Games Sweet Games

Few days back, we were returning home after watching a movie and suddenly a conversation picked up about the games we played in our childhood. From then on I have been putting up a list in my mind.

Chogi:

All you need is 4 small sea shells and it will keep you engaged for hours together. My aunt was the mentor. The game begins with rolling the 4 shells (like rolling dice) and you are eligible to start playing once all the four shells land on the floor facing upward or downward uniformly. Once you find the luck, you can start tossing the four shells in the air and try catching them using the back side of your hand and then drop them on the floor positioning them in a certain manner to grab points.

Aggravation:

This is an advanced version of Ludo, almost the same rules, but the board is bigger and 6 players can play at a time.

Brainvita:

A board and 44 marbles, you can spend hours alone. Start by jumping one marble over the other and remove the later. The aim of the game is to reach at one marble by jumping and removing.


Tell Me Quiz

Quizzing Game. Take turns to draw a quiz card and spin the alphabet wheel. Answer the given question in a single word starting with the lucky alphabet.

Scrabble:

Crossword game, build words on the board and grab points for each alphabet. The rarer of the alphabets you use, the higher points you score. Luck matters when you pick your alphabets and you can have only seven alphabets at a time.

Business/Moneyply/Monopoly/Trade:

Trading game, where you buy and sell places as such. It’s such fun when you know you own Darjeeling, Mumbai (Business) or Miami Beach (Moneyply). Another such game, I can recollect playing was ‘Barbie Goes shopping’ where you purchase household furniture to set up the house for your Barbie.

Dark Room

Get into a dark room and hide under the tables, behind the curtains or beneath the cot or choose a corner for yourself. Once ready, call the seeker into the pitch dark room. He’s got to find and identify you in the dark.

Memory:

It’s a pack of 56 pairs of square picture cards. Shuffle them and lay them on the floor facing down. In turns, pick up 2 cards at a time; if they match they are yours, else place them back. Every time you get a pair, you play an extra chance. At the end the player who grabs the maximum number of pairs is the winner.

King, Queen & Robber

It’s a game for 5-6 people - King, queen, Jack, Minister, Police and robber. Write each one of these on a piece of paper and shuffle the lot. Each picks a piece and keeps his role a secret except for the King. The King has to find the Queen. If he’s right he gets full points. If he’s wrong, he’s got to exchange the chit. This way the queen finds the Jack, then the minister and so on.

Book Cricket

All you need is a school text book and a plain sheet of paper. The batsman opens the book randomly and the score is based on the last digit of the even page number. It’s up to you to decide the number of balls or the form of game.

Uno Cards

It’s a pack of cards (similar to the playing cards, 4 colours, Each colour contains numbers 0-9, colour change, +4, +2, skip and reverse.) It’s one game that keeps you engaged for hours together. Shuffle the cards and distribute 7 cards to each player. One player plays a card, the next one has to play a card that has the same number or the same colour else he has to skip his turn after drawing an extra card. The player who gets rid of his cards the earliest is the winner.

Trump Cards

It’s yet another pack of cards. Each card contains a photograph of a WWF champion, with some statistics like his ranking, weight, height, biceps, etc...Shuffle and distribute the cards among the players. Each player plays one card at a time and compares the statistics with the other players’ cards. The player with the card that has the best statistics gets all the cards.

It used to be real fun when we as kids used to gather a gang at home decide on a game (sometimes it takes hours) and sit together around the board and play. Parents used to keep us fed with snacks and beverages at regular intervals. Purchasing new indoor games was the first activity we do when school closes for summer holidays. Indoor games used to be our way to keep us engaged for the 2 month span by passing the heat.

Now are the days when most of these are available as flash games or executable programs and the kids are getting used to playing games with the computer all alone at home.