Year: 2024

Ultimatch earns Academics’ Choice Brain Toy Award for Mind-Building Excellence!

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Academic's Choice Brain Toy Award seal next to box for Ultimatch card game.

We are pleased to announce that Ultimatch has been honored with a 2024 Academics’ Choice Brain Toy Award, a prestigious seal of educational quality, reserved only for the best mind-building media and toys. The independent Academics’ Choice Awards program and its seal of excellence are recognized worldwide by consumers and educational institutions as a mark of genuinely effective learning tools that stimulate the mind, and provide potential for the student to fully develop higher order thinking skills. Ultimatch is a winner of the Academics’ Choice Brain Toy Award in the toy category. The Academics’ Choice Advisory Board consists of leading thinkers and graduates from Princeton, Harvard, George Washington University, and other reputable educational institutions. Product-appropriate volunteer reviewers, combined with the brainpower of the Board, determine the coveted winners. Entries are judged by category (i.e. mobile app, toy, book, website, magazine, etc.), subject area, and grade level, and evaluated based on standardized criteria rooted in constructivist learning theory. The full list of winners is posted online at www.AcademicsChoice.com.

The hundreds of submitted products that are not chosen by the Academics’ Choice Awards team (and many that are chosen) are donated to a variety of worthy charities and other organizations across the globe.

About Academics’ Choice™:

Academics’ Choice™ helps consumers find exceptional brain-boosting material. Academics’ Choice is the only international awards program designed to bring increased recognition to publishers, manufacturers, independent authors and developers that aim to stimulate cognitive development. A volunteer panel of product-appropriate judges, including parents, educators, scientists, artists, doctors, nurses, librarians, students and children, evaluate submissions based on educational benefits such as higher-order thinking skills, character building, creative play, durability and originality. Only the genuine “mind-builders” are recognized with the coveted Academics’ Choice Award™.

Ultimatch coming in June

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Ultimatch box with cards laid out in a pyramid with the alta hand cards face up and the deck face down.

Fireside Games is thrilled to announce Ultimatch, an addictive, cooperative card game that hits stores worldwide June 12, 2024.

Ultimatch box with cards laid out in a pyramid with the alta hand cards face up and the deck face down.

Ultimatch is an addictive cooperative twist on matching card games that brings new options for making matches. The goal is to remove all the cards from a pyramid by matching them. You make matches by color, number, addition, subtraction, or even mixing colors, but you want to think through the best cards to use now and which ones to save for later. Single matches give you a rush, Ultimatches feel great, and clearing the pyramid feels amazing.

Diagram showing all the ways players can match an Orange 5 in Ultimatch

Ultimatch includes both public and private cards and requires the kind of clever decision making about when to use cards that seasoned card players enjoy. Silently trading 1 card facedown with 1 other player keeps all players engaged throughout, introduces a push-your-luck element, and calls on players to read each other. Will you risk trading a card with another player? If so, who is likely to know what you need? Is your card better to keep for later use? The thinking goes quickly as do the turns. Every match is a mini-win, and win or lose, players keep coming back for more.

Ages 10+, 1 to 5 players, 20 minutes, $9.95

Ultimatch is available for preorder and will be demoed at GAMA Expo, Dice Tower West, UK Games Expo, Origins, Gen Con, and more to be announced.