Telestrating and Science-y Things - Game Reviews

 Thoughts on Vacation

Going on vacation is weird. You spend all this time getting somewhere and then you just stop everything and attempt to relax all the while the world goes on around you. Emails continue to be sent, planes continue to fly around the world, and your family (if you left them at home) continues on with their daily lives while you sit back and relax in a pool.

Or at least attempt to.

Because if you're like me and my family, you spend a better portion of three days of the seven day vacation cleaning up and doing chores around your dad's house that you're staying at.

Sure, there were some times where we were able to play some games, like the breakout hit Thunder Road: Vendetta, which turned out to be absolutely worth it to bring along to play on the trip. I regret not choosing something smaller, but that's hindsight and it's always 20/20. Still I think I learned a valuable lesson in bringing games on a vacation: stick to three or four small games that are easily packed and know your audience.

I had brought along several other games for us to play, including Welcome To... (more for me to play solo on the plane), One Night Ultimate Werewolf (which was a huge hit previously), and Unstable Unicorns. Yet, to my total lack of surprise, we ended up playing Thunder Road: Vendetta two times only despite me offering the other games and a third game of Thunder Road: Vendetta being set up to play. I did end up playing several other games on my own, but my brothers and dad weren't into what I had brought.

Until I picked up Telestrations from the store. I had wanted to go to a local game shop but there wasn't anything remotely close to where I was and I fell on the mercy of Wal-Mart (I hate Wal-Mart, but that's where we went) and Target (which had a much better selection) to provide me an offering of games. After striking out at Wal-Mart, I proceeded to Target and managed to get my hands on a copy of Telestrations. There were several other games available for me to purchase, including Red Flags and Wavelength. The former I had wanted to play but really wasn't liking the idea of adding it to my collection and the latter was just too big to fit in my bag, despite me wanting to get it.

So it fell on Telestrations to hopefully fill that gap that we were missing during the trip. We had been drinking quite a bit, so anything heavier wouldn't have really sat well with my family and the heaviest thing that they have played up to this point is somewhere in the medium-light category. My youngest brother had played CATAN but that was the heaviest thing that he had played. Thunder Road: Vendetta fell nicely into the "easy to learn and fun to play" category, plus it jived with our watching of Mad Max: Fury Road the first night.

With that in mind, when I pulled out Telestrations, I was honestly expecting things to go completely awry, which they did, but in a way that left us laughing our heads off. It was a great and quick party game that was well worth the money I had spent on it and offered itself as something that even my dad and brother who normally didn't play games could enjoy.

After really sinking deep into the realm of board games in the last several years and playing games nightly, it was an interesting experience going into a realm where the hardest game that anyone had played was CATAN. It was a jarring experience to say the least and I am glad that I'll be getting back to my normal game play at home. Playing lighter games is fun, but my brain is needing a shot of Dinosaur World to get the juices flowing again.

After all that rambling, here's my thoughts on both Telestrations and For Science! which I mainly chose because of how recently I had played them:

Pictures and Phones

Game Name: Telestrations
Publisher: The Op Games
Year Released: 2009
Mechanics: Drawing, Paper and Pencil
BGG Score (Overall Rank): 7.4 (#361)
Expansions: Telestrations: 80s & 90s Expansion Pack

Times Played: 5
Josiah's Score: 9
What I Liked: Telestrations is wildly fun. I had been on the fence about it for a while until I saw it mentioned on a list here of games that you needed to play at least once. Since then, I had been looking for an opportunity to either play it or a reason to obtain it so I could play it and my vacation was a perfect time for it. That turned out to be a wildly successful choice as we played game after game of Telestrations on the couch and each time it devolved into cries of "what the heck is that?" and peals of laughter.

I loved how the game could be played with three separate ways to score at the end: 1) with no scoring at all and just laughing at the ridiculous drawings that were made, 2) with friendly scoring that awarded points for numerous items, and 3) with competitive scoring for those that want to push their drawing skills to the limit. The game offers quite a few ways to play and there's definitely going to be many questions about the horrid scribbles that make their way onto the included booklets.

I really appreciated the inclusion of wipes for cleaning up the booklets and how everything is made for easy cleanup. There are numerous cards and categories to choose from that I doubt I'll ever get through or see them all and it's fantastic. Even if I do wind up with a card that I've seen before, the dice rolling mechanic to choose what you draw helps keep it fresh and new each time.

What I Didn't Like: I have some fairly minor complaints about the game, but that's only because I've enjoyed it so much and I don't really have anything else to note. My first complaint would be the box size and how it has quite a bit of wasted space. I do appreciate the insert, but I feel like it should have been shrunk down by a third to make things more compact. My second complaint is with the wipes that are used to clean off the dry clean pages as they don't work as well as they should, although they do get the job done while leaving a bit of residue. My third and final complaint is that the game is set up for four+ people in box. I'm sure I'll find a variant to play with two people, but I don't think this will be pulled out as much as I want it to without that.

Overall Thoughts: I was absolutely impressed with how much fun Telestrations was to play. There were a few minor gripes that I had with the game, but as a party game, it was absolutely a blast to play. Having played Pictionary in the past, this felt like a natural evolution to the game and it was a really fun addition to my collection. Thanks to a great recommendation here on BGG, I now have something simple, light and fun to play for those nights where I'm going to a party and just want to laugh. I'd recommend this game to anyone who is looking for a good party game as the nature of the game allows for it to be played over and over again.

Stacking, For Science!

Game Name: For Science!
Publisher: Grey Fox Games
Year Released: 2021
Mechanics: Cooperative Game, Elapsed Real Time Ending, Hand Management, Solo / Solitaire Game, Stacking and Balancing, Variable Player Powers
BGG Score (Overall Rank): 7.1 (#4026)
Expansions: For Science!: Sci Hard, For Science!: Kickstarter Extra Content

Times Played: 12
Josiah's Score:  8.5  
What I Liked: For Science! is one of those games that just wildly stands out of the crowd for being so unique. The entire premise of the game is built around building towers out of children's blocks to earn differently shaped pieces to build a "master cure". Each player has different abilities that can grow as the game evolves and they all work cooperatively together to work towards the "master cure."

Every single portion of the game is extremely tongue in cheek, especially the player powers and events that occur during the game. There might be an event that requires a player to stop what they're doing, turn to page x of the rule book, read sentence x of the page and then go "Of Course!" before returning to work on their "cure" (X being the number of cards on the current disease board). Or stopping a random passerby to explain what disease you're curing and how you're going about it. The player powers also have things like "Press Mesmerist" who can help with extra resources when a cure is found by stopping and saying loudly "WE'VE CURED [Disease]!"

Everything in the game is extremely light and fun and the quick nature of how it's played makes it really easy to replay again and again. It's such a unique experience, especially using children's blocks as the main foundation (pun intended) for how the gameplay is cemented. It also taps into the cooperative dexterity gameplay, which while each person does have their own workspace, it is a combined effort to find the master cure together. The frantic nature of the game also is broken up by having to "verify" each other's builds as well as the combinations of cards for the cures, making this even more of a time crunch to ensure that everything fits together well (both literally and figuratively).

I also appreciate how there are several different options contained within the rulebook to not only make the game easier to play, but also more difficult to play. Multiple options are included for adding additional tougher mechanics, and conversely, there are options in play for assisting individuals who might need additional help with their dexterity control, or even remove the timer completely. It's well-thought out and takes into account those that might not be able to play with all the included rules and doesn't make you feel bad for doing so at all, which is very nice to see.

What I Didn't Like: While I really liked the game, my wife was not as much of a fan of it. The limited time nature of the game made it difficult for her to really remain focused without getting too stressed out in the game. She enjoyed the odd nature of the game, but found it to be a bit too stressful while she was playing, especially with the interruptions from our kids during the night. I personally liked the pressure that the time limit added, but I knew that Sarah was not as much of a fan of it.

I will say that I wasn't as big of a fan of the "Sci-Hard" expansion that was included with the base game and the challenge that it added with the star blocks. It certainly added a significant level of difficulty attempting to balance blocks on the stars, but I am not terribly certain if it really was worth it to have it in the game. There were a few new roles that came with the expansion too, but I generally played with the basic roles rather than the expansion roles due to the nature of what they added.

The app that was made for the game is decent, but there are significant improvements that I feel could be made to it. There's no way to update the ruleset after you complete a game without going back to the main menu, and while the voiceovers and effects that get played from time to time are funny the first few times, they tend to be a bit annoying after a bit and really distract while you're attempting to build. It doesn't really add much to the game, aside from adding in event alarms, so I'm not terribly certain why it was created for the game since it seems so minimal.

Overall Thoughts: I absolutely loved For Science! The quick gameplay, paired with an absolutely unique mechanics of the game have made this a game that absolutely stood out to me with how well it plays. It stumbles a bit with the expansion, Sci Hard, and with the official app, but overall, its one of those games that I'm hoping to eventually add to my collection. At the time of writing, the publisher website notes that they are all out of the game so I will probably need to get it secondhand, but it's definitely a game that I'll eventually like to add to my collection, if only for the unique gameplay.

Final Thoughts

It's so interesting to me how different games can be and both Telestrations and For Science reflect that. Both are such unique games in their own respect and even though the former takes ideas from two games and mashes them together, it still creates something new. Some of the fun in the realm of board games is journeying and finding unique games that you get to play and tell others about and both of these are definitely ones that I can absolutely recommend giving a try.

Give Me Your Thoughts:What are some unique games that you've come across that you would recommend to play at least once for the experience? What are your favorite games to bring to family gatherings for those that don't play games regularly? Are there any unique dexterity games that you'd recommend for me to try out?

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