Matthew BaileyJust Jack(7) and I for today’s game so without further ado game 10 of the “Bailey Family Sorta Summer Board Game Bonanza” is “Coral Islands”… Well actually no it’s “Coral”… let me explain.
Coral Islands is a weird box. Essentially there are 2 games in here (“Coral” and “Islands”, by 2 different designers that use mostly the same components. So here we are playing “Coral” (we have yet to play “islands”).
The concept of the game sees you drafting dice and then laying them on a grid. you can only lay dice where the face-up number is higher than the one below it. By doing this you are trying to make patterns in the dice between your dice colours and your opponents that are then worth points.
It’s a simple concept but doing this in 3D is a really mind-bender and even as an adult (who has a job where 3D visualisation is a key skill) I found this very very hard. Jack did a stellar job but I could tell he was also finding it heavy going.
Jack actually oddly enjoyed it though and we ended up having a second go and he is keen to try again. I think the appeal is the fact that even though the puzzle is hard the rules of the puzzle are dead simple.
The component quality of the dice is a little iffy. As you can see by the close up many of them do not have flat edges. This is especially annoying when you are supposed to be making piles out of them.
So I can currently only talk for half of the box’s content so far but I think Coral could very well appeal to a certain type of child who enjoys solving puzzles in 3D space and while understanding the rules of this game is super easy actually executing it well is a massive undertaking.
The Cheapest Price is direct from the Alleycat website for £14.99 plus postage.
