Base price: $19.
2 – 6 players.
Play time: 15 – 20 minutes.
BGG Link
Buy via Allplay!
Logged plays: 2

When I go to a local game store, I like to support if I can, somehow. For a long time, it was picking up Pokemon TCG packs, but then that became wildly impractical. Thanks, randos! But now we’re working and thinking about it. Last time I visited the impeccable Blue Highway in Seattle, I picked up Tower of Doubt. Now that I’m freshly back from a San Francisco trip, I visited Gamescape while I was there. Seemed like another Funbrick game was in the cards. I do need to get back to my review queue, but the reviewer life is largely defined by what games I can get my group to play. We’re slowly approaching getting regular game nights back! We’re going to see what games we play on that front. In the meantime, let’s check out Wonder Bowling!

In Wonder Bowling, the thrill of the bowling alley is coming back to the tabletop! Love bowling and love a bowling game, so excited to see what’s going on there. However, you’re not precisely bowling. In lieu of bowling, you’re going to be using something called the “Ball Stick”. Your goal is to knock the pins down, but not necessarily all of them. Here, you’ve got targets that you want to hit and you want to knock a specific amount of pins down. You do not want to knock all the pins down. That’s not a strike, anymore, that’s a Penalty! Can you win this strange little bowling game, or will you end up striking out?

Contents

• Setup
• Gameplay
• Player Count Differences
• Strategy
• Pros, Mehs, Cons
• Overall

Setup

Almost none! It’s very exciting and easy to set up. First, set out the inner box, flipped upside down to create the bowling alley.

Set the pins aside, for now:

Give each player two Strike Tokens:

Shuffle the Target Tokens face-down and give each player two, turning them face-up. Then, set six by the bowling lane face-down (use four face-down in a six-player game).

Give a player the Ball Stick:

You’re ready to start!

Gameplay

Wonder Bowling is played over multiple rounds! Here’s how it works.

To start a round, the player to the right of the starting player sets up the pins. No rules on where or how, as long as they’re all within the outline of the lane and they’re not touching each other. Then, a player goes! The player with the Ball Stick hits the lane with either end of the stick. Your goal? Knock over at least one pin, but not all of them.

When the pins have settled, count how many are still upright. If that number appears on your Target Chip, turn it down. If you have more than one of those Target Chips, you still only get to turn one down.

If you knock down zero pins, you have to go again! If you knock down zero pins again, you get a penalty! You also get a penalty if you knock down all of the pins or if you touch any of the pins with the Ball Stick. When you take a penalty, you take one of the face-down Penalty Chips and flip it face-up, adding it to your Target Chips.

If you knock down almost all of the pins so that there’s exactly one pin remaining, you get a Strike! You can either flip a Strike Chip or flip two Target Chips.

Once either all the pins are knocked down or a player gets a Strike, that player resets and you keep going! Go until one player has flipped over all their Strike and Target Chips. In the event that you run out of Penalty Chips, the next player to get a Penalty is eliminated until there’s one player remaining. The player who flips their chips first or the surviving player wins!

Player Count Differences

Not a ton here from a process standpoint. With more players, however, you start seeing the Pigeonhole Principle apply, and that might change some of your strategy. It’s a lot easier to play aggressively or just hit one pin when you’re playing at two players and you know your move won’t affect your opponent. At six, every possible number of pins could potentially be in play, so you either have to try very hard to just hit your own target or try to pass your opponents’ required numbers so that they have to either Strike or bust. I wouldn’t necessarily say that’s a bad thing, as it means that the game is fairly interactive, but I like the core gameplay loop a bunch anyways. Wonder Bowling makes for a wonderful head-to-head game as a result, though, and a very entertaining group game even if the vibe shifts a little bit. I don’t have a huge preference on this one.

Strategy

• Your first hit likely isn’t going to go great. Just kind of roll with it. Our first ones were absolutely nothing, then way too much, then absolutely nothing again. It’s kind of excellent.
• The box slides a fair amount. No matter what you’re playing on, if you hit the box too hard, it’s going to go in one directions and the pins might … not. That can often result in all the pins getting knocked over at once.
• I find slapping the Ball Stick against the box top rather than the sides helps a lot. That sends a pretty big shockwave through the entire box, depending on how hard to smack the Ball Stick against it. You can do a little tap as well, but also be mindful of not hitting any pins with the stick. That’s a penalty.
• How you set the pins up can be pretty helpful. If you’re trying to go for a certain number, you can set them up in a group and hope that your opponent knocks just that group down and leaves the number you need up and active still available. It could happen, even if it’s vaguely unlikely. Sometimes you have to hope for the best. Leave luck to heaven or something like that, to quote an entirely different Japanese game company. If they knock down more, you either need to shoot for a different number (if you have it) or try to get a Strike.
• You can end up taking a nasty Penalty if you’re not super careful. If you’re not paying too much attention and knock down more pins than you’re expecting, you can take a Penalty which can potentially get you eliminated. Try to stay grounded.
• If you’re not sure what to do, try just knocking down one pin to essentially pass your turn. That can also potentially make things tough for your opponents, since they’ll need precision to avoid getting a Penalty.
• Getting a Strike is tough! You do need two to win, but they’re definitely not easy to get or lock in on. If you’ve got the vision for it, I suppose, it’s nice because you only need three Strikes to win.

Pros, Mehs, and Cons

Pros

• I like the Ball Stick; it’s stupid. It has a big ball and a small ball and it rolls quite pleasantly and it’s just an extremely weird implement for a dexterity game. I love when itten is on a tear; it always means they publish something weird and delightful.
• Continue to love the entire Funbrick form factor. They’re great for certain kinds of storage and they transport really easily. Hoping to try more soon.
• The bright teal color for the lane is delightful. I just think it’s a nice color that I don’t get to see often enough.
• Look, if nothing else, I was always going to be excited about the little pins. The little pins are extremely whimsical, especially since you aren’t setting them up in the traditional bowling triangle; you just kind of place them wherever you want and roll with it. Big fan.
• Plays quickly. The Survival Mode makes sure it ends eventually, but since your turn is pretty much just one bonk, anyways, it’s not a particularly long game.
• It’s very easy to pick up, at least from a rules standpoint. Hit the box with a stick and don’t knock down too many pins. Easy. You already intuitively understand it.
• Getting to place the pins for the next player is also pretty fun. You can try and set them up to potentially give you a boon or potentially bust very quickly, as long as you follow the placement rules. There’s some interesting strategy there.

Mehs

• I was a little sad at first that it wasn’t a tiny bowling game. I was kind of hoping for a little ball and pitching it down a little lane, but that’s both impractical and barely a modification of bowling. I like this a lot better, to be honest.
• Does the surface that you play on matter? Who knows? That’s kind of fun. Sometimes it slides a bit on slicker surfaces, so it might matter what you’re using, especially if you hit the box from the sides.

Cons

• I don’t love the survival outcome, personally. I understand that there needs to be some way to break out of the core game loop, and this is really what you can do with what you have. It’s a bit of a bummer that the next player to take a Penalty is eliminated no matter how close they are to winning. You can’t really make it “next point wins” or anything, either. If you get rid of that, then you can get stuck with no way to end the game. Not ideal.

Overall: 8.75 / 10

Unsurprisingly, I kind of love Wonder Bowling. The form factor is impeccable, the style is wonderful, and, just, those little pins. Bowling, inherently, to me, has always been necessarily whimsical because it’s also kind of gross and janky. Nothing wrong with that; that’s how I like it. It’s part of the reason I struggle going to Lucky Strike-type places because they’re too nice. Give me Compton Lanes or Valley Worlds of Fun any day of the week, RIP to Valley Worlds of Fun. And RIP to Compton Lanes as well, apparently. But Wonder Bowling lives! I did kind of wish it was a bit closer to actual bowling, at the start, but I think it ends up coming around as a simpler Hammer Time. Less to keep track of and a theme I really gel with. In general, Wonder Bowling is a great example of a Funbrick series game, though. It’s easy to pick up and play, but there’s some exciting elements and silly aspects. A perfect on-the-go game to set up pretty quickly, even if you’re somewhere else. I wouldn’t necessarily play it on a plane, per se, or anywhere that shakes or moves, but beyond that, it’s an anywhere game. Bowling is a beloved pastime for me and while this doesn’t perfectly recreate the experience, it’s got a lot of the same vibe in its inherent whimsy. There’s some genuine tension when you’re trying to decide how hard to whack the lane and where you’re going to hit it. That said, it’s extremely silly, so, you don’t necessarily need to overthink it. If you’re looking for something that captures the whimsy of bowling, you want a little portable dexterity game, or you just want to whack something with a double-ended stick, Wonder Bowling might be just what you need! It’s been a lot of fun to play.

If you’re down to play another dexterity game, try checking out my Dexterity Games Hub for more fun recommendations!

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