I’ve talked about a couple different word games on this blog. Mostly in the context Paperback and Paperback Adventures. Word games hold a special place in my heart, as my wife and I played a lot of Scrabble online when we were in a long distance relationship. My partner adores other word games, like Wordle and Crosswords, so it should come as no surprise that when we visited a board game café together, and she saw A Little Wordy on the “Staff Picks” shelf, it was the first game she grabbed.
A Little Wordy was designed by Ian Clayman and Matthew Inman, and published by Exploding Kittens in 2021. This is a two player, or two team game, where each player is given 4 vowels and 7 constants to create a secret word, then players go back and forth using clues to help them guess the word their opponent picked.
The clue cards vary in ability and cost, the cost being berries that you have to give your opponent when you use them, as well as give more berries when you make an unsuccessful guess at your opponent’s secret word. Once both players have correctly guessed the word, whichever player has the most berries is the winner.
The clue cards offer you a myriad of ways to help you deduce what your opponent’s word actually is. From eliminating letters to confirming the first letter, to deducing the length of the word, each clue card is a tool in your arsenal to help you in your quest to figuring out your opponent’s word.
A Little Wordy is a bit of a race, in the sense that the longer you take to guess your opponent’s word, the more berries you’ll be forking over to them. Some of the most powerful clue cards have you handing over 4 or 5 berries at a time, which is the equivalent of 2 incorrect guesses. With 11 letters to pick from, is it more valuable to just guess willy-nilly, or do you use those powerful clues in the hopes that you’ll only need one guess to pin your opponent’s word to the wall?
I imagine the real answer is somewhere in the middle, but A Little Wordy does offer some fun tension that you don’t usually find in word games. Where most word games feel like a vocabulary test, A Little Wordy makes you feel more like a detective. As you use the clue cards and cut down the list of possibilities, you get a feeling like you’re circling your prey. At the same time, you can feel your opponent getting closer and closer. You need to weigh the benefit of using a powerful clue card against just guessing a word and hoping for the best.
There is some significant luck involved with the initial tile draw. Sometimes you’ll pull a Q with no U, effectively just giving you fewer letters to use. Another challenge is that dreaded S, which exponentially increases the number of potential words by pluralizing everything. In that case, hopefully there’s a clue card that will help you pin down where in the word that S is sitting.
A Little Wordy does manage to be exciting and interactive, which is more than most word games can boast. Yes, having a good vocabulary is going to be a boon, and the luck of the letter draw can tilt the scales one way or the other. But it’s exciting when you start to see the shape of the word you’re chasing start to take shape. When your opponent is idly sliding tiles around and getting closer to your word before moving the letters around again. I felt genuine excitement when I got the word right, and it’s even clever in that just because I guessed the word right first, doesn’t mean that victory is surely mine. If I overspent in berries, my opponent has the chance to keep playing and if they guess my word before the berry supply is tilted in my favour, they can steal the victory from my grasp.
If you like Boggle or Bananagrams, A Little Wordy offers a more interactive experience than either of those two games. It’s less competitive than Scrabble, and is adorned with the characterful art that adorns all the Exploding Kittens games. A Little Wordy doesn’t really work as a party game, though, you’ll want to stick to So Clover and Codenames for that situation. But if you do have a single partner who really enjoys word games and puzzles, the deduction element of A Little Wordy fills a little niche that I didn’t even know I wanted until I played it.
Disclaimer: A copy of Re;Act: The Arts of War was provided by publisher BrotherMing Games for the purposes of review
I didn’t have a lot of friends, growing up. I lived in a village with ~500 people, and with such a scant population, the amount of people my age who were interested in the same nerdy things that I was into were diminishingly rare. to compound the issue, even just getting the nerdy products was a challenge.
But, a determined nerd can surmount all problems. We had a teacher come to my town for a year when I was 10, and while he was there, he taught me how to play Magic: The Gathering. It wasn’t long after that, that Pokémon cards found their way into my home. Shortly after that, I had enough terrible cards to make a couple Yu-Gi-Oh decks. I spent a lot of time playing duels on my own, two-handed. I tried to teach my mom, but she immediately dismissed it as too confusing. Eventually, I convinced two of my friends to get on the cardboard bandwagon, and we immediately started pouring what little money we could earn raking leaves and shovelling snow to augment our meagre collections.
So why am I telling you all this? Because the reaction chain in Yu-Gi-Oh has heavily influenced the core of Re;Act: The Arts of War by designers Chris Lin, MingYang Lu, and Eric Zeringue, and published by Brother Ming Games in 2024 after a successful crowdfunding campaign, but they’ve added a grid based movement and asymmetric characters to spice up the game.
Brother Ming games sent me the deluxe version of Re;Act. This is a bigger box that includes two neoprene mats instead of a board, and acrylic standees in place of the cardboard ones. The acrylic standees are big, colourful, and bold, creating a really eye-catching game. The incredibly stylish anime-esqe artwork is equally attractive, if you’re into the style (spoiler: I am). The deluxe edition also comes with an art book, including some background on the characters and commentary on how the developers worked on each of the characters. It’s a fantastic looking product.
Re;Act is a 1 on 1 grid combat game, managed almost entirely by cards. Each player controls an artist and is aiming to take down their rival. Re;Act comes with 8 vastly asymmetric characters to choose from, with each one lending their own flavour and flare to the combat. Understanding the core of the game is simple. Players start with a hand of cards, drawing one more on each turn (even on your opponents turns), then the active player plays one of their intent cards. The opportunity to play then passes to your opponent, who can play a reaction card. Opportunity passes back and forth with players either playing reactions or passing until both players pass in succession, then the reaction chain resolves, starting with the most recent played card, and working toward the oldest.
The intentions and reaction cards control everything in the game. If you aren’t holding a card that says you can move, you cannot move. Some characters have incredible movement, like the Tagger or Dancer, who hop all over the board, ducking and diving into and out of harms way. Other characters, like the Calligrapher have terrible movement, but instead they can control and influence every other unit’s movements. That dancer who had planned to step in, attack, then duck out of range, may suddenly find himself pulled in, overcommitted, and surrounded by the Calligrapher’s minions. Card management is critically important, and may be what catches you off guard in your first few games. That said, it’s not terribly difficult to learn a character. Each character’s deck only has 4 or 5 different cards to learn and remember, plus a few extra persistent abilities that you can use round after round. The first time you play, you’ll quickly find the boundaries of a character, then within those boundaries you’ll be able to play and stretch what they can really do.
Re;Act is a high-stakes duel. No action itself is difficult or complex, but the ramifications of each action is consequential. The duel ends when one of the two artists take just 3 hits. Being one square too far in any direction can make or break all of your plans, and when you’re trying to plan your turn 4 reactions in advance, suddenly the simple system becomes a complex web of decisions.
Duels should be, and could be, short. 20 to 30 minutes per encounter, with most of my games only really lasting 4 rounds. But Re;Act is a tough game to get into. First, both players need to understand the core game. Then, each player needs to understand the nuance of the character they’re playing. And finally, to do well, both players need to understand the limits of what the opposing character can do. Re;Act is a game that demands mastery from its players. It’s not the kind of game that instantly shines from the first play. Re;Act wants you to pick a character and really get to know their abilities and tricks. It wants you to pick a ‘main’, and develop tactics and strategies for each of the opposing matchups. In some of our first games, turns were excruciatingly long, mainly because any action had long reaching consequences that needed to be well-thought-out before committing to them, and the trying to understand the risk of the reaction chain was a bit hard to wrap our minds around.
I’ve long held the opinion that duel games are at their best when you have a partner to play with who is equally enthusiastic and invested as you are. Re;Act falls into that same camp, if you can find a group or community who wants to dive into this system with you, I have no doubt that you’ll have a ball. The more you play, the more you’ll understand the strengths and shortcomings of each character, which in turn should make the game move faster.
Most of my battles consisted of players trying to manoeuvre themselves into a favourable position, and waiting until your opponent couldn’t react before striking. Not quite the build up of tension and sudden bombastic explosion of consequences all at once that you’ll find in some other games, such as Neuroshima Hex. Re;Act can often see players chip away at each other, a tit-for-tat battle until one person manages a skilful riposte. As I said before, it’s a game that rewards mastery.
One of the benefits of a simple system, at the core, is that the asymmetric characters matchups create a new experience each time you play. And looking into the future, plugging in new characters is a fast and easy way to increase the variability of Re;Act, and looking at the community on BrotherMing Games discord channel, if you’re willing and wanting to go deep, there’s a community ready to welcome you with open arms. They even have templates for creating custom characters if that strikes your fancy. I suspect there will be a season 2 soon, which, another half dozen characters, would just send Re;Act‘s replayability to the moon.
I don’t often get the chance to play head-to-head duel games anymore, but Re;Act: The Arts of War reminded me of why I love them. It’s got that same spark that first hooked me into Magic, Pokémon, and Yu-Gi-Oh. Tight turns, tactical tension, and the exhilaration of a well-timed counter.
Re;Act isn’t for everyone. It asks a lot from its players. Time, patience, and a willingness to dig deep into asymmetry and matchup knowledge. But if you’ve got a sparring partner and a shared desire to master a system, this game delivers a unique and rewarding battlefield experience. It doesn’t ask you to spend hundreds on booster packs. Instead, it asks you for something much more. It asks you to learn, adapt, and grow.
For those looking to fill a Magic-shaped hole on their shelf, or for a anime-flavoured combat game with teeth, Re;Act is absolutely worth the dive. Beautifully produced, deceptively simple, and rich with potential, it’s a modern dueling gem.
First, let me tell you how I played this game wrong. The first time I played Forest Shuffle, I thought animals had to be put on trees matching the tag in their corner. This lead me to be frustrated for the entire game that I couldn’t find the right trees to match my animals and really soured my experience. Thankfully, I was wrong.
In Forest Shuffle, designed by Kosch, with art by Toni Llobet and Judit Piella, and published by Lookout Games in 2023, players are competing to gather the most valuable trees and attract the best fauna to those trees, creating a mutually beneficial point generating engine.
On a turn, players can either draw two cards, or, play a card from their hand. Each card is either a beautifully illustrated tree, or, the card will be split down the middle, representing a pair of animals. The trees get placed in front of you, while the animals need to be attached to one of the four sides of the tree card, covering up one of the two animals on the card. Each of these cards have a cost, and many of the cards boast a bonus that you earn if you pay for that card with cards of the same suit. After you’ve taken your turn, the next player goes, and around and around the game plays until 3 winter cards that are shuffled into the bottom third of the deck are drawn, and trigger the end game.
Perhaps you can see why my rules gaff would create such an unnecessary restriction, and would make me sour on the game. After all, it’s the restrictions that make me dislike many other tableau building games such as Ark Nova and Terraforming Mars. Instead, Forest Shuffle is a pretty forgiving game. Sure, there’s 8 tree varieties, sometimes getting two of the correct ones into your hand to trigger a bonus can be a challenge, but it’s rarely a real issue. Instead, the challenge in Forest Shuffle comes in the form of the animals, and the ways they score off each other. Bats score 5 points if you have 3 of them, foxes score 2 points per rabbit, the rabbits score 1 point per rabbit you have in your habitat. Some trees give points based on how many creatures are attached to that tree, while others give points based on having the most of that variety in your forest. With a thick deck of cards, there’s a ton of variety in the scoring, and almost anything you do will earn you points in the end. But will they earn you enough? That’s the real question.
Now, I love multi-use cards. Not only does each animal card have two different animals on it, but much like other card based tableau builders (Race for the Galaxy and San Juan come to mind), the cards in your hand are also the resource you need to discard to play other cards. Unlike those other two games, however, the cards are discarded face up to a central board, where other players can freely draw them into their hand. In a 2 player game, when you can keep tabs on what your opponent is building towards, this does create some delicious tension. If they’re obviously building towards a massive hedgehog dynasty, the last thing you want to do is, just, hand them more hedgehogs. But if neither of the animals on that card are useful to you, now it’s just a dead card in your hand. Can’t be used to build something else, it just sits there.
Outside of hate drafting cards away from your opponent, there is a single other point of interaction. One of the trees gives you points if you have the most trees of that variety in your forest. Beyond that, Forest Shuffle is truely solitare. Not a bad thing if you and your partners like to build your own little happy forests and not need to worry about some psycho chopping down all your hard work. But if you’re looking for a dynamic and exciting game, Forest Shuffle is going to leave you disappointed.
On one hand, I want to say Forest Shuffle is a great game to draw players into board game hobby. With easy to understand turns and delightfully cute artwork, it’s certainly an attractive option. But because every card has 2 options, the decision paralysis of what cards to play from your hand, and which cards to take from the centre can grind this game to a halt if players struggle to keep 20 different card effects in their head. It can be jarring when players sit down to a cozy game with cute animals, and get hit over the head with point optimizations and information overload.
There is a lot of luck in Forest Shuffle, mostly in that you manage to draw the cards that work with your strategy. Many of the cards reference other, specific cards. Such as foxes that give points on how many rabbits you have, or the boars that give points only if you find one of the three squeakers in the game. When you can build a engine that really works, like the deer and wolves, or the ferns that give 6 points per lizard, it feels great. Beyond that, Forest Shuffle feels like you’re shuffling through a pile of trash, hoping to stumble upon the golden nuggets before your opponents do.
The real downside, is that Forest Shuffle sits in a crowded genre. For tableau building games, I’ve already mentioned Race for the Galaxy, and San Juan. There’s also Innovation, Mottainai, and Res Arcana to consider. If you really want a forest or nature theme, Arboretum, Ark Nova, and Earth are all strong contenders, not even to mention Wingspan. Although perhaps I’m being a little unfair with some of these recommendations. Forest Shuffle is not an engine building game, so to compare it to engine building games is like trying to race a bicycle against a motorcycle. One just has an innate excitement, while the other, is great for a sunday ride, but it isn’t going to turn any heads.
I don’t know if it’s still true, but Otter has said that cooperative games are his favourite games to play. He loves the collaboration, and especially, the discussion that most cooperative games feature. Creating a plan together, and seeing it all come together, is very satisfying. It makes sense with his personality, he’s a very kind and inclusive fellow. Gross, right?
The Gang, designed by John Cooper and Kory Heath, art by German design studio Fiore GmbH, and published by KOSMOS in 2024, is cooperative poker. Much like how Balatro is roguelike Poker, The Game uses the familiar mechanisms of creating 5 card poker hands in a unique and interesting way. Or, it would be familiar if your experience with Poker was more than randomly clicking buttons while playing Vegas Stakes when you were 7 years old. And besides, Vegas Stakes Poker game was 7 card stud, not Texas hold ’em
Now, because I don’t live under a rock, I’ve been tangentially aware of what Texas hold ’em is, because it’s always on the many screens in pubs over the years, as well as being featured in Casino Royale. I’ve seen it around, but I’ve never really played the game. For some people, it can be hard to imagine that people out there are largely unfamiliar with how Poker plays, yet, before Balatro hit earlier this year, I was an utter novice at anything Poker.
So, here’s a rundown for the uninitiated. In Texas hold ’em, each player is dealt two cards, face down. Then everyone has a chance to bid or fold. Once bidding is complete, three cards are turned face up from the deck into the centre of the table, creating a pool of community cards. Then another chance to bid or fold is presented to all players. Then a fourth card is turned face up, and again, all players have the chance to bid or fold. Then a 5th card is added to the community pool, and all players have a final chance to big or fold. The goal of the game is, to create the best 5 card poker hand between the 5 community cards and the two cards that were dealt with you at the beginning of the round. A pair or two pair is having one or two sets of cards, a full house is when you have 3 of the same card and a pair, a straight is when you have a run of sequential cards, and a flush is when you have 5 cards of the same colour.
The Gang, uses the core mechanisms of card distribution and hand value, but strips out all the bidding. Instead, after each phase in which players are given information, each player must take one of the poker chips on the table. There’s one chip for each player, starting with a value of one, and increasing for every player at the table. The ultimate goal here is that on the final round, players will take the value of chip that corresponds to the order of strength of their hand. And of course, much like The Crew or The Mind, there is no communication allowed during game play. All you can do is take the chip that you think tells the story of your cards.
It’s worth mentioning that we played The Gang a bit wrong at first. We were getting frustrated when players would jump to grab the low chips before someone who was a bit less experienced with Poker (me) had a chance to evaluate their cards and consider what they wanted to grab. Then we realized that when you take a chip, you can take it from the supply, or, from another player. It was hilarious when two players just took the same chip back and forth from one another, and the accusations and mud that were slung when the hands were revealed and one of those players was the misstep our gang took, were something to behold.
In Poker, if you’re not first, you’re last. It doesn’t matter if you have a pair of kings if someone else is rocking a flush. But in The Gang, correctly assessing where you stand in the order of hands is paramount. sure, you might have a pair of 7’s with a queen kicker. But does anyone else also have a 7 with a king kicker? Is your hand the worst, or the second worst? Maybe you started the round with an Ace and King of the same suit, you have strong potential here, it could literally be the best hand in the game. Do you take the 5 to demonstrate the potential your cards hold, or do you take a middle of the pack chip, to hopefully communicate to your teammates that you don’t have anything solid, but not nothing.
Communication is important in all aspects of life, but the joy in The Gang lies in what you can communicate with those bidding chips. Kind of like Brandon Sanderson’s second law, which reads “Limitations are more important than abilities“. When all players get into the flow, make the correct reads, and actually succeed at the heist, oh the feeling of jubilation is something to behold. If you enjoyed The Mind, I can strongly recommend The Gang. That said, if you found The Mind a boring exercise of sorting cards, then The Gang isn’t going to change your mind.
I also need to caveat that none of the players at my table are poker players. None of us are able to tell you why an Ace Jack suited is actually a better hand than a King Queen suited. None of us knew the odds of the river holding the card we needed, or how to really value a good hand from a bad. We all played based on vibes and our guts, and we had an absolute blast. It’s also worth mentioning that, especially when playing with inexperienced Poker players, The Gang is exponentially more difficult to succeed at when you have more players at the table. The odds of two players having nearly identical is higher, and really, it’s just luck at the end of the day if those players manage to get their chips in the right order.
The Gang was one of the most engaging games we’ve played in a long time. During each round, we were silent and tense, weighing the potential our hands held with the scant information that we could glean from the chips others took. Each revealed card swaying the balance, one person dropping their bid from a 4 star to a 1 star. After the 5th card is revealed, and we slowly reveal our hands from the weakest to strongest, we’d usually groan in defeat, but then launch into a frenetic conversation about what we all meant when we took the chips that we did. Yelling at our friends for taking the chip we wanted, or commiserating that we had a really unlucky deal. Inevitably, we’d shuffle up, deal again, and another tense hush would fall over the table. There’s no greater endorsement than when a player says, “I know I need to go, but let’s just do one more round”. And The Gang demands several more rounds.
I wonder how including the diaeresis in the title of the review is going to affect the SEO of the review. It doesn’t really matter, if there’s one thing I’ve gleaned from the stats, it’s that unless I’m reviewing a brand-new game, or one that is a proven evergreen classic, SEO doesn’t pull too many eyes onto my reviews. Which means if you’re reading this post, you’re probably one of the few people who come back week after week to read my reviews, because you like the way I write, instead of seeking out the review because you have an interest in the product. So, thank you! If I described you, thank you for being here!
Yamataï, designed by Bruno Cathala and Marc Paquien and released by Days of Wonder in 2017, is a game in which players are placing ships between a dense archipelago, and either scooping up the coloured resources that are littered across most of the islands, or, if the island is empty, building one of the buildings to earn victory points and money.
The action selection mechanism is really the star of the show in Yamataï. Along the bottom of the board sit 5 action tiles face up, and 5 more face down. On your turn, you take one of the action tiles, which will provide you with a number of ships as well as a special ability for your turn. The action tile will also dictate where on the turn order track you’ll end up next round.
Your turn follows the same 5 steps each round. Pick your tile, optionally buy or sell one of your ships, then place your ships and either take the resources on the islands next to your placements, or build on an island next to your placements, then store any unused ships, and finally, trade in the resources for some special character powers. There is a lot of nuance I’m skipping over, but you get the general idea of how the game plays.
As always, publisher Days of Wonder makes some really good-looking games. Yamataï is bright and colourful, with wonderful artwork. The wooden buildings that get built are all big and chunky and satisfying to hold and look at. Just from looking at it, I don’t feel like the insert is particularly good, but the copy I played with had everything in baggies, so, I suspect it’s not. If I’m wrong, someone please correct me.
The gameplay is something that I should love. I always talk about positive player interactions in games, where my actions benefit others and vice versa, and Yamataï has some of those feelings. The ships you place out next to the islands can be used by anyone during your turns, and in fact, you’ll need to utilize the ships that others have laid out to really extend into the centre of the archipelago. This creates lots of interesting decisions on your turn. You’ll want to try and place your ships in a way that benefits you, but doesn’t create amazing opportunities for your opponents. Furthermore, several of the buildings are these special red prestiege buildings that when you choose to build them, you don’t put one of your houses on that spot, you place the big red torii or castle on that tile instead. Then, anyone who builds one of their houses on an island adjacent to one of those prestige buildings earns one extra bonus point.
Yamataï doesn’t feature luck in its design. Instead, I feel like a skilled player will dominate a table of novices. Each turn, I felt like I had a tonne of decisions to weigh and consider. At the same time, the score feels a bit flat. And by that, I mean that if I simply execute my first gut instinct move without too much thought, I’d earn, like, 3 points per round. But if I sat, and gave it a lot of thought and really squeezed my brain to make the most optimal move, I’d earn 4 points per round. Yamataï is not kind to players who get paralyzed with too many options. Even at two players, the game could drag on as players take whole minutes to consider their moves.
Although it’s important to note that the 2 player game is similar to Five Tribes, in that you get two actions per round instead of just one. It creates a lot more depth and gives players a lot more control over how they’ll shape the round. You’re able to set up a juicy scoring spot and if the tiles you took last round afford you two turns in a row, you can capitalize on that spot immediately. It’s really satisfying.
The specialists that offer players special powers can be very powerful, and it was quite fun to see new ones get revealed every round, and figuring out how they can work together is, I’m sure, the key to getting good at Yamataï. In one of my games, I was holding 40 coins when the specialist that changes the money to victory point conversion from 5 to 1 to 3 to 1. I snapped that specialist up, and the extra points it awarded me was the entire gap between first and last place.
In my opinion, there is nothing wrong with Yamataï. It’s a good game with a fine theme, great production, and fun mechanics. I would never turn down a game of Yamataï. But I also don’t think there’s anything special in this box that would encourage me to pull it off my shelf, especially sitting next to other Days of Wonders games, or Bruno Cathala games. Five Tribes is the game it most reminds me of (but let me be clear, Yamataï and Five Tribes are very different games), and I think I’d reach for Five Tribes 7 days of the week. At the highest player count, your ability to plan is just thrown out the window. There’s no catch up mechanics, there’s no randomness, there’s no real engine building or sense of acceleration. The specialists give you new actions or augment your existing ones, but each one is fairly minor, and you’ll likely see every specialist in each game, although the order in which they come out is random. The buildings are functionally the same, requiring 3 to 5 different colours of boats arbitrarily, and your ability to make clever and interesting plays feels limited to the 2 player experience.
It feels weird to be so down on Yamataï, because again, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. I like so much about it, from the action tile mechanism, to the shared building spaces, to the specialists that do combo together nicely. I had a fun time playing Yamataï, but I also doubt that I’ll ever play it again. I don’t feel like there’s anything in the game that’s really drawing me back to it. There are too many games and too little time to play games that don’t spark joy, and even though Yamataï didn’t do anything to snuff my enjoyment, there simply was no spark.
There’s something inherently satisfying about watching spheres cascade down a gentle decline. Potion Explosion taps into that feeling with its five rows of marbles colliding and chaining together. Gizmos by Phil Walker-Harding seems to promise a similar experience at first glance, with its eye-catching marble dispenser, but the games themselves are very different experiences.
In Gizmos, players take on the role of inventors creating wild machines powered by energy marbles. The dispenser drops six marbles into the offer row, and on your turn, you’ll do one of four things:
File – Reserve a gizmo for later.
Pick – Take a single marble from the dispenser row into your supply
Build – Spend marbles to construct a gizmo from the offer pyramid or from your archive.
Research – Draw cards from the deck equal to your research level, and choose one to build or archive, then discard the rest.
It’s simple, but the real enjoyment comes from building a wild and exciting engine. Every gizmo you add gives you a bonus, like extra picks, or extra builds, marble storage increases, or even colour conversions. The best turns have you cascading those powers into satisfying chains, where one action triggers another, then another, leading to a flurry of bonus actions.
For example, late in our game, I had a moment where I built a red gizmo. Because I built a red gizmo, I got two bonus marble picks. Because I picked a red marble, I got to blindly draw two extra marbles from the dispenser. And because I did all that, I scored two bonus victory points. Those moments feel incredible.
That one turn was great, but building up to that point is slow and painful. The game starts with every player having the same basic gizmo, offering a single blind draw from the dispenser when you archive a gizmo, which is about as exciting as a cold bowl of oatmeal. Gizmos absolutely shines when the engine building comes alive and starts firing on all cylinders, but it takes a while for things to get rolling.
And sometimes, they don’t roll at all. The dispenser can stagnate if it’s full of colours no one needs. There’s no built-in way to reset it, so if five black and one blue marbles are clogging the offer, and no one has black synergies, tough luck. Likewise, the game can be punishing if you don’t plan ahead. One player in our game archived a gizmo requiring six marbles, while his storage limit was only five. Without a way to discard that gizmo, he was kind of stuck for the rest of the game, desperately researching for an upgrade he could afford. It was brutal watching his game grind to a halt while the rest of us flourished.
The marbles, the dispenser, the satisfying domino effect of well-chained turns, it all works so wonderfully well for this light engine building game. But on the other hand, it also feels like it could have been pushed further. More variety in gizmos, variable player powers, a way to refresh the dispenser, any of these tweaks could have taken it to the next level. Gizmos was released in 2018, I feel like any hope for an expansion to add more to the game has long since perished.
That said, not every game needs to be a complex affair. Gizmos is a great family-weight game, but one I’d hesitate to bring out with younger kids due to its slow start and somewhat punishing nature when a player doesn’t plan appropriately. As for my core gaming group, it lacks the depth to be a go to engine-builder. Ultimately, Gizmos sits in that weird middle space, too light for one group, too slow for another.
But when the engine finally clicks? Yeah, that’s a great game.
