This Game is......Ingenious!

I've recently had the chance to play the board game 'Ingenious' in my game design class. 'Ingenious' is the English name for the game, however, we played the German version, which was called 'Einfach Genial'. (Everything is the same, just that the original instructions were most likely in German) Let me start by saying that although we had some trouble getting the scoring correct, the game was still very fun to play.

There were 4 of us playing and the game took about 45 minutes, which is not bad and fits perfectly with the time we were given in class to play the game. Personally, I think that if a game takes too long (example: Monopoly), everyone will eventually get bored and pissed off at each other for whatever reason.

The first thing that stands out about this game is the use of little colored cubes to keep track of score. That was quite unique and allowed everybody to see what everybody else's score was at any given time. Also, I liked the similarities it shared with the PC game 'Civilization', where everybody starts off with their own little 'island' and working on their own thing until they hit the turning point later in the game and start planning their strategy. Lastly, I liked the idea of being able to co-operate with each other. I'm not sure that was "allowed" in the instructions, but it was fun co-operating with another player and trying to stop the other 2 players from winning.

Of course, the downside to this co-operating allows for the possibility of a 3 vs. 1 situation if 3 players decide to gang up against one player, thus giving that player no hope of winning. Also, I disliked the idea that it is hard to redeem yourself in the late game, as the stronger player will be able to keep scoring the bonus moves and eventually get all their scores to 18 and automatically win. This leads to my last dislike about this game, the limited randomness. Besides drawing tiles, there really isn't anymore randomness in this game, meaning that more experienced players will almost always have the upper hand against less experienced players.

If I were to change the design of the game, one thing I would definitely do is add a timer rule. Although nobody in our group tried this, adding a timer would force everyone to make a move, and eliminates the possibility of purposely taking forever to make a move in the hopes of frustrating other players. Also, I would make the game a bit more random, most likely through drawing tiles. As an example, each player must empty their entire hand after each turn. I think this would make the game a bit more random and limits the advance planning a player can do. Finally, I think I would limit the amount of bonus moves allowed. It just doesn't feel right if a strong player has all their scores really high, and then they make 1 "super move" in which they place a tile, get the score to 18, get a bonus move, place next tile to get next score to 18, and repeat the process for all or a majority of their scores and allowing them an easy victory. To allow for more strategy, I think I would throw in a few 'single' tiles, allowing players to fill in the odd gaps and can potentially help in some situations.

Here is a picture of the game: