Sunday, February 15, 2009

Initial Impression of On the Dot and Jungle Smart

At our last meetup, JM brought out On the Dot and Jungle Smart. I'm reviewing them together because a) we played a lot of new games that night and b) the two are both puzzle games.

In On the Dot, players are given four transparent cards with colored dots on them. A card with a pattern of dots is flipped up, and players must manipulate their cards to replicate that pattern. The first one to do so, gets the card and the point. The game is challenging until you get the trick of it. Once you do, I guess there's fun to be had in trying to find the match before your opponents. Still, I'm not sure of the replayability factor.

Jungle Smart is very similar in that a card is flipped over, all players compete to see who can figure out how to move a lion, elephant, and bear into the order shown first. The trick is that you have to determine the moves mentally and be able to repeat them to the others to win the point. To me, this seems more like a good game to play with kids than a highly competitive adult game.

Overall, both were enjoyable for the first play, but I question how fun they would be with multiple replays.

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