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In10sity Board Game Review and Instructions

In10sity Board Game Review and Instructions
How to Play | Review | Final Verdict | Comments

How to Play

Objective

To be the first player to reach the finish line.

Setup

Place the board and cards on the table. Each player gets an answer board and a pawn. Everyone places their pawn on the start space. Whichever player’s age is closest to a multiple of 10 (10, 20, 30, 40, etc) gets to be the first reader.

Playing the Game

The reader for the current round rolls the three dice and places them on the corresponding spaces on the game board. The player then reads the next card without taking it out of the box (so no one can see the answer). Every player (including the reader) takes their answer board and tries to guess the correct answer to the question. If a player has no idea what the answer is and doesn’t want to risk it they can place their dial on pass. When everyone has picked their answer all of the answers are revealed. The reader lifts up the card to read the correct answer. Based on what players guessed and what the right answer was one of four things will happen for each player.

  1. If a player guesses exactly right they move their pawn forward as many spaces as indicated on the green die.
  2. If a player’s guess is off by one in either direction they get to move forward the number of spaces indicated on the yellow die. For example if the correct answer was four, answers of three or five would get to move forward based on the yellow die.
  3. If a player’s guess is further than one away from the correct answer, they must move back the number of spaces indicated on the red die.
  4. If a player chose to pass they get to move their pawn forward one space.
Scoring in In10sity

In this situation the answer to the question was four. The blue player passed so they would get to move forward one space. The purple player guessed nine which was off by more than one so they would move back six spaces. The yellow player guessed five so since they were one away from the correct answer they would get to move forward two spaces. Finally the green player was exactly correct so they would get to go forward five spaces.

After everyone moves the job of reader passes to the player on the left and the next round begins.

End of Game

The first player to reach the finish line wins the game. If two or more players are tied an additional question is asked and whoever is closest wins. If there is still a tie, questions keep getting asked until the tie is broken.

Winning In10sity

The green player has reached the finish space so they would win the game.

Review

I kind of have a love/hate relationship with trivia games. I generally like the idea behind trivia games since I like trivia and learning new facts about the world. The problem with most trivia games is that they aren’t always designed that well. Some trivia games are poorly designed while others essentially require a master’s degree in the game’s subject in order to avoid being stuck in a constant loop where no one can get any answers correct (I am looking at you Trivial Pursuit). Since I like the idea of trivia games I generally try out any that I find for cheap that at least try to do something new. While In10sity only does a couple unique things, it is better than quite a few trivia games that I have played in the past.

In10sity plays a lot like games like Wits and Wagers and other trivia games where all of the answers are numbers. Unlike Wits and Wagers all of the answers are between one and ten. For what it is In10sity is pretty fun. It is really easy to learn and takes 15-20 minutes to complete a game. In10sity doesn’t really have much for unique mechanics though.

The most unique element of In10sity is the dice that determine how many spaces you move based on if you answered correctly or not. While the dice actually add a lot of luck to the game, which I usually don’t like, I actually liked this mechanic. The numbers rolled on the dice can actually make a difference on how you approach a question. If for example the green and yellow dice are high while the red is low you are going to be much more likely to take a risk than you normally would since you could potentially have a big return with only a small penalty if you should guess incorrectly. The opposite holds true as well.

The variability in the dice also gives players opportunities to try and hedge their guess. If the number on the yellow die is high, players can easily hedge their guesses. For example if a player has narrowed down the correct answer to a three number range, they might be better off picking the middle number in order to cover all three answers instead of picking the lower or higher number even if they think one of those answers is more likely to be the correct answer. I liked that the game gave players the option to take a bigger risk for a bigger reward or playing a question safer for less spaces.

While the questions are a little on the easy side (a player won the whole game within five to seven questions in both games), most of them are interesting. Some of the questions come out of nowhere which means that players are unlikely to know the actual answer and will have to try and guess.

The single biggest problem with In10sity is the passing mechanic. I like the idea of being able to pass since if you have no idea what the correct answer to a question is, you shouldn’t be forced to take a guess which could result in you losing a lot of spaces. The problem with the mechanic is that it rewards you for not taking risks. This mechanic sometimes makes it easier to just pass and play it safe instead of actually trying to make an educated guess.

This is especially true in two situations. If while rolling you roll a low number on the green die and a high number on the red die most players are not going to take a big risk just to gain a space or two when they could lose many spaces if they guess wrong. Also if one player is way ahead and the other players can’t catch them, the player might as well pass since they will automatically win. In one game this actually happened. I was only two spaces away from winning and none of the other players were close enough to catch me so I just passed the last two questions on purpose to get the final two spaces that I needed to win. Even though I won the game, the victory felt kind of cheap since I took advantage of a poorly designed rule in the game.

In our second game we decided to tweak the pass rule in order to make it a little more fair. We kept in the rule that you could pass on any question but you would get no spaces on a turn where you pass. This gave players more motivation to take chances since they couldn’t make any progress if they didn’t. By keeping the pass though we allowed players to pass on questions that they would be guessing on otherwise.

Another issue with the game is the number of questions included with the game. The game only includes 350 cards with only one question on each side so the game only includes 700 questions. While these cards will last some time, you will have to repeat questions much quicker than you would in most trivia games. While players aren’t going to remember every question, they should remember some which might hurt the replay value of the game. The good thing is that it would be pretty easy to make your own cards if you wanted.

Final Verdict

Overall In10sity is a very solid trivia game. It is not highly original but it is fun and the gameplay works well as long as you change the pass rule. If you like trivia games and are looking for more of a easy to moderately difficult trivia game I think you could have quite a bit of fun with In10sity.