Gems of Iridescia
Designed by Roberto Panetta, Gems of Iridescia is a set collection and trading game where the 1-4 players are exploring to find gems, mine for more gems and trade set combinations of gems in to 'restore' relics that are earn you victory points. Gems can also be sold for their market value and the money can be used to buy items that give you a single-use ability. Players can also score points at the end of the game for having met their individual secret objective.
Gameplay is simple. On your turn you reveal one or two tiles adjacent to your explorer, and you choose one to move to, taking the tile and the indicated gem and any additional bonus reward shown. Exploration and movement can only be sideways or forwards: you cannot move to a tile in a row that's lower than your explorer.
In addition to collecting the gem shown on your tile, you can spend coins to mine for more of the same gems. To successfully mine you need to roll the gem's current market value or higher. Gems all start off with a market value of 2 but that is increased at the end of any turn when a gem of that type is collected. That value is also what you can get from the market for selling a gem, and you can always sell any number of gems of the same type. It's easier to mine gems when their value is low but you obviously want to sell them when their value is high.
The game discourages mere hoarding because you can never hold more than seven gems. If you pick up more when the seven spaces on your individual player board are full, you have to give any surplus to another player. Tho' it can be tempting to linger on a level to scoop up all the gems there, the game encourages players to move up the board; if you linger too long and other players have already explored and taken the tiles in the level adjacent to your explorer, you have to pay in tiles you've previously taken to move to the nearest empty space. The tiles are worth points for sets so sacrificing one could cost you victory points...
When a player's explorer moves to the top row on the board, they gain victory points and exit the game. Play continues for other players but a player who has exited the game removes a tile from the board when it would've been their turn. That will make things more difficult for other players, often forcing them to discard tiles to move.
With its straightforward and largely intuitive rules, Gems of Iridescia is easy to teach and learn. It's also very attractively presented and produced by Rock Stone & Dice, with appropriately iridescent components, especially in the deluxe edition shown here in our Board's Eye View 360. The combination of readily accessible rules with great table presence makes Gems of Iridescia an ideal 'gateway' game for introducing to those coming fresh to modern board games. And there's a solitaire game option where you are competing against a card-driven automata.
