You know the kids’ card game concentration? Well, Colorio isn’t that game. It’s something else. Something much deeper, involving strategery and cunning and, ok, concentration, and, yes, memory. But it’s not that card game, believe me you.
There’s a board – a 5×5 matrix. Inside the board there are 5 slots (well, ten slots if you consider both sides of the board) to accommodate 5 strips. Each strip has five spots of a different color. There are five different colors, but all five just might not be present on any given strip, on any given side of that strip – adding an essential uncertainty to the conceptual contemplation. The different colors are also illustrated, each with a different expression, providing a touch of humor and a large tad of assistance for the color-blind.
Key to the strategic part of the game, there are 25 “caps” that are used to cover all the holes in the board. Players take turns removing up to three caps at a time. While you’re so engaged, you can remove all three caps and take them off the board entirely, or, as long as you remove one cap completely, you can move one or both of the remaining two to other open spaces on the board. This assures that more and more spaces are revealed each turn.
Every time you remove a cap, you reveal what lies beneath. Every time you cover an open space, you have one more thing you probably want to remember.
The game continues in this manner until someone (not you, of course) accidentally reveals the fifth of any one color.
As the game progresses, and more and more spaces are revealed, the tension increases. How tense depends on how well players understand the impact of using the caps to cover colors back up. Once four of any one color are already revealed, the tension becomes palpable.
Colorio is very well made. The board, caps and color strips, and even the box are all designed to provide many years of play. The game itself gets more interesting as players become more familiar with all the strategic implications, but even without all that thinking, the game is well enough designed to invite hours of repeated play.
Coloriois yet another Major Fun award-winning game available from Mindtwister. It was designed by Jacky Bonnet for 2-5 players. It’s best for families and kids 6 years old and up. It takes about 10 minutes to play and maybe even less to learn.