On the way home, I read the back of the box and found myself growing worried. It seemed overly simple, like a short-but-adult version of Candyland, but we decided to open it up and give it a try.
Our concerns grew even stronger when we got to the part of the instructions where it mentions that you try to keep everyone else from figuring out which of the six Adventurer tokens is yours. Wouldn't that be obvious, we thought? Of course it would be the one you were... you know... moving towards the end goal.
But then we played it.
And we had tons of fun.
So we played it again.
And it was even more interesting the second and third times (with fewer players).
So, bear with me as I try to explain how what seems to be a silly idea actually turned out to be a complex and interesting game!
Adventurers - There are six color-coded Adventurer tokens in the game: Blue - Biologist, Green - Botanist, Yellow - Geologist, White - Archeologist, Red - Hunter and Black - Jungle Lord. Each Adventurer token is a wooden disk about the size of four pennies stacked together, and the game comes with a "face" sticker (different for each character) that you affix to one side of the token and a "Quicksand" sticker for the other side, essentially creating a two-sided coin for each Adventurer. During the course of the game, these Adventurer tokens are moved down a multi-space path across the board from their home spaces to their goal, the Monkey Skull Temple. The first token to the temple wins. However, unlike most games, you don't squabble over who gets to be which character. Inherent to the nature of the game, the identity of each player's character remains a secret... for as long as they're able to keep it that way.
Secret Identities - The game includes six hex-shaped cardboard tokens, each with an identical back. On the opposite side, each is marked with the color and face to match one of the adventurers. Before the game, you shuffle these hex tokens face down and each player takes one but doesn't reveal it to the rest of the players. The un-chosen hex-tokens are moved to the side, but are also not revealed. While there are six Adventurers, the game is designed for 2-5 players, so there will always be at least one token left unclaimed (but not unused!)
Whichever hex-shaped token you secretly chose represents your adventurer for that game. Your goal is to have your adventurer be the first one to the temple. However, it is not always possible (or even profitable) for you to move your own token. Because of this, keeping your adventurer's identity a secret for as long as possible is an important part of the game's strategy. If your opponents know which adventurer you are playing, they will target it as the game progresses and slow your journey to the goal, but if they don't realize who you are, they may very well move your token significantly closer to the goal without ever realizing they're aiding you.
Goal - The goal of the game is to be the player who's adventurer is the first to progress all the way across the board from its starting space to the goal of the Monkey Skull Temple. However, each player can move every token, so you may not be the player who progresses your Adventurer through much of the path between home and temple.
The Board - The board game is a path, clearly marked with spaces, most of which are blank. Each circular space has one, two or three points facing towards the other spaces (forward or sideways) that an adventurer can move to from it.
A few spaces also bear either the color and symbol of one of the Adventurers, or a Mask. If the red Hunter Adventurer token is moved onto the red Hunter space, whoever moved it there is allowed to discard an extra card that turn (an important benefit which will be discussed later.) Likewise, any Adventurer token moved onto a Mask space allows the person who moved it there to discard an extra card.
Only one token can occupy any given space at any time, making blocking an important game strategy. However, if a player has sufficient movement cards in his hand, he can "leapfrog" a token over another, landing in the space beyond it.
A few spaces also contain the dreaded Quicksand symbol. When a token is moved to a space marked with this symbol, it is turned upside down, so that the quicksand symbols shows rather than the adventurer. It must be turned upright (at the cost of one movement) before it can be moved from the quicksand space.
Movement - Each player begins his turn by drawing cards until his hand is full (6 cards). There are three types of cards: Movement, Mask and Quicksand.
Movement cards bear the image, color and symbol of one of the Adventurers. Each one allows the player to move that Adventurer token one space (regardless of who actually secretly owns the token).
Mask cards bear an African mask, and are a wild Movement card. They can be used alone to move any Adventurer one space, or combined with a Movement card to further the movement by one space per card. Thus if a player wanted to move the white Adventurer token two spaces, he could use two white Movement cards, one white Movement card and one Mask card, or two Mask cards (declaring them to be white).
Interspersed with the movement cards, there are also Quicksand cards, which can be played on any adventurer. When a Quicksand card is played, that token is turned over, just as if it had landed on a Quicksand space, and (like the Quicksand space) a Movement card must be spent to turn it over before it can be moved again.
Cards - You always begin each turn by drawing until you have 6 cards in your hand. Because each of the Movement cards can only move a particular Adventurer, drawing new cards (in hopes of getting your own color, or at least not the color of the enemy who's nearest to the goal) is important. And since you can only discard (rather than play) cards at certain times (when you've moved an Adventurer onto its own color space or a Mask space), these are important mini-goals to achieve, as they allow you flexibility that is otherwise impossible.
After refreshing your hand to 6, you can play any amount of cards from your hand - as long as they are identical, or act as identical. So, in a hand with One Red, Two Blue, A Mask and Two Quicksand cards, a variety of options are available. The player could move the red Adventurer token one space (or two, by adding in the mask). He could move the blue Adventurer token one, two or three spaces (by playing one or two blue cards with or without the mask to enhance it). Or, if he's feeling particularly dastardly (and of course he may well be), he can turn over either one or two of the Adventurer tokens by playing either or both of the Quicksand cards (which may have different targets, but cannot be played with Movement or Mask cards). If he is able to move the red or blue Adventurer to its matching target or to a mask space, he can discard not only the cards he used to move it, but any additional card, allowing him to weed out his hand and draw more fresh cards on his next turn.
Strategy - Despite my initial misgivings, it is actually not too difficult to keep your identity hidden for much of the game, at least in most cases. Since all six adventurers are a part of every game, and it often benefits a player to move tokens other than his own, until the last minute "dash for the finish line," it's rarely clear which player is linked to which adventurer.
While we originally played with 5 players, with only one adventurer not claimed by a player, later we tried the game with 3 or even 2 players. To our surprise, we found that, if anything, having more non-claimed adventurers made the game more interesting as you progressed. It enhanced the uncertainty and upped the social play of the game as everyone tried to judge from each of their opponent's actions whether they were moving a certain Adventurer to get rid of cards, to gain the "discard" benefit, or because it was their own Adventurer.
Summary - In actual play, this game turns out to be much more involved (and fun) than it intially appeared. It plays quick (I found the 10-20 minute estimate on the box to be fairly accurate), which is great, since we all wanted to play again when we were done.
Once we got past our initial misgivings, the game was simple enough for players of all ages to learn. Younger players may have difficulty with keeping their character's identity hidden, but especially in a multi-player game this isn't enough of a disadvantage to make the game not-fun to play or impossible to win.
While it's not a "grand scale" strategy game, there are definately many opportunities for short-term strategy gambits to come into play, but it's as much fun for "reactionary" players as for schemers.
In short, Quicksand is well worth adding to your game cabinet.
