The nice people over at North Star Games are once again hosting their self-proclaimed #1 Party Booth at GenCon!

Stop by their booth to demo a quick 15 minute party game with 5 – 8 others. For just playing the game and having a good time, you’ll get free Funny Money. No word yet on what the actual value of the FM is, but it sure looks cute. Play well and win the game in order to spin the PRIZE-O-MATIC 5000!

They’ve kindly offered to send me two of their games, “Wits and Wagers” and “Say Anything” to demo and review before the convention. The games are described thusly:

Wits & Wagers is available at Target and Borders, as well as almost everywhere online that sells games, and your friendly local game store (FLGS).

It is a trivia game for people that does not know trivia. There are seven questions in a game, and it takes about 20-25 minutes to play. Basically, everyone writes down an answer to the same question, and then all the players bet on the answer they think is correct.

Wits & Wagers fixes a lot of the problems in other trivia games like Trivial Pursuit. No one is put on the spot or feels dumb, it plays quickly, and there is no waiting for your turn, since everyone plays at the same time. That is why it has won 21 awards, more than any party game in history.

Say Anything is a pure party game that will have people laughing in no time. The player whose turn it is (the judge) asks a question from a card, everyone else writes down an answer, the judge secretly chooses what answer they like best, and then the other players bet on what they think the judge just picked.

Very simple and fun. Again, about 30 minutes to play. It just came out last summer and already it is selling better than Wits & Wagers did in its first year. Say Anything is available at Barnes & Nobles and soon Borders.

I love board games, so I look forward to giving these two a go.

Take your most standard of RPG’s add in massive customization coupled with an option to do whatever you would like. Oh and did I mention there is tons of exploring.

The game play is okay. I became a little confused in the overall expressions system. With the expression system you can assign different expressions to different keys.This worked the same way with the Magic system. It works out most of the time but I really wanted to do a particular expression and would have to search for it. By the time I found it the moment to do it had passed. One of the best things though about the game is the fact that you can either be good or bad. I found myself attempting to be good and finding that being bad is well just plain easier.(My character though currently has a Halo over his head. Hope Master Chief doesn’t try to take it from me.) The leveling in the game didn’t really feel repetitive which is nice since it’s something that you got to do. There were tons of places to explore. I really like the ability to effect other people in the game by your action. You could easily scare a peasant off or get yourself a girl. I found this to make the game a little bit more realistic.

The Load times in the game are horrible. There is a lot of loading next area screens. The Joy that you receive from the game seems to mask the load time quite a bit. Although the graphics were nice but theres some FPS issues as it is a bit choppy.

One of the things that I noticed on the game is the urge to go back and replay the game as Mc.Bastard. Ignoring all the rules and just being really mean and evil. I would say that after you finish it one way your probably going to want to attempt going polar opposite.

Worth the Price? $19.99 Brand New
I would say that that’s a perfect price for a game new. If still finding it steep there is always used copies for about $11.99. I would totally check this game out.