Overview of Floating Market

 Without putting it in a long box, I decided to dedicate the next review to the game Floating Market from our acquaintance from Morocco, Ben Pinchback. This time around, Ben sends players on a much weirder mission than controlling market stalls — we'll play as tiny Thai shekels who scour the floating market in search of fruit for their grandmother's salad. Whoever collects all the ingredients first will receive a salad from grandma.

 As I said in the previous article, the toy packaging components of this company are great, but the gameplay... We will look at it today. Let's find out what is hidden behind the phrase of the authors in the description: "Experienced board players will appreciate the unique combination of long-familiar and new mechanics of rolling multifaceted cubes with fast and fun gameplay."

WHAT IS THE GAME ABOUT?

 In the first paragraph, the entire plot, which, like almost most Euro-boxes, is unnecessary. But, let's face it, the subject is... offbeat/funny/ridiculous (emphasis added)? The justification for collecting a set of multi-colored cards in the form of "you're a granddaughter, but here's a papaya" is kind of... strange, in general. But that is not the point. You will not be able to immerse yourself in the atmosphere of the game in any case, neither at the expense of the design, nor at the expense of the theme or mechanics. Here we will roll multifaceted dice.

WHAT'S IN THE BOX?

 The playing field, which is a floating market and its surroundings:

 Several tokens for operating on the playing field:

 Player Color Meeples and First Player Marker:

 Fruit and Coin Cards:

 A mountain of player-colored dice, all suits from d6 to d12:

HOW TO PLAY?

 There are seven types of fruit represented by cards. The object of the game is to be the first to collect 5 or 7 different ones depending on how long you want the game to be. These fruits are stored on boats, and all the efforts of the players will be directed to getting the cherished fruits from them.

 To do this, each round, party members alternately place their minions in action slots (usually "one slot = one person"). There are three meeples per face and they are displayed one at a time for several laps, after which, at the end of the round, it is determined which boat brought the fruit. And this is the central mechanic of Floating Market - which fruit is given in the round is determined by throwing a mountain of cubes.

 The same cubes that are declared as game pieces are sets for each player consisting of two hexagons (2d6), one ten-hedron (d10), one dodecahedron (d12) and one tetrahedron (d4). The point is that by displaying your three myples, you add one more cube to the general pool. As a result, the final roll is made with a handful of dice, made up of the dice of all the players (one per person).

 For each boat on the playing field, a value is determined, when it falls, it brings a fruit, and the one who sent his soap boy to it receives a cherished card. In addition to the boats themselves, there are "modifier" locations on the field, such as: send a ship here - throw a "+2 to the final value" marker into the general pool of cubes.

 With the help of such simple "bets" on a specific boat and attempts to modify the throw in your direction, the game goes on: each round, three little men from each player run away to boats/locations, after which we shake a handful of cubes collected by the combined forces of the cubes and see who got the fruit . Next round.

 Among the nuances, there are also coins, outstanding for those who guessed the number that fell out, not exactly, but it turned out to be quite close to the final one. You can buy the desired fruit in a special slot for the amount of these coins. In other words, one coin is a quarter of any fruit, because four pieces are asked for the whole.

IMPRESSION

 What can I say - both after the first and after the following batches, the impressions actually did not change, which is rare, because they did not shift by one degree or in any direction. Floating Market is a completely random dice game, with players trying to get to the average arithmetic roll. In general, the above proposal explains the whole point of the flooring. It is not at all worth going for a combination of cube throwing and maple placement - there is no cunning interweaving and interaction of them, but there is a guess.

 There is only one feeling from the action: "Come on, come on, cubes, show me the right number!" The sad thing is that, as it happens in deliberately bad and average games, here the player does not influence the result of the throw, he just watches what happens by chance. The author of the box tried to take advantage of the variability of players' preparation for the final throw by choosing a cube added to the pool; plus, tried to introduce an indirect mechanic of getting fruits - when the number that fell out does not fall into the boat where your boy is, everyone who at least roughly guessed the final value (found himself on boats nearby) gets a couple of coins, having scored which, later can buy any fruit in a special slot.

 It turns out that every round the players just throw dice, someone (sometimes two) gets a fruit card, someone coins, and so on from turn to turn. In other words, Floating Market doesn't have the thrill that players are looking for in a push. The throw is the result. Next round. The throw is the result. Next round. No other emotional and intellectual inserts. Between these repetitions, only the distribution of three of your meeples on slots, which do not bring anything new: well, +2 to the final value, well, -4 to it, but here you can get coins, even if you make a big mistake with guessing.

 The emptiness of the gameplay can only be covered by excellent components and good illustrations, and excitement, since the throws happen quite quickly and regularly, plus the game itself does not last long at all. What else are the pluses? Let's try to find interesting solutions in the game. When you roll your first dice each round, you must add one of the dice to the pool, thus setting the roll's range. You can put a soap on the boat to block it, but since you don't yet have much information about what dice will be in the pool, you can only guess at the final range. And you can put the dice in some slot action, such as "+2 to roll", and only after a round of moves - when each player has already added his dice to the pool - decide which boat to send the boy to (if he is not already busy with more agile and risky boys).

 It turns out that the further you are in the turn queue circle, the more information your opponents give you, which allows you to choose a boat more accurately. It sounds logical, but. But this works very poorly in the game, because you can usually stick your little men on the maximum number of free boats and just hope for luck. The strategy, I'll tell you, is quite good in the Floating Market, because you can't influence the result in any way, and blind luck can punish you or lead to victory.

 The whole game merges into one "throw-and-dwin", and all the nuances and possibilities with the actions of rolling the dice look like something unnecessary, made to make the process seem more complicated than it really is. In a hint where victory depends on the roll of the dice, it cannot be made the final determining factor. First the throw, then manipulations with it - in this case, a game arises, a space for decisions is born, and the results depend on those who play. And when you first do something, affect the dice, and then roll — it's pointless.

 It's also funny that there are so many action slots on the field, each of which affects the proceedings in such a small way that, as I wrote above, you can just send meeple boys to random boats and win with no chance at all. Yes, one should roughly imagine the probability distribution, exactly at the level of a child: conditionally add up the values of all the cubes and divide by two to find the middle - but this is a kind of complexity and the basis for "making decisions".

 Who is this game made for? As stated by the authors, it is simple and necessary for family gatherings - not difficult, but not completely stupid, with an interesting mechanic of obtaining fruit at the expense of cubes. What is so attractive about the throw that determines who gets the winning point (and fruits are actually software, when a certain number of which one of the participants accumulates, wins) is not entirely clear to me. Perhaps, indeed, it is possible to play with children, but against the background of the rest of the representatives of this category, the choice of Floating Market seems unjustified. The topic is so-so, watching someone throw out the number he needs is also not a high-class pleasure, and doing it for half an hour is completely sad.

CONCLUSIONS

 Too simple. Too random. As always, I advise you to try it if you really want to or the topic interests you, but this dish is not recommended for shopping or game night. Do you really like to roll colorful dice and there is nothing more suitable at hand?