Base price: $23.
2 – 4 players.
Play time: 15 – 30 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy directly!
Logged plays: 3
I keep almost getting ahead on reviews and then I get into a new TV show. It’s my Kryptonite, productivity-wise. I just love watching TV and I’m trying to get my money’s worth before Big Streaming decides I can’t use my housemate’s Disney+ anymore. The end of an era where that era was me not paying for Disney+, sadly. Time catches up with us all, and I really want to watch X-Men ’97. It’s very good. But that’s not really board game-related, so I’ll save my review of the show for another blog in another life. In the meantime, let’s talk games. Speaking of the 90’s, let’s talk about something with an unnecessary “EXTREME” in the title: Nine Tiles Extreme!
In Nine Tiles Extreme, you’re getting a bit radical. Not satisfied with your simple 3×3 puzzles and displeased with the abstractions of cute aliens, you’ve decided to do some sinister context-switching. This time around, not only are you trying to match the pattern on the cards, but the back of the card on top of the deck will tell you which aspect of the card you’re trying to match. Do you want to match the color? Or the shapes? Either way, be quick about it! Just like the other Nine Tiles titles, this is a real-time game of wits and pattern-matching. Who will prove themselves the fastest?
Contents
Player Count Differences
None, really. There’s no player interaction whatsoever, so whether you’re playing with two or four players, your goal remains the same: be the fastest. This is actually kind of a relief since you can largely play heads-down, but some people lament the lack of player interaction in some games (and, granted, some games do feel like they’re missing a piece if there’s no player interaction whatsoever). There’s something to be said for the game potentially running longer with more players (assuming they’re evenly-matched), but that’s just a pigeonhole principle thing; there are more possible rounds that can be played before any player crosses the “win” threshold. As a result, no recommendations on player count. Live your best life.
Strategy
- Be careful of the context switches. It’s actually pretty difficult for your brain to go from matching symbols to matching colors and back. That’s going to trip some players up; do your best to proceed methodically so one of the players who gets messed up isn’t you.
- Try to learn what’s on the back of your tiles. You don’t need to memorize, per se, and you’re likely not going to be able to do that. Just try to get a vague vibe and that will help you out a lot.
- I usually do something akin to getting almost all of the tiles in place and then choosing one to flip and replace until I get to the solution. It’s not necessarily the most efficient, but it does help a lot with making sure I’m always pretty close to the solution. That said, close doesn’t matter except in horseshoes and hand grenades.
- Speed is everything! No points for second place. It’s not worth thinking too hard when your goal is just kind of to … win. Hustle, get the job done.
- It’s very punishing to get things wrong, so sometimes it might be worth checking things out. Don’t hustle so hard that you end up making sloppy mistakes! That benefits nobody. Instead, do a quick final pass before you reach for it. Haste makes waste, but hopefully you’re moving fast enough that it won’t matter.
- You really can’t be bothered looking at anyone else’s tiles. Why would you? This is a real-time game; what they’re doing doesn’t matter at all. You just wanna get your configuration in place as fast as possible.
Pros, Mehs, and Cons
Pros
- This is a fantastic color scheme for the game, from box to tiles. I love the colors. The bright yellow box lands unbelievably well and it shows up so nicely. It certainly made the photography easy, if I do say so myself. The game is really peak Oink in terms of being bright and engaging.
- The game still plays pretty quickly, which is nice. Nine Tiles is a game family known for its speed, so it’s nice that the “Extreme” version keeps the speed aspects of the game going.
- The forcible context switching from pattern to color and back does a great thing for your brain. It’s hard when you’re getting used to it, and there will be a bunch of silly and fun mistakes if players aren’t paying too much attention. It’s a nice way to add an extra layer of challenge to the game.
- High portability is a staple of Oink Games, and we love to see it. I still have a pretty small shelf of Oink games and it’s packed but also just very satisfying.
- Decently straightforward to teach and learn. You just flip tiles until you have the image pictured on the card. Might rearrange some. Doesn’t take much to learn.
Mehs
- It’s vaguely possible to play through most or all of a game without context switching from color to pattern or vice-versa, which can be a bummer. That’s just random chance when you’re drawing cards and shuffling the deck, but it would be nice to have more forced switches from one context to the other just in case.
- Games with a primary dependency on color can really mess with some players. Not everyone has the best ability to distinguish between colors, so it’s nice that there are differentiating things in the corners to help players be sure. I’m not entirely convinced that will be easy to tell, but, it’s at least an effort.
- I do kind of wish they meant “Extreme” in the like, 90s sense. This is challenging in terms of context switching, but when I think “Extreme” I think of the terrible superheroes from the 90s or crappy flame GIFs or skateboard tricks, none of which are present in the game. That saddens me somewhat.
Cons
- I do miss the deeply silly theming of Nine Tiles Panic. There’s something deeply soothing and compelling about a bunch of aliens that just want to eat hamburgers with reckless abandon, and I vibe with that deeply.
Overall: 8 / 10
Overall, I think Nine Tiles Extreme is a pretty fun next step from the original Nine Tiles! I do wish there were more of a theme evident, rather than just colors and shapes. There’s always an opportunity to make games weird and wild, and generally Oink Games does a great job doing that exact thing. While this game is far from their weirdest, it’s a good, consistent entry in Oink’s ever-growing library and I think it’ll land for fans of their real-time stuff. Some people prefer less-weird games, which is funny because that’s a weird thing for them to like. Very ironic. That said, while I tend to prefer Oink’s staple titles like Nine Tiles Panic or Dropolter or A Fake Artist Goes to New York, I can’t deny the allure of a simple and straightforward real-time puzzler, and Nine Tiles continues in that vein quite nicely. It’s extremely visually engaging, and definitely one of Oink’s most boldly-colored games in recent memory, to its advantage. It’s another of those games that will get you some attention if you’re playing on a plane or a train, and it’s compact and portable enough that you could actually pull off playing it there. That’s all good for me, though you might want to check and make sure nobody in your play group has any color vision issues (just because so much of the game is indexed on color). If you’re looking for a quick puzzler, you enjoy bright colors, or you just also love Oink Games (a classy choice), I’d recommend Nine Tiles Extreme! It’s solidly fun.
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