I picked up two Out of The Box games recently; Shipwrecked and Basari.
The intial review of both are great. The components and art are top notch, the instructions are easy to follow and definitely live up to Out of the Box name. I believe these puppies retail for a mere 20 bucks US. Definitely a good price, especially for Basari.
We first tried Shipwrecked. Shipwrecked is a blind bidding game where players bid for items. Each item has a point value towards winning, an income that is generated per turn, and a value that the item is worth if you sell it back to the bank. Each item also belongs to a certain category of items (example food, clothing, etc). To win you must have 150 points total or 100 points in one category. Point values on cards range from 10 to 50 points.
At the beginning of a players turn, he collects any money he is entitled from the income of previously won cards, then he flips over the top card of the items. This item is the item everyone bids for.
Each player has a small deck of bid cards If I remember correctly, the deck consists of 3 pass cards (possibly 4), 2 stop cards and 1 strike! card.
Everyone chooses and places one of their bid cards face down. Then the question is asked, does anyone want to stop the bidding? If someone DID play a stop card, and they wish to reveal that they did so, they must reveal their stop card and then the bidding is stopped. All of the other cards are also flipped over. If no other stop cards are revealed and no strike! cards are revealed, the winner of the bid pays 5 gold (for being the first round of bidding) and wins the card. That's pretty much the bidding process.
If no one declares a stop in a round, the bidding then moves to the next round. The cost to purchase the card is now one less than the previous round of bidding (during the last round of bidding it is possible to win a card for free).
If a strike card is revealed after a stop has been declared then whoever played the strike! card wins the bid. If two or more strike cards are revealed, they cancel each other out. If more than one stop cards are revealed, then all players who played stop cards must look at their previous bid rounds; whoever played the most passes in previous rounds wins the bid. If it is a tie, then all players involved in the tie, must pay the current price for the card, then they must start over and rebid for the card from scratch! This can be particularly costly if this occurs in the first round. (For example, Betty and Sam both play stop cards in the first round, where it costs 5 gold to purchase an item. Both must now pay 5 gold to the bank, and they must bid again for the same card). This can get ESPECIALLY nasty if it happens several times in a row.
If you win a bid for a card and don't have the money to pay for it, then you must sell one of your previous cards back to the bank and use that value to purchase the new item. If you don't have enough after that, or you don't have any cards to sell, you are declared bankrupt and you're out of the game.
Shew! No on to the review. I LOVE THIS GAME! A normal game of shipwrecked takes about 20 minutes to play. Any game that is this short and is this fun is a winner in my book. It makes a great 'filler' (I've added to my favorite filler games box along with Golf Mania and Guillotine). Shipwrecked is a great game for 'non gamers ' or as an introductory game as well. The social aspect of the blind bidding is wild; second guessing everyone and getting pissed off when they screw up your strategy is hilarious! I rate this game a 9 out of 10. Some people may rate it less because it's more of a 'lite' game, but that is PRECISELY why I rate it so high. Any game that is this fun and this short is a winner. Oh did I mention NO player downtime. What's not to like!
On to Basari.
Basari is a game where players move around a board which represents a Bazaar. On each space on the board is a picture of a number and type of gems you could win. Also on each space is a pt value you could win.
On each turn players blind bid for one of the three possible actions.
- Gems: This action will allow you to take the gems listed on the space you're currently on.
- Points: This action will allow you to score the number of points of the space you're currently on.
- Movement: This action lets you roll the dice. You get to move the number of spaces shown, PLUS you get 6-x points, where x is the number you rolled on the die. Example; you roll a 4, you move 4 and get 6-4=2 points.
After the blind bids are revealed, if no one bid for the same action as you, you get the action for 'free'. I.E. you simply take the action.
If two people bid for the same action, then both players enter a trading session to see who gets to take the action. This is where the social aspect of the game really shines. When you bid, you have to always raise the bid from the previous bid. This is done in two ways; either by bidding one more gem than the previous bid, or by raising the value of the previous bid. In the game, rubies are the most valuable gem. If for example, player A bid a ruby and an emerald, player b could raise the bid by either bidding 3 gems of any combination, or he could bid one ruby and another gem of higher value than the emerald, such as another ruby. Bidding goes on like this until a person is unwilling to or unable to raise the bid. If this is the case, that player takes what was bid and the 'winning' player then takes the action he just won.
If three or more people bid for an action, all of the bids are cancelled and no one gets to take the action.
There are three rounds to the game.. A round is ended when any player makes one complete lap around the board.
Points are scored at the end of the round for:
Lapping the board
Having the most of any particular gem set. The most valuable is ruby.
That's it in a nutshell. It seems relatively simple but the game has a lot of strategy. Serious gamers will find Basari to be pretty good. The gem trading is quite fun because you have to weigh how much you will be gaining for the action and how much you will be losing by paying the gems to your opponent. Also there are at least three strategies that I have found that MIGHT work with any particular game. All of the elements of the game are very tightly integrated and highly balanced. From a designer's point of view, this game is a masterpiece.
My friends absolutely loved this game and we played about 10 times over one weekend. I'd rate this game an 8.75 out of 10. Serious strategy gamers would probably rate it higher, especially with the rules variants available on the internet.
Check out these games if you get a chance, and I encourage everyone to post reviews of any new games they get.
-Darke
