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(search on Board Game Geek) 
- Replay Value (1-10): 3
- Fun Factor (1-10): 2
- Worth Buying (1-10): 7
This 1-player "game" comes with 30 balls, 5 each in the 6 basic colors. They
are placed in a ring (which falls into a nice groove on the supplied wooden
dais). On each turn, the player must choose a pair of balls that are not only
adjacent in the ring, but also adjacent in the color wheel (there is a small
color wheel painted in the center to remind the player). That pair is then
placed in the center, and the "ring" of balls effectively shrinks by two
balls. If the player has a bit of luck and a good amount
of thinking ahead, they can eventually remove all the balls in this manner,
and their reward is a nice-looking pyramid of colored balls in the center.
As someone with a bit of a mathematics background, the mechanism of this
game fascinates me; with just a simple wooden frame; it is easy yet pleasing
to construct the pyramid of balls in the center -- and when the frame is
removed, the balls tend to drop back in a haphazard manner back into the
ring. Yet the actual challenge itself seems, well, dissatisfying. There's
no added layer of challenge, and repeat play isn't nearly as rewarding.
What would probably turn this from a middle-of-the-road puzzle challenge
into a good one would be to take a cue from Thinkfun: attach a deck of 40 or so ordering of the balls, ranging from
easy to challenging. To me, at least, there's much more satisfaction in
solving a few designed sequences than to hope that randomization will result
in an interesting puzzle.
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