Lunch this week is R.A.V.E.L. a solo puzzle game by Daniel McKinley. In this compact game, your task is to manipulate eight dice within a grid to unlock the surrounding cog cards, each offering effects that you use to further influence the puzzle. Remove all the cogs you win, but if you can’t go, then you lose. With its simple rules yet quite deep puzzle elements, R.A.V.E.L. offers an engaging puzzle just right for a spot of lunch.
How it plays
Set up is very easy, place the dice grid on the table. Decide if you’re going to play with the standard or advanced cards and take the appropriate set. Shuffle the cards and place, facedown, a pile of four cards around the grid. Fill the grid with dice, randomly choosing each and rolling it before placing it. Take 8 ‘tinker’ tokens then turn the top card of each pile face up. You’re ready to go.
Each turn you can do one of two things. Tinker is when you use 1 or 2 tinker tokens. Use 1 to swap two dice that are orthogonally adjacent, while using 2 allows you to determine the number showing on one of the die. Unlock is the action you take when you have fulfilled the condition on one of the cog cards. This basically means the three dice next to that card do what the cards wants. In the example below the card requires the three dice to have a combined value of more than 14. Since it is 15 (6+3+6) the cog is fulfilled,
As a reward you get to do the reward at the bottom of the card, in this case swap two dice. Rewards are immediate and cannot be saved, after taking you then reveal the next face down card in the cog pile. Thankfully all the cards are described in the instructions so the iconography doesn’t really get in the way even in a first game. If you manage to unlock all the cards you win – which is not as easy as I first thought it might be!
Good for lunch
It most certainly is. It ticks all my lunchtime boxes – it’s small so portable, easy and quick to set up, the box says it plays in 10 minutes though it’s played a little longer for me. Maybe I think too long about my turns – but then again that is part of the joy of trying to solve the puzzle. My lunchtime games tend to be a puzzle that needs solving, and this game gives a really engaging mental workout. With two sets of cards to play with and the randomness of the starting dice and card piles there is a lot replayability. My only criticism is I have no idea why they decided to give it the full name – Rare Artefact Vertiginous Enigmatic Logical!
Lunch time solo 