Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of this product in exchange for an honest, unbiased review. This review is not intended to be an endorsement.
When you put Reiner Knizia’s Purrramid in front of new players, the first thing they notice are the tiles. Thick, semi-transparent plastic rectangles with rounded corners, the material quality alone would make an impression. You want to handle them, to clack them together, to hold heaps of them in your hands and let them spill out on the table. That sound? Heaven.
This is all to say nothing of the real draw, Inês Toczyska’s wonderful illustrations of cats.
You ain’t seen cats like these. These cats are cute. These cats are nuclear-grade. I have seen multiple tables full of adults reduced to cooing and awing at the very sight of these cats. They take time arranging them into piles, into grids, making sure all of the cats are oriented correctly and situated comfortably. People complain when they see another player in possession of a style of cat they don’t have. Nobody has named their cats yet, but it can’t be far off. Most of the 30 minute runtime on the box can be attributed to these sorts of behaviors.
You divide the cat tiles betwixt the players, who are tasked with getting rid of them as quickly as possible. Each side of the Purrramid board shows a pyramid made up of cat-tile-sized rectangles bearing numbers. On your turn, you roll five dice. Any combination of dice that equal the number shown in any one available space may be placed in that space, which reserves it for one of your tiles. You can then either continue your turn by re-rolling whatever dice remain, or you can stop. When you stop, you remove all the dice from the board and set down the appropriate number of tiles.
That’s not quite all there is to it, but that’s certainly the short of it. Purrramid is firmly in the family game category, something you can easily and reliably set in front of you grandmother and your niece during the holidays. It’s cute, it’s approachable, and it keeps things moving. But that isn’t to say it’s free of decisions for the real heads.
It isn’t really as simple as “Roll dice and place tiles.” The spots you’ve reserved with your dice have to be contiguous to one another when you end your turn, otherwise they aren’t valid. The first roll presents a moment of purr-veyance, trying to parse the area of the board in which you’re likely to have not only the best results, but the most options. And the board includes a few simple special spaces, ones that allow for more tile placements or give you re-roll tokens, which subtly shift priorities from turn to turn.
Like all great push-your-luck games, Purrramid encourages you to go one step too far. If you manage valid placements for all five of your dice, you put down your tiles and start a new turn. In a game where the only—the only—player to possibly score any points is the first player to place out all their tiles, that’s all the encouragement you need to give in to the mania, to roll again.
Purrramid isn’t going to rock your world, but it is rock-solid. I find myself considering where to place tiles so I’m not handing golden opportunities to others. The decision to push my luck and go for five is usually an informed one. The aesthetic is charming, and will help it find a wide audience. The table is alive with smack talk the entire time. You could do better than Purrramid, but you could also do a lot worse.
