Nimble Review

This review first appeared on Polyhedron Collider.

Nimble is a game that will present you with neither interesting nor agonising choices. It will not test your resolve, or your ability to read a bluff in a friend's face. It will—as the name may hint at—test your reactions, your nimbleness if you will.

Game: Nimble

Designer: Peter Jurgensen

Publisher: Pegasus Speil

Artist: Christian Schupp

Player Count: 2 - 4

Runtime: 1 – 5 minutes

The rules and gameplay are very simple; all you have to do is draw a card from the top of your player deck, briefly place it on your discard pile and then place it on one of the central piles, where you will match the frame of your card to the circle of one of the central cards.

The first person to burn through their deck wins, if they haven’t made any mistakes that is.

That’s it. That’s the entire game mechanics.

You may think it sounds a lot like snap, and you’re halfway right, it does have that feel of snap but the good part of snap, all the excitement without the boring waiting. In Nimble, the game progresses as fast as the players, once someone says “Go” you do just that. If you can’t find a match you put the card in your discard and draw again. Another player beats you to the central deck, forcing a change and you have to start your frantic search all over again.

The game is about quick decisions, quick reactions and even quicker recognition. I find myself holding my breath playing, focusing all my attention on the cards, forcing my eyes to only look at one part of the card in my hand and one part of the card on the central piles, it’s here that the game tricks you.

Frame to circle

Frame to circle.

It’s simple. Say it with me now,

“Frame to circle”

So why can’t you get it right, why that moment of hesitation, that moment of second-guessing. You know what a frame is, you know its cream. And you know what a circle is, just look for a cream circle on one of the piles in front of you. Why is that so hard? It’s not as if the circle is hidden somewhere, but it does feel like it, that one cream coloured circle in a sea of pastel colours – some of which will be cream.

Playing this there will be mutterings of “redredredredredredredredred” and “purplepurplepurplepurplepurple” like your extras in a TV show and you’ll do it just to keep focused. I say it feels like the exciting parts of snap because there is a simple pure delight in finding your match quickly. That thrill of getting three cards on the bounce down, down and down all to the dismay of your opponents that stop their colour-chanting-mantra to groan.

Although there is an almost self-elimination in this game, you can’t sit back with your laurel wreath waiting for everyone to cheer your victory. No, because even when you’ve burnt through your deck and are out, there is no guarantee you’ve won. When any one player runs out of cards (including the discard pile) this causes the game to immediately end. However, now each of the card stacks are checked for errors, should the supposed “winner” be found to have ballsed-up, they are disqualified and the player with the smallest remain stack of cards wins. There is beauty in this too; a tension as each card is drawn (in reverse order) and is slapped down on the table. Now that the pressure is off everyone joins in:

Blue
Cream
Red
Purple
Ohhhhh!

Stringing the cards together, the errors are easy to spot and the erroneous card is easily matched to its player by means of its colour coded back.

And that’s why there is the second-guessing, why there is that hesitation during the frantic gameplay; one wrong move now will cost the entire game. How long do you risk checking? Do you trust your eyes enough, are you saying the colour of the frame right now or the circle of the card in your hand. You’d better check again.

With a game that is so dependent on colour, there is the rather obvious consideration of accessibility in regards to forms of colour blindness but the publishers here have you covered in a charming way. Each of the six card colours is used to depict a different classic story, where purple is War of the Worlds, the cream is Pinocchio and turquoise is Don Quixote. The good people at Spielfritte have, in fact, done a colour blind test of the game and to me at least it looks pretty good, but have a look yourself if you or someone you're likely to play with is colour blind.

It is hard for me to know how effective the storybook identification is, I know it looks pretty and some of the colours are intentionally 'close', causing difficulty and hesitation when slapping the cards down. For me, it was the turquoise/blue distinction, but I quite like it. It's all too easy to make a mistake in this game when playing at speed. And that's kind of the point.

It has many of the beats you would associate with a party game, just without the larger player count and that’s not a bad thing. We’ve been able to get a game in while someone is at the bar getting a round of drinks between “bigger” games. Nimble is a bridge or an aperitif in a game night, it’s a fun, family game; perfect for children. It’s light, it’s simple, and it’s a shot of cardboard childish delight that forces your attention and focus.

A copy of the game was provided by the publisher for review

Review: Ominoes

Ominoes.  A game for Pharaohs, for Rulers and Sovereigns all.  A game for dice chuckers, a game for those that love and hate Chance in equal measure.  For those that want a generous sprinkling of strategy over their polyhedrons in the morning. And for those that just want a quick tabletop hit, but don’t have time for the chits that comes with those bigger box games.  

A Confession:

Now, while writing this I’ve spent a truly inordinate amount of time trying to concoct a silly story about how this game was played by ancient Egyptians 4,000 years ago.  I also spent far too long looking for hieroglyphs of people playing a board game, of ancient looking dice and so on.  All this for the simple aim of duping you, dear reader, into believing, even for a moment that Ominoes is really a modern re-skin of an ancient game such as Chess, Go, or the Royal Game of Ur.  But, to do this would have been to cheapen the accomplishment of the designer, Andrew Harman.  It also wouldn’t have been particularly funny.  Why would I want to do this?  Simple: Ominoes is startlingly simply to play that it feels like it belongs alongside those ancient games I mentioned before.  It’s hard to believe that this game didn’t exist before Andrew and YAY Games brought it into the world.  It has an almost ageless quality to it.

A dry description of this game may include words such as abstract, area-control, and pattern-recognition and dice.  My description would only involve three words. Simple. Elegant. Fun.

I was reminded of the famous Antoine de Saint-Exupery quote:

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

And there is nothing in this game, nothing, that doesn’t need to be there.  It is incredibly lean, and from this stripped back stance the game gains, no, it earns its elegance.  And it does so in spades.

How to roll dice:

So, the simple rules:  Players need to orthogonally connect four or more Ominoes (dice) that show their respective coloured symbols – this can also include the two different types of wilds – once this is done the Ominoes are scored (1 point each) and removed from the board.  First player to reach the agreed-upon target (depending on players, and/or how long you want to play).

1. In your turn, you’ll roll an Omino.


2. Then you’ll move another Omino with a matching face exactly three spaces.


3. Finally, you’ll add the Omino you just rolled.

Other than the fine print, that is how to play (the YAY-Ra wild allows the roller to move any Omino, and the Omniotep allows the roller to re-roll and replace any other Omino).

SPOILER ALERT (it’s not really a spoiler alert, I was just being melodramatic)

The first time you play this game, it will take you a couple of turns to truly realise how deep the strategy is.  You'll also quickly come to relise that with pretty much every turn you'll be interfering, frustrating and in any other way peeing off your opponents.  

On your subsequent games, the gloves will be off and you’ll come out swinging.  There is this moment I look for now when I play this with others for their first time.  Newbies and veterans alike have this “Oooh” moment when they do a surprise double-take.  The best analogy I can think of is eating a very nice cake, and then suddenly finding it has a gooey sweet centre that you had no idea was there.  If you’re not a “cake person” I hope you can still appreciate the metaphor here.



What I’m getting at, is the surprise that this game packs, is, well surprising.  The game is just a bunch of dice - brilliant, wooden chunky dice with colourful filled engraved icons - and a gridded board.  That’s it.  No cards, tokens, chits.  Certainly no miniatures and not even a whiff of custom meeples.  The game doesn’t need them.  Yet, there is so much game here.  That is why this game feels “classic” like it should have been designed 3,00 years ago, not in 2016.

Two and Three-Player Games

In a two -player game, the rules change every so slightly, each player not only collects sets of their deity/colour, but they will competitively complete sets of the other two that are not in “direct play”, so both players will be trying to finish sets of Ra (Yellow Suns) and Khepri(Blue Scarab Beetle).  In a three-player game, all players can score from the one missing deity/colour.  These changes really help keep the balance, and in fact, make the two-player game far more competitive.  As the board fills up finding just the right spot to not give away point to you opponent becomes harder and harder.

Advanced Games

For those players that want a little more of a challenge, Ominoes answers with Indy’s much despised Snake Pit.  At the centre of the board, there is a two-by-two square “Snake-Pit” that cannot be entered at all, which adds a further level of difficulty very simply.  I’ve found that many newcomers to the game assume that the Snake Pit can’t be entered from the get-go, which makes it an important distinction to make when you play for the first time, as it is much more challenging with the advanced ruless in play.  

With each play of this game, you will face a different problem, regardless of the player count, as Ominoes is, at its core a luck based game, therefore what you roll will determine how each game plays.  Regardless of experience as a gamer, or with this specific game.  Ominoes keeps you on your toes.  There will be games where you roll nothing but little Green Hawks (Horus), and the following game you won’t see one.  Making this game very accessible and, quite simply, very good fun.

Accessing your inner Om

Ominoes does a great job getting around the issue of colour blindness and eyesight issues (for the greater part), all the icons are distinct and clear, even if you can’t make out the colours.  The fundamental depth of this game comes from pattern recognition, you can never truly plan ahead too far, or anticipate your opponent since so much of the game is based upon the roll of a die.



 

All of the above combine to make Ominoes a game that can be played by young or old, experienced or new gamers alike.  And I mean really alike.  This game creates a very level playing field to enjoy some fantastic dice chucking over and over again, with such a very short play time, even with the max player count you can play multiple games within an hour.  This is a perfect breakout game, travel game - especially with the far more transportable Travel edition, which includes a neoprene “board” - or even if you just want to play, have fun and don’t have much time - you won’t get much better than Onimoes.

N.B. The travel version of Ominoes is shortly to be released and at present will only be available direct from YAY Games along with the kick-ass pop-up dice tray



This review is based on a full retail copy of the game provided by the publisher.