Ringo perfect coffee time diversion

Right from the start of play, Trevor and I were absolutely surprised, and in the most positive way, with Ringo.

This one comes from designer Julien Griffon and designer Steffen-Spiele (www.steffen-spiele.de) via Ilo307.com in Canada, and isn’t a game you might expect to impress as much as it did.

The goal is a familiar one, and one that typically doesn’t create gameplay that rises above average – get four in a row and win.

But Ringo offers a refreshing take on the old standard.

The game starts with a playing field consisting of eight rings: four red and four blue.

Now I must pause here to say just how nice the metal rings are. Just pure wow for a game of this kind – huge marks for the overall components in Ringo with the rings top-shelf.

On a turn, the active player places a disc of their colour in any ring – yes, either player’s colour, which is another neat twist here — then moves the ring to a position adjacent orthogonally to another ring. There is no board with Ringo, so games can develop in some pretty interesting ways.

If you have placed all your pieces – nice wooden ones, by the way – you then begin using one that is already in play.

Whoever first creates a row of four discs or four rings – orthogonally or diagonally, so again a neat twist — in their colour wins.

Ringo is sort of a sister game to Stakko (soon to be reviewed), and Nonago reviewed previously, which was a solid little game, but this one is far better – one that will be in our thoughts for top-five game of the year come Christmas.