Clustered
- Board's Eye View
- 5 hours ago
- 2 min read
Scotty Hardwick has designed Clustered as an abstract game for 1-4 players. It is indeed playable with three or four players and in solitaire mode but Clustered is a game that particularly shines as a two-player game.
The game is played with square tile cards that show either 1, 2 or 3 hollow, shaded or filled circle, square or triangle shapes. Each player has their own deck of these cards from which they draw a hand of five. On your turn, you play a card from your hand next to another already in play with the only stipulation that the card must share two attributes with the cards to which it is adjacent (ie: same shape, same number or same solidity). You score for your largest rectangle and for horizontal and vertical rows, and you can claim bonus point cards for, for example, being the first player to have placed out a row of five cards.
The rules for this pattern recognition game then are super simple. It's best with two because you always on your turn have the option of playing one of your cards to your opponent's tableau rather than your own; a way, for example, of screwing up the potentially high-scoring rectangle they were about to complete. With three players, such interactions typically lead to tit-for-tat scrapes between two of the players that allow the third player to cruise to the win.
For those contemplating games to take with them on their holidays, Sculpin Games have put Clustered in a commendably compact box. Just be warrned tho' that you'll be building tableaus that take up quite a lot of table space: this most certainly isn't a game you'll be able to break out and play on the plane!
