New Game Round-up: Bézier Games Sells America, Libellud Visits More Loonies & NSV Invites Existential Despair

• In which year was Close Encounters first in theaters?
• Which state gets the most snow each year?
• How many albums has Madonna sold?

It's likely that you don't know any of these facts, but you might have a rough idea, and that's good enough because America is a party game in which being close counts. And what if you have absolutely no idea what the answer is? Take advantage of your friends who do know. And if you realize that no one (including you) seems to know what the answer is, you can bet against everyone!

In America, which includes almost one thousand questions covering more than three hundred topics, each player uses their knowledge of pop culture, food, products, games, sports, and United States history to score more points than their opponents. If your opponents know something that you don't, you can leverage their knowledge to your advantage, scoring more than them with clever play. The cards have full color clues to help you, as well as interesting factoids for every question in the game.

Every player starts Life Is Life with five life cards, and things only go downhill from there.

To set up a round, shuffle the sixty-card deck, deal ten cards face down to each player, then place ten cards face up on the table in four rows, with the rows holding 1-4 cards. The deck consists of animal cards, with nine giraffe cards, eight bear cards, seven each mole and goat, and so on down to three mouse cards.

On a turn, a player either swaps 1-4 cards in hand with the face-up row that contains the same number of cards or knocks on the table to signal the end of the round; when a player knocks, each other player can make one final swap or also knock. Players then compare cards in hand to see who holds a majority of each type of animal. If a player holds more giraffe cards than each other player, for example, then that player keeps one giraffe card (worth 9 points as nine such cards are in the game) while all other giraffe cards are discarded. (A player can hold a majority by having one card and no one else having any cards.) After all animal types are compared, whoever has the most points loses no life cards; whoever has the fewest points loses two life cards; and whoever has a total between these extremes loses one life card.

Alternatively, if during a round a player collects all four cats or all five rabbits or pigs in hand, that player can end the round immediately, with all other players losing one life card.

If a player runs out of life cards, they're out of the game. At the end of a round, shuffle the cards and play again. Whoever last clings to life wins!

The Arkadia tournament is now over, but the king's exiled evil brother Vadoor has caught the five adventurers and is sending them far away. To save the kingdom, our heroes must begin by fleeing a pirate ship. During their escape, they will find the legendary sunken city of Spectra, inhabited by a hitherto-unknown, ancient tribe of Loonies who appear to have come from another galaxy. Where will this new quest lead our adventurers?

In Loony Quest: The Lost City, the first expansion for Loony Quest, players discover five new worlds and strive to master the previously unseen challenges of this 32-level content pack! Travel through secret passages that let you reappear in another location on the level. A 3D-pyramid spaceship turns up the fun factor of the new levels and brings a new angle to the original Loony Quest game, boosting replayability.

New special stages and more bonus and penalty tokens add up to even more fun with the players around the table!