Flow

We finally got to sit down and play Flow.  The animated film was amazing, and I couldn't think of any way to capture the feel of it in a board game, but we wanted to give it a shot. 

We really don't like timers, and this came with a little hourglass.  But from the box, it reminded me a bit of the Saving Nemo game that we like so much -- a simple tile placement path-building game.

Yes, that's what it is.  But it's a cooperative game where players work together to join all their animal starting points to the island in the middle.

Each turn you either flip a tile and put it in the map,  or play a card to change something.   When the timer runs out,  roll the black and white Wave dice.  Remove all tiles on the row and column indicated by the dice,  then flip the hourglass and keep going.

Our first run was just two animals, and it was a quick, easy win.   Connecting all four corners was more of a challenge.   We won one and lost one.

It was not clear in the rules whether the tiles with obstacles should block the path entirely.   They have paths leading in and out.  But I figure those are for placement rules, and if they are called obstacles then they are probably meant to be obstacles.    Yes, the game was harder with those as blockers.

The cards were pretty,  but were very limited.  You only get two, and there's no time to look up their actions while the timer is running. 

Your action cards can only do a few things:
- place a bird token on one tile, and if a wave hits the tile it takes the bird and leaves the tile alone
- flip two tiles from the deck face up so they can be used in place of the blind draws
- move or remove all tile
- on the next Wave, till one die instead of two

We didn't use the scenario cards in our test runs.  They also don't seem to add much.  The one that says not to communicate during the game was certainly unusual,  but the chatter around the game table is most of the fun of a game night, so why?  Another makes it so that waves don't wash away obstacles, which is how I deduced that the obstacles were actual path blockers.

It was okay.   I was thinking of ways to skip the timer.  Maybe after each player's turn,  roll the wave dice,  and if they come up doubles  then the wave hits.   But it feels well balanced to the limited time between waves.

This is a rare case where printing the action rules on the cards would be preferable, since there is no time to lookup the card effects with the timer is ticking away...

We bought a second copy to give as a holiday gift.  I thought right away of who in the family would enjoy the time and waves the most,  but don't want to be that cheap guy who only sends hand-me-downs.