Panic Lab

• Designer: Dominique Ehrhard
• Publisher: Gigamic
• Players: 2-10
• Age: 8+
• Time: 30 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

Amoebas have escaped and are slithering around in all directions! Catch them fast!

In Panic Lab, the player-scientists have their hands full trying to figure out which amoeba to catch and where it might have oozed off to. To set up the game, shuffle the 25 cards, then lay them out in a circle.

At the start of a round, one player rolls four special dice which indicate the color, shape and pattern of the amoeba being sought as well as the color of the lab it left and in which direction it was traveling. Competing at the same time, players need to find the lab, then move in the right direction to spot the amoeba (which may, of course, be striped and not spotted).

But wait! If you encounter a vent after leaving the lab, you need to skip to the next vent in the circle before continuing your search. (Amoebas prefer to travel in the dark when possible.) Plus, if an amoeba passes through one of three mutation devices in the circle, you need to alter the criteria for your search, looking for a tentacled amoeba instead of one with a tail, for example, or an orange/red amoeba instead of a blue/purple one. Zap!

The first player to lay her hand on the correct card collects a token, and the first player to collect five tokens wins!

My thoughts on the game

So, I should start here by saying that pretty much every speed game is going to get rated “Not for me”.  That’s not necessarily a fault of the game but more because I find that nearly every speed game ends up skewed towards the one player who just “gets it” faster than everyone else.  

In my experience thus far with Panic Lab, I think that the truism holds true.  All of the games have included someone who was simply able to parse the directions from the dice just a bit faster than everyone else and the scores have always been something like 5-2-1-0 or 5-1-0-0, etc.  In an attempt to try to beat the savant, other players may rush to give an answer, but if they are wrong, it only furthers the gap as the incorrect player has to return a scoring counter to the box.

That being said, there is a fairly complicated puzzle here when you add in vents and the transformers into the equation.  It does take a bit of mental gymnastics to figure out which cute guy you’re looking for…   The art is definitely cute, and the game definitely has that going for it.  If you’re lucky enough to have a group that is not dominated by an amoeba-finding savant and/or you like quick speed fillers, give this one a go.   It is definitely not as easy as it looks, and it will certainly challenge you to process the rules as fast as possible.

Until your next appointment

The Gaming Doctor