Sorry Sliders Review

Sorry! Sliders was described to me as a "poor man's PitchCar" (since it's about $20 instead of $80).  This made me immediately start looking for a copy of it.

In Sorry Sliders, the goal is to move all of your pawns up to the "Home" scoring region.  To do this, you take four "slider" pawns, and you roll them up the ramp onto the scoring board.  After each player has slid all of his pawns, you score points based on where the pieces landed.  Each "slider" can move one scoring piece, and to move a piece onto "Home", you must get the exact score that you need.  Also, in true Sorry! fashion, if you have a slider land in one of the corners, or go off the board, then your top scoring pawn (that hasn't reached "Home" yet) goes back to the starting position.  Keep playing rounds like this until one person has moved all of their pawns to "Home."

One of the alternate setups

The first thing that I like about Sorry Sliders (aside from the price) is that it is quite customizable.  There are several different setups that you can play.  There are four different "ramps" (for lack of a better term), and you can set these up on each side of the scoring board, or you can stack two in a row opposite the scoring board.  You can also set them up so that you form a right angle with the tracks, or even stack three or four ramps in a row.  Finally, there are different scoring boards to make the game easier or harder - the easier one includes an "automatic Home" spot in the center; the hard one contains "danger" zones that remove any sliders that land on them.

The second pro for Sorry Sliders is that it is very kid friendly (and, for that matter, targeted at kids).  It's ages 6+, but could probably be played with 3-4 year olds.  I'm not really sure that it is more kid friendly than other dexterity games (what kid doesn't like flicking things around?) except that the pieces might be a bit heftier, and so they might be able to handle a bit more abuse.  Plus, if your kids completely destroy it, you're out $20 instead of $50+ (depending on what else you play with them).

However, though I liked those two things about the game, there were a few things I was disappointed by.  Our first game we played four player, and so we used the basic four player setup - a scoring pad surrounded by a ramp on each side.  This, essentially, doesn't work with adults.  If you're playing with really young children, this might work out, but for adults, this just means that all of the sliders clump up into the middle.  And, once a few of them are there, it forms a giant blob of pieces that aren't easily moved.  So, instead of having skill or strategy, you're just ramming your pieces into all the ones that are already there.  We wrote off this configuration and started playing others. 

The triple decker

These new configurations lead to my next con - I don't feel like you have as much control over your sliders as you do in other dexterity games.  We switched to the configuration with three ramps in a row leading to a scoring pad.  This made the game much better, but we found ourselves just clumping on the back of the track.  In order to get enough power to get onto the scoring pad, you almost always will give it a bit too much power.  When putting several ramps together, each ramp is at an incline, and so you have to put some extra power in order to slide uphill - and so several of these in a row will remove most of your precision.  Plus, frankly, I don't think that the plastic/ball-bearing combo slides very well on the cardboard playing surface.  It just isn't very smooth - and this added friction forces you to focus more on shooting with enough power instead of aiming your shots. 

Overall, I give Sorry Sliders a 7.0/10.  I was disappointed in it, but that doesn't make it a horrible game.  It's something that I would play more if other people wanted to, and that I think that you can enjoy with the right group of friends.  Also, I think that kids will enjoy it.

If you're looking for some other good choices for dexterity games, you might also look at Caveman Curling, Elk Fest, and AttrAction.