Check out our Board Game Book Club

We’re starting a new series of blog posts called Board Game Book Club. As a team, we frequently meet up and play games together. More often than not we end the game with some discussion on our thoughts and opinions of the game. We obviously enjoy playing games, but as we’ve grown as designers our thoughts about what we play and what we like about what we play has also grown. We’ve benefited greatly from this new and important exercise. As we formalize this into a regular team activity, we thought it might be interesting to share from that perspective. We’ve had so much fun trying new games, let’s get things kicked off with one of our more recent acquisitions: Root.

ROOT

Root is a 2-4 player, 60-90 minute, asymmetric game wherein each player controls a different faction. Factions have unique actions they can do on their turn that earn them points. For example, the Marquise de Cat’s main way to score points is to build different buildings; the Eyrie faction’s main way to score points is to build roosts, but they have a strict sequence of actions they must take.

What We Liked

• Walk-through instructions allowed 2 turns to be played “by the game” giving every player a tour of the different actions and mechanics in the game. We like this because adding in the time to learn the game and the flow is really helpful. By the end of the 2 turns, everyone has a better idea of the game, then the competition can really start!
• Factions being wildly different makes for interesting game play. Having both your own actions and actions that everyone does is fun and exciting since no one knows what to expect. In other games, players may get distracted and not pay attention to other players’ moves. In Root, it is impossible not to pay attention. 
  
• The game design is elegant, which can be hard to accomplish with an asymmetric game. Each player’s components and area are so well organized, it takes little effort to look at the board and understand what is going on. Having such wildly different gameplay for each faction presents an interesting design challenge: how do you present the game state in a way that each player can internalize quickly? Root’s design definitely solves this problem.
• Animal-shaped meeples in team colors for each faction is unique and so cute! Because each of them is unique, it make movement on the board interesting without being complicated. This game has just the right amount of bits. Lots of activity, fun to move pieces, and not too many or too few. 
• Finally, the art is adorable. We love the woodland animals and forest theme (obviously, given our newest game Inoka). We love the direction they went with the art! 

What we didn’t like

• Solitaire aspect: There is a bit of parallel solitaire at the start of the game. However, this is mitigated by the factions goals overlapping in the early to mid game. By the end game, there’s a build-up of engagement which results in full-on competition.
• With the factions having such radically different play styles and actions, it’s a little much to absorb on the first play through. We recommend for beginning gamers, one initial play-through to fully learn the game.

OVERALL

• Root is such a solid game – from its art work and components, to its thoughtful and intentional design – it’s no wonder it sold out at Gen Con 2018. We can’t wait to play this game again. Now that we really know how to play, the engagement and full-blown competition will start a lot earlier!