Smitten
- Board's Eye View
- 4 hours ago
- 2 min read
Stonemaier Games have published several blockbuster games, including Scythe and Wingspan, but among the big box games and their expansions they've also published a stack of lighter, sometimes more whimsical product. Rolling Realms took titles from the Stonemaier Games catalogue and used them as the inspiration for a roll&write game. Since then, Stonemaier Games have published small packs of Rolling Realms cards that tie in with titles from other publishers. These make great stocking fillers. Likewise, Smitten - a small pack card game designed by Jamey Stegmaier, with art by Vincent Dutrait.
Smitten is an 18-card microgame. It's a fully cooperative game for two players tho' it also incorporates a solitaire mode designed by Morten Monrad Pedersen. The cards all indicate the position they need to be in a 3 x 3 grid and the text on each card sets out a placement requirement of the other player. Players each have a hand of three cards (four if you're playing in 'easy' mode) and they should only communicate whether or not they can or want to play a card.
Other than the first card in each grid, cards can only be placed orthogonally adjacent to an already placed card. Your shared objective is to complete both grids but you lose if neither player can play a card or if your partner cannot follow the instructions on a card you play.
It's a game that's super-easy to play and it sounds like it should be easy to win. It isn't. We've found from our plays at Board's Eye View that it's very much harder to win than to fail. But because it looks like such a simple puzzler players automatically want another crack at it. Each game takes no longer than 10 minutes, but you'll be playing and replaying rather longer than that till you luck into a win.
