Tropichaos
- Board's Eye View
- 13 hours ago
- 2 min read
Tropichaos is a light easy-to-play game where the 2-5 players are buying and selling fruit (tiles). To get the most value from your fruit, however, you need to sell it in the correct season, and the speed with which the seasons change depends on tiles drawn randomly from a bag. This is one of the latest small-box games from Oink Games, distributed in the UK by Hachette Boardgames UK. It's designed by Goro Sasaki, with art by Rie Takahashi.
Gameplay is super simple. On your turn you either take one of the tiles from the display of three, drawing a replacement from the bag (where the tile you draw might also advance the season tracker) or you 'sell' (exchange for points) fruit you've previously drafted. The number of points you get for any specific fruit tile will depend on the season in which it's sold, and some fruits (pomegranates) are worthless unless they're sold in a specified season. You can only ever hold a maximum of five unsold fruit and if the replacement fruit that you draw means that the market has three the same you take a penalty point and you're required to swap one of those fruit tiles for one of those you've drafted.
Selling is also not without its pitfalls. If you hold an odd number of fruit tiles when you opt to sell then you must sell all of them, and if you hold an even number you must sell all of them or exactly half. Unless you are especially careful or, more likely, very lucky, this will often mean you're having to sell at least some fruit tiles at less than the optimal time and so for fewer points than they might otherwise yield.
As always, Oink have done a sterling job in the production of the game and in tightly fitting it all in the usual tiny Oink box. It's impressive that in this case, the tiny box includes five wooden tile racks. These have coloured segments that correspond to the colours of the game's three seasons and, in a neat device, this obviates the need for scoring tokens. When you trade in a fruit tile you simply place it in front of the season colour in which it was sold, then at the end of the game (when the season tracker hits the end of the track) you just tot up the relevant numbers in each of the three corresponding colours.
Tropichaos is one of Oink's lightest games. There's a strong push-your-luck element, not least because the five-tile 'hand' limit means you can have a turn when you actually have no choice of actions. It's a family game that even quite young children can play, and you can expect games to take around 20 minutes.