Choconnect

• Designer: Sandro Blasich
• Publisher: Snovid
• Players: 2-4
• Age: 14+
• Time: 15 minutes
• Played with review copy provided by publisher

In the game Choconnect you are chocolatiers, immersing yourselves in a tantalizing world of confectionery mastery. Your task: skillfully arrange an assortment of chocolates to become the ultimate chocolatier and triumph in the sweetest challenge.

To set up, put the board in the middle of the play area and all of the tiles in the cloth bag.

On your turn, without looking in the bag, you take a tile from the bag and slide it on the board.

You can slide the tile from any of the edge spaces on any of the four sides of the board, even if that space already contains a tile. When doing so you push other tiles in that row or column one space further in the direction in which you are sliding the tile.  You are not allowed to slide a tile in a row that is already full (because you would be pushing other chocolates out of the box, we don’t waste food!).

The goal of the game is to create a line of chocolate tiles of the same type either orthogonally or diagonally. The number of tiles needed in the line to win is indicated by the number of decorations on it.

• Dark Chocolate – 3 in a row
• Milk Chocolate – 4 in a row
• White chocolate – 5 in a row

Whoever succeeds in creating the winning line first wins the game.

My thoughts on the game

This is a little abstract game that has a chocolate theme lightly poured over it.  The game is played on the little cloth board and you simply draw a tile and slide it in the grid from one of the end spaces.  Early on, it feels like most of your decisions are inconsequential – but I think that is a fallacy.  You should definitely be watching for potential winning lines that could develop with later plays.  As with many abstract games, the ultimate goal is to set up a fork where the opponent has no option but to leave you with a winning condition.  However, in my experience, I’ve found that it’s much more likely that someone makes a play and simply misses the fact that they’ve left a winning condition.

The bits are well done, and I like the fact that each of the chocolate types has a visual reminder on each piece as to how many pieces in a row that type requires for a win. If you’re into abstract games, this is certainly a fine example of the genre – if you’re not, there probably isn’t anything new here to attract you to this type of game.  If you’re not sure, it’s definitely worth a gander.  As someone wise once sorta said “Games are like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get until you play it”. 

Ratings from the Opinionated Gamers

• I love it!
• I like it.
• Neutral. Dale Y, Mark Jackson (note: I don’t typically love abstract games)
• Not for me…