Gigamic Skybridge Game

I'd have to disagree about the complexity of the rules and calculations involved. I read the rules in 2-3 minutes and they are pretty short and straightforward. I do not know what "calculations" people are speaking about. If you own a tower then you count the number of floors. Let's say "7" floors. Then another building, lets say "6" floors. This building is also connected by your bridge to another tower that has five floors. So your total score is 7+6+5=18. In a game of strategy this is a really basic math. I'd say in any context this is really basic math. I can't say it is a complicated game. Though, to be really good at it you have to play a number of games and learn by experience and try to figure out one or two strategies.

There's something very pleasing about these heavy wooden blocks and the pastel towers they create. As the game progresses, the rising structure looks like an Art Deco city of the future, a sort of weird retropolis with gable roofs and of course the skybridges.But how does it play? In a word: awkwardly. At the outset, each player has a set of blocks to play, some big, some small, as well as a couple of bridges and a couple of "caps". When you cap a tower, you get the score for it at the end. If you build a bridge, you get the score for wherever the bridge goes to as well as the tower you capped - however, you must cap one of the towers you bridged, otherwise it was a wasted bridge. There are two crucial rules. One is that two blocks of the same colour cannot touch. This means you cannot cap your own blocks; you depend on someone else playing the last piece on a tower and then you cap that. In particular, you can't carry on building on a bridge once you've played it; you depend on someone else putting their block on top of your bridge, then you put your cap on their block. Why would another player help you out this way?The answer is, because you MUST place blocks on the LOWEST available space. You only have a free choice if there are several available lowest places (like at the start of the game) or you intend to play a cap.What this means is, at the start of the game you have tons of option, so many in fact that there seems no tactical way of choosing between them. Later in the game, your options disappear and you are forced to play your blocks in places determined by the height of the towers.There's only one important decision to make in the game and that's when to play your two bridges. Play them too early and there's a good chance you won't be the one capping either of the towers they connect - and the winning strategy involves capping BOTH of the towers connected by one of your bridges. Play the bridges too late and the towers may well go un-capped by anyone. There's an optimal moment, a single turn upon which the outcome of the whole game depends.A friend of mine describes Skybridge as a game that is "all tactics and no strategy." He means that there's no way to plan effectively for future turns: the game's either wide open (early stage) or completely determining (later stage). If you play with 4 players this is particularly true. 3 players is slightly better but the best arrangement is 2 players each using 2 different colours: the ability to play different colours means that players can continue building on their own towers, which changes the dynamic of the game immensely.I like Skybridge aesthetically but the gameplay leaves a lot to be desired. It sometimes feels like you're all playing Solitaire, putting blocks where the rules tell you to put them and unable to exercise choice, or else placing them randomly because you can't tell a good move from a bad one. It's hard to do anything clever or ingenious in Skybridge, hard to surprise your opponent with a master-stroke or make some sacrifice which pays off later. As such, it's a pretty game with the depth of a puddle.

This toy is exquisitely crafted. But I thought the directions were difficult. Written in tiny print, with a lot of math calculations that weren't mentioned in the description of the item, I just wanted to return it. My ten and twelve year grandkids that I bought it for ended up stacking the blocks for fun, once. But that was all they were interested in doing. Rewrite the directions and make it more kid friendly. I looked it over twice trying to figure it out and could not. If I can't grasp a game really fast, don't have time to try and figure it out. I definitely think the math aspect should have been included in the directions.

I agree with the above post. The blocks are beautiful, but my husband and I have read through the instructions several times, we tried just winging it to see if we could figure it out as we go, but still we're pretty clueless. Hence, this online search for easier to understand directions which brought me here! It sounds like it will be a good game if we can ever figure out how to play it!