How to Play MicroMacro

In Micro Macro you want to solve cases. To solve these cases you need to find particular things on a giant map of Crime City, yes, the first box is called MicroMacro: Crime City. But there is a ton going on. So the game gives you clues as to where things might be on the map and then you need to identify the ones that go with your case.

The person in charge of the clues then verifies that you found the right thing. If you did, you go to the clue. If not, the other players, since the person who verified now knows where and what it is, continue to look for it. When they find the right thing, you progress to the next bit of story or question for the case. You continue that pattern until you’ve found everything for the case.

Then you can play a new case. Each box of MicroMacro comes with a number of cases that you can play. And you even can get an expansion that combines all the maps into a giant map for a larger experience.

What Doesn’t Work

Firstly, is this a game? I think that is going to be something that people struggle with when they talk about it. Not whether or not it’s fun, though some will maybe not find it fun, we’ll talk about that, but is it a game. There is no real lose condition. The clue reader stops playing possibly if you don’t identify the clue on the map. But it’s more of an activity than a game.

This is also a game where you need to like the idea of Where is Waldo. MicroMacro is a big one of that with some story that ties things together in a given case. But it’s really Where is Waldo, so you know if you like the sound of that or not.

Finally, the map is huge. Now, this is a good thing, because there is a ton of detail. But it’s a bad thing because it’s a table hog of a game. So you need to know that and you need space.

What Works

Firstly, the artwork works in the game. And it’s actually pretty awesome how much detail they fit into the huge map. And it’s black and white, so you can color in elements of cases if you want to create kind of your own map. I put it as a negative with how large the map is, but it’s also a positive because with a giant map, you also get so much detail which is awesome.

It is a game that works well for a good medium group of people. This is not a six person game, but it’s a good 3-4 person game. Why, so everyone can see the map. And that’s a positive in my book. It’s something to keep in your head though, as you play. But it makes it a really good collaborative experience as you search around the map.

It is also pretty fast, even the long cases with ten cards don’t take too long. And the short ones can just fly by. So it’s great for playing a few cases. And when it’s something like Where is Waldo, you generally don’t want to do just one. I also like that it is faster the more you play. Why, because you just see things on the map. You spot someone crushed by a piano in case two, good for you, that is going to come back in a later case. And it’s fun when those elements come back around.

Who is MicroMacro For?

This is a great activity/game for people who maybe don’t play as many board games. Or for those who do, it’s great to play when you want a little filler. To me, this is an end of the night game when you want to play a little more, but learning a new game or thinking a lot isn’t in the cards. So if you play like that in your game group, MicroMacro might be great for it.

All of that said, if you dislike Where is Waldo, MicroMacro is not going to be for you. It’s as simple as that, because that is what the game is. And you need to be fine with that as will the people you play with, otherwise it’ll go over like a lead balloon.

Final Grade on MicroMacro

I enjoy this experience. And I think it’s important to talk about it as an experience. Because it isn’t so much of a game as a cooperative Where is Waldo that tells little stories. But that is a concept that for me is fun. So I enjoy it quite well.

Now, I don’t love it. I don’t think it really has major flaws. It is exactly what it looks like. But it’s one of those things where will I want to play it all the time? The answer is going to be no. But some game nights where it’s maybe three or four total of us, sure, it’s going to be great to pull out and play again with the cases we haven’t done yet. And what’s what it should be, it shouldn’t be the greatest game of all time, but it is something that is a lot of fun.

My Grade: B-

I’m only giving my grade here. No casual or gamer grade. I think this is something that everyone knows if they like or not. So I’m just going to keep it simple and say how much I enjoyed it. And luck or strategy make no sense, this is a game of persistence.

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I have held off on getting many purely solo games. While I find it fun to play games while streaming, I generally want to share the games that I love with other people. Solo gaming can do that if you literally share the whole game with someone so they can play it, But it gives a different experience, one that isn’t shared. And that keeps me from buying many of them. But the small game, A Gentle Rain, looked too interesting, so I picked it up, which you can read about in my latest Point or Order.

A Gentle Rain

The Game

This game is extremely simple. You have a stack of tiles and you flip them over one at a time. You lay them out on the table matching sides of flowers. Eventually in your pond you get so you have four in a square. Then you place one of the matching flower discs on that corner and continue. Your goal is to get all 8 discs out, but that is easier said than done. All the flowers on the sides must match, so will you get the right tile to be able to place and complete a square. Thus far my best is seven, twice, and worst is four.

What I Don’t Like

There are two things that stand out as things people might not like. Firstly, is this a game or an activity. Well, all games are activities, so is this a game? I would say yes, but it isn’t a game like we think of when we think of bigger games. That actually leads into the second thing, the amount of luck. When I think of a big game, I want some luck, but some choice. This gives you some choice, but it’s mainly luck. Do you flip the right tile at the right time? I can see people calling this an activity because of that.

What I Like

Personally, it doesn’t bother me either way if it’s an activity or a game. A Gentle Rain is a very relaxing and fun time. It gives me just enough of that itch for playing something that I really enjoy it. It is like Onirim but easier to get to the table in terms of how I feel when I play it. I don’t think either offers me massive amounts of choices, but there is just enough that keeps it interesting.

The game is also very fast. It says it plays in 15 minutes, I think that might be long. I believe that my one play, most recent, probably took 10 minutes, and this a great thing. I like that it goes fast because there are two types of solo games I want. Sometimes I want a big experience, but more often than not, I want a solo game that fills in 10-15 minutes of time. That game I can play when I want to clear my head for just a little bit, and A Gentle Rain gives me that option.

And while I do call this game simple and lucky, there are some choices. You don’t complete a square of four cards all that often. So you need to plan or think about how you are putting out tiles to create options for yourself. Now, you don’t use most of them, but you can at least try. I feel like there is a little bit to think about, but because it is solo there is no pressure on you to think about it. That, again, goes back to that mind clearing sort of experience for the game that I really like.

Final Thoughts

This game, I don’t think it’ll be for everyone. I like it, but for a lot of gamers, it is going to be too simple. For non-gamers, they are going to look at it and wonder why you’d want to play solo. However, if you are like me and playing a game helps stretch your brain in a different way and reset kind of what you are doing or how you are thinking, A Gentle Rain is really interesting.

Like I said, Onirim gives me a bit of the same feel, but A Gentle Rain is simpler and faster. With Onirim there is a lot of shuffling, which I don’t mind, but adds to the time. A Gentle Rain doesn’t have that, you grab a tile and get going. Now the one advantage Onirim does have is play size, as A Gentle Rain grows some. All of that said, I might prefer A Gentle Rain to Onirim which is saying something as Onirim has generally been in my Top 50 games.

My Grade: A
Gamer Grade: D+
Casual Grade: B-

So, I am updating how I do this grading at the end. I have always strived to put it in such a way that people can see if it works for them. That’s been an overall grade, the gamer grade, and casual grade. The only change is it now doesn’t have that overall grade, it has “My Grade” instead. Generally the “Overall Grade” has been my grade, but acting like that was a balance of both the gamer and casual grade didn’t work that well. Just a small tweak, but should make things clearer.

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In The Mind, you are playing through levels trying to, as a group, play down your cards in numerical order. In the first level, you each have one card, so it shouldn’t be that hard. The next round two, and so on and so forth. But there’s a twist to the game, you are playing down these cards in order without communicating, and you have a limited number of times that you can mess up. The good thing is that by beating levels you can gain more lives or you can gain ninja throwing stars (it makes no thematic sense). These throwing stars allow you to all discard your lowest card without having to play it, that gives you an idea of what everyone’s next lowest card is to get the game moving again if everyone is afraid to play. Then you try and make to the highest level where you can unlock a secret new way to play the game.

If you read yesterdays article on game versus activity, you would have seen that I used The Mind as my primary example (check it out here). And, I don’t think it’ll surprise anyone that I consider The Mind to be more of an activity than a game. There technically is a point where you can win, if you beat all the levels for your player count. But to do that, there isn’t really skill, unless you are all able to count silently at the same speed, and then the skill really doesn’t come from the game. In the Mind you really are just waiting around until you feel like you’ve waited long enough, then wait a little bit more and then play the card in hopes that you’ve waited long enough. They pitch it as this quasi mystical connection that you can get by all being in sync and playing cards, but that doesn’t make it a game, it makes it an activity that has been gamified.

Now, with all that said, it doesn’t mean that it’s bad. It can be a fun activity/game. However, compared to a lot of other games, I think that this one is quite group dependent. If people aren’t able to sit still through this game and just enjoy the experience of the guessing aspect, the game is going to fall flat. And for people who play quite a number of games, the concept of this game can be hard to wrap your head around. All you’re doing is trying to guess when to play a card, there are no tells really and the game says no communication, but does that mean if I have a 2 and a 99 in round two and I play the 2, can I then lean back in my chair to show that I don’t have a card coming up for a while or is that communication, that’s something that the rules don’t tell you, so if you want to know the rules, you’re going to have to guess for that. However, if people can get into the silly nature of trying to guess and just have a good time and silently cheer when you can play numbers at lightning speed in order because you have the 46, 47, and 49 between the group, that’s fun. But even then, it’s more muted than it should be, because the game doesn’t allow for communication.

And then there are the ninja throwing stars. That could have been anything, I guess the idea of a rabbit with ninja throwing stars (yeah, I forgot to mention the rabbit), is silly. But the game itself when played isn’t that silly. Why not go with a carrot instead of a throwing star? Or, if the idea of a throwing star is that you cut off the bottom cards or throw away the bottom cards, it seems like there’s a better option or maybe a ninja instead of the rabbit ninja. This is clearly an abstract idea that you could do with any set of cards that increase in numbers. But the theming off it is odd, but in the end, I guess doesn’t matter. Again, though, for people who play more thematic games, the weird theming could throw them off versus just being a more simple completely abstract with no theme game.

Overall, for me, The Mind is a miss more than a hit when it’s made it to the table and for my playing experience. This idea of being connected and feeling when you can play cards seems to be the excuse people give for playing the game when it’s just hoping you’ve waited long enough before playing your next number. And the fact that the mind is supposed to hit that kind of filler and light style of game that can often border on party style game, it just doesn’t work for that. There are plenty of other simple and silly games where when you have that moment that you want to cheer about, you can actually cheer about it and it causes the excitement around the game to grow. Eventually with The Mind, I feel like I’m just forcing myself to play more as are the people I’ve played with, not because we’re having fun, but because we want to get over whatever hump we’ve been getting stuck on. Would I play The Mind again, sure, if people wanted to, but I’m not going to pull it out myself and I’m not going to play it 5-6 times in a row, maybe 3.

Overall Grade: C-
Gamer Grade: F
Casual Grade: C

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Taking from the Oxford dictionary, the definition of a game is:

“a form of play or sport, especially a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck”

Oxford Dictionary

According to that definition, is my example of The Mind, a game?

Basics of the Mind are that you are trying to play cards in numerical order without talking, you can see your cards but there is no communication, so you have to guess, based off of feel when to play them down, and you’re trying to get through a certain number of rounds.

By the definition of a game, it doesn’t really take skill or strength, but it is very much luck. And, I think that something that I’d say for a definition of a game, it needs to have a win condition of some sort, I think that competitive is trying to cover for that, but I think a win condition is clearer, because cooperative board games are definitely games even though you’re not competing against someone. So, the Mind, by the technical definition is a game. But, when looking at the definition, it feels like it’s lacking a little bit of what is normally a game because it is just luck based.

So, maybe it’s a combo of a game and activity. I think that you could say that all games are activities. And with the Mind, because you’re mainly just guessing when to play down a card or when to use a special ability, it feels more like an activity to me. And it is a fun group activity as you try and use body language or other non-verbal queues and non-spoiling clues to get other people to play or to have a rush of playing when the numbers are close together. For me, the Mind is more of [redacted – come back for the review].

Is it bad that it might be more of an activity than it is a game? No. I think that many party games, they are best when they are treated more as an activity than a game. When you are playing something like Stipulations and trying to come up with an answer, it’s better to put down something that you think is funny. Same with Balderdash or a game like Cards Against Humanity or Apple to Apples. Even if it isn’t the best answer or the answer most likely to win, it’s a lot of fun just to create moments where you can laugh. And you play until laughing is just starting to fade, and you’ve had a great activity without caring about who wins because you can just be goofy. If you treat them as a game, you won’t get the in-joke answers, you’ll get people trying really hard, and that’s less fun. Yes, you might be removing the game aspect from it or going against the spirit of the rules, but it’s a party game, and a party is supposed to be fun. That’s why I have issues with “party” style games that don’t led themselves to being an activity because they can’t have the same level of fun. I’ll talk about what makes a good party game later as well.

So, with the Mind or party games, they can border on an activity, and that’s fine. I think what’s not fine and some of the reason why I’m writing this article, is because there can be a sort of snooty thumbing of the nose towards these games and the people who play them. Yes, it’s not that complex a game or activity, but are the people having fun, yes. Can it be a gateway for getting people into the heavier and more complex games? Yes. Will it always do that? No, and that’s fine. We want to encourage as many diverse gamers to join the hobby as possible as that will keep the hobby growing and from becoming stale. It might not be a 4X game, an 18XX game, a euro game, or an Ameritrash game, but that’s fine depending on the group, and if they don’t want to move on to those sorts of games, it might be that game group isn’t the right one for you, but don’t disparage someone for having fun in their own way.

What is a light game that you think works better or is more of an activity? Have you tried The Mind, and do you like it? Let me know in the comments below.

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