Dice and colors and evil labs

 I’ve been meaning to look Polterdice games for a while. I’ve backed a couple of their Kickstarters so I’ve picked up a decent amount of their library and their designs do look interesting.

Many (not all) of their Roll and Write designs involve using color, markers or pencils or crayons or whatever of different colors. They certainly aren’t the first to do so. And, as a medium, Roll and Write games have fewer components to work with. Something that allows an additional layer in the game design and game play is a good thing.

Yahtzee just involves writing down numbers. The write element of Qwixx is checking off boxes. They are both very important games in the development of the Roll and Write medium (and Qwixx rocks) But, as a medium, Roll and Writes can do more than that. Color can be a powerful tool to adding new elements into turning a piece of paper into a fully fleshed out game.

But here’s the thing. I’m quite colorblind. It’s been a bane for my gaming from the start and it’s takes some decent contrast for me work with colors. So that makes some of Polterdice’s designs a real challenge for me.

And some of their designs really interest me. Dice of Steam looks like it might be able to capture rail stock in a couple pages. (I know, that’s been tried a _lot_) The engine building of Iron Made might actually give me the Pick-Up-and-Deliver Roll and Writes I’m looking for.

All that said, I started with My Little Evil Lab, the family/Junior version of Evil Lab. Evil Lab might be their simplest and most accessible game and I’m starting with the simplified version lol

Stripping away the made science theme, you’re putting symbols on a grid. Pretty familiar territory for me. The columns act like Connect 4 columns, that a symbol has to go down to the bottom or on top of another symbol. Again, we’ve seen this before.

So… what makes My Little Evil Lab different?

You use two dice to determine the color and shape of the symbol you draw each turn. A very important touch is that each pip gives you more than one choice of color or shape. In fact, the difference between the junior version of My Little Evil Lab and regular Evil Lab is that the Junior version gives you four shapes as opposed to the regular version’s three shapes. That makes gameplay easier because two identical shapes cannot be next to each other. Diagonal is fine, thank goodness. If placement is impossible, you put a big X in a space.

In order to score points, you have to create patterns of colors. A box of four squares, a line of three squares, that sort of thing. And the patterns must be isolated. If you have a line of five squares, not one of the scoring patterns, you get nothing. It doesn’t count a line of four with a buddy.

You also get bonus points for making every pattern in one color or making one pattern in every color. Trust me, if that sounds confusing, looking at the scoring sheet will make it all makes sense.

(The low ink version substitute’s patterns for colors. I went one step further and used numbers)

From what I can tell reading through rule sets, the Evil Lab family is the simplest of Polterdice’s

catalog. And I have to admit that the various elements are familiar. However, the various restrictions on both placement and scoring make for some interesting game play.

The Evil Lab family is simple but so many of the games that they share qualities with are even simpler.  Even sitting down to My Little Evil Lab requires making some plans and some decisions. There is enough going on to keep me interested and coming back.

The more forgiving ruleset of My Little Evil Lab has actually made it relatively easy to get good scores. I am definitely planning on trying the regular version soon. More than that, there are alternate boards with different scoring conditions or special symbols that change the gameplay. I feel like the Evil Lab family has a lot of gaming for me.

My Little Evil Lab was me poking at Polterdice and it’s been encouraging.