disk just placed and another disk of the current player’s color are turned over to the current player’s color. The object of the game is to have the majority of disks turned to display your color when the last playable empty square is filled. Reversi was most recently marketed by Mattel under the trademark Othello.

 

 

Chinese Checkers

Chinese Checkers is a strategy board game of German origin (named “Sternhalma”) which can be played by two, three, four, or six people, playing individually or with partners. The game is a modern and simplified variant of the American game Halma.

The objective is to be first to race all of one’s pieces across the hexagram-shaped board into “home”—the corner of the star opposite one’s starting corner—using single-step moves or moves that jump over other pieces. The remaining players continue the game to establish second-, third-, fourth-, fifth-, and last-place finishers. The rules are simple, so even young children can play.

 

 

Snakes and Ladders

Snakes and Ladders is an ancient Indian board game regarded today as a worldwide classic. It is played between two or more players on a gameboard having numbered, gridded squares. A number of “ladders” and “snakes” are pictured on the board, each connecting two specific board squares. The object of the game is to navigate one’s game piece, according to die rolls, from the start (bottom square) to the finish (top square), helped or hindered by ladders and snakes respectively.

The game is a simple race contest based on sheer luck, and is popular with young children. The historic version had root in morality lessons, where a player’s progression up the board represented a life journey complicated by virtues (ladders) and vices (snakes). A commercial version with different morality lessons, Chutes and Ladders, is published by Milton Bradley.

 

 

Scrabble

Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players score points by placing tiles bearing a single letter onto a board divided into a 15×15 grid of squares. The tiles must form words that, in crossword fashion, read left to right in rows or downward in columns, and be included in a standard dictionary or lexicon.

The name is a trademark of Hasbro, Inc. in the United States and Canada; outside these two countries it is a trademark of Mattel. The game is sold in 121 countries and is available in 29 languages; approximately 150 million sets have been sold worldwide and roughly one-third of American and half of British homes have a Scrabble set. There are around 4,000 Scrabble clubs around the world.

 

 

 

Monopoly

Monopoly is a board game where players roll two six-sided dice to move around the game board, buying and trading properties, and developing them with houses and hotels. Players collect rent from their opponents, with the goal being to drive them into bankruptcy. Money can also be gained or lost through Chance and Community Chest cards, and tax squares; players can end up in jail, which they cannot move from until they have met one of several conditions. The game has numerous house rules, and hundreds of different editions exist, as well as many spin-offs and related media. Monopoly has become a part of international popular culture, having been licensed locally in more than 103 countries and printed in more than thirty-seven languages.

Monopoly is derived from The Landlord’s Game created by Elizabeth Magie in the United States in 1903 as a way to demonstrate that an economy which rewards wealth creation is better than one where monopolists work under few constraints, and to promote the economic theories of Henry George—in particular his ideas about taxation. It was first published by Parker Brothers in 1935. The game is named after the economic concept of monopoly—the domination of a market by a single entity. It is owned and produced by the American game and toy company Hasbro.