Base price: $15.
1 – 12 players.
Play time: ~15 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy on Amazon (via What’s Eric Playing?)
Logged plays: 3

Full disclosure: A review copy of Splitter was provided by Pandasaurus Games.

Busting out some reviews for y’all ahead of PAX Unplugged! I’m overwhelmingly excited, as PAXU is my favorite show each year, though now that I live somewhere colder the thrill of going to a cold place isn’t necessarily as strong as it used to be. What can you do? Either way, I should probably pack in the next couple days, but knowing me, I’m going to put it off as long as possible, as usual. It’s nice to know what to expect. Maybe I’ll see some of you there! This week’s a few smaller reviews, since we’re between cons, but one of them is Splitter, from Pandasaurus Games! Let’s check it out.

In Splitter, you’re gonna get caught across the dividing line! Each turn, dice are rolled and they must be placed on the same spot on both sides of the center line! This mirror imagery is how you’ll eventually score points: you want to make contiguous groups of the same number. But be careful! You only score if the group’s size is the number. So you want one 1, two 2s, six 6s; that whole thing. Any more or any less and you’re missing out! There are also stars, which will double the score of the group they’re in, and in the alternate board, hearts, which score extra points if the same number is in all three of them. This game will test your planning and your spatial reasoning, but it’ll come and test your luck as well; will you be able to score the most points? Or will you end up split?

Overall: 8 / 10

Overall, I think Splitter is solidly fun! One major strength is that it’s extremely easy to explain how to play. Usually, the top section runs for a bit because I want to give a short overview of play to make up for the lack of Setup / Gameplay sections in this review format. But even then, it’s just roll dice, place them on opposite sides of the line, make groups, profit. I do love tiny roll-and-write games for that. The other thing I like about roll-and-write games is that even though they’re often pretty easy to explain, that doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re wanting for excitement or interesting gameplay. These can be pretty hectic as players are jockeying to get the numbers they need, and whether or not they come up, things can be pretty exciting. Naturally, there’s something inherently annoying about playing a game of Splitter where you never even roll five 5s or six 6s; it just makes them into junk and depresses the scores. I could imagine fixing this with dice cards, though, which would be kind of fun. That’s a pretty different game, though, so you do you, on that front.

I’m always a bit skeptical of the higher end of player counts for these types of games, just because you run into fundamental limits of like, how many players can see the dice and the taxonomical argument of whether or not twelve people playing a solo game is the same thing as twelve people playing the same game. I don’t care that much about that explicitly, but I do appreciate that they didn’t go for the frankly-silly “1-100” player count that you’ll see on a lot of games like this. This is a bit easier to make work with more players explicitly because it’s essentially a solo game. You’re not going to see the kind of player interaction you’ll get from Number Drop, for instance, but that makes the game easier to pick up and play. And given that they’re going for the tuckbox (which, while I hate, I get), they’re definitely highlighting portability and Splitter’s ability to be essentially immediately deployed anywhere. Again, unbothered. I like it! Splitter doesn’t quite have any particularly incredible stand-out features that would elevate it to my favorite roll-and-write games, but it’s perfectly cromulent, fun to play, and does its core schtick well. That’s never a bad thing. Plus, it seems relatively easy to make new boards that would still work, and while it tilts slightly over the line of my preferred skill-to-luck ratio, I wouldn’t say it does so to its detriment; I’d just prefer if the numbers were a bit more predictable. If you’re into roll-and-writes, you want to play with spatial gameplay a bit, or you’re looking for a fun gift for your favorite roll-and-write fan, Splitter might be a nice choice! I’d recommend playing it.

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