Spots

Who else has watched the Disney cartoon 101 Dalmatians as a kid? Spots is a light dice game about dalmatians! Well, maybe not specifically dalmatians. Just dogs with spots. Many of the dogs in this game don't actually look like dalmatians. This is a game with a bit of push-your-luck, in which you race to fill six dog cards with dice of the right number of pips. 

You start with two dog cards. Each dog card has 2 to 4 spaces for dice, and they are in red. In each space you can only place a die of the specific value shown. A dog is not done when you fill all the spaces. There is one more step you need to do. You must perform an action to flip the dog card to the blue side. When a dog is still on the grey side, you may lose the dice on it, i.e. your progress can be completely undone. 

At the start of a game you will set up six action cards. The box comes with more than six action cards and you can play with different combinations. Players take turns using an action card. An action card that is used becomes temporarily unavailable. Only when five cards have been used will they all be reset and become available again. 

Every player has a backyard. Your backyard is where you get to bury dice you can't place onto your dogs. As a general rule, when you roll dice, you must place them. If you can't place them on your dogs, you will be forced to bury them in your backyard. There is a limit. Your backyard cannot have dice totalling more than 7. If that happens, you go bust and lose all dice on grey-side dogs and your backyard. This is the push-your-luck aspect of the game. The higher your backyard dice total is, the higher your risk when you roll dice. The different action cards in the game let you do different things. Some let you roll more dice than others. Rolling more dice usually entails a higher risk, even though it can help you progress more quickly. 

One action card lets you roll two dice, and then you have the option of rolling one more. One action card lets you roll three dice, and then you can keep rolling one die at a time as many more times as you wish. One action card lets you roll dice in your backyard. There is one action which lets you draw an additional dog card. 

In this screenshot above, three of my grey dogs (upper half of the screenshot) are filled, but I still need to take an action to flip them to the blue side to secure them. If I fill my sixth and last dog, I will win immediately. Flipping dogs to the blue side is not necessary for winning. It's just protection against losing progress. At this point I need exactly one die showing 4. If I go bust at this point, I will reset all four of my grey dogs. 

The red bone is a treat. Treats are a type of resource you can earn, and you spend them to reroll dice. In Spots when you reroll you must reroll all dice. You can't lock some then reroll the others. It's all or nothing. 

The game comes with many action cards, and there are many combinations you can play with. There are some suggested combinations in the rulebook. This variety provides some replayability. 

Rolling dice is exciting. There is certainly luck in this game, but there are also ways to mitigate that. You can be strategic about how you play. Making sure you have some treats ready helps. You need to balance between going fast and taking risks. I had fun with the game even when playing in async mode. I think the game will be even more fun when playing a physical copy in person. You will feel the excitement on your opponents' turns too. This is a nice light game to play with non-gamers who are dog lovers. It is a relaxing filler for gamers.