K Septyn
United States
Unspecified
Michigan
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While at GenCon this year, I swung by the Looney Labs area to see what was new. Treehouse sets caught my eye, mixed in their wall display with Fluxx's many incarnations and other Icehouse-related games. I had known about Treehouse from their website, but I hadn't played it yet. Since there was a free-with-purchase offer going on, I picked up a copy, and a set of Martian Coasters for good measure. I knew I'd need something light to play that night in the hotel room, and Treehouse seemed right for the job.
My two roommates and I tried another game, were a little dissatisfied with it, and broke out Treehouse. By that point we had a few adult beverages in us, but not enough to make things silly. I gave a brief explanation of the game, then we started playing right away, referring to the rules when questions came up.
Everyone starts with a three-piece set in one color, with the small piece stacked on the medium stacked on the large. (This configuration of pieces is called a Tree in Icehouse parlance.) One set, the House, is set up on the table with the small piece upright in the midde, while the other two pieces flank it, pointing away. The goal is to make your pieces look like the House.
The game has a simple roll-and-play mechanic. The special die that comes with the game has the words Tip, Swap, Hop, Dig, Aim, and Wild printed on it. Each of the first five is an action you have to perform on your pieces, and Wild lets you pick one of those five. A nice mechanic forces the players to (almost) always change something: If you can do the rolled action on your pieces, you must. If you can't, you may do it to the House. If you roll something you can't do to either set, roll again.
I was incredibly grateful for the mini-rulesheet folded up inside the game tube. While the instructions on the outside of the tube give a good overview, they don't give enough detail for new players. Things like "You can't Hop in place" and "You can't Tip part of a stack" were vital to know, but there just wasn't room for them on the sides of the tube. I'm also glad Looney Labs went to the trouble of a text-printed die; playing with a generic d6 and a cheat sheet would have slowed things down.
We played game after game of Treehouse, probably for close to 90 minutes. It was light, so our continued imbibing of adult beverages didn't affect our game play, and none of the games lasted "too long". We had a few where we noticed that no one had one yet, but that just added to our play experience--I think if all the games were really quick, it would have felt more random.
There's no denying it's mostly a chance-based game, either. You do have some tactical moments, such as when you have multiple pieces to choose from on your turn, or if you want to adjust the House to screw up your opponents. Sometimes you're railroaded into a single action, but that's the nature of random games, and you deal with it on your next turn. Otherwise, you try to move your pieces one step closer to the way the House looks.
One more mechanic I like is what happens when you throw Wild on the die. You're able to choose which of the five actions to perform, but you also get to decide if you'll do it to your pieces or the House. This means if you're one move away from winning, you have about a 1/3 chance of doing so on your next roll. The purist in me is a little ticked at such an easy winning condition, but this game is so light and quick that I brush it off. If I want deeper strategy, I'll play a German game, or Axis and Allies.
Treehouse supports four players and cost me $10 at GenCon. You could easily add more players if you have extra Icehouse pieces, but I think going over 5 (maybe 6) would slow down the game, in the sense that you would wait longer between turns. I feel like I got my money's worth from the game already, but I hope to play it again. (And I want to try Martian Coasters, too....)
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