Oraklos

Can 5 people play a game by staring at wooden cubes scattered randomly on the table? (see photo on right) You can. And it could be a very nice one.

Through a friend's group order I got a copy of Oraklos from Funagain Games during a clearance sale. At USD $5, it is truely a bargain and I can bypass the usual restrictions, that I must have read the rules before getting a copy.

Oraklos is designed by Tamara Jannink and Joris Wiersinga and published by Splotter Spellen, a small Dutch boardgame company. The components the usual Splotter quality: bad but functional. The box smells like old cardboard. The ink did not coat that well, giving a rough surface and cards were tied using rubberbands. Limited budgets I suppose.

The true gem, as I have experienced from Antiquity, lies solely in the rulebook. In Oraklos, one player throws about 20 colored cubes onto the table. Then players attempts to locate quadrilaterals whose corners match the symbols on one of the 3 hint cards they have. There is a twist: if you look closely enough you will notice the cubes all have holes. Quads with holes on top do not count as a valid pattern. As do quads which enclose or touch any other cubes.

For game test purposes, we played a standard game to completion last night. Finding a valid pattern was more difficult than I thought, especially patterns which 3 different colours. As far as I know, all players seem to have enjoyed the game. The game took around 30 minutes, double the printed playtime, but I did not find it boring, and I wish to play it again real soon.