Pack O Games Review

This series of games were provided to us for review by their designer Chris Handy. The Pack O Games are available on Kickstarter until April 3rd.

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Anna: It’s so nice to get away for a while! Just us. No work, no family, no board games!

Matt: Well…

Anna: What!? No, you’re kidding. I checked the suitcases! And you can’t have fit any games in your pockets… wait… why are you smiling like that!?

 

Pack O’ Games is a series of tiny games, games that fit in a box the size of a chewing gum pack. Games so small their names are all 3 letters long because you can’t fit a 4^th letter on the packet. You can easily squeeze them inside a bag, they even finally provide purpose to that tiny pocket on the front of your jeans. You’ll never need to go without a game again!

Crammed into this tiny box is a concertinaed sheet of rules and a pile of long thin cards. Yet don’t let their petite size deceive you! These games are far from lightweight. Indeed, it is frankly incredible quite how much game has been squeezed into so few cards. And while the text on the rule sheets is microscopic, none of these games are too complicated to grasp.

In fact, there is so much in these games that I felt they deserve their own articles, lest this grow to a page of epic proportions. So what follows is a concluding excerpt from each review of the game, giving you my overall feelings on it. If you want to find out more, click through to read the full article! I’ll be posting one review per day until Friday (the 4^th March 2016, for people from the future!) and updating this article as we go. Enjoy!

 

Gym

With just a name, two stats and a charming picture, the designer has managed to imbue these cards with more character and sense of story than any ream of text in typical story driven game.

Gym is just such a hoot to play! There is just the right degree of chaos to make it funny while leaving enough room for clever manipulations of the game state. This chaos is not down to luck but through the choices of the players and this means there is no feeling of being short changed, only knowing you’ve been out played. Add to that the fun, original theme and the way cards develop characters of their own and you’ve got a great little game that you’d be crazy to miss out on!

 

Rum

However, the whole system doesn’t work as well at some player counts as others. At 2 players, the parrot might barely make an appearance at all (the game ending instead once a player has collected a certain number of points), plus you lose that group banter and mocking that makes the higher player counts more entertaining. And this game features a strong luck element, it really needs the banter. On the other hand, at 4 players there’s not so much pushing as just luck as you’ll be having far fewer turns between parrot attacks. However, the games short length mitigates against this and as a group you’ll be bemoaning your luck and raging against fate. And it heightens the feeling of success when you manage to pull together a set and play them. 3 players is really this game’s sweet spot if you want a reasonable sense of agency.

Rum is entertaining, quick and straightforward, and so is this game. The score and clock cards are fiddly, and require some coordination around the table to make sure everyone knows which way they are facing, but they work within the confines of the incredibly small box and component list. There isn’t too much depth but it does work nicely as an entertaining filler. Especially given it’s tiny footprint.

 

Sow

All the games in the Pack O Game series are intended to be quick playing, so I can see a constant flow of flowers into players’ bouquets as an intentional decision to keep it from becoming impossible to ever score. But fun and amusement is not present naturally within the mechanisms, theme or art as it so clearly is in Gym or Rum where the humour helps offset any random or uncontrollable elements. Sow is as dry in mechanics and artwork as the dirt in which it is set, a quality that is perfectly fine for a purely strategic battle of wits (just look at chess). With two players the game succeeds magnificently, but with more it falls flat.

Sow is far from a bad game. Indeed, at 2 player it is a fantastic challenge, a really deep tussle to get involved in with more passive-aggressive blocking than a student protest in the UK. But it falls woefully short of this high mark with more players.

 

Orc

I am just so impressed by Orc! Almost from the first turn the decisions will grip you and not let up until the very end. I think what amazes me is that each choice is fundamentally simple: which card do I play and to which battle? Yet each of those choices has numerous hugely important implications for the remaining game, all of which are immediately understandable from a glance at the tabletop. But you never truly know what your opponent has available, you can’t ‘solve’ the game, making this as much a game of playing your opponent as it is playing your hand, of knowing when to stand and fight, when to push and when to retreat. I said that this wasn’t a war game, yet it captures the ebb and flow of a battle, or a war, to an extent that is not obvious from the surface.While the box my say war is ugly, this game is anything but!

 

Final Thoughts

 

With a tiny number of components, Chris Handy has managed to put together a series of unique and varied games. All offer something interesting mechanically, and many offer as much scope for challenging decisions as much larger games. Yet all can be played within a short space of time. Even the game I felt was the weakest of the set (Rum) is a lot of fun, while Gym and Orc are both fantastic games worthy of supporting in their own right, let alone with other games thrown in! A great set that are well worth your time to check out.

 

Rating: Pack O Joy

 

The Pack O Games are available on Kickstarter until April 3rd.