Awards

Hanabi is the latest winner of the prestigious Spiel des Jahres award, announced earlier this week. The Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year in Germany) was selected by a panel of ten journalists who cover the game industry. Created in 1978, the award intends to highlight the best games for a widespread German audience, and winning the award can drive a game's sales to 300,000 to 500,000 copies or more over its lifetime (source: Wikipedia).

Last weekend, 300 judges, 54 competing games, and forty-eight hours of nonstop board game action came together at the annual Mensa Mind Games. Members of American Mensa, the high IQ association, selected five Mensa Select winners, which were announced Sunday, April 21, 2013.

The Parents' Choice Awards have been described as the toy industry equivalent of the Academy Awards. Each quarter, the Parents' Choice Foundation announces the latest winners. Games can be found among the toy awards, and while most of them are marketed specifically to children, several are great options for casual gamers of any age. Here are the casual games that stand out to us.

Since 1980, the editors of GAMES Magazine have been publishing a list of the top 100 traditional (non-electronic) games for each year. The games are divided into many different categories, with a winner, runner up, and honorable mentions chosen from each one. The 2013 list was recently announced, and it contains casual games in several different categories. Here is a list of those that have caught our attention.