YORKTON –
Some games just ‘Wow!’ you with their production quality.
That is most certainly the case with Focusi from designer Preeda Pitianusorn, and publisher Life Dimensions Game (www.facebook.com/LifeDMSgame).
This game is rather succinctly; gorgeous.
The pieces come in a nice wooden box that you are amazed they all fit in until you see the cheat pattern to follow.
The box and the really great woven board then slip neatly into the box.
The pieces are wooden with acrylic inlays on both sides representing three ‘elements’ in various combos.
The nice chunky pieces really impress aesthetically as you place, move and push them around that great board trying to achieve winning patterns which match cards in the game.
The game plays two-to-four, but like most games which as basically abstract strategy in nature, plays at its best with two. With three or four a player too often gets forced into making a move to block the next player with no advantage to themselves – something which always feels rather hollow.
Now to Focusi’s credit there are various ‘modes’ of play – one having players trying to achieve patterns from a common pool of cards. You need to achieve two, and there is even a mechanism for ‘stealing’ a card from another player. This option greatly expands the potential of Focusi in terms of play value above two players. It also raises this one from a recommended for two players, to one well worth looking at for group play.
Certainly the outstanding look of Focusi grabs attention initially, but versatility of play ensures it will hold interest for a long while.
