Bongo

From: Heidelberger Designer: Bruno Faidutti List Price: $15 Players: 2+ Playing Time: 15 minutes  Type of game: Beer 'n' Pretzels Skill level: 10 Complexity: 3  Reviewed by: Peter Sarrett, Issue 26, Summer 2001

Quick-reaction puzzle games divide people into two polarized camps. You either love them (and are probably good at them) or you hate them (and are probably terrible at them). Bruno Faidutti’s Bongo is one such game.

The basic game incorporates seven dice— five showing animals (gnu, rhino, and antelope) and two showing 1-3 bamboo shoots. All are rolled simultaneously, and players race to call out the correct answer to the resulting puzzle. The bamboo dice dictate how many of the same animal players are searching for. If both bamboo dice show the same number, that’s how many you want. If they show two different numbers, you’re looking for the third number. In the example on this page both dice show one bamboo shoot, so players would be trying to find an animal which only appears once on all five animal dice.

If only one animal meets that criteria, that’s the correct answer and the first player to shout it out (in our example, “Rhino!”) wins a rhino stick. Earning two sticks for each animal wins the game.

If two animals meet the condition set by the bamboo dice, however, the correct answer is the third animal. If our bamboo dice had called for a pair of animals, for example, we’d see that there are two antelopes and two gnus— which means the answer would once again be “Rhino!”, this time because it’s the other animal. And if we’d been looking for a triplet, none of the animals would have worked and the first player to call out “None!” would earn a stick of his choice. Calling out an incorrect answer, of course, forces you to give up one of your hard-earned sticks.

But playing the basic game is like riding a bicycle with training wheels. The real action comes when you add the two “poacher” dice (the darker dice to the lower-right on this page). These extra animal dice cause one animal to be poached, and therefore ignored in the count. If these dice show the same animal, that animal is poached. If they show different animals, the third animal is poached. Our example illustrates how these poacher dice change the game. Since they depict a rhino and an antelope, a gnu must be poached. That leaves us with two antelope, one gnu, and one rhino. Since two animals now meet the condition set by the bamboo dice, the answer to the puzzle is now “Antelope!” instead of “Rhino!”

This is a game of quick-thinking and observation. Search. Count. Shout. There’s no room (or time) for strategy or tactics. Some players focus on the bamboo dice first, while others deal with the poachers and still others assess the animal population. Everyone’s brain works a little differently. And some are just no good at it at all. The consolation for these players is that the game is over quickly. Each throw of the dice lasts only a few seconds before they’re scooped up again and it’s on to the next roll. The whole game should take less than fifteen minutes to play, making it a great filler.

Bongo is a very elegant and clever design. The “if two, then the third” mechanism works beautifully and the overall mathematics guarantees a unique solution for every possible configuration of the dice. That number is actually fairly small (by my probably faulty math, 6*6*21 = 756, counting 11GAAAARR the same as 11AGAAARR, for example), but the chaos of the tumbling dice gives even identical throws a distinct character.

If you don’t like Ricochet Robot, Bongo is probably not the game for you. Both require a similar mental agility and ordered thought which some find “too much work.” And if you can’t solve the puzzles quickly, the game just won’t be much fun as those around you shout the solution vexingly fast. A niche audience, then, but spot-on for that niche.