Gravity Three
- Board's Eye View
- 2 hours ago
- 2 min read
If you're looking for something a little different, Itten's Gravity Three could be just the ticket. Designed by Yoshiaki Tomioka and Masayuki Ikegami, it's a long slim box and when you slide it open you find inside a set of 15 weighted discs. These are numbered 1-5 in three colours. Each disc has the same weight as the discs with the same number but the five different numbered discs in each colour have a different weight: the higher the number, the heavier the weight.
As the game title suggests, there are three games in the box and each is designed for two or three players. All involve estimating and comparing weights, which could make Gravity Three a potentially useful addition to maths teachers' educational arsenal.
There's a game that involves picking up three discs in turn (all with the number side down and so not visible to the players) and choosing one. This is repeated three times so that players each end upn with one disc in each colour. The discs are then flipped so that the numbers are revealed. You win if your combination is better than that of the other player(s): three the same outscore other combos, with 555 being the top-ranking combination. The game is uniquely a test of players' muscle memory.
There's a game involving balance, and that rather neatly utilises the box as a seesaw. The third game has players stack tokens to compare their total weights. In this game, players are required to contribute to the stack (face down) a disc with a designated number. You may not have that number, in which case you'll need to bluff. An opponent will need to use their estimating skills by picking up the stack to judge whether or not you've bluffed....
Aside from its educational role, Gravity Three makes for a novel filler; each of the games takes less than 5 minutes to play.
