FIVE OF OUR FAVOURITE SCORPION MASQUÉ GAMES

MASTER WORD (2020, £20)

Master Word is the most recent release, a word game attempting to uncover a single word held by one of the players. The others will attempt to guess the word using clues with a yes or no response – so we might have a word such as Dragon, or a sport such as basketball. The players first three guesses might be ‘animal’ ‘fluffy’ and ‘person’, gaining two yeses. Except then, is it a person who is fluffy, or a fluffy animal? Or an animal of a person? You’ll have to narrow down your clues, deducing as much as possible each round, until you find can make a guess to uncover the answer. It’s a conversation encouraging mixture of 20 questions, and mastermind.

ZOMBIE KIDZ: EVOLUTION (2018, £20)

The young players are at school when Zombies begin their attack, and they’ll need to ensure the school doesn’t become overrun, by locking each of the four entryways. As the game goes on, and the players get better and more confident, there are additional missions and envelopes, plus a trophy sticker system. It’s a legacy game for a younger audience, keeping kids and adults alike on their toes and making use of those highly sought after brains.

DECRYPTO (2018, £17)

Another deduction game, but this time based around coded messages. sees you trying to provide a coded message to your team mate that links closely enough to the words demonstrated for it to prompt the correct code. Except of course, you need to try to do so in such a way that the other team doesn’t pick up the words first.

QUEBEC (2011, £33)

Quebec is “the first and only Eurogame we ever published,” according to Lemay and is notably different from its fellow games on the Scorpion Masqué shelf. Co-published with Ystari and internationally distributed in 2011, it sees you the head of a rich family wanting to leave their name on history by building a Quebec city. There’ll be numerous buildings to complete, influence to acquire, all while considering religion, politics, commerce, culture, and more.

STAY COOL (2019, £25)

Stay Cool is a panic inducing party game, where you’re answering two questions at the same time – verbally, in response to the questions on your left, and written, in response to questions on your right, for two minutes. However, in true ‘patyour-head-and-rub-your-tummy’ style, the fact that it sounds simple doesn’t always translate into being so, and not only are you doing two things at once, but the written answer has to be completed by spelling out each answer as you go using the seven lettered dice. As the round goes on, the game gets harder, and now you’ll have to have a feeling for the time that’s passed too – and it sure does go quickly!

MONSTER CHASE (2009, £15)

The aforementioned Antoine Bauza game for the younger audience,

Chase sees suits the much younger audience, where you’re playing a memory game to chase the monsters from under the bed back to where they came, by finding the toy that scares off that specific monster. However, more monsters creep out at the sign of too many mistakes, making it even trickier.