Awesome Games

Konami dusts off the ’80s run-and-gun classic for today’s generation. While Contra: Operation Galuga mainly offers new graphics and audio to the NES arcade shooter, it also has a few new stages and enemies and adds a four-player arcade mode. It’s time to steal lives from your kids.

Forgecore’s playful take on Battleship replaces ships with picnic foods and torpedoes with ants. The 3D-printed prototype has tiny sandwiches, hot dogs, watermelon, and other eats, hundreds of ants, a tablecloth playfield, and a faux wicker picnic basket for its pieces. Sign up here if you’re interested in buying one. Hopefully, Hasbro won’t stand in the way.

We assumed there were thousands of different ways that a game of tic-tac-toe could turn out. While the game board allows for more than 255,000 combinations of Xs and Os, there are far fewer gameplay outcomes. Musician and coder Marc Evanstein ran the numbers and argues there are only 14 different games to be played. (Thanks, Orion!)

This party game from the makers of Exploding Kittens asks players to complete simple challenges. The trick is that your friends all get a chance to make them more difficult. The player who makes the task the hardest becomes your teammate, and if you can complete it, you both get a point. But if you fail, everyone else gets a point, and you both lose a point.

This series of 1″ enameled metal pins from DKNG pays tribute to classic arcade gaming, with four tiny machines to wear on your jacket or backpack. The Fly, Fight, Build, and Race machines incorporate sweet retro colors and graphics and a sparkly glitter-filled screen. The set is $10 off the regular price for a limited time.

Après Hours’ ready-made espresso martinis make cocktails easy, and combined with the Drunk Après Hours Drinking Game, it makes happy hour even happier. This collaboration with Drunk in Love is a simple game for three or more requiring players to follow prompts correctly or take a sip.

The guys from How Ridiculous are back at their 150-foot-tall tower and crane to drop stuff. But instead of just destroying things, they turned it into a game. The objective? The crew must catch as much water from each splashdown as possible. Another game involved keeping water in a container while taking a wild jet boat ride.

NCSOFT’s upcoming action-adventure game Project M is based on the idea that the universe is a simulation and that every particle is data that can be manipulated by your decisions and actions. The trailer’s intro is performed by an AI-generated version of NCSOFT strategy boss Songyee Yoon, complete with a deepfaked voice.

Taking a hike through the great outdoors can be a relaxing and serene experience. But if you’re squeamish about bugs and other wildlife, you’re better off staying indoors. Thanks to the Molski Brothers’ A Trail Tale, you can experience a hike along the Appalachian Trail without leaving the comfort of your web browser. (Thanks Rob!)

Food and drink writers André and Tenaya Darlington turned their book Booze & Vinyl into a card-pairing game. The set includes 100 full-color cards which challenge players to combine one of fifty classic albums with a delightful cocktail pairing. Includes an 88-page recipe book with notes on the music. For 1 to 3 players.

To celebrate World Cup time, pastry artist Amaury Guichon created one of his most ambitious edible sculptures to date. This 100% chocolate creation is a 1:1 scale, playable replica of a foosball table, complete with handpainted players, working spinners, and even those abacus-style scorekeepers at each goal.

Friendly Rabbit’s CUBED offers a modern spin on the classic game of dominoes, replacing rectangles with hexagons, and dots with colorful facets in varying heights. Players match pieces based on color and height with the goal of placing them all. The set comes with 88 pieces, with an optional 16-piece expansion set.

The party game I Have This Friend is a great way to get to know people. It plays out much like “Never Have I Ever,” except with players picking cards from a deck of awkward or embarrassing situations, then asking everyone at the table to fess up when it applies to them. Mix with booze for added laughs.

After impressing us by restoring a vintage pinball machine, Old Things Never Die is back with another project video. This time, they took an antique coin-operated lottery game that tumbled tiny balls inside a metal sphere, then dropped one behind a window at its bottom. The color of the selected ball corresponds to a prize.

You might think this object is a rusty bicycle wheel on a stand, but it’s a vintage game of chance that decides who will pay for the next round of drinks. Old Things Never Die tore it down to its components, stripped off the rust, and restored it to original condition. The clicky sound it makes when spun is so satisfying.

Smartphone racing games often require tilting the screen to steer. While it’s not a bad control method, we prefer this clever design, which places the phone in a cradle that’s been rigged up to a metal frame and steering wheel. Though if your game requires acceleration or braking, that’s another problem.