.jpg)
PROTECT YOUR DNA WITH QUANTUM TECHNOLOGY
Orgo-Life the new way to the future Advertising by AdpathwayDo you want early access to our giveaways? Do you want to read our reviews before your friends?
Join the COOL KIDS by subscribing to EverythingBoardGames.Com’s Email List Today!!
Quick Look: Unvention
Designer: Amir Aein
Artist: Naeem Tadayon
Publisher: Unvention Games
Year Published: 2025 (Live on Kickstarter link at the bottom of this review)
No. of Players: 2-5 (with a dedicated solo mode available)
Ages: 10+
Playing Time: 30-60 minutes.
Find more info HERE.
From the Publisher:
It is the turn of the 19th century, and the world is surging forward into the Second Industrial Revolution. Mechanization, electrification, and bold innovation are reshaping society at an unprecedented pace. Nations rally their greatest minds to craft inventions that will define the future.
To celebrate this new age of discovery, the most prestigious International Invention Exhibition has been established—an extraordinary event where visionaries from around the world gather to showcase their ingenuity. Here, only the most daring ideas will earn their place in history.
You have been invited to compete, and the prize is a future of your own design.
Unvention is a competitive roll-and-write game where players take part in a prestigious weekend-long invention competition. Over the course of three days—Friday through Sunday—players journal their designs, gather parts, and construct mechanisms to bring their most ambitious inventions to life.
Disclaimer: The publisher provided the prototype flies of Unvention. The opinions expressed in the review are completely my own.
Review:
Overview:
The theme is set – an invention competition in the 19th century sets the scene for this roll-and-write, print and play game from Amir Aein.
Players will need access to a printer, some pencils and some six-sided dice to enjoy the game. Beyond that, you’ll need about 15 minutes to familiarize yourself with the ruleset and then jump right in. The publisher does state that virtual play was in mind from the start and that he has some “low budget online tools” to help with playing virtually.
The Rulebook:
A print-and-play, roll-and-write game is going to rely heavily on simple rules that leave room for some strategy for the players to chew on. Unvention appears to capture this fairly well. The rulebook is honestly written in a manner that it’s easiest to play through a game alongside the rules to get started.
The sections of the rulebook do a good job of leading you through the gameplay one step at a time, providing the information you need to fully understand what you are trying to accomplish in the current phase. It doesn’t take long before you can see where the strategy is leading you.
The Play:
Unvention thematically takes place over a three day weekend competition between the players to develop and complete three complex inventions. Players are rewarded for fully complete inventions but can still gather victory points for inventions that they were able to work on without fully completing them.
The game is played in three cycles (days) that are made up of an undetermined number of rounds, depending on the gameplay. Each round consists of rolling five six-sided dice, journaling your results, mapping out the workshop, building mechanisms and finally using mechanisms in an invention. The end of each day is triggered based on a player completing a journal. The first day, Friday, ends when someone has filled at least one journal, Saturday ends when someone has completed at least two journals and Sunday when someone has completed at least three journals.
Each round begins with rolling five six-sided dice and then grouping them in “equals” and “unequals”. This provides the player with the base numbers they will use this round throughout their inventing process. Should the player roll five non-repeating numbers, they gain a “double wild”, allowing them to create two different groups of “equals”.
Players then choose one group of dice and place the numbers from that group into a single journal on their scoresheet. Journals work like miniature Sudoku puzzles, each being made up of four quadrants of four cells. Numbers are not allowed to repeat within the quadrant, row or column of cells. Players are required to journal each round and must sacrifice the ability to gain wrenches or ideas should they not be able to make a legal entry.
Players then move to their workshops, choosing a different group of dice from their initial roll than they used for journaling. Here, they find four workshops with scattered number patterns throughout. Workshopping is not as strict as journaling as players can choose to skip this entirely, use some of the group of dice or use all of them. Players also have the option to use any wrenches gained from their journaling in their workshops as well.
The goal in workshopping is to create shapes to accomplish two goals – inventions and tools. There are four tools available in the game. When a player completes a specific shape of a tool, they gain the unique ability of that tool as well as victory points based on whether they were the first player to unlock it or not. At the same time, they are trying to create shapes (thematically called mechanisms) to transfer to one of their inventions.
Once players have completed their workshops, they can spend acquired wrenches to move their mechanisms to their invention charts, attempting to arrange the shapes in polyomino fashion to create a complete invention that is hopefully full of mechanisms from various workshops.
Each of the three inventions that players are racing to complete in the most complex way possible contain bonuses based on how they were assembled. The “Integron Assembly” will reward the inventor that used as many mechanisms as possible to complete it. The “Unison Motorworks” provides additional rewards for using the same shape numerous times. Finally, the “Lateral Arc Engine” provides a multiplier based on mechanisms of different sizes. Each invention provides a bonus for using items from the four different workshops and a completion bonus depending on which day they were completed.
At the end of each day, a player may present one of their inventions to the competition for scoring, remembering that there is a completion bonus applied if the invention is fully built, but an incomplete invention can still be presented for points.
The completion of the third day brings the game to an end. Players will compile their total points for inventions and points based on their use of tools from the weekend and declare someone a winner. Ties are broken by way of completed journals. If players remain tied, the player with the most unused wrenches wins. If players are still tied, the player with the single highest valued invention is declared the winner.
Theme:
Thematically, this game leans into itself pretty hard. Journals, mechanisms, tools, wrenches, ideas and building are all terms that lend themselves both to the theme and gameplay. The addition of some components, should the game become more than just a print-and-play, would help solidify the theme. Overall, it is easy to get lost in the idea of being an inventor at an international competition to create the next great widget of the 19th century.
Components:
The rulebook is well put together, easy to follow and straight forward. The player score sheets are put together in a logical way that aids in the flow of the game. Largely, the components will rely on the player providing a high quality printer, dice and writing utensils that create a fun environment.
Thoughts:
Admittedly, I’m not a huge fan of roll-and-write games. Some of them find themselves in a regular rotation of games on my shelf while others are played and discarded shortly after. This one plays smoothly and, I would say, tends to stray closer to the 30 minute time commitment. It’s quick, easy and fun. We were able to try it at two players and with a group of four and felt that both games moved along well, were entertaining and didn’t get stale.
Roll-and-write games can get repetitive quickly as you simply roll dice and look to fill in areas on a map, graph or score sheet. I appreciate the combination of Sudoku play along with polyomino placement to keep this game fresh. After a few gameplays, it hasn’t felt overly repetitive. There’s enough strategy here to draw players back in to try a different approach in subsequent plays.
Conclusion:
Unvention will find itself in rotation to my table, at least for a while. I wouldn’t place it at the top of my list of games that I want to play at any given moment, but it can be a fun game to scratch an itch. One of the great things about it is the portability. Five dice, a few pieces of paper, a pencil and a small dice tray and you’re fully setup to play this game. I hear a lot of people say “what could I play on an airplane, on a hotel desk or on a train” and this game fits that category easily.
On another note, Unvention has a current Kickstarter campaign and is definitely worth the $6 USD to add it to your collection. One of the great things about a game such as this one is the lack of overhead that needs to be covered to deliver it to players.
That said, I’m a gamer who likes “stuff”. If there were an added campaign level that would allow me to acquire a thematic set of dice, laminated player sheets or other components from Unvention, I would probably be enticed to spend a few more dollars on it.
After reading Bill’s review, if this sounds like a game for you at the time of this posting Unvention is on KICKSTARTER until Thur, April 10 2022 7:25 PM PDT, and has surpassed its funding goal of $69. Check it out and back it for only $6 HERE.
Did you get it based on our review? Please comment below letting us know!
Do you find that you’re missing too many reviews as we drop them? Provide your name and email below and we’ll keep you in the know of what we reviewed that week as well as other hot news!!!!!
Name
Email
Marketing permission: I give my consent to to be in touch with me via email using the information I have provided in this form for the purpose of news, updates and marketing.What to expect: If you wish to withdraw your consent and stop hearing from us, simply click the unsubscribe link at the bottom of every email we send or contact us at gettinggeekywithgamerleaf@gmail.com. We value and respect your personal data and privacy. To view our privacy policy, please visit our website. By submitting this form, you agree that we may process your information in accordance with these terms.
Bill Ivie Reviewer
Bill has been an avid gamer most of his life and is always willing to pull up a chair and play a game. He works in IT and has for the past 25 years. He has six kids and an amazing wife, all of which are willing to play games of differing difficulties and mechanisms. He serves as the Board Game Director for Meeple-A-Thon, a charity in the Kansas City area that runs an annual convention to generate funds. His favorite games are Ark Nova, Terraforming Mars and Dice Throne. When he’s not playing games, you can find him watching baseball or football or traveling with his family.
All of Bill Ivie‘s reviews can be found HERE.
English (US) ·