Players: 2
Playing Time: 5 minutes

The Components

Rock! comes in an attractive, labeled tin containing 60 cards. Each of the cards is medium weight, covered with a glossy finish. Each card features a (random) color and a picture of a rocky thing, scissors, or something made of paper. The art is by John Kovalic and Cathleen Quinn-Kinney and is attractive.

Overall, the bits to this game are well-produced, sturdy, and good looking; it thus earns a "4" out of "5" for Style.

The Game Play

The deck is divided into two piles, with each player one of them, placed face-down.

Simultaneously, the players will each flip one of their cards. Then, players try to be the first to shout out which card wins, either "rock", "scissors", or "paper". If a player shouts correctly, he gets the cards, but if he shouts incorrectly his opponent does! In case of a tie, the cards are left on the table and will be won as part of the next flip.

Now this isn't quite as simple as it sounds, as the cards have been purposefully designed to be a little obtuse. As noted, each features a color which has nothing to do with the object on the card. Likewise, there are a variety of pictures for each object type. For example "rock" includes both Easter Island heads and Greek pillars, while "paper" includes paper airplanes and Origami.

The game ends after the decks are expended, and whoever has the most cards wins.

Relationships to Other Games

Rock! combines elements of Rock, Paper, Scissors and War with fast pattern recognition (see in games like Set).

The Game Design

You can probably make your own assessment off of this explanation of the game, but I find very little point to it. There's almost no game here. The idea of shouting out the words as fast as you can stays humorous for somewhere between a third of a game and two thirds of a game.

Will kids like it more? Probably. Could they find something better to play even in a very short time period? Probably.

As a result I've given Rock! a "1" out of "5" for Substance.

Conclusion

Rock! is a nicely produced game that has no guts. It's a pity that this attractive packaging wasn't used on a game that generated more than a couple minutes' worth of fun.