Perfect for individual inspiration or as an after-dinner game with friends or family, Haikubes is a set of 63 word cubes that is attractive enough to display on the coffee table. Simply roll the cubes and use the words that come up to create an expressive haiku. Includes two cubes with inspirational cues to help guide the haiku. Everyone's a poet with this latest entertainment from the team behind Cranium.

For decades, Marvel Comics' superhero group the Avengers have captured the imagination of millions, whether in comics, multi-billion dollar grossing films or video games. Similar to the chronology of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the Avengers video games first started with titles driven by single characters, like Iron Man, the Hulk, Thor and Captain America. Over time, the games grew to include more and more heroes, culminating in playing experiences that featured the Avengers assembled. This is the first-ever book assessing the video games starring "Earth's Mightiest Heroes." Featured games span consoles and platforms, from popular PlayStation and Xbox titles to an arcade game in danger of being lost to time. All video games are covered in depth, with each entry including game background and a detailed review from the author. Some game entries also include behind-the-scenes knowledge from the developers themselves, providing exclusive details on the Marvel video game universe.

In this book, Michael Cramer views the Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA), an organization that studies and recreates the middle ages, as a case study for a growing fascination with medieval fantasy in popular culture. He explores the act of medieval re-creation as performance by focusing on the SCA, describing the group's activities, investigating its place in popular culture, and looking at the SCA not so much as a historical society but as an on-going work of performance art; a postmodern counter-culture riff on what it means to be "medieval." Cramer examines the group's activities, from persona and character development to theatrical performance and personal interaction; from the complex official ceremonies to full contact armored combat with mock broadswords. He explores the SCA in detail to discover how its members adapt and employ ideas about the Middle Ages in performance, ritual reenactment, living history, and re-creation, analyzing the performance of identity through ritual, sport, drama, and personal interaction, and he focuses on the reconstruction of the medieval "king game," a game in which a mock king is chosen to reign over a mock court. The book also studies various ideas about medievalism, including the contrast between reenactment and re-creation, and places these activities in the context of contemporary American society. With three appendixes, a bibliography, and a selection of photos, Cramer demonstrates how and why medieval fantasy is increasingly used in popular culture and analyzes the dissatisfaction with contemporary culture that leads people into these realms of fantasy.

Discover the blissful transience of joy and cheerfulness with The Puzzle of Happiness. Part of a new 150-piece gradient puzzle series that taps into the mindful, self-care appeal of jigsaws. The beautiful, mesmerising artwork of each little puzzle focuses on a different emotion, with an accompanying essay to help you understand and make sense of these feelings. Other titles in the series include: The Puzzle of Hopefulness, The Puzzle of Calm, The Puzzle of Love and The Puzzle of Ecstasy.

Andy Warhol Selfies 1000 Piece Puzzle features a collage of the artist's famous self-portrait Polaroid photographs. Galison puzzles are packaged in matte-finish sturdy boxes, perfect for gifting, reuse, and storage. An insert of the full puzzle image is included in the box. - Box Size: 8 x 8 x 2.5", 203 x 203 x 63 mm - Puzzle Size: 20 x 27", 508 x 685 mm - Includes Puzzle Insert

While the Western was dying a slow death across the cultural landscape, it was blazing back to life as a video game in the early twenty-first century. Rockstar Games' Red Dead franchise, beginning with Red Dead Revolver in 2004, has grown into one of the most critically acclaimed video game franchises of the twenty-first century. Red Dead Redemption: History, Myth, and Violence in the Video Game West offers a critical, interdisciplinary look at this cultural phenomenon at the intersection of game studies and American history. Drawing on game studies, western history, American studies, and cultural studies, the authors train a wide-ranging, deeply informed analytic perspective on the Red Dead franchise-from its earliest incarnation to the latest, Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018). Their intersecting chapters put the series in the context of American history, culture, and contemporary media, with inquiries into issues of authenticity, realism, the meaning of play and commercial promotion, and the relationship between the game and the wider cultural iterations of the classic Western. The contributors also delve into the role the series' development has played in recent debates around working conditions in the gaming industry and gaming culture. In its redeployment and reinvention of the Western's myth and memes, the Red Dead franchise speaks to broader aspects of American culture-the hold of the frontier myth and the "Wild West" over the popular imagination, the role of gun culture in society, depictions of gender and ethnicity in mass media, and the increasing allure of digital escapism-all of which come in for scrutiny here, making this volume a vital, sweeping, and deeply revealing cultural intervention.

Fortnite has re-emerged from the black hole for Chapter 2! The 100% Unofficial Fortnite Annual 2021 is the perfect Christmas gift for gamers. It includes the best skins, emotes and accessories, as well as a round-up of the most impressive vehicles, the best sports mini games, builds and escape rooms in Creative, plus tips for the best attack and defence strategies and much more.

Master the art of building in Minecraft Minecraft is a sandbox game where anything is possible! With over 600 blocks to choose from, getting started can feel overwhelming. This Creative Handbook will give you all the tools you need to become an expert builder. Whether it's choosing your blocks or decorating your build, this book is packed with expert advice, top tips and advanced tricks to take your construction skills to the next level. Read how to plan builds, create colour palettes, use effective lighting and much more. This book also features advice from pro build teams and YouTubers, and includes step-by-step builds to complete in-game. With so much to explore, there's sure to be something for 'crafters of every level.

This large-format activity book contains a wealth of creative, mindful pursuits and puzzles to soothe the mind and enable you to park any worries and stresses and focus on the moment. Mindfulness is the practice of bringing our attention to the present moment without judgement or evaluation - which sounds as if it might be easy but isn't. Scientifically proven to reduce anxiety and depression, improve concentration, even improve the immune system, enabling us to fight off diseases, training our brain to live in the moment is crucially important to our mental and physical health and wellbeing. In The Mindfulness Activity Book Dr Gareth Moore presents creative challenges that will help you focus on yourself and live in the moment. Featuring over 120 fantastic puzzles, mazes, dot-to-dots, crosswords, spot the difference, hanjie, sudoku and more, as well as colouring pages, this book is perfect for any adult who loves a challenge but also craves a creative outlet that allows them to use their artistic and inventive side too. With the help of this book, you will find that taking time for yourself and concentrating on an activity has real therapeutic, mindful benefits, as it allows you to recharge your batteries and better cope with the stresses we all face every day. Take time for yourself, focus your thoughts and feel the proven benefits of being in the moment.

Put your Liverpool knowledge to the test with the ultimate quiz book for Reds fans. Do you think you know it all about Liverpool? Could you name the starting line-up in 2005 Champions League final? The most decorated player in the club's history? Do you know which sides Liverpool have beaten most, and vice versa? Or which game drew the Reds' biggest-ever crowd? Whatever your area of interest or depth of knowledge, this expertly assembled quiz will have some testing questions for you. From the club's earliest days to the glory years of Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley, the renaissance under Jurgen Klopp and beyond, Think You Know It All? Liverpool will challenge your knowledge of the iconic team's players, managers, records and more. Featuring an entertaining mix of questions and puzzles, this is the perfect test for new and veteran LFC fans alike. Proving you know it all about your club has never been such fun - or so tricky.

Never get stuck inside an escape room again, with this strategy guidebook to beating your favorite immersive interactive game-from a well-known game designer and puzzle enthusiast Chances are you have visited an escape room, whether for a birthday party, a corporate team-building exercise, or as a weekend excursion with your friends. But what does it take to maximize your chances of solving the puzzles, while ensuring everyone has a good time along the way? Planning Your Escape is the perfect guide to making sure you never get stuck in another escape room again. Game designer extraordinaire Laura Hall has all the best strategies for every room you might encounter, so your team can function like a well-oiled machine. This guide offers: -A history of puzzles and experiential entertainment, from the 4,000-year-old dexterity puzzles of Mohenjo-daro to the spectacle of immersive theater installations like Secret Cinema, Meow Wolf, and Sleep No More; -Different types of escape rooms, and solvable examples of the common puzzles they employ; -Common escape room player personality types, and how best to work with them; and -Advice for constructing your own escape rooms and puzzle hunts Bringing in a cast of experts, Planning Your Escape is the must-have strategy book for any escape room enthusiast, puzzle fan, and aspiring experience designer. Get ready to wow your friends and impress your co-workers with your new skills, and never enter a room you can't get out of again!

Unleash an Army of NPCs! The spotlight isn't always on heroes or monsters. Some encounters call for a whole cast of nonplayer characters, and the Pathfinder Gamemastery Guide NPC Pawn Collection is the best way to bring the most useful and commonly encountered NPCs to your gaming table! This value-packed collection contains every NPC presented in the Pathfinder Gamemastery Guide and is perfect for use with the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game or any fantasy RPG. NPCs include beggars, guards, judges, jailers, pirates, a cult leader and cultists, innkeepers, executioners, surgeons, bandits, torchbearers, acrobats, and more. Printed on sturdy cardstock, each pawn slots into a size-appropriate plastic base from the Pathfinder Pawns Base Assortment, making them easy to mix with traditional metal or plastic miniatures. The Pathfinder Gamemastery Guide NPC Pawn Collection is the best way to ensure you've got the perfect character for every Pathfinder Roleplaying Game encounter!

This three-staged memory game invites you to observe masterpieces closely. Historically, a masterpiece was a work of a very high standard, produced in order to obtain membership of a guild or academy. Since the author never went to art school, her untrained eye wondered: "How should I look at art in order to fully appreciate it?" Trying to answer this question, she decided to design a system of observation based on different steps: games and activities following a set scheme that triggers the player to look at a masterpiece on a different scale. Pixel-Art Game allows you to zoom into these Dutch Masterpieces. Match the original image with its pixelated copies by zooming into Van Gogh's famous Cafe Terrace at Night. The painter's colour and use of light are emphasised through the pixels of the digitalised image, taking art into our contemporary digital language. With light packaging, perfect to take along with you, the Pixel-Art Game offers several games in one set. Each of these 3 games is a step towards understanding the artwork better, and they can be played with multiple players.

Many aspiring game designers have crippling misconceptions about the process involved in creating a game from scratch, believing a ""big idea"" is all that is needed to get started. But game design requires action as well as thought, and proper training and practice to do so skillfully. In this indispensible guide, a published commercial game designer and longtime teacher offers practical instruction in the art of video and tabletop game design. The topics explored include the varying types of games, vital preliminaries of making a game, the nuts and bolts of devising a game, creating a prototype, testing, designing levels, technical aspects, and assessing nature of the audience. With practice challenges, a list of resources for further exploration, and a glossary of industry terms, this manual is essential for the nascent game designer and offers food for thought for even the most experienced professional.

So you're good at the pub quiz ... you always have the right answer ... you're known for the depth and breadth of your knowledge ... well, why not put those skills to the test with Think You Know It All? Genius Edition. In this fiendish and at times infuriating book of general knowledge questions, you'll find a vast range of topics are covered, to give you a real challenge on subjects from maths to history, music to literature, cinema to sport. With all sorts of different types of question to keep you on your toes (and all the answers at the back for when you need them) this book will give you entertainment and be head-scratchingly annoying in equal measure ... ... But then that's the thing about knowledge: if you know the answer, it's easy!

Test yourself against a fiendishly tricky series of IQ test-style puzzles, the perfect training for those who want to prepare for a Mensa IQ test. This full-colour puzzle book features a wide variety of questions to test every aspect of your brain's workings, from visual and spatial challenges to pattern-based or logical problems. Compiled by Dr Gareth Moore, Mensa's Most Difficult IQ Puzzles will force you to think in new ways and spot patterns you have never seen before in order to solve these demanding conundrums.

Across the globe, therapists are using tabletop roleplaying games (RPG) such as Dungeons & Dragons as a part of their practice. This book provides an overview of what RPGs are and what makes them such an effective and powerful tool for therapy. By examining research on gaming, flow, immersion and role-play, readers will gain a better understanding of the theoretical underpinnings and how to skilfully and ethically use RPGs in their own practices. The author also looks at the history of RPGs, specifically focusing on issues of diversity and representation to help providers understand some possible pitfalls that exist within the medium. The book utilises an example group to walk through everything from conception, planning, running, documentation and termination of the group.