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Simply Ingenious: Volume 3 of the Knizia Papers
By Dan Clark
Last week, we discussed the importance of theme in Reiner Knizia's masterpiece The Lord of the Rings. This week, we discuss another Reiner Knizia masterpiece absent any theme whatsoever — and it's ingenious!
Themeless games are, of course, nothing new; these games are known as "abstract games" or simply "abstracts," and they are as ancient as any form of human achievement. Go, backgammon, mancala games, and countless others of their ilk have survived generations of human history based on a few simple factors. The first is their simplicity and accessibility. The rules to the most common and successful abstract games are easily taught to anyone, often in only a few minutes. However, for a game to truly endure, it must also feature depth and richness of gameplay. Tic-tac-toe is a game played only by children due to its lack of depth or sophistication (it is a solvable game that, when played by skilled adults, always ends in a draw).
Box Cover of Ingenious
Whether Reiner Knizia's Ingenious will stand the test of time the way mancala or similar games have remains to be seen, but it seems to meet the criteria, and it's off to a great start. Like those classics, it is not a game about wizards or dragons or firemen or space merchants or whatever other theme you care to suggest. It's a pure abstract — inasmuch as it's "about" anything it's about colored tiles. The appeal and strength of Ingenious, then, lies strictly in its gameplay and it's very fortunate that the gameplay in Ingenious is so very, very good.
Ingenious was first published as Einfach Genial in Germany and was received very well in Europe, earning a nomination for the German Game of the Year (Spiel des Jahres) in 2004, as well as numerous other nominations. In 2005 the American edition, Ingenious, won the Mensa Select award. The game design has proven popular and successful enough to be revisited as Ingenious Travel Edition, a two-player version designed for ease of play in travel conditions, and other Ingenious products yet forthcoming.
Ingenious Travel Edition
Ingenious is a quintessential abstract game. The game revolves around hexagonal tiles, which are domino-like pieces with two symbols printed on them of six possible colors. Players place the tiles down onto the game board, so that each half of the piece occupies a single hex. Having done so, they score points for similar colors arranged near their tile. If a player manages to place her piece such that it joins several long rows of the same color, she can score many points in a single move. Because of this, of course, other players must be careful to place their tiles so as to block their opponents.
The wrinkle is that points are scored in their appropriate color, so a player has a blue score, a yellow score, and so on. When the game board is full and no one can play any more tiles, only each player's lowest score counts — so players must utilize a balanced strategy if they want to win!
Ingenious board and game pieces
At this point, we've very nearly covered all the rules to Ingenious - it really is that simple, playing to the strength of an abstract game. However, as is common with Dr. Knizia's designs, the simplicity masks a surprisingly deep strategy game with a great many rich decisions to be made on each game turn. The game experience becomes not simulationist, with players acting out a story or an epic struggle for dominance, but pure game. The delight in Ingenious comes from the system itself and the decisions you make over the course of the game, and of course from the other players at the table. It's a similar satisfaction to that one gets from solving a puzzle, only the puzzle is different on each turn, modified by the actions of other players, and the true resolution won't be revealed until the final turn of the game!
Ingenious, buoyed by its Mensa Select award and its accessibility, continues to sell and to inspire sequels. Whether in some distant future an historian will read these words and point his finger and say "Aha! So this is where the game we futuretopians know as 'six-color' began its life!" might seem far-fetched, but then again… someone must have designed Go too, right?
And will our future historian have any idea what backgammon or mancala are? Only time will tell!
Read the rest of the articles in the series:
The Knizia Papers: Camels Never Tasted So Good
The Two Masters: Book Two of the Knizia Papers
The Knizia Papers, vol. 4: Days of Future Past
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