Testing out the Ruin Game by Buffalo Games

Today, we were visited by Lenny & Yvonne of Buffalo games, and they brought an in-store demo copy of the brand-spanking-new board game Ruin. We love to try out new toys, especially a brand-new game that no one else has seen yet! It didn't take long for us to bust into the game and sort through the contents.

We decided to take pictures along every step of our adventure with Ruin. This picture on the left shows all the pieces that come with the game. All the contents are high quality, though we did find that it helped to bend the board back at the creased folds in order to get the plastic card holder to lay perfectly flat.
Once we were set up and ready to play, the first thing we noticed was the incredibly cool extra-large tetrahedral die that comes with the game. It is really distinctive and unlike any die we've seen before, and we've seen a lot of dice in our toy travels!

The whole idea of Ruin is to have players travel around the board racing to be the first with both of their pieces in the center. The board itself changes as the players substitute the maze cards in play with the cards they have in their hands. This means that your opponent can literally sweep the floor right out from under you!

We really had a blast with this game. Jerry admits now that he has been deemed official Good Toy Shop Game Champion, that he has a reputation to uphold. Catherine started out ruthless, sending Jerry back spaces as she pulled the floor right out from under him. But with his usual aplomb and good fortune, Catherine's attempts were thwarted by the innocent yet awesome die! Our game play lasted about 40 minutes, laughing included. The instructions were really straightforward and easy to refer back to when we had a question. This last picture shows Catherine's defeat, one of her pawns in the center, the other limping far behind!