Slide

• Designer: Claude Clement
• Publisher:  Gigamic
• Players: 2-6
• Age: 7+
• Time: 15 minutes
• Amazon affiliate link:  (coming March 2025)
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

The challenge of Slide is to rid yourself of cards to leave as few points as possible.  In the game, you need to arrange the numbered cards, aiming to score as little as you can.  But watch out, you’ll need to keep an eye on your opponents and be one step ahead to win the game!

To set up, deal sixteen cards to each player, who arranges them in a face-down 4×4 grid. Cards range from 1 to 10, with ten copies of each number.

To start, each player reveals a card of their choice from the grid. Starting with whoever revealed the lowest number, each player claims a revealed card and slides it into their grid to close the gap they created when they removed a card.  Depending on where you chose to remove a card, you will have 2, 3 or 4 options on where to slide the new card into your grid.

The starting player keeps rotating clockwise as players do this fifteen more times, eventually having a fully face-up 4×4 grid. Each number in a grid that’s adjacent to the same number is removed, and the sum of the remaining cards is your score. Whoever has the lowest score wins.  Ties broken in favor of the player with the fewest cards in their grid.  Alternatively, play multiple rounds until a player reaches 100 points, then once again whoever has the lowest score wins.

My thoughts on the game

Slide is a simple game to play – choose a card to reveal and then await your turn to draft a card to slide back into your array.  At first, there doesn’t seem to be much strategy; you can randomly choose just about any card.  As the game progresses though, you may be more likely to choose certain spaces based on what options it will give you to slide something back into the grid.  Your standing in turn order may also be important – you may want to save a riskier space for when you are closer to the start of turn order; you’ll have the most options when it is your turn to choose. When you are at the end of turn order, you pretty much just take whatever is left to you.  This would be a good time to leave a space  that doesn’t limit your future options – those are the times it is probably worth it to leave a way to push next to a high valued tile you want to cancel.

Also, when you are in the next-to-last spot, you could make choices based on what might screw over the last person (who has no choice in the matter).  You could at least leave them with a truly unpalatable option.

That being said; there’s really not much complexity in the game.  Randomly flip a tile, draft a tile, place a tile.  The sixteen rounds should be over in ten minutes or so.  Much of the game comes down to someone flipping your desired tile up at random – and on a turn when you have the ability to draft said tile before someone else takes it.  There is a neat puzzle going on here trying to figure out where to leave room to slide tiles into your array, and there is a modicum of player interaction in the drafting.  The tiles are colorful, which makes for a nice display, but it also makes it easy to see what other people are doing from afar.  Slide is a nice choice for an opener/closer, and the wide range of players it can handle give it a lot of flexibility in that regard.   

Thoughts from Other Opinionated Gamers

Simon W: I enjoyed this game enough to get it. It plays better with 4 than with 2 players as it’s a bit more difficult to predict and feels more random with 2 since the choice of cards is much more limited even when it’s your turn to play. Incidentally I liked the box! 

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I Love it!
• I Like it: Simon W
• Neutral: Dale
• Not for me…