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Fantasy Flight has announced a fast paced dice game for later this year, Smart Play Games has released a new card game and Boardgaming.com previews oddball Aeronauts.

Zombie Dice is getting a new expansion, Hyperbole Games releases print and play Wizard Poker and the New Yorker publishes a profile on Settlers of Catan designer Klaus Teuber.

Do you love pirates? Enter to win a brand new copy of Dread Curse, a new strategic party game from Smirk & Dagger Games. Grab as much treasure as you can by using thievery and trickery, but avoid the deadly Black Spot or you'll be cursed!

Charades is the age-old acting game in which players portray a word or phrase physically rather than verbally. It is so well-known that numerous spin-offs have been created, with varying degrees of success. Double Take, a party game for 3 to 8 players by R&R Games, is one such game. The twist? Two players co-star, trying to get the other players to guess a 2-part word or phrase. One player acts out the first half, while the other player acts out the second.

Who's most likely to lie about their age? Oprah, Justin Bieber, or your mom? It's most certainly debatable, so why not put it to a vote? That's the point of Majority Rules, a party game by FoxMind for 3 to 8 players, ages 14 and up.

If there's anything that TV shows like BattleBots have taught us, it's that the best possible use of robots is to watch them fight each other to the death. Sure, robots can come in handy for many productive uses, as well, but they're not nearly as entertaining. Stak Bots, by UK publisher DogEared Games, is a small Kickstarter-funded card game that pits stacks of robots against each other to use their unique attack abilities to gain victory.

Welcome to the lighter side of the loony bin: this third installment of the Closet Report series analyzes Stratus Games' offering of mental state mayhem and answers for all time the age-old question, "Are you sure you're all right in the head?"

This month, Kickstarter has a couple of interesting two-player games and several board games with fun looking themes. Microgames are still being pitched and Game Salute is seeking funding for two separate campaigns.

Asmodee will be releasing Continental Express this month, Days of Wonder will be selling a 10^th Anniversary Edition of Ticket to Ride and more games from Z-Man Games.

Before jumping into the world of game design, I paused to consider two things. First, I thought about what types of games I would like to design.  My answer was family-friendly games. I defined family-friendly as easy enough for a child to learn, yet with enough meaningful decisions to hold an adult’s attention. I also defined family-friendly as played in an hour or less. That time limit was not just in consideration of the shorter attention span of some children, but also because of typical family schedules. Between school, homework, soccer, dance lessons, etc., even sixty unscheduled minutes for a game can be hard to come by for some families.