How many parents out there have kids who love to pretend that they are Harry Potter, Ron Weasley, or Hermione Granger? Heck, maybe even you have been known to cast a spell or two! “Wizard Roll”, a simple tabletop family game, lets you do just that. You’ll be rolling dice and claiming elements/runes in order to be the first to complete spells and thus earn points. The first player to seven points wins. Special thanks to the folks at RoosterFin Games for providing me with a press copy for review purposes.
Due to medical issues I opted to convey the gameplay in a video as opposed to writing out the rules. I think it’s more fun to do it this way anyway. For those that don’t want to watch it, the rules are actually pretty easy to explain. The rulebook is actually just a double-sided sheet so it takes maybe five minutes to grasp the concept and understand what’s going on. This makes the game very family-friendly, though it does end up making the game extremely luck-based. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing, but there are a lot of hardcore gamers out there who despise dice-rolling games for that reason. If you’re looking for something in-depth and complicated with dice-manipulation mechanics, keep looking.
On the other hand…if you’re a casual gamer family or looking for something that your picky grandparents can play with your kids, “Wizard Roll” is a great choice. The components are fairly large, nice to look at, and very durable. I think it’s a bit too casual to be a filler for the above mentioned seriously strategic gamer as the only real strategy the game has to offer is that it encourages you to remember what your opponent needs for their card (there are times where you have to give them a rune or element). To that end “Wizard Roll” is very genre-specific, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a good game and it clearly does what it sets out to do very well.
Final Verdict: 8/10
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