Toy Fair Find: Stix & Stones
by Kim Vandenbroucke, The Game Aisle

Toy Fair was well over a month ago now, but I’m just starting to enjoy some of the new games I found while I was there. One of the first games I cracked into was Stix & Stones by Educational Insights, which was forced upon me when I stopped by their booth to say hi to Tim Walsh who was signing copies of his game BLURT!

Now, with so many games to choose from, the reason I opened Stix & Stones first is because they had the coolest thing on the box – a photo of the inventor! No, really, right there on the side of the box is a photo of Steve Ryan and his daughter Ali along with a little blurb about the game. I LOVE this idea, not only does it do a great job of drawing attention to the invention community, it also humanizes the product. I really don’t think that the American public realizes that the people who invent games aren’t employed by the game manufacturers. That they’re regular people who have an idea -- or they’re professional inventors whose job it is to invent games for a living. Either way, the manufacturers do not employ them; they come up with games ideas and then pitch them to manufacturers in hopes of getting someone to license it from them. I just don’t think these brilliant folks get enough recognition, so I like this new idea! If anything, it shows the average Joe that anything is possible if you try!

So what kind of game did Ali and Steve come up with? It’s a family game that was invented when Steve decided to have a little fun after trimming a 60-year-old ash tree in his back yard. As the story goes, Steve was trimming his tree one day and looked down to see the trimmings creating recognizable patterns on the ground below. He climbed down from his ladder and started moving the pieces to create pictures. When his daughter, Ali, came home from school, the two of them started playing. As Steve puts it, "I live by the motto…All work and no play makes Steve a dull boy (or something like that)." And Stix & Stones was born.

As you can somewhat decipher from this article so far, the game is about making pictures out of little plastic sticks and stones — and one red arrow. Some of the words are easy like "Ferris Wheel" and "Peace Symbol" while others really make you think, like "Moby Dick." The game testers were a little skeptical about some of the words at first, but it’s amazing how much the little red arrow helps! There is also a bidding aspect to the game. Since there are two teams, when the word is selected at the beginning of the round the representative who will make the image bids how many pieces they think they’ll need to make their picture. The team representative that bids the lowest number of pieces has one minute to create their picture.

If their team guesses correctly, they win the round. If they don’t the other team has a chance to steal. This "bidding" process was a little hard for some of the testers; they had a tough time even venturing a guess on how high, or low to start the bidding. One of the groups omitted the bidding entirely and just let each team draw a card, make a picture during a shared minute, and then guess and steal at the same time. Regardless, the testing went well and everyone was amazed at how you could successfully make things like "Abraham Lincoln" out of sticks and stones.

Stix & Stones Stats:
$25 at Amazon.com and some specialty retailers
4 or More Players
15-20 Minutes
Ages 7 and up (although some of the words might be a little tough…)

If you're looking for an expert in the game industry, you're probably looking for Kim Vandenbroucke. Not only does she review games at The Game Aisle, but she also designs them and is one of those people that companies call when they need to have a game designed.