*Editor's note: The use of the terminology "barcade" was changed to "arcade bar" to avoid infringing on a trademarked brand name.
Coin-Op Cantina in downtown Cape Girardeau will be hosting a free Klask Tournament at 9 p.m. Friday, with prizes going to the top five places.
The winner will walk away with the honor of his or her picture in the “Hall of Champions” and a Klask game to take home.
It’s a strange little game with a surprisingly large following: Klask is a table-top board game that Jason Mungle said he found on the internet.
Mungle is a part-owner of the downtown arcade bar. Besides craft beer on draft, the place is filled with old arcade machines and games like skee-ball, darts and pinball. Add to that list, Klask.
Because he has two other partners in the business, Mungle said he mostly runs the tournament game nights once a month at the bar. He said he’s always searching for new games, and Klask “just kept popping up” on his social media news feeds.
“I thought, ‘why not give it a shot?’” Mungle said. “And it turned out to be super fun.”
Klask is played with two people, each of whom control a striker from underneath the game surface with a magnet. The object of the game is to use the striker to knock the ball into the other player’s goal.
But there’s a catch.
Three little magnets line the center of the game board, almost like a defense. If a player gets two of those magnets stuck to his/her striker, he forfeits a point to the opponent. If a player loses control of the striker and cannot get it back, the opponent earns a point. Finally, if a player accidentally falls into his/her own goal, the opponent earns a point.
The Klask Tournament will be a double-elimination format with two game boards. If more than 30 people sign up, Mungle said the tournament will have to become a single-elimination format in the interest of time.
Unlike other tournaments at Coin-Op, Mungle said the competition will begin promptly at 9 p.m., so participants should try to register no later than 8:45 p.m.
