Rule number one: Never play against someone who works at the company. When I first saw the intriguingly simple-looking but definitely compelling board game Oversight at Toy Fair here in NYC a few months ago, I was soundly trounced in a few quick matches by Griddly Games‘ Angela Welch, the company’s now newly minted Head of Marketing & Operations (they probably gave her the job after she beat everyone in the office at all the games the company makes – ringer!). But I managed to eke out a victory once I got the hang of the sliding tiles and color matching. Still, memo to self: don’t play board games with anyone after two hours of sleep. It’s a good thing I’m not a betting man, is all I’m saying…

Anyway, Oversight is cleverly designed so anyone can play (provided they’re not completely color blind and/or can’t see the symbols on the pieces that help color blind people play just fine) and what’s fun about the game is how you start to predict moves as tiles are placed and slid or not moved at all once they’re on the board. It’s a mix of Connect Four and Tic-Tac-Toe with a nice twist of being able to push an entire row of pieces in order to secure a victory or prevent your opponent from winning. I know the device crowd would go bananas over this game, but as of yet, I haven’t heard of any plans to bring Oversight to the digital world just yet. Well, I don’t own an iPad or Android device anyway, so it’s not as if I’m missing anything if I only buy the board game. Besides, when the cloud collapses and no one can get a signal, I’ll be running my Oversight casino, winning everyone’s rations and water while waiting for the power to come back on.

Anyway, Griddly Games also makes some other really unique games for all ages, so yes, you should definitely spend some time on their site poking about if you happen to like a good board game (and have that closet space or a nice table in the living room to stack them in). I’m freezing some spare brain cells for next year’s Toy Fair, as I’m definitely swinging by the GG both for a rematch, perhaps with something new from the company’s lineup. Of course, I’ll probably still get beat because I can never sleep before a trade show or press event, but I’ll at least put up more of a fight than I did this year…