I didn’t expect to play any games during the weekend (I was visiting my parents, as it’s my birthday next week), but my mother had a new Tantrix set which I had to try.

It’s a game of connections. The hexagonal tiles feature coloured lines, three colours each. There’s a total of four colours in the game. Players try to connect the tiles so that their colour (so up to four can play) makes the biggest lines or loops. Each player scores their longest line or biggest loop, loops score double the number of tiles.

It’s quite neat, and pretty fun. I played two two-player games, lost them both. What makes the game interesting are the forced plays. Each player has one free move each turn and before and after that, they must play all the forced moves they can. Whenever there’s an empty space which is surrounded by three tiles, it’s a forced move. These offer lots of tactical opportunities!

The game also includes some puzzles, in which you mostly try to create loops. You can do these solo, so you’ll be able to kill lots of time with the set. Which, by the way, looks nice. The hexagons are black and made of plastic and the bold colours of the lines (yellow, red, blue and green) look good. Except the blue, which is hard to see from the black background. Other than that, they are nice. And they feel good.

See also the official homepage where you can play the game online. I haven’t tried it yet, but might do so in the near future.