Tonight's review winds up being the neat little game of Hive
.In Hive, two players each take on the role of a hive of insects attempting to protect its queen. With this, you control a queen, several beetles, spiders, army ants, and crickets (and a mosquito if you buy the Hive: The Mosquito
expansion). The gist of the game is that you are attempting to use your insects to surround the other player's queen. In doing this, you must maximize each of your pieces abilities - crickets can jump all the way across the board, army ants can go anywhere along the outside of the board, beetles can climb over other pieces, and spiders can move 3 spaces. Whereas this game is very simple to explain and learn, its strategy winds up being unexpectedly deep. I personally consider this to be in the same vein as Chess in that you win or lose completely based on outplaying your opponent with no random luck factor at all, but is much faster to play (unless you really suck at Chess).
In addition to being quick to play, Hive has no setup time (you just get all the pieces out), and is pretty small and thus easy to transport with you.
Overall, I would give Hive an 8.0/10. It is a very good game that I see myself playing on a semi-regular basis and enjoying. Probably the biggest downside is that for the MSRP of $30, you really don't get that many components - only about 20 tiles.
I've played this on the iPhone which costed a lot less than the price of the actual game. Still, I think a game like this really needs the tactile experience to have the full effect, just like Chess. The seemingly high price of the game is what has kept me from buying it, along with the fact that finding opponents to play won't be easy unless you have someone who is already interested.
ReplyDeleteAs far as gameplay goes though, I think it's got some depth. The one really great thing about it is that you do not need a board, and could pull it out almost anywhere and play on the floor, the beach, or at a restaurant table.