Hello Gaming Library Family!
It feels like the universe has owed us this for quite a while, but now is finally our time! Summer is just around the corner, and with the help of vaccines and booster shots, we are now heading out to beautiful vacations, both domestically and globally.
Whether you end up lounging in Boracay, sightseeing in Palawan, or surfing off the coasts of Siargao, or jet setting to Seoul, Tokyo, or Bangkok, travel board games are a great way to bond with family and friends. This summer, Gaming Library brings you our top picks for Board and Card Games For Travel in the Summer of 2023. Quick to set up, easy to learn, and convenient in the cleanup, these titles can keep up not only with your competitive edge, but also with your tourist agenda.
Make sure to check regularly to see when these titles arrive, if they’re not already available! And be sure to participate in our Summer Sale, 10% off on Travel/Vacation-friendly games with every purchase minimum P1000, available in-stores and online at the Gaming Library website!
Dobble, also known as Spot It!, is a simple pattern recognition game where players try to find an image shown on two cards. Each card in the original Spot it! features eight different symbols, each varying in size from card to card, with any two cards having exactly one symbol in common. In the basic Spot it! game, players reveal one card, then another. Whoever spots the symbol in common on both cards claims the first card, then another card is revealed for players to search, and so on. Whoever has collected the most cards when the 55-card deck runs out wins!
The noble Princess is looking for an ideal partner and confidant to help with her royal duties when she one day assumes the throne. In Love Letter, players must prove their worth and gain her trust by enlisting allies, friends, and family of the Princess to carry a letter of intent to her. By using the abilities of key people in the Princess' life to outwit their opponents and successfully deliver their letter and gain her favor, players account for each character's special skills to successfully deliver their letter to the Princess and avoid getting caught. Once a set number of favor tokens are acquired, that player wins and becomes the Princess' confidant. Will you earn the Princess’ trust?
Stack'n Stuff, a more streamlined version of Patchwork, has players on the move. Packing all of your stuff into a moving truck is quite tricky, costly, and time consuming—one has only so much time on their hands! During the game, the last player on the time track chooses one of the next three furniture items. After paying the transportation cost and spending the loading time, the player places the patch on their truck game board. Whoever manages to pack their truck best, as well as earns the most money during the game, is a moving master and wins!
…is both a delicious mouthful as well as a simple fast-paced card game. Similarly to Snap and Dobble, Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza has players taking turns placing cards from their hands face up in a community pile while saying either ‘taco,’ ‘cat,’ ‘goat,’ ‘cheese,’ or ‘pizza’ in a sequence. Once the cards and the players complete the mantra, BAM! All players slap their hands on the community pile, with the last player to do so picking up all the cards in the pile.
Additionally, special action cards such as the gorilla, narwhal, groundhog, and with the brand new Tarsier card (exclusive to the new PH edition!), force other players to make certain gestures before racing to slap the deck. The first person to get rid of all the cards in their hand wins!
Will you–or your palms–survive a grueling round of Taco Cat Goat Cheese Pizza?
A fun risk management, resource prediction party game, Bag of Chips is simple to play, but demands a keen sense of foresight. Players begin each game with six objective cards that will determine the kind of chips they’ll attempt to grab. Of the twenty-five chips total, there are five separate colors–all themed around different flavors, and coming in differing amounts of availability within the bag. Throughout the course of four rounds, a dealer will pull chips out of the bag and players must use and discard objective cards to predict the next set of chips that will be pulled out of the bag for each succeeding round. Players then check their remaining objective cards at the end of each round to see whether they’ve managed to predict chips correctly and collect reward tokens. The player who holds four or more reward tokens at the end of the game wins.
In a game of CABO, players move one turn after another to reduce the total value of their cards without seeing them, deducing whether or not they have the lowest value amongst themselves. By using certain powers to peek at your own cards, spy on your opponents’, or swap with them, you and your fellow players very subtly and discreetly scheme to get the lowest value of your cards and call “CABO!” Will you be the one to find Cabo the elusive unicorn?
Like a feline-infused reimagining of Russian Roulette, Exploding Kittens has players taking turns drawing cards until someone draws an Exploding Kitten and loses the game. With cards that let you avoid explosions by peeking at cards before you draw, forcing your opponents to draw multiple cards, or shuffling the deck, Exploding Kittens gets more intense as the game progresses! Would you survive this fast-paced cat-astrophic minefield of a card game?
As ruler, it's up to you to build the mightiest realm in the world! And you do so in the game Fantasy Realms, which takes seconds to learn: Draw a card, discard a card. You can even draw from the discard pile! The key is to get the best hand you can by making the best combos. The game ends when ten cards are in the discard area. The player with the highest score wins! Will you choose to follow military tactics and sweep away all in your path with a massive army? Or will you turn towards sorcery and control an inaccessible island surrounded by impenetrable flames? The choice is yours, and no two realms will ever be the same in Fantasy Realms.
Marvel: Remix follows a similar play style to Fantasy Realms. Players build a team of heroes and allies to take on infamous villains. From a hand of seven cards players are dealt characters, items, or locations from throughout the Marvel Universe. Using these, players go about arming their characters with powerful equipment or maneuvers and use their cards to pull off epic combos. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins!
Happy Salmon is a simple, lightning-fast, extremely silly card game… There are no turns. Players call out the action shown on their cards as fast as they can. When two players match, they celebrate by performing the action. Actions include the classic "High 5", the unifying "Pound It", the frantic "Switcheroo", and the delightful and bizarre "Happy Salmon". Each time players celebrate a match, they quickly discard a card. The first person to discard all their cards wins.
…Is a cooperative, guess-the-word party game in which players try to discover as many mystery words as possible. Over 13 cards, players will coordinate with one another to give the best clues to help their teammates guess the word. There’s a catch, though: giving clues similar to the last will get you canceled, so be unique!
Politricks is a slimy-fun card game that draws on the hallmark events and figures in Philippine politics. Players take on the roles of trapo or dirty candidates masquerading as “traditional politicians” trying to win the upcoming season of elections. To secure victory, players can give bribes or low-blow their rival candidates. The cards in the game illustrate different stereotypes in the Philippine political circuit, as well as soap-opera events that have taken place in the country’s political timeline. The slimiest candidate with the worst moves wins! Do you have what it takes to collect the most votes and dominate the country?
Similar to Rummy, the game you play with cards, Players of Rummikub try to get rid of all their tiles by forming numbers into runs of 3 tiles or more, or 3 to 4 of a kind. The colors of the numbers on the tiles are like card suits. Simple as it sounds, Rummikub can start uneventfully, but spiral out of control when the players start putting more and more tiles in play. Options for upcoming turns can become more complex, challenging, and exciting.
Being stuck with sticks in Stick Stack isn’t ideal, so players compete to place them as carefully as they can on the wobble tower in the center of the playing area. By drawing a stick from the bag or choosing one of the sticks in front of them each turn, players place that stick onto the tower—but only the colors on that stack may touch matching colors on the crow's nest or on other sticks that have already been placed. When all sticks have been placed onto the tower or when the tower falls over, the game ends. The player with the lowest score wins! Will you turn the tides on your fellow players in the tricky-yet-fun game of Stick Stack?
Tapple is a fast-paced word game that’s great for parties. In each round, a player draws a topic card, then starts the timer. In the next ten seconds, that player must give a word that relates to the topic, press down the letter key that corresponds to the first letter of that word on the game’s electronic device, and restart the timer. The next player must then think of a word for the topic that starts with a different letter; wash, rinse, and repeat. Players that go past the timer are out for that round, and new topic cards are drawn if all players but one are out. Depending on eliminations, the stakes get higher with each round, and the more exciting the game gets! Whoever collects the most topic cards wins.
The Resistance, Avalon, and Coup
The Resistance is a party game of social deduction. Of five to ten players, each one plays as either a Resistance Operative or an Imperial Spy. For three to five rounds, players must carry out missions against the Empire, whilst trying to deduce the other players’ identities and gain their trust. Each round begins with discussion. When ready, the Leader entrusts sets of Plans to a certain number of players (possibly including himself/herself). Everyone votes on whether or not to approve the assignment. Once an assignment passes, the chosen players secretly decide to Support or Sabotage the mission. Based on the results, the mission either succeeds and the Resistance wins, or fails and the Empire wins. When a team wins three missions, they have won the game. The Resistance also branches out into its spinoffs Avalon, wherein Arthur represents the future of Britain, and hidden among his brave warriors are Mordred's unscrupulous minions, and Coup, wherein players head a family in an Italian city-state, needing to manipulate, bluff and bribe their way to power in a city run by a weak and corrupt court.
About Gaming Library
Gaming Library aims to be the go-to resource for board games, providing not only titles that can be enjoyed by families, but also to be enjoyed by friends both newcomers and veterans alike. By pulling from different resources from all over the world, we at Gaming Library curate an impressive collection of games for consumers to choose from, suitable for anybody from casual players to hardcore hobbyists. In doing so, we hope to provide the best means to foster activities that strengthen family ties and friendships, while teaching relevant skills and practical critical thinking that can be applied to your everyday life.
