The joy of owning fish in a lovely little tank and with all the associated pieces is hard to replicate. Imagine then the person who is tasked with looking after all of these fishes, for those lovely people eager for a new pet! Well I should say it was even hard to replicate until that is the game BETTA appeared.
BETTA
1-5 Players (3 is best) / 20 minutes / Ages 8+ (6+ works)
You are tasked with a first day of work at Bette’s Pets. Bette is a lovely owner of exotic fish and other animals that make for great pets. It is, in the local community, everyone’s favourite pet shop. So far so good. You are expecting to learn a few basic things but first you expect stocking shelves, working on the till and maybe some sweeping up of stuff. Bette has other ideas. She has just sealed a deal to buy a boatload of bettas. Now she needs to off load them! In order to boost sales, Bette’s come up with a way to make a game out of it, and she’s going to award points based on how well you follow her instructions. Ahhh thats are game then!
THE GAME
Players need to arrange the bettas into 3×3 displays. This sounds easier than it actually is. However, the shops best customers like 6 particular patterns that fit into these displays and so, get that right and sell loads. The more you sell the more points. The more points the more chance you will win! Players have to draw big point cards that sit on top of the six selected tanks. These are worth 3,5 or 7 points. These offer the chance say, if you have a group of fish that are the same colour, you get the points. Once you have filled a card and matched it, you can sit back and enjoy the point bonus.
THE REVIEW
The thing with arrangement games like this, is that they can be hampered by mechanic play ability and limited functionality. With BETTA this is very much core to its problem. It looks good. Very good in fact. It plays ok. Quite well in fact. But this quite well, became apathetic awful after two games. The cards are brittle, pokey and cause players to be hampered when they use. They rip when shuffled. Are hard to hold in a hand and make players feel jarred as they reveal others and their, plays. This also means that when played they sit on the tank cards without ease, slipping and sliding. Or catch everything and it all tumbles off. This means that players become annoyed and ultimately bored. Sad to say, I liked it but
