Scribbly Gum

• Designer: Phil Walker-Harding
• Publisher: Postmark Games
• Players: 1+
• Age: 6+
• Time: 20 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Did you know Australia’s scribbly gum trees get their beautiful scribbles from baby moths burrowing through the bark?

In Scribbly Gum, each player has their own tree diagram and every turn gets to draw a line that leads to food for your baby moth to eat. Collect sets of food to score points. Whoever scribbles their way to the most valuable food wins!

Scribbly Gum can be played with any number of players at once and includes directions for classroom play.

Choose one of the tree diagrams (my PnP version has three different options), and find a pen and 2d6.  Your baby moth is in the middle of the board, with lots of food options in circles in the grid surrounding it.  The meal tracker is found to the right of this – with combinations of food objects in lines.  Further to the right is the turn tracker in a grey column.  Finally at the very right, there is the player aid area to help you convert your die rolls to your possible actions as well as the achievement section – there are 3 optional achievements that can be added to your game to make it a bit more complicated.  These will give players three different races; with the first player to achieve one the higher score and all other players who accomplish it taking the lower score.

The game happens in 3 rounds, each with 7 turns.  On each turn, the dice are rolled and each player chooses one of the dice – and then draws a line on his sheet in the corresponding direction.  The line must start from an already filled in circle and then lead to a new circle.  As you fill in the new circle, you also fill in the matching icons in the meal tracker to the right.   If you fill in a meal tracker space with a bold circle, you get an immediate extra move in one of the four cardinal directions.   If you fill in a tree circle with a water drop, this is a wild card and allows you to fill in any single icon in the meal tracker.  If you choose a die with a 5 on it, you must be able to use one of the special dotted lines.  If doubles are rolled, all players can choose any result they like.  If you are unable to make a legal play, then tough luck for you, and you get to do nothing. All players make their move simultaneously, and all players have access to both numbers.

[As an aside, if you prefer, you can use a website which draws two movement tiles for you that you must choose from.  This is a relic of the original game, but it can still work for you here – and if you plan to play in a large group, this might be a better way to facilitate that game as you can project the tiles onto a screen easier, and no one has to cross reference a chart…]

Repeat this until all 7 turns have been taken in the round.  Then, all players score points for their completed meals – that is a line in the meal tracker with one filled space (one of each food type).  Simply record the number of completed meals at the end of the round in the appropriate space in the chart at the bottom.  Now repeat the process for two more rounds.  Note that you will score all completed meals at the end of each round, so every meal that is finished in the first round will score three times for you.

At the end of the third round, you check for any column bonuses – if you have filled in every circle in a column – you score three bonus points.   Now tally up your points and the player with the most points wins.

You could also play in solo mode – where you always use the achievements, and you score the larger score if you finish the achievement in rounds one or two, and you score the lower score if you complete it in round three.  Compare your score with the chart in the rules.

My Thoughts on the Game

Well, Postmark Games (helmed by Matthew Dunstan) has been one of my favorite makers of print and play games in the past few years.  The company has focused on PnP games where you need only the most basic of things and the game sheets to enjoy a nice game.  

Scribbly Gum is a revision of a previously released game; the regular version using a deck of movement cards instead of d6 generated choices.  The odds are slightly different (using a fixed deck of cards instead of a freely rolled pair of dice), but there is a nice online app that does the cards for you – and I found this to be perfect for a game over Zoom, as I could share the screen of the cards as they were drawn and my friends around the globe could all play along…

It’s quite simple, and I can see how this is a game that would be suggested for classroom play as the rules (without achievements) can be taught quickly.  Personally, I like having the achievements included, but having them be separate from the basic rules keeps the game super accessible to all gamers.

The strategy is pretty straightforward, and it is mostly figuring out where to go when you don’t get the roll that you want.  The dotted lines can be tempting to take because you get the illusion of moving further away on a single role, but in the end, you’re still just filling in a single dot on your chart, so you have to make sure that it’s a position that you want to be in for future moves.

The components I used first were the low-ink PnP version, and admittedly the black and white sheet isn’t the most exciting to look at, and the icons were hard to see.  Then, I splurged and found a color printer; and this version is much better- and the colors helped make things easier to play.

There are three different sheets included in the file, and each gives you a different maze to wander through, and each also offers different achievements – and I suppose if you really played the game a lot, you could even cut/paste the achievements and the grids.  

I have yet to score more than 31 in the solo game (highest level is 35+), but I’ll keep trying. I have laminated two of the sheets back to back, and it’s now in my roll and write box to be played with a dry erase marker.

For me, this is another really nice PnP RAW game from Postmark.  Nothing world-beating about it, but it’s already given me a few hours of enjoyment – a great value for the low price  (yes, I know mine was free, but the retail cost is only 5 GBP).

If you are interested in learning more: https://www.postmarkgames.com/scribbly-gum

Thoughts from other Opinionated Gamers:

Mark  Jackson: Like Dale, I commend this to you as a solid family-friendly roll’n’write. I’ve tried both the tiles and the dice – and while Dale does make a convincing argument for the tiles with large groups, the dice work great when you’re sitting in your car killing time before an event and want to play a quick game.

Until your next appointment,

The Gaming Doctor