Da Vinci's Challenge

To you, you lovers of strategy games, you appreciators of perceptual challenges, we present, with great pleasure, the latest Major FUN Award-winner: DaVinci's Challenge.

Each player has a collection of 72 pieces. There are two kinds of pieces: ovals (or lenses), and triangles (each side curving inwards). The circular board looks like something a playful geometer might have made with here compass - all curving lines, circles intersecting circles, hexagons and six-branched star shapes. The object of the game is to place your pieces so they form one of nine different patterns - the more complex patterns scoring higher because they are more difficult to form and easier to block.

One of the chief delights of the game occurs when you complete multiple patterns with a single move - placing one of your triangular pieces in a space surrounded by three of your lens-shaped pieces, for example, could complete a gem (for 5 points, or, if it's adjacent to another triangle, it could also complete an hourglass (for an additional 10 points). No matter how lost one gets in the strategic implications of it all, your eye is continually delighted by the visual challenge that comes from trying perceive potential patterns that you or your opponent might complete.

Score sheets turn out to be exceptionally useful for novices, helping them remember all of the different patterns.

Major FUN, in deed.