A Review by Mike Petty
Introduction:
I've been eagerly awaiting the release of Cluzzle for a long time now. One reason is that it's designed and published by a friend of mine, Dominic Crapuchettes. Besides this, I also wanted a copy of my own after having so much fun playtesting it back in 2002 at our Protospiel game designers convention. No other game from that year's event generated so much laughter and excitement. It's been a long time coming for Dominic, but we received our first shipment of the game a couple weeks ago. I'm very happy to say the finished product looks great and the gameplay is as good as I remembered it.
The game:
A "cluzzle" is a clay puzzle. The idea of the game is terribly simple actually. Players pick an object from a list on cards and they sculpt that object. The best scoring cluzzle will be one that's guessed in later rounds, but players will score no points for their cluzzle if it's not guessed at all. The idea is to be somewhat tricky in your representation, but not too tricky.
After all cluzzles are sculpted and displayed on their "claystations", a series of rounds is played out. Each round, each player gets to ask two yes/no questions. These questions are asked and answered with no particular turns. Table talk is encouraged, so you don't have to just say "yes" or "no" when answering. Guesses can be written down for the cluzzles anytime during the round. When everyone has asked a question, or when time has run out, the round ends.
At this time, players read off their guesses. Correct guesses earn a the sculptor and the guesser(s) one point in round one, two points in round two or three points in round three. Since the session only lasts three rounds, you're fresh out of luck if your cluzzle hasn't been guessed by that time. A complete game lasts three sessions. Our games have been completed in 30-45 minutes.
Haven't we seen this before?
Many gamers will likely recognize similarities between Cluzzle and the classic German game, Barbarossa. I've talked to Dominic about the game enough to know that the core idea for Cluzzle was inspired from playing Barbarossa. What Dominic managed to do with his game, though, is take those fun elements of Barbarossa and put them into a game that's more accessible to non-gamers. In the time since I've had Cluzzle, I've played it enough with non-gamers to know this to be the case. As much as I enjoy Barbarossa, I find it has too many rules that I have to keep pointing out to new players throughout the entire game. In contrast, Cluzzle is so simple most people just start playing. As it is now, I bring Cluzzle with me whenever I may be playing games. It works well with many styles of play, from extremely light party gaming to more competitive deduction, though I don't suggest mixing both of those styles in the same group!
Negatives?
The only thing we've run into a number of times is the question of how close a guess must be to be correct. For example, I guessed a cluzzle to be a stocking cap when it was simply a hat. Was I right? The rules gave no indication, so I asked Dominic how he would judge such a situation. He said he leaves it to the creator of the cluzzle. Personally I'd like to see criteria spelled out in the rules that makes such judgments more standard. He assures me something to this effect will be posted on the game's website (www.cluzzle.com) in the future. In recent games, I've started pointing out this potential problem before we play and most players have decided ahead of time how "correct" a guess has to be. In some cases, for example, we just tell the other players when we're going to be particularly picky about guesses, due to the nature of the cluzzle.
Conclusion:
I see myself playing a lot of Cluzzle in the future. It can be a quick filler or a party game to play over and over for a few hours. If my summary above or the information at the website sounds like fun to you, I can assure you you'll enjoy the game. With very simple rules, the excitement of turn-free questioning and the attention this one gets in public ensures that I'm always up for a game.