Potion Explosion - A Creativity Quest Review

Read more...

I bought the iOS version of this and played through the tutorial. It's undoubtedly more fun in person, but the game itself didn't do a lot for me. I'm not a beard scratcher of a gamer, I just didn't think what was happening was very interesting, and found the "explosion" bit kind of underwhelming. It's a fun idea, but not something I'd seek out to play, or even just waste time with on the iPad.

My buddy was telling me about this....he really loves it with the family over some margaritas.

After reading the review, I bought a copy. I was looking for something for the family gamers; a little different, not too complicated, and no direct conflict. I played a whopping three games of it with my wife last night, so I'm now an expert. What I found was:

- The component quality is a little lacking. Matt has mentioned this above. The marbles kind of suck, some of the cuts in the cardboard are conspicuous by their absence, and the marble machine can be a touch delicate. Pick it up wrong when fully loaded, and it will fall apart just enough for the marbles to come out.

- The rules are okay, not great. There are some corner cases concerning the 9th marble in the chute that aren't covered in the rules. However, it's Potion Explosion, not Magic: The Gathering. We just made a rule that made sense to us and pressed on.

- AP is lurking in there. You can end up scratching your head for a couple of minutes trying to maximize your turn. And sometimes you don't get a chance to think real hard about your turn until it's your turn.

However, we did have fun. I ran off with the first game, because I got it a little faster. I lost the other two though, because she got it a little better. Scores were close, with two points between us in both games. I'll play it again.