Tesseract

• Designer: James Firnhaber
• Publisher: Smirk and Dagger
• Players: 1-4
• Age: 14+
• Time: 60+ minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

The Tesseract appeared in our skies six days ago, over the exact magnetic north of the planet. It was the size of a city block. Since that time it has been condensing, collapsing upon itself. It can now fit into the palm of your hand. Our world’s best minds must now find a way to contain and control the reactions of this alien artifact, or its exponentially increasing destructive power will remove our planet from existence, reconfiguring our space and time to the extra-dimensional needs of its creators. Can you and your team work together to shut down the Tesseract, or will humankind simply be a blip in the grand scheme of the universe? Time will tell.

Tesseract is a compelling, cooperative dice-manipulation game for 1 to 4 players. The focal point of the game is a block of 64 dice, the Tesseract, which sits at the center of the board on a raised platform. Players will remove cubes to place in their individual labs, transfer them as needed to others, adjust the cube’s values and, importantly, isolate the cubes into the containment matrix, neutralizing them.

To Contain a cube a player must have in their lab 3 or more cubes all of one value (a Set) or in sequence (a Run), either all of one color or having none of the same colors. By filling the containment matrix completely (24 total unique dice) they will stop the reaction and win the game. But if the Tesseract has its last cube removed beforehand – or if 7 breaches occur, the game is lost and our world ceases to exist. Asymmetric character abilities include a passive, ‘always on’ ability and a unique action that is only available to that player. Research cards earned during play help give players an edge, as do the even more powerful Containment cards, unlocked from the matrix. Tesseract is a very challenging co-op game, with lots of replay value built into the number of characters and various threat platforms which govern the difficulty. The game scales remarkably well and has a solo mode that is every bit as engaging. The tension mounts quickly as the Tesseract sheds cubes at the end of every player’s turn, primes them and potentially causes Breaches to occur, bringing us closer to disaster.

Tesseract is a cooperative (well, or solo) game where the team wins by containing 1 die of each color/value combination. The team loses if all the dice from the Tesseract are removed or when the 7th breach happens. 

To start the game, set up the Tesseract. Place one of the base plates on the stand (each corresponding to a different level of difficulty) and then use the dice sleeve to get the 64 dice to arrange into a nice 4x4x4 cube. The whole thing is set on a lazy susan so that you can rotate it around. The containment board is placed nearby with a small containment card at each of its six slots. The Breach board is also set nearby where everyone can see it. Each player gets a player board, a randomly dealt character card (each with a special ability), as well as a starting die – taken from one of the top corners of the Tesseract. This is rolled and placed in their lab. Players also get a starting level 2 Research card. Finally, the Tesseract is primed – per a chart in the rules, 2 other dice are removed from the Tesseract, they are rolled and placed in the appropriate Primed slots underneath the Tesseract.

Each player turn is split into the Action phase and then the Threat phase. When both are complete, the next player takes their turn,.

In the Action phase, the active player takes 3 Actions and can play any number of Research cards that they have. Actions can be done in any order and they can be repeated. In general, you can only interact with cubes that have 3 sides free – a simpler way to think of it is you can interact with it if you can pinch it and remove it without disturbing anything else.

• Remove – take a removable cube and place it on any empty space in your Lab without changing the face
• Adjust – Change the value of a die in your Lab or the Primed area by 1. The 6 does NOT rollover into a 1. However, in the Primed area, you can reduce a 1 to nothing and destroy it (remove it from the Primed area)
• Transfer – move a cube to or from your Lab to another player’s Lab.
• Study – Discard a Research card from your hand to draw one of the next higher level

• Contain – if you have a valid set: (3 or more cubes that either all have the same value or are in successive order) AND (either all are the same color or all are different colors), then you can remove one die from that set and place it on the matching slot on the Containment board. If there is an identical die in the Primed Area, you can destroy one copy there as well. Optionally, you can roll any unused dice from the set to gain a Research card, level equal to the number of dice rolled. The newly rolled dice stay in your lab. When you contain two colors of a rank, you reveal the Containment card associated with that number, and when you contain all four colors of a particular pip value, you’ll unlock the Containment card – it can be used by any player on their turn. When you finish a row (all the ranks in a single color), you can choose any color from the Destroyed pile, roll them and place them back on the Tesseract.

• Unique Character Action – each Researcher card has a unique action on it; details are printed on the card itself (Note that each character also has a passive always active ability that you should not forget to take advantage of!)

It does not take one of your actions to play a Research card, you are only limited by how many you have. Note that the deck of Research cards is finite, and the cards can only be used on your turn and generally not be passed amongst the players.

Then, in the Threat phase, you deal with the Tesseract. First you find the lowest removable cube with the lowest value; remove it, roll it, and place it in the Primed area in the corresponding column. If there are 3 or more cubes in that column, it causes a single Breach. If there are 6 or more cubes in that column, it causes 2 Breaches! Remember that the team loses when the 7th breach occurs.  If you remove the lowest die from a column, you will reveal an Event icon which is immediately resolved – they are all bad, but some are definitely worse than others. You might remove extra dice, prime extra dice, screw up the dice in your Labs, etc.

The game is won if the Containment chart is filled with all 24 dice. The game is lost when the Tesseract is empty of dice or when the 7th breach occurs. 

My thoughts on the game

Tesseract is a cooperative game that has a high table presence; it’s honestly hard for a gamer to walk by a cube of 64 dice without stopping to gawk at it and watch the game for a bit. I do like the way the colorful structure slowly dissolves as the game wears on (though of course, as it dissolves, you get closer and closer to losing the game!)

Tesseract is definitely a quarterbackable sort of cooperative game as everything is in the open and players can freely discuss things; however, as each player has to take their own turn, independent thinking players can do whatever they want 🙂 On the bright side, this does allow the game to be played with a wider audience as the game certainly lets folks who want/need advice on their turn to get what they want.

This is one of those games where it feels like you’re under constant pressure to do things, and you never have quite enough actions to do the things you want. This is the sort of cooperative game tension that I like – it never feels as pressured as Ghost Stories or Pandemic, but that constant tension is definitely there and palpable.

Watching the dice in the Primed area is key. Trying to manage the dice here is critical. Do you try to destroy dice by rolling them from “1” to “0”. Do you just rearrange them to spread them out to make it less likely to get three dice in a column? Do you stack them all in a single column to reduce the risk of rolling a number that causes a breach (though possibly leading to a double breach)?

In addition to that puzzle, there is also a really nice challenge in getting your sets figured out in your Lab and then figuring out how to trigger them so that they chain into multiple Containments. You also should try to use each Containment as a chance to destroy a die in the Primed area as there aren’t many ways to get dice to disappear from there. It certainly gives you a good feeling when you have a turn where you modify a die to make a set, contain something, destroy a die from the Primed area and draw a nice Research card.

Larger sets take more time to create, but the higher level Research cards can certainly payoff – in fact, the Level 4 cards are very strong indeed, and I don’t think that I’ve won a game yet where we didn’t get a couple of them and used them to turn the tide of the game.

Also, there is a bit of a puzzle in the timing of the Containments (though at baseline, you’re already working with the dice just to make sets that give you options on what to contain at all!). Trying to get all four of a rank early on can be good to unlock one of the special Containment action cards; they can be quite powerful, and it’s good to know your options as early as you can. I like to try to wait until close to the end of the game to finish a row of a single color to allow for the destroyed dice to accumulate in the box thus allowing us to replace the maximum number of dice to the Tesseract to give us more breathing room. Of course, as you fill up the Containment board, you have to work that much harder to construct a set with the desired missing die within it – so it’s like a puzzle in a puzzle…

I do like the way that the special abilities on each Character card are different and powerful. I think that a successful team will figure out how to exploit the special abilities well, and each game will play out a bit differently due to the random deal of these abilities to the players. Player count will also affect things. At higher player counts, you will have more different abilities, but at lower counts, you’ll be able to use the powers you have more often.

The components are well done, and while I don’t care for the new-fangled pip designs on the dice, you just have to remember to count the actual dots on the face to figure out the number. The artwork otherwise is well done, and as I mentioned earlier, the multicolored Tesseract is definitely something that will cause people to stop and look.  And for all of my complaints about the dice, more of the gamers I’ve played with have liked the design than not – so maybe I’m the problem, and not the dice.

So far, I’ve enjoyed the games of Tesseract, and while I haven’t had the chance to play it on the higher levels of difficulty, we’ve had a good challenge with the first two. I am definitely looking forward to playing this some more. I will again say that it really does feel a lot like Pandemic – in the need to cooperate, the unique abilities you get with each character, the ever growing chance for cascading badness, etc – but that’s really a pretty good thing to be compared to, no?  For me, I am enjoying those familiar traits while getting a new puzzle to explore and solve.  I might not ever need to get to the higher levels of difficulty as I’m definitely having a good time at the lower end.

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers

M. Edwards chiming in. Hey, hey, another game that I actually own and can solo! I absolutely was in the “oooh, dice!” camp when I grabbed this and I adore the dice manipulation possibilities; as a solo gamer, co-op games are hit or miss since I don’t have access to all the powers unless I play multi-handed (which is not my preferred way to solo). With Tesseract, I’m able to choose my powers to benefit me and since most of the powers are fairly simple – albeit powerful – I can actually use multiple powers without losing my mind. (Man, that sentence got away from me.) 

Anyhow, from a solo player’s perspective, this game felt less Pandemic/tension-y and more Imitation Game/puzzle-y. I got to take my time weighing in on each decision – do I take that die to complete a set or that die so I don’t get closer to the bottom of the Tesseract when bad things happen? – and it was delicious analysis paralysis. I love the components, especially the cunning Lazy Susan which allowed me to look at the dwindling Tesseract from all angles without having to get out of my seat. Really, the whole experience felt surprisingly immersive: don’t tell anyone but I was totally role playing as an Avengers techie on board a quinjet trying to beat out Loki. Eheh. And of course, as mentioned, the dice manipulation options were stellar (pun intended) in that there were plenty of opportunities to do so and no turn felt pointless.

Now, I must admit that I haven’t won a game yet; that darned Containment chart feels nearly impossible to fill with all 24 dice on my own. But Tesseract is the kind of game that doesn’t make me feel slow or stupid for losing and it always keeps me wanting more. I may house rules it so a win could be less filling the entire Containment board and more how many rows and/or columns I can complete, but regardless, this was a fun experience and one I don’t mind revisiting often.

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it! Dale Y, M. Edwards
• I like it. John P
• Neutral.
• Not for me…