I feel like the player boards need to be at least 50% bigger to give players more room for drawing the symbols, especially with those thick tipped markers.
This looks solid--borrows heavily from Mosaix where you're trying to draw polyominos composed of symbols onto a board, and scoring for grouping similar symbols together. This adds wonderful art, a nice seasonal theme, and spatial elements to the drawing. Unfortunately it also adds some additional rules overhead, legibility concerns, and component issues. It also comes out at a time when people are going to be dismissive of most roll-and-write games AND polyomino games in general, which is a shame.
Rather than getting confused between saying Roll and Write or Flip and Write, how about renaming the genre to Random Write? If having trouble with the markers rubbing off: I prefer to use permanent markers. When you are done and want to clear the board, use the dry-wipe marker to scribble over the permanent marker marks and then wipe it away. (Though this game doesn't sound worth the effort, but it works for other games. :) )
"Too much work, for not enough fun", that's a pretty solid criticism, I totally agree. Sadly, this is an overflowingly beautiful game, but yeah!, those gorgeous illustrations are over the top of the game mechanics. That been said, this is a gateway game, the target public is very clear. Great review!
Funny that before Tom's final thoughts, I thought I'd really like this game. Now I'm not sure. I'll put it on my maybe list of things to buy because it looks so cute :D
Seems like this might be the takenoko of roll-and-writes. Not especially deep, but cute enough that most folks won't mind. I'll definitely keep an eye out for cheap copies of it in the future
1. Provide choice by allowing players to choose the direction of the shape when they draw it. 2. Keep players from having identical patterns on their boards by providing variations in the boards to start with. 3. Find a better solution than those markers. I have never had dry erase that began to disappear without even being touched. Where they not tested?
Is this game aimed at kids? I'm guessing that the last player to add a card has the most to gain from making the shape. I didn't catch it but, I presume that changes player from round to round.
