Hitch a Ride Home in Echidna Shuffle

Can you get your three bugs home by hitching a ride on the back of friendly echidnas? There’s an awful lot of them wandering around, though, so it may cause a bit of a traffic jam on the way home.

Echidna Shuffle is a 10-20 minute family board game from Wattsalpoag Games, designed for 2-6 players.

Gameplay

The goal of Echidna Shuffle is to be the first player to get all three of your insects onto your three tree stumps. The board is made up of a series of spaces that are connected by arrows that show the allowed movement. The twelve echidnas are placed randomly around the board. Each player also puts his pickup marker on an empty space, and each player has the three tree stumps in his player color placed on spaces around the board by the player on his left.

On a player’s first turn, he rolls the die to obtain a value from 2 through 7. This is how many spaces he must move echidnas this turn. Only one echidna can be on a space at a time and they cannot jump over each other, so echidnas must be moved out of the way of one another. Next to the board is the number board. When a player rolls the die on his turn, he places his player marker on the top of the number board, on the space showing the number he rolled. On his next turn, he will not roll the die, but instead slide his marker down to the connected space on the number board. The number on that space will determine how many movement points he has for that turn. At the end of the turn, he will remove his marker from the number board and will go back to rolling the die on the next turn.

Therefore, if a player has a high roll on one turn, the next turn he will have fewer movement points, while if he has a low roll one turn, he will have more movement points on the next turn.

When a player has an echidna on the same spot as his pickup marker, and it is his turn, and that echidna is not currently holding an insect, the player puts one of his insects onto the echidna (this does not cost any movement points). If that echidna ever moves onto a space with one of that player’s tree stumps, the bug will move onto the tree stump and both are removed from the board (even on another player's turn!). As soon as a player delivers a third insect onto the tree stumps, the game ends, and this player is declared the winner.

Photo courtesy of Wattsalpoag Games

Review

Echidna Shuffle feels like a sliding puzzle mixed with a traffic jam. How can you move the echidnas around the board to make way for your bugs and get them home, while blocking off other players?

This is quite a clever implementation of a roll-and-move mechanic. Yes, there’s some luck, but you know if you roll badly this time, it means you’ll have lots of movement next round. It’s also open information, so you can use that to block an opponent. Maybe they had lots of movement this turn, but you know their options will be limited next time, so you can purposefully move echidnas in their way, knowing exactly how many movement points they’ll have to work with next time.

The component quality is absolutely top-notch, giving the game a fantastic table presence. The board is large and the echidnas are nice, chunky game pieces that give a great tactile element to the game, as they’re very fun to move around. The bugs slot into their backs, and there’s some nice detailing on the bugs themselves. This is just a really nice-looking game. The board is also double-sided, offering some variety for different movement options on the reverse side. The only real flaw is the rulebook, which lacks examples and is mostly just blocks of text.

There is a lot of take-that and messing with other players’ plans in this game. This is not going to go over well with everyone. Also, at a full player count, gameplay could get quite chaotic. Still, we enjoyed this one. It felt unique and looked fabulous.

Disclosure: we received a complimentary review copy of this game.