OK Play
Designed by: eejay Wheelie Bag
OK Play (also published as Cinco Linko) is a pattern-forming game not too dissimilar to Connect Four: to win, you must place five pieces in a row vertically, horizontally or diagonally.
Everyone begins with their own set of coloured tiles, and the starting player places a piece on the table. Thereafter players one at a time add a tile of their own, that must be placed adjacent to a previously-laid tile (diagonal is not counted as adjacent for tile-laying, only for winning). This continues until someone has won, or – rather more likely – all tiles have been laid, at which point instead of adding tiles you move them. The same rules apply as above – you simply pick up one tile and move it elsewhere, with the caveat that when doing so you never split the tiles into two groups – all tiles must remain connected.
As soon as someone gets their fifth tile in a row, they win.
There’s also a two-player version available: OK Play Duel.
Sam says
It’s accessible, it’s durable, you can play it pretty much anywhere as long as you have a flat surface. Some folk will really dig it for those reasons, but I wasn’t hugely bowled over by OK Play: though it has a similar tactical challenge as Connect Four (hamper opponents plans, advance your own; ideally at the same time) and in some ways is an improvement, the freedom of the ‘board’ to evolve does have the occasional by-product of games kind of dragging on: if everyone is spotting potential winners and shutting them out, it can start to feel a little attritional. But as a decent pattern-forming game that gets your (and your kids’) brains clicking, it ticks a box. For a similar game that has a bit about it, I’d recommend Ingenious.
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Take That!
You do need to stop the other players, so yes - although it's very abstracted and brightly coloured, there is a slightly combative flavour.
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Fidget Factor!
Relatively low.
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Brain Burn!
Low.
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Again Again!
Will hugely depend on how you feel about this type of game - there's no preset linear pattern to events, but that said each play does feel very similar to the last.
