Designed by: Nagisa Kujira
CMYK!, named for the colours of the triangular tiles, is an abstract tile-laying game played in real-time: no turns, just grab what you can until either the tiles are gone, or nobody can make a legal move.
Said tiles are stacked in five piles, and each player has a single starting tile in front of them. Oddly, the colour is actually irrelevant: to add a tile from any of the stacks to your own tile, what you’re looking at is the symbology on the edges: if these match in shape and colour, you can add the tile by aligning the matching symbols. Play continues as everyone nabs tiles as and when they can add them to their growing, multi-coloured pattern.
What you’re aiming to do with this frantic construction is create hexagonal shapes, as each complete hexagon (even if it overlaps with another) is worth 5 points at the end of the game. You’ll also have a hidden objective card that rewards you for collecting a particular type of symbol, and there are public objective cards that can be scored by any player – for surrounding an empty space, say, or having laid the most tiles total.
Finally there’s two black joker tiles that may appear. If you add them to your network they will cost you minus 3 points in scoring – but on the other hand they can be placed anywhere, so can be extremely helpful in completing a hexagon (or hexagons!)
Most points at the end wins the game; or you can play a best-of-three variant and award points per round.
Only someone taking the tile you wanted; nothing nasty here.
Absent.
The predominant focus is trying to make hexagons, as they are the best way to score. But it's entirely possible to win by hitting the public and private objectives as well. Juggling these overlapping possibilities is as tricky as CMYK! gets, but to be honest it's not a game where you have time to ponder.
The public and private objectives can vary; there'll always be a few tiles left out of play, but basically CMYK! repeats the same note. So repeat visits is really down to how much you like the sound of it.
2-5
Players
8+
Years
5-15
Mins
Sam says
We've had a surprising amount of fun with this. It's just so simple to teach and play, games are quick and easy, and yet there's just enough depth here in the objectives to make it more than a simple fastest-player-wins. There's definitely some advantage in being fast, but the scoring system won't always reward it - you can win by having placed just ten tiles in the right way (two hexagons!) if everyone else has created a sprawling set of possibilities that haven't come to fruition when the tiles run out. A deft little game, with the minor drawback that the tiles are small and very thin, so big hands may struggle to pick them up.