REVIEW: Spot It!

Designer: n/a
Publisher: Blue Orange
Players: 2-8
Ages: 7+
Time: 1-2 minutes per round
Price: $14

This review is going to be short and sweet, just like the game. Spot It! is a remarkable little confection that works great as a warm-up game or just a quick bit of fun. It comes in a compact tin that contains a set of 55 circular cards. Each card has 8 symbols drawn from a set of 50. These are clear, clip-art-style images like scissors, bullseye, snowflake, pencil, dragon, etc. The images are scaled, so you may see a large zebra or a small zebra, but each tends to have a single dominant color. Between any two cards there is only one matching image. I'm not certain how they pulled that off, but they did, and it forms the heart of the gameplay.

The goal is to draw cards and spot the matching images. It's that simple. The size doesn't matter, so a large snowman can be matched to a small snowman. However, there will only ever be one match between two cards.

With this basic setup, Blue Orange offers 4 gameplay options. In The "Tower", players are each given one card face down, with the rest of the cards forming a face-up draw pile. Players flip their cards simultaneously, and the winner is the first person to announce a match with the top card of the draw pile. They place that card on the top of their own pile, and the matching continues until the draw pile is exhausted. The person with the most cards, wins.

"The Well" is like The Tower in reverse. One card is dealt to the center and the rest are dealt to the players. The goal is to shed your pile of cards by matching a symbol from your top card to an image on the center card. 

"Hot Potato" is also a shedding game, but this time players each hold a single card in their palms. The first person to call a match places all of his cards on top of the matching card, then draws another. Play continues until one person has all the cards, then a new round begins. The winner is the player who has the fewest cards once the draw pile is exhausted. This one plays better with larger groups.

The final variant is called "The Poisoned Gift." Each player has a single card, with a draw pile at the center of the table. The goal is to make a match between the top card of the draw pile and another player's card. That player then takes the matching card and play continues. The winner is the person with the fewest cards when the draw pile is exhausted.

If all this just sounds like a simple matching game ... well, it is. But it's also a whole lotta fun. It's much more entertaining than you might expect from a mere description. Play is lightening fast, with quick turns of fortunate and split-second decisions. You have to be observant and fast, and each player develops a technique of rapid observation in order to compare visual elements as quickly as possible.

If I just saw this game sitting on a shelf, I never would have bothered with it. It looks too rudimentary and seems to lack replay potential. In fact, repeated play only makes it better, as you become familiar with the images and the pacing. I must have played at least 100 games with just my daughter alone, and it still comes out as a 5 minute filler or a compact travel game. It's immensely clever and appealing, and scales quite well for different ages and group sizes.

You can try the online demo, but this really plays better with another person.

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REVIEW: Roll Through the Ages

Roll Through the Ages
Gryphon Games
1-4 players
ages 8 and up
30 - 45 minutes playtime


Tomorrow's App O’ The Mornin’ will be Roll Through the Ages, but I thought I’d get a jump start on that review by talking a bit about the original game.

Roll Through the Ages is a fast-playing, dice-based version of a very long, complex civilization game called … yeah, you’re already ahead of me on this one: Through the Ages.

Since I’ll bet hard money (or at least Monopoly money) that the majority of people reading this have not heard of, much less played, the original game, let me summarize Roll Through the Ages this way:


Yahtzee + Civilization = Roll Through the Ages

I am not one of those people who hate Yahtzee. It’s an okay game, and the app version can be addictive.

Roll Through the Ages, however, does something quite interesting with the dice rolling formula.

The game comes with 7 special dice. Each die has the following illustrations: 3 sheaves of wheat (representing food), 3 people (workers), a coin (7 gold pieces), a jug (goods), two jugs with a skull (2 goods + 1 misfortune) and 2 wheat with 2 people (you can choose 2 food or workers).

I’m not going to get into all the nuances, but the basic idea is this:

Everyone gets a score sheet that shows the cities, monuments, and developments that you either already have, or can build by rolling dice. They also each get a peg board (similar to a truncated Cribbage board) that allows them to track their goods.

Players start out with 3 cities, allowing them to roll three dice. They get three rolls each time, and can “save” good rolls, just like Yahtzee. They need to roll food to support their cities, workers to build more cities and monuments, and goods and money to buy civilization developments (which provide bonus points and in-game benefits).

As you build more cities, you get to roll more dice, up to 7 dice total. Each worker you roll allows you to check off various boxes on your score sheet. Check off enough boxes for a particular item (such as The Great Wall or a new city) and you’ve “built” that item. Although the rules for counting, spending, and discarding goods are bit tricky at first, they soon become second nature. Final points are scored based on monuments and other bonuses, with high score winning.

None of this should work at all. Even writing it down makes it sound more complex than it really is, and the idea of a civ-building dice game sounds loopy. The real accomplishment of designer Matt Leacock (of Pandemic and Forbidden Island fame) is taking the heart of the Civilization genre and, through some weird bit of alchemy, converting it to fast-playing, dice rolling fun. I know an innovative (and tricky) design when I play one, and this is as innovative as Pandemic, albeit in a subtler way.

It’s not a “simple” game, but my 9-year-old daughter grasped it perfectly well, and is even beginning to work out some advanced strategies. It can be explained to a novice group in about 10 to 15 minutes, and takes about 30 minutes to play, making it a great light game for both experience and novice gamers alike. It's also fine as a solitaire game.

UPDATED 6/9/11: This review originally included a photo I assumed was a publisher shot because of its professional quality, but which was actually created by a reviewer from BoardGameGeek named "EndersGame". I have removed the image, but it can be found here, along with many, many more detailed photos of the game. It's quite an excellent post, and well worth your time.