Sour Patch Kids Sixem Review

boardgamequest.com:

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen my kids more excited to play a game that has landed on my doorstep than when Sour Patch Kids Sixem arrived. Despite their limited reading skills, they quickly recognized the Sour Patch Kids logo on the box.

Much to their chagrin, eating these tasty candies was actually not part of the game (although props to publisher Hootenanny Games for including a box of them with the review copy. My kids quickly ate them all up when I wasn’t looking. No, I’m not bitter about that). The game itself is a fast-paced dice game where players are rolling dice trying to get specific numbers.

The goal in Sour Patch Sixem is to be the first player to accomplish the game’s objective. Usually, this is marking off one or two lines of numbers/colors on your board. Each player board has columns numbers 1-6, and rows with 6 different colors.

When someone says go, all players roll and reroll their dice at the same time. As soon as one player has a straight run of 1-6, they call out stop and all players must stop rolling. Beginning with the player to the left of the one that called stop, they mark off on their board each number they rolled in the matching color’s row. If they have any duplicate numbers rolled, they must choose one of the dice to use.

The wrinkle comes when one person has previously marked off the space matching their die. In that case, they can choose to be Sweet, allowing another player to use that die to mark off a matching space. Or they can be Sour, forcing another player to erase the matching number from their board.

If nobody has won at this point, another round begins. The game ends after one player has completed a row on their board.

I’ll admit, after reading through the rulebook for this game, I was a bit skeptical. Reading it through the lens of a gamer, I couldn’t figure out why any player would ever be “Sweet”, giving free marks to another player. I mean, it’s a race to the finish and why would you ever help an opponent?

Well, what I