Tuesday, August 6, 2019

Dave Reviews: Point!

Punto

It's... tiny.


That's not much of an intro, but there's not much in this tin. That doesn't mean it's bad; it's just... tiny.

Punto comes in a little tin with a bunch of square tiles. The tiles come in sets of four colors, with one to nine dots on each card. Players draw a tile off the top of their deck and lay it down, in order, until someone has four in a row of their color. The limitations:
  • The grid can't get bigger than 6 x 6. The upshot is that if you can't block someone directly, sometimes you can do it by placing a tile where it makes the grid go six wide or long and your opponent can no longer has an empty space for the tile.
  • You can place tiles on top of your opponents', but your number has to be higher than the one you're placing it on.
Initially I wanted there to be a mat, something to actually play on, but the shifting dimensions of the board are part of the strategy. Plus, it's really quite impressive to have a very playable game come in such a small package at such a low price (MSRP around $8).

Of course, it has limitations. I imagine they playtested it with players holding all their cards and trying to use their numbers strategically rather than pulling one off the top and hoping they got something useful (or, occasionally, hoping they got a low number because they didn't need a high one at that moment). Maybe they also tried holding a limited number of tiles, say three, and choosing from those, then replacing it at the end of the turn. If that's the case, then the draw mechanic was apparently deemed more fun. I can see that; this is a little pocket game that you bring somewhere as a diversion, not high strategy. As long as you're OK with a couple unlucky draws dooming you, especially in a two-player game, it's fine.

And that's really it. It's fine. The biggest compliment I can pay it is that the designer clearly accomplished his goal of making this a small, cheap, playable game. I've seen many other little games that are the board game equivalent of the candy bars they sell in the supermarket checkout line, and this is better than most. There just isn't much to say about it beyond that.

Score: Siete puntos de diez.

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