Soqquadro

Designer: Simone Luciani, Daniele Tascini, Lorenzo Tucci Sorrentino
Publisher: Cranio Creations
Ages: 8+
Players: 2-12
Time: 20 min

Soqquadro, the new game from Simone Luciani, Daniele Tascini and Lorenzo Tucci Sorrentino by Cranio Creations is a classic party-game: something really different from the previous titles like Tzolk’in and Sheepland. What Soqquadro shares with this games is the will to be really innovative, to offer something new and fresh to gamers and the typical craziness of Cranio’s titles like Horse Fever, Steam Park or Dungeon Fighters.

The great idea around Soqquadro is to make a game really dependent on the place where it is played: different houses/places will offer new/different tasks. What Huizinga called the magic circle extend well around the table and the players involved catching the objects and furnitures all around.

The Game

Soqquadro is a real time game where players search and take objects all around so it is important to well define, before starting, the playing area.

When the game start every player take a die and roll it until he/she got the desired face/action to perform. The actions are: draw a card, run around to take objects or change a card.

Each card indicates one object specified by one or two features: green (easy) cards specify one, yellow (medium) and red (hard) cards specify a combination of two features. Complete a green card will give you 1 point; 2 for a yellow and 3 for a red.
Features may be a the letter the object’s must start with , a physical property or a color. It could be an ”O and sky blue” object or a “smooth and black” and so on.

(cards grapchic/leyout is, obviosly, temporary)

As soon as a player put an object on the table satisfying a card he/she has to put it on the corresponding card and than move his/her pawn on the board from 1 to 3 spaces according to the color of the card.

During the wild real time running of the game there is no time to really check what other player are doing but there will time later to discover mistakes. You can play with different strategies: just take 1-2 cards and than run or get a lot of cards before starting the searching. Remember that when the game will end you will lose points for not completed cards in your hand.

There are three boxes on the score-path, called Challenge box. When a player stops or passes over a Challenge box for the first time he must scream:” CHALLENGE!”. The game stops and one card (green, yellow and red) will be revealed and than all the player will start run to find a corresponding object in an hourglass time with the first succeeding getting the points. There will be only one green, one yellow and one red challenge in a single game activated by the first players in the game reaching/passing the corresponding box.

When a player reach the end of the score-path the game ends and all the objects/cards are checked and the players will lose points for not completed cards still in their hand. The winner will be the player who has the more advanced pawn.

Consideration

Like most of the party games Soqquadro works well if players are in the right mood and ready to roll and run in a wild race. The house/gaming area plays a real important role and the owner has to agree seeing his possessions run around from everywhere down to the table. The 3 challenges are really funny to play and will also offer the possibility, when the challenge is over, to stop and rest for a while discussing what it is going on.

It is fun to roll a die sometimes waiting for the right roll. There is luck in rolling and drawing cards but it is OK for a such game. Anyway the actions/faces are well arranged in a way that actually you have always something to do, if you want.

The game will be released in Essen but I have already tested it in his final version and it is really a crazy game. The designers are also working on a diceless version of the rules to be included in the box, but is it not sure yet. The table will be just a small safe island in a sea of chaos and the playing area (rooms, house, park, …) will have a real impact on how the game will flow … but it was the intention of the designers indeed.