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Lowell Kempf
United States
Chicago
Illinois
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Ubongo is a game with a Swahili name, designed by Polish-born Swedish man and, to be honest, doesn’t have anything to do with either Africa or northern Europe. It is a rather quirky puzzle-game that isn’t quite like any other game out there and is one that hits my table on a regular basis.
Ubongo was a long a game series that I viewed with suspicion. At its heart, it is a bunch of puzzles and my first reaction was how many times could someone play Ubongo before they memorized all the puzzles? After a certain point, isn’t victory just going to go to whoever has the best memory?
Since then, I have tried three games in the family. As far as that particular fear goes, I’d say that it would take a photographic memory to memorize Ubongo’s puzzles and, quite frankly, you’d get enough play out of the game that’d still be worth the money you paid for it by that point. Instead of worrying about someone’s photographic memory, you should be worrying about their spacial awareness. (That’s odd. My spellcheck doesn’t like spacial. I could have sworn that was a real word)
The heart of the Ubongo games is that they are competitive timed puzzles. A little like tangrams, you have a set of geometric shapes and an outline that those shapes will exactly fill, just as long as you figure out how to place them correctly. What particularly blows my mind is that each of the puzzles are designed to be completed with different sets of shapes. I could be crazy but it sure seems like an impressive amount of work was put into creating Ubongo’s puzzles.
The real time element to Ubongo is definitely part of its appeal for me. I am not just trying to solve the damn puzzle. I am also trying to solve it before anyone can solve theirs! That adds a lot of the thrill to the game.
Amusingly enough, I worked my way backwards in the chain of Ubongo’s complexity. I started with Duel, then tried Extreme, and finally got to the original game (via iPad) That said, while the original Ubongo’s puzzles are simpler than either Duel or Extreme, I think the scoring is more interesting.
I should also note that I am personally terrible at Ubongo. I have a lot of fun but I have been stumped plenty of times by its puzzles. My fiancée is much better at it than I am. That helps them hit the table more often but if I didn’t have fun, I wouldn’t be playing.
That said, since life has so many games and so little time, Ubongo slipped off of our radar for a while. But, it has come back, which is what prompted to write this rambling, occasionally coherent blog.
As it has done with other games, like Ascension, the iPad brought Ubongo back into our lives. In what seems to be a reoccurring theme with me and my relationship with the Ubongo family, I was initially reluctant. After all, part of the experience of playing an Ubongo game is that you are moving and shifting and flipping real physical pieces. A tablet version is not going to have that tactile element that is such a big part of the experience.
And, to be honest, that is true. Not only do you lose the tactile feel of the chunky cardboard pieces, there are times when the %^&#ing pieces stick and you are frantically pawing at the screen like a cat going for the laser pointer while the timer ticks down.
However, when the iPad lets you get a quick game or two in before bedtime in under fifteen minutes, the positives outweigh the negatives. In the end, it is still a tense game of trying to interpret two-dimensional space, even if you are playing with images made out of electrons.
(I also have to note that, in addition to multi-player and the expected solitaire mode, the iOS version of Ubongo comes with a story (?) mode. I mean, really, I know that all games can be broken down to abstracts at their heart, no matter how thematic they are, but is there is any way that Ubongo honestly lends itself to a story mode? That said, I have also played through Yahtzee Adventures’ insane story mode. At least Ubongo’s story of trying to save your drought stricken village has some dramatic tension.)
Of course, I have to admit that Ubongo is not for everyone. It is a real-time game with a strong speed element. It has almost no strategic elements, although it will tax your pattern recognition skills. It isn’t a mindless game but it uses a different part of your mind than Puerto Rico or Advanced Squad Leader. There are plenty of folks out there for who this would be a poor fit.
Really, given how bad I am at it, I should be one of them but the thrill of trying to win just keeps bringing me back. And, with the iPad making it easy to play Just. One. More. Time. I am getting plenty of play out of it.
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