#9/52. A Game by a Female Designer - Qwirkle (Susan McKinley Ross)

My niece, Nicole

My niece, Nicole, is a gamer too. She likes board games, card games, and video games. Whenever she comes to visit Mark and me, we sit down and play tons of board games. This weekend she is still home from college (Humboldt State University) as part of her winter break and came over to visit us. We immediately sat down to play Qwirkle, Fluxx, The Game of Life, and Pandemic: Contagion on Friday night.

Qwirkle is a fun gateway game. A gateway game is a game that would be fun for non-gamers to play. It has easy-to-learn rules and plays pretty quickly (20-45 minutes). Now, as I said, Nicole IS a gamer. We played this game because we were waiting for dinner to finish cooking, and I wanted to knock a couple of short games off of my 2016 52 Game Challenge.

Qwirkle - You can find this game
at Target or on Amazon

Qwirkle made my list because I needed a game designed by a female designer. Qwirkle, (2007 Mensa Select Winner and 2011 Spiel des Jahres Winner) was designed by Susan McKinley Ross, a game and toy designer. It's an abstract game - which means it has no theme - where you lay these domino-like tiles in very specific patterns. You either lay like shapes of different colors or different shapes of the same color (see picture below...). You cannot repeat a shape or a color in a line. When you get a line of six that is called a Qwirkle. You get one point for each tile you lay plus one point for each tile that your tile(s) is/are connected to. If you get a Qwirkle, you get 12 points. You can keep score on a sheet of paper or use an app on your phone or tablet. I use an app called Scorekeeper on my phone.

Example of Qwirkle tile layout

I have played this game several times before. While I don't always win, I usually do pretty well. When I played a couple of games against Mark and my Grandma around Christmas time, I actually won two games pretty easily. When Nicole and I sat down to play, she REALLY gave me a run for my money!

We started off slowly and then all of a sudden she started getting getting Qwirkle after Qwirkle. One time I drew two new tiles, both orange shapes and I immediately saw a place to lay them on my next turn, which would have given my my first Qwirkle. Wouldn't you know it! Nicole laid down those exact two tiles in the exact spot I was going to lay them!!!

At the end of the game I suddenly started getting a series of Qwirkles and pulled a remarkable come-from-behind maneuver and scored enough to catch up to Nicole. Then we were neck-and-neck for a few turns. When I laid the last tile the score was 202 - 191. I just managed to eek out a victory. Whew! :-)

Qwirkle is a fun little brain-bender that is easy to introduce to new gamers and non-gamers. It's also a good game for kids to play. The tiles are chunky and easy to handle and the colors and shapes are fun and easy to discern for most people.