New Game Round-up: Kites from Kotarski, Hands from Van Den Bulk & Drilling from Laurie and Jolly

Kite Fight includes three games in one box, with players using the kite, wind and lightning cards in different ways depending on what they're playing. The games included are:

• Catch the Wind — Imagine playing in a park with the land divided into quadrants by wind cards. Over the course of the game, players place kite cards in different parts of the park (that is, the space between wind cards) to try to have the highest valued kite cards on top of the stack, but the first card played in a quadrant determines which cards can be played to that area subsequently. Kotarski describes this game as "sort of a twist on trick-taking with players playing to multiple tricks at once over multiple rounds".

• Ride the Skies — Wind cards fill the air (or rather the table as they're laid out in a grid), and players place their kite cards on top of them to ride the wind. The trick, though is that the card being placed must be equal to the sum of the card being played on and one of the adjacent cards in the grid. Once all of the wind cards are covered, players check each pile to see who played the most cards on each pile, awarding the wind card to that player.

• Full of Air — Catch the most wind cards by participating in kite fights and outnumbering everyone else. To set up, a few wind cards are placed face up on the table, then players take turns placing a kite card at either end of the row, creating a sequence of 1-10 in each row. When a row is complete, whoever contributes the most claims the wind card from that row. Lightning cards let you zap another player's card and replace it with one of your own.

Hands up! Hands down! No hands! Thumbs up! Point to the sky!

In Hands, you talk with your hands instead of words while trying to find a player whose hand speaks the same words as yours. Beware of the player talking with both hands, though — you'd better do as he says!

In more detail, during the game you mimic the cards in your hands while trying to find another player who mimics that same card. Each match you make this way scores you one point. But if any other player is making a two-hand symbol, you better not be the last player to imitate that symbol or else you'll lose a point at the end of the game. Whoever scores the most points wins!