Just in case you missed them on the marketplace, we thought it would be an idea to let you know that last Wednesday, Hasbro's immensely popular Family Game Night has had three new games added to it.
The bright and colourful board game collection staring the loveable Mr. Potato Head (who seems to get VERY excited at times) has sold over a whopping 500,000 games so far, and was ranked as the 4th most popular arcade game for 2009. Previously containing five of the best-loved Hasbro board games: Connect 4, Yahtzee, Boggle, Sorry! and Battleship, as well as the new Sorry! Sliders game - each with brand new modes to try, the collection's roster of family classics has been bolstered with the release of the new titles.
Mr. Potato Head doing his amazing shaking-the-boggle-board dance.
To this lineup, they have now added Connect 4x4, Pictureka! and Jenga, which - if they're anything like the original six games - should have a whole host of new twists.
Connect 4x4
In this new take on the Connect 4 premise, Hasbro have made Connect 4 into a 4 player game. But that's not all - Connect 4x4 introduces a new, double-sided grid, making everything more challenging. To win, players, as before, must line up 4 of their counters vertically, horizontally or diagonally, but this time with a twist - four can also be connected on either side of the board, or even by weaving between either side of the board.
As always, there are new additions to the traditional gameplay, with a new Super Squares mode, where power-ups appear on the board - much in the same way as with the original Connect 4's Power Chips mode.
Jenga
The Family Game Night version of Jenga plays much the same as the board game - players try to remove one of blocks from the tower and place it on top without toppling the tower - something which is FAR more easy in theory than in practice.
The new modes for this game include something called Chance Blocks, in which players draw cards that either determine which colour block they must attempt to remove from the tower, or give them a power up, or even a weapon! It sounds like this version of Jenga's a bit more extreme than the one we're used to, then.
Pictureka!
Pictureka! is a game best referred to as 'visual hide-and-seek' - it challenges players to search through screens to be the first to locate specific items. The items can range from the simple, such as letters to more complex things - like something sharp, or something to drink.
The new remixed mode brings new challenges - involving silhouettes, memory games and matching sounds, as well as needing to find the letters to spell out a specific word.
At 800 Microsoft Points a pop, these may seem a tad on the expensive side, but if you play them anywhere near as much as we've played the original set (we wasted so many nights playing Boggle), then they may be good investments - especially when you take into account all the new twists and custom modes each one has to offer.
