Review: WORMHOLES has almost enough power to suck players in

Balancing complexity with fun and competitiveness in board games is always a difficult undertaking. We often see games that favor random chance for a sense of thrill, incorporate lots of complex rules to give a sense of choice, or constantly pit you against your opponent to feel more competitive, but very few can effortlessly balance all three. Wormhole it comes very close to the mark but falls short on challenging mechanics, genuine and fun gameplay, or intense competition.

It might seem that this game is bad, but that’s not the case at all. Wormhole it’s actually quite entertaining, but it could have used a little more depth, variety, and foresight to make the game into something really great. Starting with the mechanics, this is a delivery game that is all about making wormholes to jump to various parts of space with some environmental interactions to spice things up. Players score points when they deliver passengers and when other players use their wormholes. That’s all. I like that the game has relatively simple core ideas, but some of the mechanics of getting from point A to point B can be overly complicated and slow for how simple the gameplay actually is. But for experienced players, the game is quite accessible and reasonably fun.

Fun is such an interesting word here. I don’t know if I really enjoyed being a space delivery guy, but it was fun trying to win the game. I think most of my enjoyment was bogged down by the randomness of the delivery missions and how they could easily favor one player over another by the nature of how they are spread out. It’s great to rack up a lot of points by delivering a group of passengers to the same planet, but it’s just as frustrating to see another player doing the same things while your deliveries are all over the place. While the game somehow accounts for this by giving players points for other things or opportunities to change what needs to be delivered, it doesn’t fix the issues with luck favoring one person or another. I’ve never seen a game with a huge difference in points between last and first place, so it balances out, but overcoming that imbalance in strategy is next to impossible. Had there been some form of job trading with other players, some high-cost, high-reward mechanics, or better ways to combat randomness, I think my enjoyment could have been much higher.

This is a good game and is a good stepping stone for players to switch between casual games like One, MonopolyAND Bananagrams to something higher in complexity and concept. However, it’s not a high-end game, and there are more interesting games with polished mechanics that reward players who use strategy to get their luck instead of passively watching the game as they go.