We played this last night. It's a game of machine building, input and output power sources, and pipe laying. Vaguely reminiscent of the old school Waterworks, only way more technical. It doesn't sound like a lot of fun, and it definitely isn't one of the prettier board games I've seen, so I wasn't sure what to think. I don't know if it was the "post-birthday" sugar coma or the after effects of a house full of shrieking 5-year-old girls... but this one was a bumbling, brain fogging, head scratcher!
It took
us about 90 minutes to play from set-up to completion. Two of us have never
played it before so the initial rules and strategy explanation was slow and
overwhelming. My husband caught onto the concept quicker than I, although
he hit a major stumbling block when he cleared his factory floor completely and
then couldn't reassemble all his machines the same way. His blunder,
however, game me a good half hour to leisurely peruse the rules while he tried
to lay his pieces again. I can't say that by
the end of play, I had completely caught on, but I was taking more risks in
grabbing machines.
We discovered a significant error on my board about
halfway through the game, as well, where I had inputted into an output
piece, or something like that. A few hastily purchased pieces of pipe
fixed it right up, though. By the end I was letting my husband tell me
what pieces to play where. In other board games, his habit of
"helping" pisses me off. Last night, I actually found myself asking for
his advice. From a fluke of luck, or my lack of impulsivity in the
grabbing pieces round, I didn't come in dead last. The engineer at
the table won, actually, so of course I accused him of stacking the odds in his
favour. He insisted, "No, no, I normally lose," and "I'm not that kind of
engineer!" Hmm... maybe he's a Ticket to Ride engineer ... but I
digress.
Factory Fun is a puzzle game (I'd
venture to say a very complicated puzzle game) and I love puzzle
games. I'm generally quite good at them. And I did find myself
wishing it was a few rounds longer as it started to make more sense to
me. But I'm
not going to judge it by my virgin experience... it was awkward, messy, and
frustrating. It left me feeling unsatisfied and wishing it had lasted
just a little longer. But I can already tell that it'll get easier, so
it's definitely a game that deserves a second play.
- Laura Freeman, mother of 4, social worker, soon-to-be-published author, and all-around great sister
