I may be hard-pressed to fill the rest of the column with a review of Batik, yet another in The Great American Trading Company's/Gigamic's series of attractive wooden abstract games which look great on the coffee table. It's just so simple!
The game board— or more accurately, the game space— is vertical. Two sheets of plastic mounted on a pair of wooden support posts create a vertical area about a quarter of an inch wide. Each player starts with an identical set of wooden pieces in different shapes, not unlike those which make up a tangram set. Players alternate dropping pieces into the plastic framework, ala Connect Four, letting the pieces rest whereever they fall. If a player's piece sticks out of the top of the frame, that player loses.
For the tournament-minded, the rules suggest playing a series of games in which the loser discards the offending piece, with the winner of the series being the first player who must pass his turn for lack of pieces.
End of rules.
This is, perhaps, the ultimate coffee table game. It's visually intriguing and guaranteed to raise eyebrows and invite curious inquires. It takes all of ten seconds to explain the rules, and under five minutes to complete a game. The game itself involves very little strategy and (despite outward appearances to the contrary) minimal dexterity. It has an appealing visual element as the pieces stack up between the plastic sheets.
Had this game been published by Kadon Enterprises (Octiles, Quintillions, etc), it would certainly have included an assortment of patterns to attempt for solitaire play, either vertically or horizontally as tangrams. This would have extended the value of the game for virtually no cost, but sadly such exercises are left to the imagination of the player.
Fluff for the masses, then, but quality fluff.