It’s taken me well over a year to review any of Vandelay Games products. These paper and pencil games sold as bagged pads aren’t the kind of thing that sets the gaming community ablaze. There are no sexy components, no big-name designer.
Gridlock
does offer simple and superb gameplay, though, which should be enough to commend any game to one’s attention.Gridlock is a word game played on a 5x4 grid. More precisely, it’s played on two such grids, one for each player. One player calls out a letter which both players must place into their grids. The letter can go into any unfilled space, and each player can place it differently. Then the other player calls out a letter, and so on back and forth until the grids fill up.
The object, of course, is to create words in your grid. Vertical words filling a whole column (four letters) score two points. Horizontal words filling a whole row (five letters) score three points. The highest cumulative score after three rounds wins the game.
Gridlock is similar in feel to FX Schmid’s super Take It Easy. Both players have freedom to position the same element (letters here, hex tiles in Take It Easy) within their layouts. Eventually you find yourself deciding which of your carefully laid plans to sacrifice when an undesirable element (letter/tile) is called. Adding to the strategy in Gridlock is the fact that letters are not chosen randomly, but rather are selected by the players. This means you can arrange your common letters so that when you call a Q, X, J or Z, you’ve got a place reserved for it while your opponent might be caught in a bind.
Each round only takes a few minutes to play and is quite addictive. Its simple materials make it ideal for play in a variety of surroundings- over dinner, in a theater while waiting for the movie to begin, or covertly in a classroom, for instance.
You’d be hard-pressed to play Breakdown covertly, though. Another word game on pre-printed pads, Breakdown accommodates two or more players. Two five-letter starter words are chosen arbitrarily and written on each player’s sheet. Each player then uses those letters to form new words of three to seven letters. Any player who has written down three words of three letters, four letters, and five letters each (nine words in all) can stop the round at any time and take a five point bonus. It’s a bit of a game of chicken, as there are even more points to be gained by finding additional words before ending the round. Players have to gauge the right moment to call a halt and come out ahead.
Once the round ends, players may predict whether or not the player to their left found some of the same words. Each player is allowed one positive prediction (“You found this word”) and one negative prediction (“You didn’t find this one”) for three-, four-, and five-letter words, but she may choose to make fewer or none of them at all.
If a prediction is wrong the word is crossed out and scores nothing. If it’s correct, it’s worth a five point bonus. Remaining words score according to their length, and the highest cumulative score after three rounds wins.
Breakdown has much the same feel as Perquackey, but with the bonus of simultaneous action for all players. The predictions add an entertaining kicker, and it actually affects your strategy. I found myself eschewing obvious words to prevent my right-hand neighbor from getting an easy positive prediction. But at the same time, I wanted to use at least one word which my left-hand neighbor would have.
At any rate, Breakdown turned out to be surprisingly diverting. And with Perquackey out of print again, this makes a good alternative.
Vandelay faces a challenge in marketing these games, consisting as they do solely of a pad of preprinted game grids and instructions. The pads make life easier, but once you know how to play a blank sheet of paper would suffice. I hope TGR readers intrigued by the game will support the publisher’s efforts by buying the modestly priced pads.