Rudy Panucci On Pop Culture

The 2022 PopCult Gift Guide-Day Eleven: New Board Games

Last week we told you about retro board games, but today in The 2022 PopCult Gift Guide we’re going to recommend NEW board games for the gamer on your holiday shopping list.

You Lying Sack
by Exploding Kittens and Penn Jillette
$19.99
Available exclusively from Exploding Kittens

You Lying Sack is an honest-to-goodness game about lying. It is a first-of-its kind collaboration with Penn Jillette of the legendary magic-duo Penn & Teller. To play, reach into the Lying Sack, grab something, then look into each player’s eye and lie to them. Or don’t. They must decide: are you lying about what’s in your hand? Will you outsmart your opponents? Or will you get caught?

As we have seen, lying is an essential talent needed to advance in conservative politics, so a young kid might hone the skills with this game that they can use to run the country into the ground in the future!

It’s a fun game, for ages seven and up, and for two to five players. Average gametime is around fifteen minutes.

Target: Rats | The Board Game
by Transit Tees
$45 This is a pre-order that will ship on November 30th, in plenty of time for Christmas
Available from the Transit Tees website

In every alley in the city of Chicago, you can find a bright yellow poster with a mean-looking rat under a red cross hair, warning you of how dangerous rats are and to alert you that exterminators have planted rat poison in the area. Printed in bold red letters on the poster is the slogan, “IF RATS CAN’T FEED, RATS CAN’T BREED.”

In this game, you will be playing as the head of a family of rats trying your best to survive in this hostile environment. You must lead your family to victory by scavenging for food to feed your rats, then breeding to produce more rats, and establishing new nests to grow your territory. Finally, you must become Da Big Cheese to control Rat City at the heart of the underground. But beware! In the big city, a rat can meet danger around every corner!

Suitable for ages ten and up, and for two to four players. Average gametime is 60 to 90 miinutes.

Contents:
1 20″ x 20″ Game Board
48 Painted and Screen Printed Wooden Rat Pawns
1 Painted and Screen Printed Wooden Exterminator Pawn
8 Painted and Screen Printed Wooden Dumpsters
1 Painted and Screen Printed Wooden Deep Dish Pizza
4 Painted and Screen Printed Wooden Sewer Covers
16 Chipboard Nest Markers
79 Cards full of Prizes and Perils that a city rat might encounter
8 Custom Six-sided Dice

This is a great way to turn a problem into a fun way to pass the time, and if you scroll down the page you order from, you’ll find lots of Rat-related merchandise.
Not recommended for the rat-hater on your shopping list.

GO GO GARGOYLE! THE GAME
by Archie McPhee
$24.95
Available from Archie McPhee

The Horrible Horseman has defeated the gargoyles that defended Crowning Castle and thrown everything into chaos. A new batch of baby gargoyles has been birthed from the fire demon to retake the castle and protect it from future attacks.

These gargoyles have got to save the kingdom! This simple game takes you through a magical kingdom full of ghosts, cryptids and grumpy wizards. Includes a fantastic detail-filled game board, four 1-1/8″ tall gargoyle tokens and 54 standard-sized, 2-1/2″ x 3-1/2″ illustrated cards.

It’s a game about brave little gargoyles. A game board, cards and mini-gargoyles are included.

Race to the castle to defeat Horrible Horseman, battle monsters, traverse the catacombs and mediate a divorce.

Recommended for ages eight and up, and for two to four players.

Horrified: American Monsters Strategy Board Game
by Ravensburger Games
$31.99
Available from Target

This is a new edition of a game I recommend last year. This time, instead of fighting the Universal Monsters, players work together to save the town from classic cryptids monsters: Bigfoot, Mothman, the Chupacabra, the Jersey Devil, the Ozark Howler, and the Banshee of the Badlands.

That’s right, Point Pleasant’s own harbinger of doom is one of the characters in this game.

Each unique monster requires different strategies and tactics to be defeated. Adjust the difficulty by facing different groups of monsters, each represented by a sculpted miniature. Will you be victorious against American’s legendary cryptids?

Recommended for ages ten and up, and one to five players. Playing Time can range from 45 minutes to two hours, depending on how you play.

Game Contents: 1 Game Board, 6 Monster Mats, 6 Monster Figures, 7 Investigator ID Tiles, 7 Investigator Standees, 13 Citizen Standees, 22 Bases, 60 Item Tokens, 45 Monster Tokens, 1 Terror Marker, 1 Frenzy Marker, 30 Monster Cards, 20 Perk Cards, 5 Reference Cards, Item Bag, 3 Dice, Rules

Space Explorers
by 25th Century Games
$25
Available from Amazon

The conquest of space was one of the greatest achievements of the 20th century. In 1957, the first satellite – named sputnik 1- was launched into orbit. Just four years later, Yuri gagarin was the first human in space, aboard the spaceship vostok 1.This game is dedicated to the early space explorers: all the outstanding people who worked to make space travel possible. As Yuri gagarin said at the moment of his launch: “let’s go!”

In this game you are the head of a research & development hub in a space research center, competing with other such hubs in the spirit of the Golden age of astronautics. Your goal is to complete large- scale space projects by gathering The best and brightest minds humanity has to offer.You score progress points by recruiting specialists and completing projects. The game ends when all available projects are completed, or you have recruited 12 specialists to your hub. The player who made the most progress Is the winner!

Specialists are assigned to the divisions according to their skills. The more specialists you have in a division, the easier It is to recruit new ones to that division.

All specialists have unique abilities. Only the ability of the top card in each stack is Active. Therefore, by adding a new specialist, you often get a new ability but lose the other one. Think carefully what is more important for you at that moment in the game!

Recommended for teens and up, this game features absolutely gorgeous graphics that capture the retro-space program feel of the Apollo era.

That’s our new board game recommendations for this year. Tomorrow The 2022 PopCult Gift Guide will recommend more graphic novels!

1 Comment

  1. Thomas Wheeler

    That Space Explorers game sounds cool!

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