Game Reviews: Mensa Mind Games®, year 2007

Spin & Trap

• Replay Value (1-10): 2
• Fun Factor (1-10): 2
• Worth Buying (1-10): 7

This is a two-player abstract game played on a hexagonal board, three-on-a-side. Three spaces are filled with green marbles; the rest are filled with either black or white marbles. The two players represent black and white, and the goal is to surround the green marbles with marbles of your color. On your turn, you may choose any three marbles in a small triangle and rotate them, or choose any ring of six marbles surrounding a marble of your own color or green, and rotate those. First player to capture two green marbles wins.

The game is very well produced; the marbles fit the board very well, and the spinners are a delight to turn. Unfortunately, the rules supplied with the game were very ambiguous as to what constituted capturing a green marble. One line says that a marble must be "surrounded", while another line says that there must be "at least four" of your own color marbles to capture. It's unclear if the two marbles at the end are part of the board or if they are placeholders for when you win a green ball (none of the spinners can interact the them). Normally ambiguous rules wouldn't be too horrible; I'd just choose the interpretation that makes the most sense. But the liberal interpretations mean that the first player can win a green stone on the first turn, which seems wrong; and the stricter interpretations make the game go on forever, in the way that so many broken abstracts are -- if you can look two moves ahead, the game is a perpetual stalemate because there's no good way to set up a long-range win. Overall, I'd pass on this game until it seems to be a working game; a shame because the components are fun to play with.