THE SPILL
A slippery slope to success
Designer: Andy Kim | Publisher: Smirk & Dagger Games
No other cooperative game manages to make removing cubes from the board as satisfying as Pandemic. A newcomer to the scene has to offer something extraordinary to escape Pandemic’s gigantic shadow, and The Spill definitely gives it a good try.
The Spill’s most compelling success is the tight interweaving between the game’s theme and the mechanics. Players are a response team coming out to the ocean to a recent accidental oil rig spillage. They will have to contain the spill, while attempting to save the local sea wildlife. In The Spill, ‘the cubes on a map’ take the form of black dice (representing oil) that can populate the circular board of four sectors each divided into six lanes, corresponding to the six-sided dice values. Players will be rolling these dice by using the oil rig dice tower and placing them according to which sector the fall and which value they show. If the dice lands on the animal, they become contaminated and if not saved immediately will have to go into a sick bay. If all three spaces on a lane are covered in oil – dice – the spill occurs, which may increase the number of dice players will need to drop in the dice tower on subsequent turns. If the spills get out of hand or there are too many animals in the sick bay, the players lose.