MindWare Qwirkle Board Game

Although some strategy can be involved it is easy enough to play with elementary age children. The rules are pretty simple. That said, it is easy to blow it and place tiles where they arent allowed. A certain amount of watching each play is necessary to avoid mistakes. You need a good size table space because you never know what the layout of the tiles will be.

Very fun game, easily replayed. Easy to learn , won’t work in car for travel though.

I bought this for my grandsons (ages 6 and 9) and found I wanted to play it more often than they did - and they enjoyed it. Comes with a bag to keep the tiles in, making the box unnecessary once it’s opened. Just wish the bag had a slidey thing to keep it closed. I imagine some tiles will go missing before too long.

This game is easy & fun to play. It is great for adults, as well as kids. Love to play with my grandchild.

Gift

Great game. My 94 year old mom likes it.

I had played this game at a friend’s house and enjoyed it. I bought it for a game night at my house.

Qwirkle is like dominos on steroids. Very fun to play. I can play alone if I want to practice, and we have had up to 11 people playing. Can be done in teams too. We left the kids at home, this game is good for all ages. The trickiest part was keeping score, took a little practice to get the hang of it, and we made up a few rules.

I have been enlightened. Throughout my childhood and for the majority of my adult life I was resigned to the notion that the board gaming landscape was sparse and barren. Populated only by a few unenticing, played out old names like Life, Scrabble and Monopoly (Which to this day, Im certain has never seen a match played to completion). However, my eyes were opened by a new wave of innovative, engaging titles like Pandemic, Small World, 7 Wonders and many more. Ive been a true believer and tabletop enthusiast ever since. Alas there is one big problem... Most people I know have the same narrow minded approach to board games as I once did. It just isnt easy to get a group together. The heavy fantasy and sci fi themes of my favorite games only serve to compound that difficulty as it seems to create an illusion of complexity and carries with it the stigma of intense nerdiness. I can see the eyes start to glaze over when I attempt to broach the subject. Whatever shall I do? Enter Qwirkle! This game relies on such a simple concept of matching colors and shapes that it would be easy to dismiss this as something childish, certainly beneath that of any respectable gamer. But that is the beauty of it. It dumps the polarizing themes that tend to put newcomers off and the rules are so straightforward that the game can be explained in just a few sentences. What little confusion one might have is usually resolved within a couple of turns and suddenly a world of strategy begins to unfold as you subtly try to mislead, block, and steal combinations from the clutches of your beloved opponents. It is truly a wonderful tool for family bonding and better still, it serves as a gateway game to pull loved ones into the world of table top games. That was my fiendish plan all along and the reason I even bought this game to begin with. With little effort, I was able to coax my niece, dad and step mom to give it a try. The result was a super fun evening of laughter and surprisingly stiff competition. I narrowly secured a victory with my last move and that alone is a testament to the excellent game design. The game was so captivating and easy to learn that there was virtually no handicap for newcomers. If you would like to dip your toes into board games or perhaps coerce a particularly resistant individual to give them a try, I cannot recommend Qwirkle enough.

I purchased Qwirkle for Christmas for my son. Dad and I have played the game more than he has, though he seems to enjoy it as well. The game is not too long to play with 3 or more players, however, it is noticeably longer (and seems a bit harder?) with only 2. I like this game and other MindWare games/products we own. My only qualm with this particular title is that the game is poorly made. Qwirkle consists of a set of painted wooden tiles, a convenient canvas storage bag, and instructions. The box is quite a bit bigger than necessary for the pieces contained within, perhaps to keep it in size with other games. The Qwirkle tiles are quite a bit thicker than Scrabble tiles and, thus, will stand up on their own to protect the privacy of your hand. The wood of which the tiles are made is fairly light-weight, but they feel substantial enough in hand. The tiles do not make a significant clacking sound when the tiles are laid on the table or poured into the storage bag. Game-play is fairly straightforward once you understand the concept and we did not find it necessary to refer back to the instructions after our initial reading. Qwirkle is like a mixture of dominoes and scrabble, but with colors and shapes. Now, to my problems with the game. The game tiles come packaged together in three separate sheets. Apparently, the tiles are painted as a sheet because it was necessary to snap the tiles apart to break the paint joints between pieces. After snapping the pieces apart I found that many small pieces of black paint had fallen off or were hanging from the edges of the tiles. This is still happening, even after playing the game four times. This could be a problem for those with small children who could potentially ingest the paint flakes. After snapping apart the tiles, I found that, while all the sides of all of the tiles are black, only the fronts and backs of all the tiles are *completely* finished. This fact is particularly noticeable because the tiles are extra thick and these unfinished, rough edges are plainly visible when the tiles are upright forming your hand. To be accurate, while most tiles have no edges finished, one or two edges of *some* of the tiles are finished. This seems dependent on whether (and where) the tile was along the edge of the sheet when the sheet was painted. I would think, given that the game is only a bunch of fairly simple painted wooden tiles, the company could go the extra mile and finish the sides of all the pieces with a smooth, glossy coating like the fronts and back. The difference in finishing on the edges of the tiles makes the game seem cheap and cheesy. Also, these tiles are not nearly as nice to handle as a Scrabble tile. The last problem actually affects game play: We find it difficult to differentiate between the colors red and orange when the pieces are standing upright in our hands. Once the pieces are laid down and played, it is easy to make the distinction between colors. This problem was experienced by every member of our family; we constantly find ourselves tilting our pieces to determine whether a piece is red or orange. This, unfortunately, tells any opponent that you have a red or orange piece in your hand. By the way, we play the game in a well-lit (certainly normally-lit) dining room. We would probably not experience the same problem if we played the game in an extra-bright supermarket. We are planning to modify either the red or orange tiles to make the colors easier to differentiate. All this said, I would probably still buy Qwirkle if I had it to do over again. It is a fun and simple game that is easy to set-up and easy to break down. I would not, however, pay anywhere near the list price for this game - it is just too shabbily made for that price. Also, I would hesitate to buy Qwirkle as a gift for the same reason.