Ominoes Review

Ominoes has a long history! Originally invented by the ancient Egyptians to wind each other up, the integral playing pieces, the ominoes, inscribed with their hieroglyphics were discovered long ago. In fact, my great-great-great-ish-grandfather, writing for “Freshly-Assembled Shelves Circular” reported on the original discovery of the Ominoes cubes back in 1864:

Gaming history made in Cairo! From the sands of the Ominus Valley, where even the bravest souls tread with trepidation, has been unearthed a great horde of inscribed cubes. The Harman expedition reports great artworks of Egyptian Pharaohs rolling these cubes as if playing some kind of game in the tomb in which they were discovered. The inscription below the artwork appears to read

“Pharaoh wins again! Nyeh-nyeh ner-nyeh-nyeh!”

How this game was played, however, remains a mystery that only time and the diligent efforts of science can hope to solve!

Well, it has been a long time coming, but Andrew Harman of Yay Games (see our reviews of their previous games, Frankenstein’s Bodies and Sandcastles) has finally solved the mystery of this ancient game. And it’s a lovely, friendly game with hardly any screwing each other over at all.

Oh no, wait.

There’s lot’s of screwage.

So much silly screwage!

If you’ve got a mischievous smile beginning to twitch at the corners of your mouth then come right in, make yourself at home. If you’re regarding this review now like a mouse regards the sound of a cat flap, then try and still your beating heart (lest the review hears you) as I explain just what we mean by that.

In Ominoes, you’ll be trying to collect together adjacent blocks of 4 or more symbols in your colour. The black symbols act as wilds and can help you achieve this. The screwage, of course, comes from everyone else doing their best to stop you BUT, and here’s the thing, it’s never really their fault. You see, the first thing you’ll do on your turn is to roll one of these suspiciously dice-like ominoes and should one of the coloured sides come up that player has to move one of the ominones of that colour on the board 3 spaces. Has to. You see, it’s not their fault they just disrupted that block that was set to score you 6 points, they had no choice.

Ok, so they could have moved that one in the far corner that you were never going to get use but, you know, they probably just didn’t see it. Look! Stop complaining! You’re winning anyway!

The final thing you do on your turn is to plop that di-Ominoe down on the board wherever you want, which translates to right next to your stuff if its your colour, and in the furthest most remotest parts of the board if its anyone else’s colour. But even that naughtiness isn’t going to work for long as the small, cramped board rapidly fills up with cubes it gets harder and harder to keep your opponent’s stuff apart and it’s only a matter of time before someone gets a break and puts together a scoring block, removing those ominoes with a pop as space finally returns to the board. Briefly. Because then you’re immediately back at it.

Now, perhaps you’re thinking this game is just luck. You have a 1 in 6 chance of rolling your colour, doesn’t that sound awful? Well I understand where you are coming from. In fact, that’s exactly what I thought when I first heard about Ominoes. I originally turned down the review copy for exactly that reason. Then I played it at the UK Games Expo and… well, we’re here aren’t we?

There are a few reasons why this perception is wrong. For one, you have two wild sides to a dice-I-MEAN-OMINOE! So it’s actually 50% of the time that you’re doing something positive for yourself. But more importantly is how opportunities can arise from the most unlikely of places. You see, that 3 space move you have to make before you place your ominoe is really quite important, it means you have to consider a fairly large area of the board at every moment. And you don’t just care about your own colour. It is just as important to slow down your opponents as it is to score for yourself, so that other 50% of the time isn’t wasted at all. In fact, you are constantly paying attention to what people are doing even when it isn’t your turn.

Yes, there is certainly a fair amount of luck, but the game really does make you feel like you’re still in control. Opportunities flicker in and out of view like an oasis in the scorching desert and the player who best spot their plays while disrupting their opponents will win, but even if someone does get lucky, it’s so quick to play you can immediately just wipe and reset. Furthermore, you might only need 4 ominoes together to score, but the game challenges you to get 5? 6? 7!? You totally feel like you can push your luck there and it’s going to feel amazing if you pull it off. But if you weren’t in control, I guarantee you wouldn’t feel comfortable going for that.

More importantly, Ominoes has you laughing at each other all the time. It’s an absolute joy! There is something so childishly amusing about slowly moving an ominoe back to the corner the owner only just managed to extract it from. Or re-rolling an ominoe using the ability of the black serpent side, only for the same side to show up again. The fact that no one really has a choice to mess up another player means there are no hard feelings, and on the rare occasions someone uses a wild to interfere with your schemes, it’s only because you were about to win and you can’t begrudge them that, now can you?

If you can’t already tell, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my time with Ominoes! It somehow blends the fantastic emotional highs and lows of dice rolling, with a really satisfying spatial puzzle on the board. It is constantly interactive, with a take-that naughtiness that works so smoothly that even the recipient is laughing. This is a lovely, entertaining filler that you should really think about checking out!

 

Rating – Omi-Yes!

 

Our copy of Ominoes was kindly supplied to us for review by Yay Games. You can pick up a copy from their website.