THE FOOT OF KILIMANJARO

BLATZ/HANS IM GLÜCK JUNIOR, £23

designed by REINER KNIZIA

2-4 players, AGE 7+

reviewed by DAVE FARQUHAR

The foot of Kilimanjaro is a race game for two to four players. It involves the play of cards, the total of at least some of which moves the player's piece along a one hundred space track, through the jungle. The winner is the first to the mountain's foot, or whoever has progressed furthest when the cards run out.

The cards represent four different forms of transport: foot, canoe, mule and jeep. Each has a number from one to seven, with the colour and picture identifying the transport type. The rules are simple, so I shall try to summarise them.

Each player is dealt three cards, face-up, and three into their hand. The face-up cards are used to calculate movement. On their turn, a player lays one card. This may either be on themselves, or another player who is ahead of them. The playing piece is then moved a number of spaces along the track calculated as:

1.

if all three cards are the same colour -- total all three;

2.

if two are the same colour -- total the two;

3.

if all are different colours -- highest individual value.

If a player lays a card on an opponent's layout, they still move, retaining their previous score. The effect of this is that players generally attempt to maintain three high value, similarly coloured face-up cards. Of course, this is not easy. If other players are behind you, they may play onto your transport. In a four player game, if you are leading, your whole layout may have changed by the time your turn arrives.

That is basically it, except for a set of markers. These are distributed secretly. After examination, the tokens are laid, face-down, onto spaces on the board. This brings an aspect of chance, and memory, to the game. There are three different types of token, which take effect when landed on:

1.

bananas -- move again;

2.

lion -- get chased back to the previous village;

3.

switch places -- switch positions with another player.

An optional, recommended, rule for gamers is that this latter counts to move an opponent back to a village, instead of switching places.

And that's about it. Graphically the game looks very nice. It is lightweight, and quite fun. I cannot write this piece objectively, as I was quite involved in the play-testing. The developers have chosen to focus the game on a younger age group. This has been quite successful. I have played Kilimanjaro with children as young as six, and they thoroughly enjoyed it. I don't think though, that it is really suited for most Sumo readers.

If you already have the game, you might like to try playing with numbered tokens. These can then be used to move the piece which lands on it. This played quite successfully in testing, and brought more depth to the game. It was a little like Hare and Tortoise, with some players racing ahead, while others would carefully try to plan movement to maximise use of the tokens. Not an easy matter.

Dave Farquhar