Recess Review
By Ian Strelec, Staff Reviewer
Initiative Round
“Growing up is never easy…especially in a rough parochial school where scores are settled on the playground. You’ve only got 30 minutes to get across the playground, beating lunch money out of the other children on the way and trying to steal a kiss from your sweetheart. The one with the most lunch money by the end of recess wins! Just make sure you do all your dirty work where the nuns won’t notice you. If they see your wetwork, or you get tattled on by another child, you’ll get detention for sure…”
“Recess is a strategy board game designed for 3 to 5 players, ages 8 and up. Play time is 10 to 30 minutes.”
With this, you take control of 4 kids – 2 boys, 2 girls – and you also start with 10 coins. The game revolves around these coins, which you acquire by, putting it simply, beating them out of the other kids. (Not your own though!) Now, granted, you can’t just beat up random kids with impunity; you can be stopped by the nuns. Initiating a fight, however, won’t necessarily penalize you, as long as you stop rather than continuing to assault your victim. You also still gain one coin for initiating the fight. If you do decide to continue however, chances are good another player will sic a nun on you and get you sent to “time out,” which is basically one turn of inactivity.
Each player’s turn consists of a “3,2,1, nun” sequence, where the player moves one child 3 spaces, one child 2 spaces, and one child 1 space, then moves a nun. Children can’t be moved more than once, and must be moved the specified distance. The children move like rooks in chess, (that is, moving either horizontally or vertically the specified distance in a straight line) and the nuns like queens (any direction in a straight line any number of squares). Each player gets one minute per turn – with a total of 30 turns per game.
The game ends when the 30th turn ends or when one player gets one of his boy and girl tokens into the same space that is also out of a nun’s line of sight for a kiss.
Critical Hit
This game excels in several areas. First, it’s highly amusing to run around wreaking mayhem while avoiding nuns.
Second, the game is well-rendered and possessed of good quality materials that won’t rip or tear when you’re opening the box.
Third, and highly important, is the simplicity. This game runs smoothly and quickly and can be learned quickly. It’s not, in any way, difficult to understand.
Critical Fumble
The only problem with this game from my point of view is the childish age group, but considering it seems to be targeted for a younger age group, it makes plenty of sense for it the way it is.
Coup de Grace
So, we have an entertaining game that is extremely quick to learn and well made, if targeted for a young demographic. If you have kids, or just feel like having some childish entertainment, I highly recommend this.
Final Grade: A
