as Duell, so now Ubongo BMM gets its turn. As yet one more game in the series, does BMM have anything worth offering to the Ubongo family, or is it just an unloved child?Rules
Thanks to Scott Russell, you can read an English translation of the rules here on BGG. If you're familiar with Ubongo, you already know the basics of gameplay. Players are competing to finish puzzles the fastest. BMM, like the rest of the games, has its own spin on how this works. If you want to know more, just read the rules.
Components
BMM comes in a compact little box which is around the same size as Great Wall of China or CIA vs. KGB. Inside the box you will find 32 cards, 28 pieces (7 in each of 4 colors) and the rulebook.
The cards are standard playing size and are double sided. One side has a 2-piece puzzle while the other has a three piece puzzle. The cards are pretty sturdy and have an eggshell finish. The pieces come in 4 colors (red, green, yellow, and blue) and have 7 pieces to each color. As usual, the cardboard is pretty solid. The one big difference is that unlike other Ubongo games, these pieces are only colored on one side. They can't be flipped like in the other games. We'll talk a bit more about this later on.
Thats all you get in the box, which is enough to play the game. There isn't a whole lot to the game so there's not a lot of need for components.
Gameplay
Its just like Ubongo...
Sure it is. Players are competing to solve the puzzles as fast as they can. The shapes are familiar and the general look and feel is the same.
....but different
The biggest difference is how the actual gameplay works. To start, seperate the cards by color and place the stacks on the table with the side you want to be playing on face down. Put the pieces in easily accessible areas. The start player takes a card from any of the face down stacks. All remaining players do this, but they can't take a card from a stack thats already being used this round. The start player shouts "Ubongo!" and the players race to finish the puzzles. When one player finishes again yells "Ubongo!" and counts to 20. The winner, and anyone else who finished their puzzle in the allotted time keeps their card while everyone else gives their card to the winner. As soon as the cards are gone, the game is over with the winner being the player with the most cards.
A bit too easy
Another big difference is the one-sided puzzle pieces. This has a dramatic effect on making the game much too easy. If you can only lay a piece on one side, that eliminates a lot of possible orientations thus allowing players to complete the puzzles even faster. Additionally, the puzzles are only 2 or 3 pieces, so there's less challenge than any other Ubongo game. The 2 siders are so easy that the game becomes more of a dexterity race to find the pieces you need than an actual puzzle game. By Ubongo standards, even the 3-piece puzzles are easy. The combination of one-sided pieces and simple puzzles really takes the challenge away from this game.
A variant to make it a bit harder
There's a variant in the rules which is designed to make the game harder. In this Pro Variant, only the winner keeps his card, with everyone else's getting put on the bottom of the stacks. I find this to be a tremendous improvement over the basic rules because this makes it more important to be fast. The basic rules create a situation where you don't need to be fast, you just need to complete it in a reasonable time. The Pro Variant puts much more emphasis on the puzzle solving speed.
Replayability
Any game with puzzles is bound to have its replayability questioned. In the other 3 Ubongo games I haven't seen this as a problem. BMM on the other hand may have replay issues due to the simple puzzles and one-sided pieces. There's not nearly as much to this version as the others and I think players could become very familiar with the puzzles very quickly. This game should only be played occassionally to help prolong its playable life.
Game length and player numbers
There's no timer in this game, but the simple nature of the puzzles means that play should go extremely fast. I can't see any puzzle taking more than 30 seconds to complete. Since there are only 8 cards of each color, a game could easily be over in 10 or 15 minutes.
The game plays equally well with 2, 3, or 4 players. While the instructions say that 1 person could use this as a puzzle, there's not nearly enough depth to these to keep anyone very busy. If you want puzzles, buy Ubongo
as Duell.Portability
Ubongo BMM is designed as the travel version of the game. They've pretty much got the size of the game down right and the simplicity of the puzzles means that this is a game you could drop down in a moment's notice and have people playing in no time. If the goal was to create a simple portable version of Ubongo, then they succeeded.
Theme
No theme here, this is an abstract puzzle solving game.
Compare it to...
If you've read this far, you'll know that already.
Overall
Unlike the other games in the Ubongo series, this one failed to thrill me in any sort of way. While the other games have found new ways to challenge players, this one is a huge step backwards in terms of difficulty and skill. This game wasn't designed for that however. It was designed to be a portable version of Ubongo that you would play almost anywhere. To that degree its a success.
However, I have to rate this a 5/10. I really enjoy Ubongo and if this version had more challenge or replayability, I would certainly rate it higher. There's just not enough here to make me want to take this anywhere. I'd rather take my Travel Ingenious or a bunch of other smaller games. Even Travel Blokus would be better if I wanted a puzzle game to travel with.
Unfortunately, I can't recommend Ubongo BMM. They got the idea right, they just failed to bring anything new or exciting to the table. You could do almost the same thing with regular Ubongo if you just use the cards and pieces without the scoring track. I recommend you pass this one up unless you're an absolute completist or you just really love Ubongo.
Posted Wed Jul 16, 2008 10:14 pm
