When I first saw Einfach Genial Knobwlspass, I got pretty excited. I love Ingenious as does my fiance. This one looked like a combination of Ingenious with Ubongo, which is another of our favorites. Unfortunately, the game was only available in Germany so I thought I'd have to go without. Luckily for me a copy became available in a recent Math Trade and I happened to win it. So does Knobelspass belong in the Ingenious family, or is it better kept a family secret.


Rules

EGK is a game for 1-4 players. There are 4 sets of tiles which are exactly the same for each player. There are also 15 double-sided sheets with puzzles on them ranging from 1 to 5 stars. The number of stars is the difficulty of the puzzle with 1 being the easiest and 5 being the hardest. To play competitively, each player takes a puzzle of the same difficulty (or differing difficulties to handicap the game). The first player to complete his puzzle is the winner. The game can also be played solitaire as a standard puzzle.


Components

The components of EGK are sparse, but they cover the necessities.

There are 4 sets of Ingenious tiles with each set having the same 21 tiles. The tiles look just like normal Ingenious tiles, except these are made of cardboard. They're reasonably thick and have a nice matte finish with a bit of texture.



As mentioned above, there are 15 puzzle sheets, each with 2 sides providing a total of 30 puzzles. These sheets are basically a thick paper with a light coating on it. The colors are beautiful and the sheets look quite nice although they are only paper. I would have much preferred at least a thin cardboard. Still, these work just fine for what they are.



Other than those items, all you get is a simple 1 page rulesheet with some examples. The contents are very minimalistic, but they are adequate for the application.


Gameplay

There's really not much to cover in the gameplay section. This is either a solitaire puzzle or competitive puzzle solving. Either way you look at it, EGK is a puzzle and not really a game. This is no more a game than those accursed Sudoku puzzle "games". If you enjoy puzzles, this is perfect, but it's not a game.

More importantly, I think Reiner Knizia really missed the boat. You could drastically increase replayability if each of the 4 sets of tiles was different yet each could be used to solve all of the puzzles in different ways. In comparison, lets look at Ubongo which is also a competitive puzzle solving experience. In Ubongo, each player has a puzzle card that can be solved with one of 6 combinations of tiles. EGK doesn't have this ability. There's only 1 way to solve each puzzle and all players have the same pieces. That means that EGK is more akin to a simple jigsaw puzzle than a game.

As far as challenge goes, some of the 4 and 5 star puzzles are really tough. Even some of the "easy" puzzles will make you think for a bit. These aren't really brain burners, but they're definitely challenging.


Compare it to....

If you compare this to Ingenious, you will be sorely dissapointed. It uses Ingenious pieces, but other than that, there is no correlation. When compared to puzzle games like Ubongo, this falls flat for the reasons mentioned above. I can best correlate EGK to "games" like The Original Sudoku game, Code Sudoku, or Do You Sudoku? Game.


Overall

If you're looking for a game which uses Ingenious ideas in a different light, look elsewhere. This isn't a game, its a puzzle. Sure, you can compete to finish puzzles fastest, but thats not my definition of a game. Thats more like a race in my book. If you want a puzzle game, buy Ubongo or Ubongo Extrem. EGK is not a game anymore than competitive book reading is a game.

On the positive side, if you're looking for a fun and challenging puzzle that won't make your brain bleed, this could be perfect. The puzzles go from easy to hard with plenty of middle ground. There are options for puzzlers of all types. You can easily compare this with Sudoku or crossword puzzles. If you're a puzzle fan and an Ingenious fan, I can't possibly recommend this enough.

For me personally, I would rate this a 4/10. I'm not much of a puzzler. My fiance would probably rate it much higher because she loves puzzles and Ingenious. For her, this is a perfect combination. For me, I'd rather play around on the computer.

In the long run I got a terrible game out of the Math Trade. But on the positive side, I got a great set of puzzles which will entertain my fiance for quite a while to come.