Players: 1-3
Playing Time: 10-15 minutes
This review—originally written in 2007—has been updated in 2011 for the new "tin box" edition of the game published by Gryphon Games.
The Components
Stoplights is a card game that comes in a tuckbox with 56 cards, which is itself stored in a tin. The cards all printed on glossy, medium-weight cardstock.
The majority of the cards depict a stoplight with three spaces for lights on it. Each light can be red, green, yellow, white, or unlit (black). There's a pack of four cards for each player, then a joint play deck of 35 cards.
The remainder of the deck contains quick reference cards for each player, plus rules. The rules are short and simple and fit on two double-sided cards. The quick-reference cards double as reminders of which color each player is. I like tuck-box card games that come with card-based rules, as it means that you don't have a folded-up piece of paper to get in the way. Quick-ref sheets are almost always a nice addition, though here they're not needed much.
The tin which was added in the most recent version of the of the game is largely unnecessary, but nonetheless an attractive container for the game.
Overall the components of Stoplights are about what I'd expect, featuring simple but easy-to-read cards. I give it a high "3" out of "5" for Style: slightly above average.
The Gameplay
The object of Stoplights is to get five lights of your color in a row either horizontally or diagonally (the latter of which means 5 lights--not cards--in a row, as shown in the photograph above).
Setup: Each player is given a set of four cards for his color. These cards each have one or two lights of their color, and just black besides that, so they'll usually be able to play them to their advantage, if their regular card draws aren't going well.
Gameplay: On a turn a player may take one of three actions:
- Play a card in an empty space within a 7x6 grid (defined by the cards), adjacent to a card already played, and draw a card; or
- Play a card atop another card; or
- Draw two cards
Solitaire Game: There are rules for a solitaire game, where you lay out a grid of 42 cards, trying to make as many 4 light combinations as you can.
Relationships to Other Games
Stoplights is a classic connect-them-in-a-row game. The category includes things like Tic-Tac-Toe and Connect 4, though you can of course have deeper games than that. Chekov is a game in this family that I've previously reviewed.This is one of a few tin box games that Gryphon has released, all of which are light card games.
The Game Design
I find that games in this category usually result in games that are won after another player makes a mistake. Certainly that's the case with the playtest games that we played of Stoplights.As such, I don't find Stoplights particularly deep, but perhaps that was the intention, because contrariwise it's a simple game that could easily be played by families, and it might also be great for kids working on counting and colors.
However, I'm not the correct audience for that, and I can only rate it as a gamer, and to that extent I give it an average "3" out of "5" for Substance. It's mostly harmless and plays quickly.
