Review: Loch Ness Board Game

I was given the opportunity to review Loch Ness by Rio Grande Games. I would like to mention that the photos for this post were taken by Ryan Mitchell from The Tiny Life. Please stop by and check out his blog.

Type: new release, Set collecting
Number of players: 2-5
Age of players: 8+
Length: 30-45 minutes
Languages Available: English
Suggested Retail: $34.95
Release Date: December
Status: In Print

Game Description:

For decades reporters from the around the world have been on the
hunt for the Loch Ness monster. But lately reports of sightings of Nessie
have been increasing.
Such reports naturally have drawn such reporters as the attractive
Belinda Viewing from New York, the half-Belgian Claude McMirror, the
clever Filosa Sharp, as well as her Londoner competitor Jack Nesstee,
and even Nils the Blitzen from Denmark to the Loch. Equipped with
the most modern equipment and techniques, these daring reporters have
traveled to Scotland, in order to capture the elusive Nessie on film for
their newspapers.
But the 5 will experience some surprises...

So the basis of this game is that the players are a bunch of photographers trying to take pictures of the Loch Ness monster. At the beginning of each round, the first 3 players choose a card from their hand. Each card has a number on it - that number is how far Nessie moves around the Loch. If you are one of the 3 players choosing cards, you know what you're number is, but you don't know what number anyone else put down. If you're not one of the first 3 players that round you have no idea what numbers were placed down. Then each player gets the opportunity to move their cameras, making educated guesses based on the number on their card, or a card that they got to look at with their special ability, or just a shot in the dark if they didn't see any cards at all. Once everyone has moved their cameras, the cards are flipped and Nessie moves around the lake.

If Nessie stopped in front of one of your cameras, you then get picture cards. The picture cards have 3 different sections of Nessie on them - head, trunk, or tail. If you can get all 3 photos of Nessie, you can get more points. Play continues like this until Nessie has moved a total of 65 spaces. Then points are added up and a winner is declared.

At first this game seemed a little silly, but by the time we were done, we all ended up really enjoying it. The game play was fast and easy to learn, and the special abilities evened out the play if you were not one of the people laying down cards that round.

Overall I found Loch Ness by Rio Grande Games. to be pretty fun. I think we all ended up liking it, but it is not a favorite - yet. We'll need to play it some more to get it into the favorite category, and I think everyone will be more than willing to play it again.