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A lot of games are hitting Kickstarter these days, and casual games are no exception. Over the last year, we have seen amazing growth in the number of high quality casual games hitting the crowdfunding scene. After many hours of research on the games being funded this month, we are happy to present to you our crowdfunding favorites for November 2013!

There are many different word games on the market today, and with good reason: we all are ingrained with vocabulary from the earliest days of our childhood. Turning what is already in our heads into a game has brought immense success to the publishers of Scrabble, Boggle, Bananagrams and others. WOW: World of Words is one of the latest additions to this genre, and we were recently given the opportunity to evaluate it. We wanted to know: does it hold its own?

How much wood would a lumberjack chop if a lumberjack could chop wood? Oh, wait...a lumberjack can chop wood, and, in fact, he can chop a lot of it—but can he chop just the bark? Click Clack Lumberjack, a new dexterity game by Mayday Games, challenges players to remove the bark from a tree without toppling the trunk.

Our Big Box O' Games Giveaway is back and it's bigger than ever! Help us celebrate our Fall 2013 release and new digital editions of Casual Game Insider by entering to win these 5 great casual games, worth over $100!

Casual Game Insider has become the first and only U.S. board gaming magazine to be distributed on modern mobile devices! As of today, it is now available for download on Apple Newsstand, Amazon Appstore, and BlackBerry Newsstand marketplaces. Supported devices include iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Kindle Fire, BlackBerry smartphones, and Android devices connected to the Amazon Appstore.

The Fall 2013 issue of Casual Game Insider is now in stock and available for sale! Print and digital versions are available.

It's time for our crowdfunding picks for October 2013! This month we're seeing some new themes (junk collection in space and lying pandas) while also keeping with some of the common themes we've seen in the past (monsters, pirates, and ninjas). There are several press-your-luck style games currently seeking funding. We're also starting to see a trend of digital game studios crossing over into tabletop game publishing, and I believe this will continue as casual tabletop games continue to gain popularity.

All of humanity is in danger! Four deadly diseases are wreaking havoc on mankind and you and your team of disease-fighting experts must cure them before they spread too much and become uncontrollable. Pandemic, by Z-Man games, is a very popular cooperative game that was first released in 2008, but a new edition in 2013 includes all-new artwork and components. But is this game an ideal choice for casual gamers?

Ah, football — the hard-hitting, adrenaline-pumping, injury-inducing American sport. Some of the biggest rivalries have been fought out on the football field. But what if the game were instead a board game played out on your table? Would the competition be just as fierce? CSE Games, the publisher of Hand-Off The Card Football Board Game, certainly thinks so, and we recently were given the opportunity to try it out.

If you're into playing card games, then you'd better watch out: witches and magicians are about to infiltrate your deck. HeartSwitch, by U.S. Games Systems, is a twist on the classic game of Hearts that adds additional bonuses and penalties, as well as some new strategies, to spice up the game.