#86: Floß geht's!

Floß geht's!

• designer: Susanne Armbruster & Helga Nyncke
• publisher: Haba
• date: 2002
• BoardGameGeek rank/rating: not ranked/6.8
• age: 4+
• # of players: 2-4
• print status: OOP?
• cost: EUR 9,50 (Amazon.de, approx. $14)

Today, we all decided to go rafting down the river, just like that American icon, Huckleberry Finn. We even borrowed the design of his raft. Though I'm pretty sure that Huck didn't use a big colored die to provide motive power to his craft.

And yet, that's exactly what you do in Floß geht's (literally "raft goes" in German)... on your turn, you move your raft down the river (made of out of beautifully illustrated puzzle pieces) to the next symbol that matches the one on your die.

But this is NOT a simple "roll'n'move." (For those of you who aren't steeped in gaming hobby lingo, "roll'n'move" is a derisive term for games that boil down to rolling the dice & moving that number of spaces - Chutes & Ladders, for example, is an infamous roll'n'move game.) At the start of your turn, you may roll the die of ANY player... thus slowing down a leader (if their die has a particularly good match) or helping yourself (if you're just drifting along). The die has 4 symbols that are found along the river... as well as a sun (a wild card symbol) and an anchor (which means your raft can't move).

Two caveats - though the game as outlined in the rules (go from one end of the river to another) works fine with the younger set, the game is more fun for the 6+ crowd if you race up & down the river. (This is a variant rule listed in the rulebook.) Also, although the game "works" with 2 players, it's much more fun with 3 or 4.

As usual, the Haba production on this game is splendid - nifty little rafts (complete with felt flags), chunky wooden dice, and the puzzle river/board, which my youngest son likes to play with even though he's not old enough to play the game "for real."