Game: Aquarius

Thread: Re: Chicken

cerulean — 2008-05-15T12:19:51+00:00

Aqua-Chicken, by John Cooper, 1999:

http://www.wunderland.com/WTS/Ginohn/games/Aqua-Chicken.html

Thread: Aquarius - El Dominó en Cartas Sicodélicas (mini review in spanish)

ponchera69 — 2008-03-24T21:02:55+00:00

Aquarius - Andrew Looney (Looney Labs, 1998)

Nadie sabe para quien trabaja. Así dice el dicho y este simpático juego de cartas representa muy bien el espíritu de la frase.

En Aquarius existen tres tipos de cartas: Elementos, objetivos y acciones. Las cartas elemento se ocupan como en el Dominoes, es decir, juntando dos paneles iguales (en este caso se trataría de un Dominoesirregular, porque los paneles no son uno frente al otro sino que además se conectan por los costados o por 1/4 de panel). El que logre la consecución de 7 paneles seguidos del mismo tipo será el ganador. Para saber que elemento debes juntar simplemente debes mirar tu objetivo: si es fuego, tierra, espacio, cielos y agua. Además están las cartas de acción que te permiten, por ejemplo, cambiar tus cartas de la mano por otro jugador, intercambiar objetivos con otro juguador o simplemente revolver todos los objetivos y entregarlos de nuevo. Quizás esta es la parte más débil del juego: no se puede realizar una estrategia porque en cualquier momento todo lo que has construido pasará a otro jugador. O cuando ya estás pronto a ganar y alguien tira una "zap card" que retira una carta del juego, o simplemente cuando se vuelvan a cambiar los objetivos. Al final el juego se decide en las últimas dos vueltas cuando ya no quedan cartas de acción (a menos que alguien no las haya usado) y pasa muchas veces que no hay ganador.

Aquarius es un juego rápido, entretenido, pero entregado absolutamente a la suerte. Sus reglas son muy intuitivas (tanto así que la primera vez que jugué no necesité que me explicaran las reglas, pero al ver el juego ya lo tenía todo claro), puede ser jugado por cualuquiera, gamers o no, y finalmente es un juego bonito y barato.
Vale la pena como juego de relajo o introductorio (demasiado básico quizás) y quedarás con un buen gusto después de jugarlo, aunque después de varias partidas ya no lo querrás jugar nunca más.

Un 5/10

Thread: Re: It's the Age of... Mediocrity? ... Crappiness?

smittenkitten — 2008-02-27T01:59:18+00:00

I bought this game precisely because of its overly simplistic artwork. The swirly colours are quite attractive to me. I was, of course, never expecting a good game out of it but it surprised me.

At first, the game seemed exceedingly random and luck based (actually, it still is ;p regardless). You could be building up a certain colour only to have victory snatched away by the special ability cards. The game seemed to end swiftly and in an unsatisfactory manner but after a few more games, we all realised the beauty of this simple game. Bluffing plays a part in the game and if all players aim to just build up random colours (and destroy the right colours) then really, victory is anybody's if they've been hording the right combination of cards. The game can become extremely mean when played with the right crowd.

Of course, Aquarius is not a game for everyone but I found that in the right, light hearted sort of group - the game was quite enjoyable as a filler inbetween all the heavies.

Thread: Re: It's the Age of... Mediocrity? ... Crappiness?

ced1106 — 2008-02-27T00:32:49+00:00

I enjoyed the game quite a bit. If you're in the SF Bay Area, I'll but it off you for five bucks or something. It's quite a bit like dominoes *but* the action cards add randomness that might be more than most BGG'ers can tolerate. In any case, here's the javascript online game. See for yourself.

http://www.wunderland.com/WTS/Kory/JavaGames/Javaquarius/

aka. Washu! ^O^

Thread: Re: It's the Age of... Mediocrity? ... Crappiness?

ScottMcChesney — 2008-02-26T23:55:00+00:00

badweasel wrote:
ScottMcChesney wrote:
I think your missing out on one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game, bluffing. Building up another element to make it hard for players to guess which element you need to win is one of the aspects of the game that causes it to come back to my table again and again.

As for the art style I can understand not liking it but it was done on purpose to give the game “the 60s animation vibe”. If a game wants to look of 1920’s art deco and you don’t like that art style does it mean the game has poor art even if it is done well?

Maybe the bluffing was lost, but I still didn't like the base mechanics of the game. However, I don't see this game ever making it back to the table with my group.

I have no problem with 60s animation, but I thought this was a very poor attempt at it. For whatever reason, I felt it detracted from the game's appearance. It just seemed very poor and rushed to me.

Well said.

Thread: Re: It's the Age of... Mediocrity? ... Crappiness?

badweasel — 2008-02-26T23:26:42+00:00

ScottMcChesney wrote:
I think your missing out on one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game, bluffing. Building up another element to make it hard for players to guess which element you need to win is one of the aspects of the game that causes it to come back to my table again and again.

As for the art style I can understand not liking it but it was done on purpose to give the game “the 60s animation vibe”. If a game wants to look of 1920’s art deco and you don’t like that art style does it mean the game has poor art even if it is done well?

Maybe the bluffing was lost, but I still didn't like the base mechanics of the game. However, I don't see this game ever making it back to the table with my group.

I have no problem with 60s animation, but I thought this was a very poor attempt at it. For whatever reason, I felt it detracted from the game's appearance. It just seemed very poor and rushed to me.

Thread: Re: It's the Age of... Mediocrity? ... Crappiness?

ScottMcChesney — 2008-02-26T23:23:05+00:00

I think your missing out on one of the most enjoyable aspects of the game, bluffing. Building up another element to make it hard for players to guess which element you need to win is one of the aspects of the game that causes it to come back to my table again and again.

As for the art style I can understand not liking it but it was done on purpose to give the game “the 60s animation vibe”. If a game wants to look of 1920’s art deco and you don’t like that art style does it mean the game has poor art even if it is done well?

Thread: It's the Age of... Mediocrity? ... Crappiness?

badweasel — 2008-02-26T19:32:41+00:00

Introduction:
Casey and I decided we needed to play through several demo copies that we have not had a chance to go through yet. This looked like the easiest and simplest of the bunch, so we started off with this. First impressions: it wasn't going to be good as it by the makers of Fluxx and neither of us is a huge fan of Fluxx.

Components:
The game comes in a decent box, but by the artwork I would absolutely never pick this up. It looks cheap, exceedingly simple, and like it will be a poor game.

There are two basic types of cards: game cards and goal cards. The goal cards feature one of the five elements in the game: Fire, Earth, Water, Air, and Ether. The game cards feature various mixtures of the above elements in groups of 1, 2, or 4 as well as 5 different action cards. Personally I find the artwork extremely poor and detracts from the game. It is kind of in the 60s animation vibe, but it doesn't really do it for me.

Rules:
The rules are extremely simple: the first person to have 7 cards in a row that are connected and feature the element on their goal card wins.

Gameplay consists of draw one, play one. The two types of cards are the element cards and action cards. Action cards are played and the corresponding action is take, which consists of shifting hands, shifting goals, or shifting already played cards. The element cards are placed on the table and they must connect through one of the pictured elements to an element card already in play.

Once seven of these are connected and feature a specific element, one of the players will win.

Thoughts:
This game was extremely boring for me. I honestly will never play this game again at all. I think the basic mechanics are way too simple even for children and the random nature of the game removes any skill from the game which makes a random victory entirely plausible. It plays like a too simple variant of dominoes and is not worth the $10 cost.

1/10

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josephc4 — 2008-02-23T18:48:04+00:00

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josephc4 — 2008-02-23T18:47:43+00:00

Thread: Filler Game during Board Game Night

Phantom — 2007-11-16T04:11:32+00:00

As a filler, and a change of pace from Fluxx, we played a five-player game of Aquarius. None of us had played before, which was evident from the gameplay. I pulled Water as my element, and had a hand of mostly Fire -- this is typical of my hands in card games. I played gamely along in any case, and felt good that some of the other players played cards with Water in at least one part. Eventually, I drew an Action Card - Trade Hands. Picking the girl across from me, I was delighted to find a hand full of Water cards! I won two turns later, when I used a full Water card to link two separate three-card Water tracks that I'd painstakingly developed.

All told, the game lasted a little less than half-an-hour. Our unfamiliarity with the game led to a couple of questions. One player pulled a hand of only Action Cards, and was unsure how to get decent elements, for instance.

Thread: 1st game with non-gamers

subhan — 2007-08-04T15:01:26+00:00

My wife & I were hanging out with some friends the other night. Since our babysitter canceled at the last moment, we were stuck at home without any real plans. So, we decided to try a game or two to pass the time while chatting. As our friends are decidedly non-gamers, we figured we start out light. I laid out a few cards and explained the rules and special cards. Our friends seemed a little confused, but figured they’d pick it up as we went along.

Overall play went pretty smoothly, but both the new players had a little trouble figuring out when & how to us the special play cards (shuffle goals, zap, etc.) By the end of the game they pretty much had it down. Don, one of the newbies, won the game. A good time was had by all, but I don’t think I converted them to gamers (yet!)

Aquarius is a good game to share with non-gamers as it is simple, fun, attractive, and has some simple strategy mixed with enough randomness to balance play between less & more experienced players. Even though our friends didn't quite 'get it', they enjoyed playing the game. It was interesting to me teaching a game to folks with a complete lack of the basic gaming skills I take for granted when teaching new games to my gamey friends.

Thread: Chicken

KSensei — 2007-03-10T19:46:27+00:00

One variant that we like to play is "chicken"--it might have a different name for it though. In this simple variant do not look at your goal card and try to deduce your goal from the way that other players play.

Of course if everyone does this through to the end then it will be impossible to figure out what you have.

Thread: Paper-thin Dominoes

KSensei — 2007-03-10T19:15:38+00:00

Aquarius is a card game from Looney Labs for 2-5 players. The game is played like dominoes where players lay cards from their hand end to end matching pictures that appear on them. There are 5 pictures based on the classical elements; Earth, Wind, Fire, Water, and Ether.

At the beginning of the game players are dealt a secret "Goal" card that has one of these elements on them. The object of the game is to connect 7 cards with the players goal element on them. The elements on the cards must also be touching each other.

The cards have either one, two (split on either the horizontal or vertical axis), or four pictures of the element on it. Only one like element needs to be matching on adjacent cards.

There are also 5 different cards that can affect the game in other ways, they are:

Shuffle Goals - All players goals are collected, along with any unused goals, shuffled and redistributed.

Trade Goals - One trades goals with the player of his/her choice.

Trade Hands - Swap your entire hand of cards with another player.

Move a Card - Move any card on the board to any other legal position.

Zap a Card - (Named for Frank Zappa??) pick up any card from the board and place it in your hand.

All the cards in this game are very colorful. My only complaint about them is the Black backgrounds of the cards. For whatever reason the cards can scratch, and when this happens to the Goal cards one can easily tell what goal another player has if they are familiar with the scratches on the card.

Otherwise, Aquarius is a fun little filler game that can be easily taken/played anywhere.

I might also add that it has an elegant tuckbox ().

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ArtEmiSa64 — 2007-03-03T15:16:36+00:00

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ArtEmiSa64 — 2007-03-03T15:13:45+00:00

Goal an more

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ArtEmiSa64 — 2007-03-03T14:16:16+00:00

A rule that works great for me

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bill_andel — 2007-02-10T03:42:32+00:00

On-line version in play

Thread: Aquarius microbadges now available

bill_andel — 2007-02-05T23:06:48+00:00

The following microbadges for Aquarius are now available:

Air

Earth

Fire

Water

Ether

You can purchase them here:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/browse/microbadge/2119

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mdu2boy — 2007-01-26T03:20:16+00:00

From Bobby Tweak's game night

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mdu2boy — 2007-01-11T22:32:36+00:00

From Bobby Tweak's game night

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mdu2boy — 2007-01-11T22:30:35+00:00

From Bobby Tweak's game night

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KSensei — 2006-11-23T04:12:32+00:00

Thread: Five elements, you say?

flyinghogfish — 2006-11-19T22:20:00+00:00

We tried playing Aquarius for the first time tonight. I'd tried out the fantastic Java version on Looney Labs webpage to get an idea before playing.

The quest is simple, I'm looking for small, light-themed games to add to a small toolbox to carry from games venue to games venue as and when I play. Sometimes, it's with my friends, sometimes with a friend and family, sometimes my own family and sometime (hopefully) with my family an unsuspecting folk who come to stay. So, as you can appreciate, numbers and tastes will vary.

I've become increasingly enamoured of Looney Lab's games recently. It all began when I picked up a pair of Treehouse stashes (one in each colourscheme, d'oh) at my local game store. Treehouse is a very light game, with a little bit of planning, which is ideal for an easy to carry, five-minute-tops game.

I was thinking of getting Eco Fluxx, but my local store only had a vaguely mangled copy, so I wasn't too keen, plumping for a copy of Aquarious instead.

So, although I've tried to get my family round the table all weekend, no luck. Then, cosmic beings be praised, we had a power cut. Oh no, the electric is out. Oh dear, the TV doesn't work. Oh heck, can't read a book by the light of a couple of candles. What shall we do? I know (says SUPERGEEK), lets play this handy card game that's been lying here in case of power cuts...

To get vaguely to the point, myself, my wife and my eleven year old daughter cracked open Aquarius. I explained the rules for a whole ...oooh... two minutes and we were off. I would tell you which element I started with, etc, but to be honest it doesn't really matter, they change quickly enough, and your great five-card earth suddenly becomes the five-card earth of another player that you're trying to block out.

The thing that got me, was that we played for a good forty minutes (it's a little difficult to differentiate water and earth by candlelight), and I have never seen my family concentrate so hard or be so good spirited. We play Carcassonne and there can be spats, we play Citadels and you can bet someone will get hacked off after being killed by the assassin and don't get me started on M*n*p*ly. However here, it was all good fun and everyone was jockeying for position as we went along, looking for the card that would give them the edge.

At the end of the game, my daughter won, she was playing Earth at this point, by a narrow margin, I think both myself and my wife had six cards.

Conclusion

I'm pretty sure that this game is going to find a permanent home in my bag-o-games. I enjoyed it, my family enjoyed it, it took but a moment to explain and it looks really cute. Did I mention the pictures on the cards? They've got a 70's feel to them, and are all really colourful. My only gripe being that they weren't tested under candlelight - though we figured that you could look to see whether there were fishes or clouds on the block, so who's complaining?

Thread: a feast for the eyes

Gnomekin — 2005-08-12T15:17:58+00:00

Whether or not we want to admit it, appearance plays an important part of what we look for in games. Would Carcassonne, with its wonderful game play and clever tactics, be as much fun if you weren’t creating a beautiful map and populating it with those cute meeples? While I enjoy the playing Aquarius for the game itself, the reason that Aquarius hits the table so often for me is because it is a visual feast.

Aquarius is a card game that is played as a tile-laying game. There are five goal cards, with different backs which are kept as a separate deck. The rest of the cards are either element cards or action cards.

The element cards, which make up the bulk of the deck at forty cards, have five different elemental patterns (Earth, Air, Water, Fire, and Space) on them, with the cards divided up into quarters, halves or just one pattern on each card. And these patterns are a riot of color, vivid, 70’s style images. They may not be to everyone’s taste but no one will ever be able to call them plain.

There are five different kinds of action cards, three of each kind in the deck, each one showing a form of transportation involving one of the element patterns. A truck driving over the earth pattern, a rocket ship whose exhaust is the fire pattern, a balloon flying through the sky pattern, etc. The element doesn’t actually have an effect on the action on the card but it does help make all of the cards come together as a visual whole.

The goal cards simply show a tiny image of one of the elemental patterns.

The goal of the game is to connect seven cards containing your goal card together.

First, each player is randomly given one of the five goal cards, which means that the game plays up to five players. These goals are kept secret from the other players. Then, the main deck is shuffled and each player is dealt three cards. The top card is turned over and placed in the middle of the playing field and the rest of the cards become the draw pile.

On a player’s turn, they draw a card and play a card. They can either play an element card or an action card.

Element cards are set down next to the element cards that have already been played. Cards must be played in the same orientation and they must be edge to edge. At least one of the elements on the placed card must match the element of one of the cards that it is adjacent to. Fire must be next to fire, water next to water, etc., in a domino style matching arrangement. Only one element needs to match. The rest can be anything under the sun.

When an action card is played, it is placed on the discard pile. Since element cards are never discarded, Aquarius has a very small discard pile. The different action cards can allow to move an element card; take an element card off the table and place it in your hand, which will increase your hand size; shuffle the goals, which includes any goals that are not in play; trade hands; and trade goals.

The game ends when a player has seven of the elemental pattern on their goal card connected on their turn. Having cards with that goal next to each other is not enough. They actually have to be able trace a path between the seven symbols in order to show that they are connected. If the deck and player’s hands run out before anyone can do this, the game ends in a draw.

There are some definite strategic elements to Aquarius, between the bluffing players have to do in order to keep their goal from becoming too obvious and the way they place the element cards. While having to use the same orientation may sound like a tight restriction on card placement, since players only need to match one element, it is almost impossible to have an unplayable card, just not always one that’s ideal to play.

On the other hand, the action cards can easily disrupt any strategy, particularly the shuffle goals card. The action cards add a lot of chaos to the game, which may not appeal to everyone, although I do like it. There is also the luck of the draw. With such a small hand size, it is possible for players to have no cards that actually help them.

Aquarius also plays out fast. With only forty elemental cards, there is a definite endgame in sight. Games rarely take more than twenty minutes and usually much less. There is enough actual strategy involved to make Aquarius more than just a luck fest. It definitely falls into the filler category, as a fast, light game.

I have also played the solitaire variant that is listed on Looney Labs website. It actually is more of a Klondike (what Microsoft just likes to call Solitaire) variant with Aquarius cards than a solitaire version of Aquarius. That said, I thought it was a fun variant on solitaire.

I like Aquarius. It isn’t a deep or heavy game but it doesn’t try to be. Aquarius wins its points on being fun and accessible. And, it is definitely eye catching.

Thread: Variant to keep the play interesting

Ravsitar — 2005-02-17T20:13:39+00:00

While this is a pretty good game to play with non-gamers, it does tend to get a bit boring after a dozen plays (especially with only two players). My younger brother and I came up with an interesting variant to keep the game fun.

Deal out the hands as normal. Do not deal out the goal cards. Play then continues normally until each player has played six cards. After each player plays their sixth card, deal them a goal card. Play continues as normal until someone wins.

This variant forces all players to try to keep all elements (goals) as even as possible during the beginning of the game. You do not want to make one element far stronger (with more connections) than the others because you may not end up with that element when the goals are finally passed out. With two players and six cards each, most of the elements will have four or so connections. Meaning that with a couple good/lucky plays, the game could end in a turn or two. This also forces players to keep most of the action cards until the end of the game, as many are less useful or useless when you do not have goal cards. After the goal cards are passed out, the play becomes cutthroat. All the action cards come out and players scramble to block others and finish their own goals.

With more than two players, you may want to decrease the number of cards played before goals are handed out. Try to set it so that only about have of the required connections are made before the goals come out. I have tried ten cards with two players and my brother put three of the elements up to seven connections before the goal cards were handed out and won with a lucky draw.

Thread: User Review

quarks — 2004-05-11T17:39:59+00:00

Draw one, play one.

The folks at Looney Labs have gotten a lot of mileage out of that mechanic. With the exception of Nanofictionary, "Draw one, play one" is the basic mechanic for every one of their card games, though of course it doesn't stay that way for long in the case of Fluxx. There is a certain elegance to that approach; game design becomes about making something interesting happen you play that one.

In Aquarius, playing one usually consists of adding a card so that it is orthogonally adjacent to the playing field formed by orevious played cards. Cards played thusly are "element" cards. The element cards are divided in various ways (half and half, half and two quarters, four quarters, etc.) into between one and four panels. Each panel depicts a different element: fire, water, air, eart, and aether. Cards added to the playing field must be played so that one of their panels adjoins a panel of the matching element of a card already on the field. Play is thus dominoes-like, though unlike dominoes all cards must be played in the same orientation, though they can be played with either side as the "top". At the beginning of the game each player is dealt a "goal" card depicting one of the five elements; as they add to the field, players are trying to create a continuous chain of seven cards with their goal element. Instead of playing an element card, a player may play an "action" card if he has one. The action cards do things like allow the player to trade hands or goals with another, to take a card from the field and add it to his hand, to move one card already on the field, or to reshuffle the goals and deal everyone a new one.

Gameplay tends to be quick and somewhat chaotic, though the level of chaos can very from gane to game. If players are consistently drawing cards with their goal element, they can approach the seven card chain win condition pretty quickly. On the other hand, when players don't draw what they need, the trade and shuffle goals actions cards tend to come out alot, making the game very random. Since goals are hidden, there is a small bluffing element, which I have occasionally seen players do effectively; usually, though, players go for their goals when they have the cards and bide time (or play actions) whehn they don't. Because of the randomness of the card draw and the "shuffle goals" action, the game is mostly tactical, although hanging on to the remove and move action cards until they can give you a win (or stop an opponent who is about to) can be an important strategy.

I have played Aquarius almost exclusively with 12-14 year old kids and they seem to like it. They seem to find the colorful cards appealing (so do I) and don't much mind the randomness. It's not a game I would suggest playing with adult gamers, though I might be willing to play if someone else did. If you've had fun drawing and playing one in the Looneys' other games, you'll probably enjoy Aquarius.

Thread: Session Report

hinj — 2002-04-28T16:41:32+00:00

Time for a filler. We played three games of aquarius, which is sort of a psychedelic dominoes played wth cards. Even more, it comes from the makers of Fluxx (I know, it hardly qualifies as a game, but can be an amusing filler if you go for mental masturbation of that sort), so it has all sorts of wild action cards like "shuffle goals", "trade hands" and the like. An interesting game, much more of a game than Fluxx, but still very random and unpredictable. But colorful! I like colorful.

Thread: Session Report

BoardGameGeek — 2001-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Players: Brian, Steve, Troy

We ended with another Looney Labs card game, Aquarius.

There's not much to say about this one... it's light-hearted and light-brained. We were all complete hippies by the third turn.

Ratings:
Brian: 7. It's a good wind-down game, especially if you've just been blowing up stuff and wading through armies in your previous games. Nice cards.
Steve: 5. Pretty goofy. I think the concept was done better in other games, like Water Works, but's it's good for a no-brainer.