New Games for 2015

The game developers have been busy again!  There are a bunch of really fabulous looking new puzzle-style games coming out this year.  (Some are already available!)

These two IQ games are new this year from SmartGames.  I have many of the other IQ games, including IQ Steps, IQ Link, and IQ Fit...and they are all awesome!  One of the best features of these little genius games is that they can fit in your pocket for puzzling on the go.  I can't wait to get my hands on these two new versions.  Especially IQ Candy!

You can click here to see a list of all the new puzzle games coming out from SmartGames this year.

We love sheep at our house!  So this new game from Blue Orange really speaks to us.  Battle Sheep is a game for 2-4 players ages 7 and up.  What looks interesting about this game is that the game board is dynamic, meaning that the board shape can change to a different configuration at the start of each game.  The little sheep tokens are pretty cute too!  Oh, and the play on words for the title, Battle Sheep and Battleships...just silly.

You can visit the Blue Orange main page to see what other new games they have available.

Thinkfun has released a new version of Rush Hour this year.  It's called Rush Hour Shift.  So if you can't get enough of the classic Rush Hour puzzler, you might want to grab a copy of this.  It's a 2 player version of Rush Hour where players rush to get their hero car off the shifting game board.  Check out their website for a really nice video explanation of how the game works.  I'm totally a fan of Rush Hour, so I'm excited to give this version a try!

Another interesting new product from Thinkfun is Maker Studio.  There are Propellers, Gears and Winches sets available so far.  These are not puzzles or games, but more construction sets.  They do offer 10 engineering challenges with each set, so those logical thinking skills will still get a workout!  The neat thing about these construction sets is that they give you the working parts (like the gears), but you must build the support structure for your creation using things you'd find around your house, like toilet paper rolls and empty cereal boxes.

And last, but not least, we have Houdini!  This is another puzzle from Thinkfun.  Houdini is a disentanglement puzzle.  There are 40 challenges in which you must disentangle Houdini from a mess of ropes and locks.  What's interesting about this puzzle is that you are really getting 40 disentanglement puzzles in one!  I'm sure we all have some of these puzzlers sitting around our house.  Check out Rob's Puzzle Page about Tanglement puzzles to see what I mean.  There are hundreds shown on his website!  Houdini looks like it will be pretty engaging!

You can find other new games from Thinkfun here.

Do you know of any other awesome new games I might have missed?  Let me know so I can check them out!