"Minecraft: Builders & Biomes"

This is basically Minecraft: The Game.

I'm joking. Minecraft is already a game. This is more like Minecraft: The Tabletop Game.

As with any adaptation of a non-tabletop game into a tabletop game (or anything else into a tabletop game), this differs somewhat from the source material. However, it's definitely the most fun Minecraft game I've played that isn't actual Minecraft. (Not counting Minecraft Dungeons Arcade, because that's a videogame.)

 

Gameplay revolves around two main trees: collecting weapons to fight mobs, and collecting blocks to build structures. There are three rounds of scoring (biomes, structure materials, and structure types), and a board consisting of a 4x4 grid of square cards (mobs to fight and structures to build) with weapon tokens around the edge. 

You collect blocks from a 3D big cube of blocks. It is literally named "the big cube".

I like how unlike many games seem inordinately complicated and then are inordinately complicated to play, this one seems inordinately complicated and turns out to actually be pretty straightforward. It's one of those games that you have to play to understand.

 

Since this is manufactured by Ravensburger, every piece is extremely sturdy. It says a lot about a company that you can just look at one of their products and be like "well they made this, it's obviously good quality."

Were this a videogame, I'd rate it: E. You could play it with eight-year-olds if you could explain it to them.

4 stars.

(Endnote: I have decided that this blog doesn't strictly have to be solely a book blog. However, that doesn't mean it is no longer primarily a book blog; what it means is I can sometimes review things that aren't books. Like this game.)