Inktentions

MaKa Games' Inktentions is a light filler-length 'take that' game of bluff, deduction, guesswork and misdirection. It takes 2-4 players and it is themed around octopopii. The game is designed by Matthew Kambic and the illustrations are by Chris Adams.

Players each have a hand of eight cards, corresponding to their eight octopus limbs. You'll have three Hunt cards, one Hide & Hunt and two Sharks. In addition, each player has a Punch and an Octobility card. There will be five piles of food tiles placed out (just four in a two-player game) and players take turns placing their cards out face down at any food location but subject to the limitation that a limb is capped off at four or five cards, depending on player count. When all the players have placed out seven of their eight cards, each limb is resolved and food allocated according to the cards played and in order of proximity to the food tiles.

Hunt cards take a food provided they aren't adjacent to a Shark card; Shark cards eat any adjacent Hunt cards. Hide&Hunt cards are Hunt cards that are immune to Sharks. Punch and Octobility cards aren't played to a food location. You instead play a Punch card face up to the table and immediately take its effect: move any card on an uncapped limb to the end of any other uncapped limb. The Octobility cards are similarly played face up to the table and they activate the effect on their owner's Octobility tile; one of seven asymmetric effects as shown on tiles randomly allocated at the start of the game.

Tho' their individual Octobility effects differ, players all have the same mix of cards so the skill (or luck) of the game is in trying to outguess where opponents are positioning their cards and positioning your own accordingly. You play over multiple rounds so players may increasingly be able to make deductions about the cards opponents are placing from the foods you can see they have already collected and so have an incentive to focus on...

Inktentions then is a light often chaotic game that's a lot of fun to play, especially with a full complement of four players. With a playing time of around 20-25 minutes, it makes for a great games night filler. The one grumble from members of the Board's Eye View team was that the game didn't add more sets of cards to allow the player count to be extended.

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