Card Game Review:
Point Salad
Rating: 7.6 out of 10 stars
Intro
What I hope to accomplish with my card game reviews is to introduce you to a new game and help you determine whether the game is a good fit for you. I will consider and rank five criteria: gameplay, design, strategy, originality, and replayability.
Description
Point Salad is a card drafting game for 2-6 players. It has over a 100 ways to earn points, which is why it is called point salad. In the gaming world, point salad has come to mean a game in which there are a ridiculous amount of ways to amass points and win. The name is very fitting and clever.
Gameplay (8 out of 10 stars)
The game is super simple. On your turn you can take one point card or two veggie cards. The point cards dictate what veggies you need to earn points. The veggies allow you to actually earn those points.
There is another optional action that you can do once per turn. That is to flip over a point card in order to gain the veggie on its back. (Cards are doublesided.)
That’s it. Easy to learn, harder to master.
Design (6 out of 10 stars)
Design includes two categories: art and components.
The art is aesthetically pleasing, but nothing special. The designs are simple and generic.
It’s a basic card game, so there is not much in the form of components, but that is understandable.
Strategy (8 out of 10 stars)
The strategy level in this game is very high because of the ways to earn points. There is a definite gap between those players who are making decisions on the spur on the moment and those that really know what they are doing. My dad is an expert player and thinks more mathematically than I do, so he beat me by more than a hundred points last time we played.
Originality/Creativity (9 out of 10 stars)
This game is creative, especially in the way that it utilizes both sides of the card, and by the sheer number of ways to get points. The title is creative too, as I said earlier. There is not a game in my family’s collection that is quite like it.
Replayability (7 out of 10 stars)
It is short so you can play several times in a row. I do think it would get old if it were played too often though, mainly because the gameplay is so simple. Serious board gamers may get bored quickly.
Conclusion
The game box says it is for ages 14 and up, but I would say any child who knows rudimentary math skills should be fine playing this game. In fact, it could be used to help children develop their math skills. It is not primarily an educational game, however–it is mostly just fun. I played this game with a variety of people of different ages and everyone enjoyed it, so I would recommend it to anyone who enjoys simple but creative card games.
The Queer Schizophrenic 