Designed by: Thomas Sing
Kribbeln is a dice-rolling challenge not hugely dissimilar to Yahtzee: in each turn you get three rolls of the dice, and you’re trying to hit certain objectives – in this case, involving the colour of the rolled dice, rather than their number.
The dice each have a different coloured face for each number, and the game comes with a score-pad that also shows you what your objectives are – it might be two dice of one colour, having none at all of a particular colour, or needing more of a certain colour than you have of another. On each turn you can re-roll as many dice as you like, but only up to three times. There’s a safety-net of sorts in that in each of the three rounds you have a Kribbeln score: if you miss your objective you have a choice – you can put the numeric value of all the dice in your Kribbeln, and try to hit the objective again, or simply go ‘bust’ and end your turn. (If you’ve already filled in your Kribbeln, you have no choice but to go bust). If you have completed (or bust) your objectives and your Kribbeln is still empty, you get an extra turn to roll for it.
The catch with the Kribbeln is that in each of the game’s three rounds, your Kribbeln score must be higher than the one from the previous round! And in the third and final round there two Kribbeln spots to fill. The highest score on each objective gets the most points (although everyone who hits the objective scores something) and the most points wins the game.
The feistiness of it all comes from fickle fate, rather than your opponents.
Low. There's nothing to cause the game to slow here.
Decision-making is light: how lucky do you feel?
There are six different types of objectives to go through, but the game is pretty one-note for all that. It's a pure dice-rolling game, not without a little strategy, but heavy on the luck.
2-5
Players
6+
Years
5-15
Mins
Sam says
There's something sweet about the simplicity here and I'd certainly rather play Kribbeln than Yahtzee, but I did feel I was far more beholden to lady luck than in some not-too-far-removed equivalents. The games it reminded me of just had a bit more going on - a race in the case of Cosmic Run, or a closing-out of options in Rolling America. In comparison Kribbeln feels slightly arbitrary to me - the rounds are fun, but if the dice don't go your way you can end up kind of shrugging at your misfortune, rather than screaming/laughing in the way a game such as Take It Easy might inspire. An okay game, but not a go-to game for me.