My wife and I recently had the opportunity to check out a new board game café that opened near our house. I love going to new board game stores and seeing what weird or unique games they have on their shelves. I generally assume the majority of the games come from the owner’s personal collections, or at least the ones that aren’t the owner’s absolute favourites. I suspect that’s how IOTA, designed by Gene Mackles and published by Gamewright in 2012 made it onto this shelf. The sole reason my wife picked it off the shelf was because it was JUST SO SMALL!

IOTA contains a deck of 66 cards. 64 of the cards are unique, displaying a symbol, colour, and number. Each player takes 4 cards into their hand, and on your turn, you play cards onto the shared play area to create lots, which are rows or columns where every aspect of the cards in a particular row and column are either completely the same, or completely different. A row can contain cards that all have the same colour, but different shape and number, or they can be the same number, and colour, but have different shapes, you get the picture.

Each time you play cards, you score all the lines you create or extend by the value of the cards. If you happen to complete a set of 4, it doubles your score for the round. There are 2 wild cards that will assist, but other than that, every card will appear only once. So if you’re holding out hope for that blue sqaure with a 3, and you notice it’s on the table somewhere else, well. You’ll be waiting for a long time.

The game that immediately sprung to mind when playing IOTA was Qwirkle. The similarities are immediately obvious, playing lines of shapes and colours that either all match or don’t match to score points. IOTA adds a 3rd dimension for players to consider with the value on the cards as well. It creates some depth, especially when it comes to scoring. Playing two cards next to a 4 is better than playing three cards next to a series of 1’s. IOTA pares down the symbols from Qwirkle‘s 6 shapes to 4, which is both a blessing and a curse. There are less shapes to keep in your head, but now all the lots are stubby. You’ll likely end up creating tiny staircases that sprawl all over your table.

The whole reason IOTA even made it onto my radar was because of it’s comically small tin. The tiny square cards don’t feel great to hold, and more than once we had to awkwardly slide the entire shared play area so that the game didn’t run off the table. For a game that comes in such a tiny tin, I did not expect it to be such a table hog. Furthermore, the shorter rows and columns made it surprisingly difficult to expand the play area at times, if you just so happened to not be able to play off anything. If you and your opponent have been competitive and pairing cards off well, not being able to strike off into a different direction is frustrating.

While my wife was a pro right from the start, I had a strange amount of trouble figuring out how to play my cards. I kept trying to play a series of cards that were not completely the same or different in all aspects. Adding that third element really seemed to throw me off my game. A lot of “I’m going to put these down right here, except I can’t do that!” “How about over here? Nope, can’t go here either!”. It’s no fun having the wind constantly taken out of your sails.

As more cards got played and the number of lots grew, the analysis paralysis grew in turn. There were more and more places to play cards that were worth almost the same amount of points each. I kept checking over and over for which lots needed that fourth card to get a double score turn, only to realize that a lot of the necessary cards were already on the table. It slowed the game down to a crawl, and I’m sure if we were playing more than 2 players, the wait between turns would have been atrocious.

At the end of the day, IOTA offers a more cerebral experience than Qwirkle. The potential for huge turns is much higher, if you manage to play 3 cards in a turn, and complete a lot, doubling your score for the whole round. But it’s less satisfying to play. Tiny cards are annoying to hold and likely to slide around, versus wooden blocks that are a joy to touch and click together are obviously the superior component. IOTA was more frustrating, as so frequently the cards in my hand just didn’t fit anywhere because one of the three elements were wrong. The scoring was much more mathy, which slowed the game down when players are trying to puzzle out which placement will earn them the absolute most points. These points of frustration all prevent me from really ever recommending IOTA. It should be said that I would like IOTA quite a bit more if Qwirkle didn’t exist. IOTA tries to build on the foundation that Qwirkle built, but misses the simple joy and charm that made Qwirkle such a hit to begin with.