Zendo Review

One of the first games that I was introduced to once I moved to Philadelphia was Zendo. (As a note, you can't buy Zendo anymore as a standalone game, but it utilizes the "Icehouse Pieces", so you can easily make your own version of the game, as I intend to do.)

Zendo is a game all about patterns and rules. Yet, there are very few rules to actually playing the game. To start each round, one player determines a "rule" (pattern) that all of the other players are attempting to discover. He then creates two examples - one that matches the rule (or the "Buddha nature") and one that does not. After this, each other player builds a structure and either says "master" or "mondo". "Master" simply asks the moderator (rule creator) to tell everyone whether that structure matches the pattern. "Mondo" allows all of the players to guess whether or not the structure matches the rule - and each player that is right gets a guessing stone. On your turn, if you have a guessing stone, you are allowed to guess what the rule is (and if you're wrong the moderator will create an example that disproves your guess). The first person to guess it correctly is the winner, and they get to make up a rule for the next round. That's the whole game - you keep playing as many or as few rounds as you want, and you make the rules as simple or as complicated as you want (and your group is willing to put up with; if you came up with a 5-part rule, I would probably never play with you again. Especially since it would take us hours to figure it all out.)

What's the rule?

So.... you know how sometimes you just feel like you're going to hate a game, before you even try it? Zendo was like that for me. It was explained as a game "of figuring out the rules", and so I immediately thought of the atrocious card game "Mau." (I absolutely hate Mau. If you don't know what it is then: 1) consider yourself lucky, and 2) you can find more information about it on Wikipedia.) However, since I claim I'm willing to try any game (and to be a good sport since I had just met these people), I tried it. I was wrong - Zendo actually wound up being a very fun, laid back game. Therefore, my first pro is this: Zendo is a relaxing game. Most games that I play are fairly intense. This is because I'm (hyper-)competitive. I like to win. I'm willing to lose, but while I'm playing a game I'm doing everything I can to win. Zendo for whatever reason doesn't matter as much. Sure, I'd like to win, but it's also just fun to try to figure out the pattern.

Secondly, I like that the difficulty of Zendo is scalable based on the group. I'm not incredibly dedicated to the game, so I probably won't ever play where there are complex rules (such as there has to be a red pyramid and there must be a small pyramid). However, for those people that do enjoy more complicated patterns, this is perfectly legal. You can make the pattern as complicated as the other players are willing to accept.

Can you figure out this one?

My third pro is that the game is very inviting. It's something that could be played by most anybody (it might be problematic if you're color-blind). It can be enjoyed by both gamers and non-gamers alike, and it could even be a decent ice-breaking game. You could start playing it with 3-4 people, and before you know it there would be people around watching it that you could include in the next round (or if you're willing, you could even let them jump into that round). It's a very fluid and inviting game and is great for playing just to enjoy the experience.

I don't really have any direct cons for Zendo, but at the same time I realize that this isn't a game that I'm going to get together specifically to play. This keeps it out of my upper echelon of games. However, this doesn't mean that Zendo isn't something that everyone can enjoy. I could easily see this being played at coffee shops, or any other gathering of friends.

Overall, I give Zendo an 8.5/10. I try to reserve 9+ for games that I would get together specifically to play, and that's really the only thing that keeps Zendo from scoring quite a bit higher!  If you somehow find a copy, or if you happen to have Icehouse Pieces (or were thinking about buying them for a different reason), I would definitely recommend that you try it out.

It's hard to recommend games "like" Zendo. But, you might check out Tsuro, Jin Li, and Blue Moon City.

Aquarius Review

Now for a quick card game review for a quick card game: Aquarius.

In Aquarius, each player gets a goal of which of the five elements they represent. From here, the objective is to connect 7 cards together, each of which represent your specific element. The different cards that can be played may only represent one element, may be split in the middle and represent two elements, or may be quartered and thus represent four elements. In order to play any of these cards, you must place the new card so that it faces the same direction as the previous card (no perpendicular placement) and so that two elements match. However, they do not need to be your elements - if you are playing as the earth, it may be in your best interest to connect two stars on cards that both have the earth on them. This would still count as your elements being connected, since they are on both cards. But, beware! There are action cards in the game that allow you to "zap" cards (take them into your hand), move cards, and even change goals.

The thing that I liked about Aquarius was that it was a simple game that could easily be played with just about anybody. The game I believe claims that it is for 8+, but it could probably just as easily be taught to a 6 year old. I'm not even sure that you would need to be able to read to play the game as everything is picture based - if you could teach your kid what the pictures on the 4 action cards meant, then they would be able to play. I think it's even short enough that it might fit into their attention span, and it is small enough to be taken with you and brought out whenever you needed to entertain them.

Unfortunately, that was really about all that I liked about the game. This is a Looney Labs game (the people that brought you Fluxx, which is a really awesome game), but I think they missed the mark on this one. This game just seemed pretty boring to me. Yes, I could play it more, but the ultimate question is, why? There's not really all that much strategy to the game, but there's also not really an element of exciting randomness (the closest there is occurs when someone messes with the goals, but that is more annoying than random). I don't really know how to explain to, but on these silly little card games, some are hits and some are misses. Whereas Fluxx I considered to be a great hit (I should write a review about it...), Aquarius is a miss. I think part of it is that there is so little that you can do each turn. It keeps with the standard "draw one card, play one card" game flow of the rest of the games by Looney Labs, but the other ones all allow you to break out of the mold in some way. In this one, you are simply drawing and playing a card each time.

Overall, I give Aquarius a 6.0/10. Whereas I didn't think the game was especially fun, I also didn't feel like it was a chore to play it (which is more of the 5 and below range). I could play it again if someone else brought it and I was trying to kill time, but they will need to bring their copy, because I intend to get rid of mine.

If you like light games, you might also check out Gloom, For Sale, and Hey, That's My Fish!

Back to the Future: The Card Game Review

In case you haven't read enough reviews on Back to the Future: The Card Game, I will now finally get around to writing my thoughts on it, but since I've personally seen several reviews of it floating around, I probably won't be as in-depth as I would on some other games.

In Back to the Future (which is a re-implementation of Chrononauts, which I never played and thus will not mention again in this review), the timeline is laid out in front of all of the players. From there, each player represents a potential descendant of some of the characters from the Back to the Future movies. The goal of the game is to set the timeline up correctly so that your character will be born, and then to go back in time and ensure that time travel is never invented. To do this, there are different "linchpins" and "ripple points" in the timeline. Various cards allow you to change what happens in a linchpin event, and this causes a "ripple" through the timeline - thus flipping cards onto their opposite side to reflect the new outcome of the linchpin event. Once all of your correct events happens, you must go back in time and keep Doc from hitting his head when hanging his bathroom clock and getting the idea for time travel.

The main thing that I liked about Back to the Future was the concept of the timeline. If you assume that time travel is possible, then it makes sense that changing an important event in the past would then ripple through other events and cause different outcomes. This concept was reflected well and was well executed in the game.

The next thing to mention about Back to the Future that many people would consider a "pro" (though not necessarily for me) is the amount of flavor in the game. If you really enjoyed the Back to the Future movies (and watch them often enough to remember what happened in each of them) then you will really enjoy looking through the cards, the timeline, the characters, etc.  (As an added bonus, you will probably also get to go first when you play, as this is decided by whoever has watched them most recently). However, as I have not watched them in quite some time, I wound up ignoring most of this flavor text and simply paying attention to things like "C-3 flips C-5".

Now to the cons... the first thing that I didn't like about the timeline was that it was difficult for me to follow by looking at it. Whereas I said that I like the timeline mechanic in the "pros" section, and I stick to that, I still had some concerns with it.  I think that a lot of this was because I ignored the actual flavor text and only paid attention to which linchpin number flipped which ripple effect numbers, but it was something that I felt was difficult to follow visually. In general, I'm not sure that there is a better way of laying out a timeline, however, so this is a fairly minor complaint.

The main thing that I did not like about Back to the Future was how the victory mechanic worked. Once you had all of your character's events setup, you had to go flip the linchpin trying to get Doc not to get the idea of time travel. There are 5 linchpin cards in the corresponding pile, and you flip over the top one - if it is the card that says that he successfully hangs his clock, then time travel never occurs and you win the game. If it is one of the 4 other cards, then the game continues. I do not like that whether you win or not is random. I understand not wanting to guarantee that a player wins the game (though I don't necessarily agree with it), but I would like that player to at least get some kind of advantage by flipping over an unsuccessful card. This would mean that at least their turn is not a total waste, and they also didn't waste whatever card allowed them to flip the linchpin in the first place.

Overall, I give Back to the Future a 7.0/10. It is a playable game, and I would not mind playing it more. If you're a big fan of the movies, then you should definitely check it out, but if you are just a gamer looking for something to play, you may want to try it before you buy.