Firstly, sorry for taking a while to post this. Secondly, let’s get on with the post.
Generally considered a light-hearted variant to the more complex, world-building board games such as Settlers of Catan, Risk, or even Monolopy, dexterity games are games whose outcome is determined by the level of dexterity an individual possesses (hence the name).
Take Ice Cool. Opening the board game reveals a few bobble penguins (think Weeble toys but penguins, and very small), some fish, and a couple of smaller boxes that when combined with the main box creates a simplified school layout. Without getting too familiar with the rules, the job of the players is to flick their penguins around the school, collecting fish and avoiding the roaming headmaster.
It’s a game of flicking. And it’s just like Flick ‘em Up, Pitch Car, and many other dexterity games. Simple and hilariously fun, these games rarely take longer than ten to twenty minutes and rely on the user’s enthusiasm, creativity, and flicking skills.
Or maybe flicking isn’t your thing. Some of these games are all about building, some are all about destroying, some are all about pimple popping (it’s a game designed Dr. Pimple Popper [Dermatologist Sandra Lee] and it’s as gross as it sounds. I don’t even want to put a link in. Google it and you’ll see.).
While they aren’t necessarily as popular as their bigger brothers the class board games, many of these games deserve their place upon the shelves of the true board game fan. Some fans are even using platforms like Kickstarter to create their own versions, like Flick Fleet, with surprising effectiveness.
But more on that in the next post