Wonder Bowling
Designed by: Susumu Kawasaki
Wonder Bowling is a fairly silly – deliberately silly – game of trying to knock down pins. However, there’s no actual bowling here – instead the design asks you to reach your objectives with some gentle tapping.
The inside of the box is flipped over and the ten pins are placed randomly upright around it. Players take turns using the provided tool – the ‘ball stick’ – to tap the side of the box and knock pins off. Each player has a number of goals to achieve, some of which are Target tokens – where you want a certain number of pins left standing – and some are Strike tokens, which means leaving a single pin upright. You only get two taps each turn, so if you knock off nothing at all (or too many) there’s a penalty, which is taking an extra Target goal you need to hit before you can win. If you hit a target or strike, you get to flip the token
Whenever a single pin (or none) is left, the pins are reset and play continues. As soon as any player flips their last token, they win!
Sam says
In an age where new games are coming out all the time (literally every week, if you include Kickstarter and Gamefound) it’s easy to get lost in the melee. But whilst Wonder Bowling does feel very similar to Hammer Time, it’s also different enough (and considerably more portable) to stand on its’ own two feet – before falling over at the tap of a ball stick. The luck-pushing of penalty tokens feels like a great design decision, as players are dissuaded from randomly banging the box with no consequences. But the penalties are also limited in number, which prevents the game going on for longer than ideal. It’s the kind of fun that works well for both adults and kids – and serves as a great leveller when both are involved.
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Take That!
None
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Fidget Factor!
It's a fats-moving game that usually takes about 20 minutes
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Brain Burn!
Any kind of brain will do for this one
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Again Again!
There are a lot of gaming itches unscratched here - but what Wonder Bowling does it does well, with palpable humour
