PalinGnomes
- Board's Eye View
- 3 hours ago
- 2 min read
We were initially a little surprised when we opened up the box for this game from PhantomLab. We've previously played and reviewed PhantomLab's OrthoGnomes, which is an entirely abstract three-dimensional Connect 4-style strategy game. Unlike OrthoGnomes, however, PalinGnomes really does include gnomes. Lots of them, in different colours and in three different sizes...
PalinGnomes is designed by Kotori and there's a notional backstory about gnomes coming together to sing. You can ignore that tho' because your focus in this game is all about placing big, medium and small gnome meeples out into a central tableau. The wooden meeples are charming but slightly abstract in design. They are distinguished by colour as well as size, but the number of points on their heads are a reminder of how many points they score you (3 for big, 2 for medium and 1 for small).
Gnomes must be placed next to another gnome or next to the board's magical spring but there are strict placement rules that make PalinGnomes a cute but not too heavy puzzler. In short, you can't have two gnomes of the same colour next to each other and adjacent gnomes have to step up or down in size. If you've ever seen the classic 'class' sketch first broadcast in The Frost Report in 1966 featuring John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett, you'll have the general idea.
The basic placement rules are quickly assimilated, tho' there are some further complications over flower spaces. Players coming new to the game will be up and running quite quickly, however, and even quite young children will soon grasp the rules for playing together or against older family members.
PalinGnomes plays quickly. Our plays have all been 15-20 minutes and the modular setup adds to the game's replayability, making this a good family-friendly filler.
