Players: 3-5
Playing Time: 10-30 minutes
Difficulty: 3 (of 10)

The Game Components

Recess! comes with:

• 4 game boards
• 2 entrances
• 2 safety squares
• 10 boys
• 10 girls
• 2 nuns
• 50 coins
• 1 sand timer
• 1 game clock

Game Board Bits: The board is constructed of 8 different bits. First you have four 6x6 boards depicting the actual playground. Then you have a pink girls' entrance and a blue boys' entrance, each of which is L-shaped and goes around one of the corners of the board. Then you have 2 2x2 safety squares, which are green squares which each go just inside the entrance atop the actual playground board. All of the bits are printed on cardboard with a gloss finish.

The result is that you'll put the game together into a different form each time you play, which allows for variability, and discourages set strategies.

Wooden Bits: Next up are a generous pile of wood bits. Each player gets 4 meeples in their player color (orange, red, green, purple, or yellow). Two are boys, distinguished by their distinctive legs, and two are girls, who instead look like they're wearing dresses. The similarity between the meeples is very cute, but unfortunately also makes it hard to tell the boys and girls apart when you're looking at them from certain angles (e.g., side-on) and from across the table.

The nuns are represented by large, black wooden pawns, while the coins are yellow discs.

Sand Timer: A one-minute sand timer. This keeps the game running along at a very nice clip, but can also be a bit frustrating when a player finishes his turn halfway through the timer. (Do you wait? Do you let the next player start in? Do you just stop using the timer until peopels tart going slow again?)

Game Clock: A circular disc of cardboard that has 30 sections marking the 30 minutes of recess. There's also a nun's arm which is attached via a plastic pin. You use that to mark what minute you're in. (The plastic pin was actually too big for the arm, and so it was pretty hard to get it on without damaging the pieces.)

Overall the cardboard components for Recess! are of fair quality, while the wooden bits which are very nice and also quite numerous for the price. Beyond that the theming of Recess! is superb, and really (I think) the game's biggest selling point. Though I describe it as an abstract strategy game, Recess! really presents an evocative and amusing view of playground warfare that makes the game.

As such I've given Recess! a high "4" out of "5" for Style: good bits, great theme.

The Gameplay

The object of Recess! is to beat up other kids and take their lunch money ... but a kiss can often make up for any amount of lost change.

Setup: The four boards, safety squares, and entrances are laid out on the table. Each player takes their pieces and puts their boys and girls at the appropriate entrances. The nuns are placed in the safety squares.

Each player also takes 10 coins.

Order of Play: On his turn a player engages in "3-2-1-nun" movement. This means that he first moves one of his children exactly 3 spaces, then a second (and different) child exactly 2, then a third (and different) child 1. Then he moves the nun.

If a player has a child beating up another child or has a child in detention (more on each in a second), then he loses his fastest move (or multiple fast moves if he has multiple children meeting these criteria).

If a player has more than two of his children getting beat up, then he won't be able to do all of his 3-2-1 moves because he has 2 or less pieces to move. He then selects which move number(s) he skips of those he could normally do.

Other than upon these occasions, a player must move all of his 3-2-1-nun move ... unless the timer runs out.

The Timer & The Clock. Each turn is timed and if a player doesn't finish his move within 1 minute, then he loses any moves he didn't yet do.

The game clock, meanwhile, is advanced one minute for each turn that's played. It's just a marker for the game length. If all 30 minutes are completed, the game ends.

Moving Children: Children move orthagonally 3, 2, or 1 spaces. Any child who isn't getting beat up can move, and he (or she) can move through other children and nuns. Movement is always blocked by playground equipment, which is scattered about the board. Children can freely share spaces with other pieces in the safety space but outside ... no holds are barred.

Landing on a Lone Child. A player can land his piece on another child that's alone in a space, not in the safety square, and that belongs to a different player--as long as they aren't in line of sight of a nun (meaning, essentially, that the nun isn't in a direct line from them, orthagonally or diagonally; more complex LoS rules aren't used). This initiates a fight. The aggressor immediately takes a coin from the player who's child he landed on.

Landing on a Fight. A player can land his piece on a pair of pieces who are currently engaged in a fight. He moves the fights apart, bumping each of the pieces to an adjacent empty space.

Landing on a Nun. A player can land his piece on a nun if there's a fight going on elsewhere on the board. This results in "tattling". The nun immediately jumps to a fight and breaks it up (as described below).

Not Moving a Child: A child could be in dentention after a nun broke up a fight. If this is the case the player just loses their fastest move for the next turn.

A player engaged in a fight can also choose to lose his fastest move. In this case he leaves his attacker upon the poor child that's being pummeled. and he takes another coin.

(Alternatively a player may choose to leave the child he's attacking behind by taking a normal move with the piece, and this might be a good idea if he's in line of sight of a nun.) Moving a Nun. Finally, the player gets to move a nun.

If the nun is in line of sight of a fight involving one of the active player's children, he must move the nun to that fight. The fight is immediately broken up.

Otherwise, the player can move either of the nuns. A nun moves any direction (orthagonally or diagonally) as far as they want in a straight line. Like children, nuns can move through children or nuns, but are blocked by playground equipment.

Landing On a Child. if a nun lands on a child she shoves the child out of the way, bumping them to an empty adjacent space.

Landing on a Fight. (a/k/a: Breaking Up a Fight.) If a nun lands on a fight She breaks it up. The aggressor is sent back to their entrance for detention. The player will lose their fastest move on the next turn. The victim is shoved to an adjacent empty space.

The Kiss: One other special thing can happen during the game. Two players of the same color, but opposite sex, can move onto the same space. This results in a kiss.

When the kiss occurs every other player must give that player 2 coins. The game then ends

Ending the Game: The game ends when a kiss occurs or after the 30th minute. The player with the most money wins.

Relationships to Other Games

Recess! is a bit of a rarity. It's a well-themed abstract strategy game. There's no doubt that the mechanics are pretty abstract. You move relatively identical pieces around a pretty plain board and they have a couple of simple functions as they interact with each other. It vaguely reminds me of abstracts like "Fox and Geese" which involve pretty freely moving pieces around, except this one is of course symmetrical.

Which I suppose is a way of saying that Recess! is a pretty unique game.

In the Atlas family of games, Recess! is of course a great match for Lunch Money a card game about beating up other kids on the playground and taking their money.

The Game Design

Recess! is a very simple, elegant game. However, it's also a game that I wanted to like more than I ultimately did.

Generally, the games has a nice tactical feel to it. You've got a set number of actions on your turn, and you try and outthink your opponents by using those set actions and identical resources to your advantage. You can do some mildly clever things with the interactions between the children and the nuns, and this adds some depth to the game.

However, the beginning of the game was also a bit awkward; there was always a bit of lock-up, as players tried to figure out how to get their children out of the safety zone without them getting mugged. Experienced players might get a little bit better with this, as there are ways to use the nuns to protect or propel your children ... but there always seemed to be some number of children milling about in the safety square.

In addition, I was never entirely convinced by the use of the timer. On the one hand it was probably required to prevent total analysis paralysis. But on the other hand it kept people from figuring out the deeper moves, and thus seemed to ultimately result in a win-by-chance as someone managed to get their kids together to kiss because no one noticed under the time pressure.

Recess!'s biggest advantage is probably that it fits into a somewhat rare category. It's a filler game that's an abstract strategy and that does allow for some deep thought if you can manage it in the time constraints.

However, it never entirely clicked for me (or any of my other players). I've given it a high "3" out of "5" for Substance: slightly above average.

Conclusion

Recess! is a well-themed game of schoolyard bullies that nonetheless plays like an abstract strategy game. It allows for some surprisingly deep play given its short play length, but also feels like it has some awkward corners and that it goes too fast for most of that deep play to come through.