High Score
Designed by: Reiner Knizia
High Score is a super-simple dice-rolling game. Each round players are given a challenge of getting a score based on a particular criteria, and are awarded with points for first, second or third place. The game comes with a set of dice numbered 1-5 and a sixth vortex side.
Each game has seven rounds – you’ll shuffle the deck of challenges, deal seven random ones and then discard the others. At the start of each round the top card is flipped which tells you what you’re trying to achieve with the dice (eg only 3s 4s and 5s score), whether the vortexes have a positive, negative, or neutral value and how many times you’re able to roll. One at a time, everyone rolls for the highest they can, with scores tracked on the scoreboard and points awarded for first second and third. Then a new round begins, with a new starting player, and so on until the seventh round is completed: at that point players tot up their points, and the player with the most wins!
Sam says
A really simple game where the fun emerges not from one individual challenge, but how High Score forces you to push your luck in order to try and keep up with everyone else, with sometimes crestfallen, sometimes air-punching results. I wouldn’t say it’s a classic, but it packs a moderately-sized punch on fun into something with picnic/pub portability.
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Take That!
None, unless players are sensitive to their seemingly-impregnable scores suddenly looking impregnate.
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Fidget Factor!
Low - it's a fast-moving game, so the amount of down-time depends on the number of players but is unlikely to be overwhelming.
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Brain Burn!
It's a luck-pushing game, and the canny part of it is not the individual challenges, but how it forces players who are further behind to push their luck, with occasionally-wild results.
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Again Again!
It's not a game that screams variety, but it's more about the fun and tension of the players jostling for position in twenty minutes of dice-chucking.
