Kulkmann's G@mebox - www.boardgame.de

The Sound Maker

[The Sound Maker]

Authors:
Jonathan Favre-Godal
Corentin Lebrat

Publisher:
Blue Orange
2021

No. of Players:
3-6

EVALUATION

[Complexity]
[Design]
[Interaction]
[Strategy]
[Evaluation]


G@mebox author Ralf Togler writes about the game:

Maybe you will know this problem: You, as a boardgame enthusiast, are always under suspicion that all of your games are complex, if not complicated, take ages to play and are unsuitable for children, families and non-boardgamers. I am often confronted with persons who ask me for a boardgame tip, but on the same time they add something like: we only know games like Monopoly, Scotland Yard and Ludo, so please, it should not be a game you like. Also, I made the experience that a lot of non-gamers hate the idea of reading new rules. When do you read that? Meeple? Victory Points? Drafting? Who can understand such a bafflegab?

What can you answer to those questions? How can you overcome the fix idea that all of your games are only heavy Euros and that it takes hours of rule explanation to start a game? I made the experience that one of the best ways is to take a very simple, smart game that amuse players right from the start. If those players get a kick out of playing that game, they are open for more complex games in the future.

[The Sound Maker]

Click on image to enlarge!

The Sound Maker (also named What’s That Sound?) is such a game. One small side of rule explanation, about 15 minutes to play the game and unexpectedly funny for most players. In the game one of the players makes a sound effect that corresponds to an open card. All other players then simultaneously try to guess to which image this sound belongs to, and the fastest player who guessed right takes the card as a victory point.

That’s easy enough, right? And the rest of the rules is not much more complicated: First of all the imitator cannot select a card at her leisure. Instead, at the beginning of the round four cards are placed next to each other in a row. And the imitator then draws a sequence card that exactly tells her which card is chosen in the first step.

[The Sound Maker]

Click on image to enlarge!

To distinguish noises between four images is not too difficult, you might think. And yes, it’s true that the first step of each round is an easy challenge. But with the first player winning the round (and taking the won card) two new cards are revealed, and the next step begins. This goes on like this until there are eight cards on the table in the fifth step. After that it’s time to move the imitator job to the next player and the next round of the game begins. The game ends after all players once have been the imitator.

Although I’ve played several thousand games up to now, and I’m always interested in full-length boardgames that really challenge me, I’m also regularly looking for easy games with a high fun factor. Maybe The Sound Maker is not the real big-time in the long run, but at the moment I love to take the game wherever I go. Especially as a filler and family game (I even played the game with five year olds) the game is almost always a success.


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Copyright © 2022 Ralf Togler & Frank Schulte-Kulkmann, Essen, Germany