Ever wanted to turn red marbles into blue marbles and then turn those blue marbles into points? Well, with Gizmos, now you can! Plan out your perfect engine of gizmos as you plan, research, generate energy and build whirring machines to churn out precious victory points in this engine building game from Phil Walker-Harding and CMON Games.
Unboxed
1 3D marble dispenser
20 award tokens
4 energy storage rings
1 first-player token
4 player dashboards
112 cards
52 marbles in four colours
1 plastic insert tray
1 list of effects
1 dispenser assembly guide
Rulebook
It’s hard to talk about Gizmos and not discuss the massive gumball machine in the room. When the game was being developed this particular component was a deck of cards, simple and functional, but the energy dispenser and its marbles gives Gizmos a table presence and toy factor that have elevated it in the collective gaming consciousness to being memorable, a feat that a simple card game would not have accomplished in today's play and forget culture.
Of course the coolness of the marble dispenser comes at the cost of the box size, which is much bigger than it would have been if the game were simply a card game. Fortunately the rest of the design works hard to compensate for this. Square cards for example mean that the game takes up less table space. Folding player dashboards organise your play area while also acting as player aids. Even the dispenser itself reduces table space, taking up less space than a card row and allowing for better randomisation.
Overall, Gizmos is a very functional design, a bad version of this would have seen marbles rolling everywhere and a players scrabbling to find a way to organise their sprawling play areas. Plus the game looks really nice on the table, cool art, bright colours and a presence that will draw in passerby.
A Quick Overview
Gizmos is a pure engine building game with simple turns that gradually become more complex.
Each player begins play with a dashboard in front of them that explains the four actions in the game plus a space for their upgrades and converters. Each space on the dashboard also acts as a storage area for gizmos of the matching types associated with each action.
Each player also starts with a gizmo that upgrades their File action and a ring to store their energy orbs.
Gizmos are then dealt to the central area to create a market and the energy dispenser is placed to one side for players to gain energy orbs from.
On their turn a player may take one of four actions.
File - take a face up card from the market and add it to their hand
Pick - take an energy orb from the visible row
Build - build a card from hand or the market
Research - draw cards from the face down stacks and choose one to build or file.
As players build Gizmos they will be able to chain their various actions together, perhaps gaining a pick when they build, or a build after they file. They may also be able generate victory points this way too, for example gaining points for each red gizmo they build.
Gizmos can also upgrade a players dashboard, granting them the ability to hold more cards in hand, more energy in their storage ring or the ability to look at more cards when they research.
The game continues in this fashion with players chaining actions together until one player builds 16 gizmos or 4 level 3 Gizmos. The player with the most points from Gizmos built and point tokens collected wins.
Thoughts
Gizmos is an example of when you take a designer, Phil Walker-Harding, known for distilling a design concept down to the purest version of it and pairing them with a company known for excess and extravagance, Cool Mini or Not. The end result is a well designed and focused game in a beautiful wrapper, if somewhat larger than it needs to be.
In truth, while Gizmos could be a small boxed card game, its lavish production gives it a very cool table presence with its gumball machine, energy dispensing device front and centre of every game.
Gizmos is an engine building game, pure and simple. You collect cards, Gizmos, to improve your ability to make more gizmos, eventually firing energy through your gizmos to turn it into points. While Mr Walker-Harding is usually known for his family friendly games, Gizmos presents with a more gamer friendly face. While Granny and Grandad can join in the ball picking fun, Gizmos does not offer any leniency to those that fall behind the curve.
Once a player's engine begins to tick and churn out points it can be difficult to catch them and without any significant player interaction you’re only left with the option of fine tuning your own engine in the hopes of keeping up.
Gizmos can feel like there is luck from the card market, your opponent has the perfect combination of energy to buy that amazing card that just came out, however I feel this is easily balanced out by players making good use of the research and archive actions. Careful planning and masterful engine building are the keys to winning and a better player will almost always outplay a lucky one.
Is Gizmos a perfect game, no, the lack of text on cards means that players need to pass the large reference sheet around the table to understand the iconography and the lack of catch up mechanism for players who fall behind may leave a some players feeling powerless in the final third of the game.
What Did Others Think?
Bob - “I'm just enjoying collecting the pretty colours”
Dave - "Good little engine building card game I very much enjoyed. I particularly liked the marble dispenser mechanism and the semi-randomness this introduced"
Final Thoughts
If you’re looking for a pure engine building game then you would be hard pressed to find anything as elegant as gizmos. However if you’re looking for an engine builder dripping in theme or something for the more casual gamer, then Gizmos might not be the right fit for you.
Comments