At last year’s PAX Prime, Jonathan Liu and I sat down with Calliope Game’s Ray Wehrs to play a game of Tsuro of the Seas, which had recently completed funding on Kickstarter at the time. Like the original Tsuro game, it was quite fun, but when we finished playing Ray smiled and asked if we wanted to see something new.
Of course we did.
Ray pulled out an early version of Roll For It!, a game currently seeking funding on Kickstarter. It’s a family friendly game that’s easy to learn and fast to play. Each player gets a set of six colored dice and the deck of cards is shuffled and three or four cards are laid face up on the table. Each card has between two and six dice faces on it and a point value assigned to the card.
One by one, players around the table roll their dice and try to match the dice faces on the cards by assigning a matching rolled die to a card. You can assign dice to multiple cards, but once the die is assigned, the player loses that die until the card is won. Multiple players can go after any particular card and once a card is won, the player who rolled the correct dice wins the card and its points and another card is dealt from the deck to replace it. Play continues until a player has won 40 points.
This is a great family game because it can be taught in under a minute and played in about twenty. While the traveling game (more on that in a moment) I was sent had two sets in it, a regular set will have enough dice for four players, although all you need for additional players is another six dice.
It’s certainly not high strategy, but that’s OK. It’s nice to have a game that anyone can play and can be used as a palette cleanser between bigger games or a time killer while in a hallway while waiting for an appointment. My kids loved it so much that they race each other to choose dice colors and we’ve played the game every day while we’ve had it.
Truth be told, I might’ve enjoyed it more than my kids. I love dice and, even more, dice games, so Roll For It! is definitely in my sweet spot. Beyond that, it’s just fun. We enjoyed cheering for each other (until someone got too close to winning) and then actively rooted against numbers coming up. When someone finally won, we reshuffled the cards and began again. What more could you ask from a family game?
As part of the promotion surrounding the Roll For It! Kickstarter, Calliope Games is sending this traveling set from player to player, à la Flat Stanley. Before I received it, the game had been in Seattle and I will soon be sending it off to North Carolina. Each temporary guardian of the game takes a picture with a card and writes in a little journal before sending the game on. Look for my image on the Kickstarter page later this week. If you’d like to take care of Roll For It! for a couple of days, let Ray know or better yet, back the Kickstarter and get a permanent copy for your home.
I’m glad you shared this here. I’ll be SO happy when the project succeeds. The game is great.