The heart-pounding stress. The tantalising relief of completing your turn. The laughter as it all comes tumbling down. This is the essence of a great balancing game and the purity and simplicity of Jenga can’t be beat… can it?
Variants on a theme…
Well, the makers of Jenga are always looking to try something new so here are a couple of the better variants in the series.
Is it too easy for you? Got such a steady hand that the tower always makes it to maximum height with only one block in each level? Well you need to try Jenga Bridge. By placing the tower on a wibbly wobbly rope bridge structure, this game has suddenly become a whole lot harder.
Too structured for you? Need a bit of random chaos to spice your game up? In this case you should try out Jenga Quake. The wooden blocks are replaced with hollow plastic ones and the tower is made on a small platform. The platform is the key here… it randomly shakes every so often and those blocks are not going to survive for long once the quakes begin.
Ambidextrous and wanting to show off? Want to add some crazy rules too? You have to go for Jenga Pass Challenge. This involves a much smaller tower than the others, but the tower is built on a platform with two handles. Hold the platform in one hand and use your other hand to do ‘the Jenga’ and then pass it onto the next player. I mean, that’s hard enough, am I right? Well… throw in a bunch of other rules then… like ‘zombie mode’, now you can only hold the tower at arms length with your elbows straight… “Mmmm…. Blocks…”
If you want to go a bit off the Jenga brand then we have plenty of other great balancing games to suggest from the beautiful simplicity of Catch the Moon through to the cuteness of Burger Balance all the way to the intensity of Bamboleo. They deserve a blog post of their own in time but for now one game stands out.
The New Balance contender: Misfits.
Oooo… shapes! Perfectly designed too. This is the beautiful Misfits: The Tactical Stacking Game by Alexander Neumann.
It’s so simple it almost hurts. There are 40 shapes in the wonderfully designed box from simple cubes or cylinders, to a cloud or even a ghost-like shape. Each player will choose 10 blocks and the game begins with the first player placing any block as the base. Each other player takes it in turns to place another block on the ever expanding structure. If anything falls then that is added to the pile of pieces for the player whose turn it is. Out of pieces? You win! Easy.
I could stop there as I think you can see the beauty in the simplicity. Wait though, surely there is more? Well of course there is. Jenga has almost identical blocks and you will always be placing them on top of the tower in the same way each time you play, the only variation comes from where you pull your block from. Here we have a tactical decision. There are curves and angles to deal with and even holes which will take some of the shapes. Lets not forget you can also turn the shape you are placing in three dimensions causing some nail biting shapes to form and some absolute evil challenges.
I recall a game where the first placed shape was a small shape with two straight edges and a curved one. The player sat back all complacent like thinking how clever they had been. The next player calmly picked up the wheel piece and placed it side down with the hole over the point of the odd little shape forming a reasonably solid base for the rest of the game. Quality. The fact that it was an almost perfect fit shows the level of design expertise that has gone into the creation of these wonderful shapes. Every game looks like a work of art and no two games will ever be the same. I’ve even seen two games merged together and an 8 player game be played. Now that was a sight to behold.
The box tray has all the shapes sketched on to its base to show how the pieces go back into it. This is a pleasing game in itself, just putting all the items away. Easy to see if a piece has gone under the sofa too as there will be room in the box if any have done a runner.
It’s a beautiful game and would look great on any coffee table and truly could be the next big stacking game. Only time will tell, you owe it to yourself to give it a go. At this point the first edition is mostly sold out but the second edition is on it’s way!