Good idea, I'll add my latest purchases.
Space Alert: I'll put this right at the top since it's just that awesome. General idea: you and your crew of 3-5 astronauts are exploring a new sector in space. The goal is to survive for 10 minutes, then warp back out. Co-op players ersus game. Sounds simple, right?
I'll let
this video speak for itself.
The level of teamwork needed, while it is genuinely impossible for one player to do everything and 'lead' the game is what makes it. The 10 minute missions are controlled chaos.
Another note: the rulebook for this is EXCELLENT. There's the dry manual stating all the rules, and there's the "learning to be a space recruit in 7 simple steps" manual. The latter features some pretty funny dialogue from your instructor and guides you through 7 tutorial missions (not all of them have to be done if you're quick to learn), complete with easier pre-made CD tracks, each one introducing some new elements of play and ramping up the difficulty. Great way to ease into the game.
edit: SC2 match incoming. Will finish post later. //edited edit: We won, yay, my life for Aiur, etc.
Saboteur: Pretty simple, but a decent, interesting game that supports up to 10(!) players easily. One team lays down map cards to make a direct tunnel from the entrace to the gold stash (diggers), while 1 to 4 hidden saboteurs try and prevent that from happening before the cards run out. There are three face-down goal cards, only one of them is the gold stash. You can play attack cards on other people to prevent them from laying down new cards, so saboteurs will have to be subtle in their tries to block progress.
Nice little game, cheap, easy to bring along, and like many other party games, the draw of this isn't so much the game mechanics itself, but the social interactions that follow from it. If you draw a spy card (look at one of the three goal cards to see if it's gold or not), who do you tell what it was? If you tell the diggers it's easier to complete the tunnel, but if the saboteurs find out you're gonna have a hard time. Someone played a crappy move? Should you hit them with an attack card or not, or will that incriminate you as one of the saboteurs? Etc.
Mr Jack: Great little 1v1 game, quite the brainburner. I think of this as a cross between chess (dynamics), citadels(character selection and powers) and cluedo(theme). One player plays investigator, the other one plays Jack the Ripper, who is disguised as one of the investigators. You take turns moving one character across the board and performing their ability, in an attempt to either figure out who Jack is, or make sure Jack's identity isn't discovered.
You do this by working with a hidden/visible rule: If Jack is next to a lantern, next to another character or standing in Watson's flashlight beam, he's visible. The same goes for all other characters. Each 4 moves the Jack player has to indicate if his disguised murderer is visible or invisible. This way the investigator can rule out suspects.
Goal is to accuse Jack before the end of turn 8 (as in: 'take them' such as in Chess). Jack's goal is to prevent that from happening or escape through one of four exits (can only happen if he was hidden the previous turn).
It seems childish and simple when you first see the game, but a surprising amount of thought goes into playing a match properly, particularly on Jack's part. Not only is there the literal suspect elimination through visible/hidden rule, you can also deduce quite a bit through either player's character picks and which characters they tend to 'protect' (make sure they are in the largest group, either hidden or visible / make sure they can't be made invisible through opponent's moves, etc / purposely picking a character that's useless to them just to prevent the investigator from using it, etc).
Really fun!
