Macroscope, Game Review

It is a challenge understanding what you’re looking at when you can only see bits and pieces of the whole picture. You slowly unlock the clues to what you’re looking at. Timing is critical as others are racing along the same path to discovery. You’re using your skills, and improving your powers of deduction. Can you figure it out before another person can piece together the clues?

Macroscope is a game of such discovery and understanding. Players are competing to discover what picture is hidden in the Macroscope from the small sections that can be seen. Macroscope was designed by Martin Nedergaard Andersen for 2 to 6 players of ages 6+. He did a wonderful job of creating a game younger players are intrigued by.

A picture is hidden in the Macroscope and on your turn you are able to reveal portions of the picture by “opening” viewports. Then you have the choice of guessing what the picture is, or moving on to the next player. This continues until all of the locations are opened and no one guesses, or someone attempts to identify the hidden picture.

The game moves quickly. There are twelve ports on the Macroscope and each turn allows a person to remove one or two tokens covering the viewports. Removing a token port is a simple aspect of rolling a pair of dice and removing a token with the matching number to one of the dice. If no matching numbers remain, the player can remove any of the remaining tokens. This continues until a guess is made, or all of the tokens are removed.

Making a guess carries risk. When a player identifies the picture they receive scoring crystals equal to the number of still closed locations on the Macroscope. An incorrect guess means the player has to pay to the pool that number of scoring crystals. More than one person can guess at a time, but each guess must be different than any already called out—so there can only be one player receiving the scoring crystals and everyone else must give theirs up. That’s the end of a turn.

If all of the tokens are removed without a guess, the tokens are replaced randomly and the game moves on to the next hidden picture. When this happens the turn hasn’t ended, you’re just working on a new picture.

There are ten turns to a game and lasts about 30 minutes. The first time playing the game give yourself some extra time to punch out the pieces and build your Macroscope.

Your family will be able to come back to Macroscope and play again. There are 200 double sided pictures in the Macroscope, or 400 rounds of play. It is well designed to allow going through the deck one direction, then the other. I don’t think there would be many people who could remember what they saw in earlier games by the time they worked through the rest of the pictures.

Macroscope was designed by Martin Nedergaard Andersen, published by Lifestyle Games, and distributed by Mayday Games. It is made for 2–6 players of ages 6+, and to last 30 minutes.

If you have a comment, suggestion, or critique please leave a comment here or send an email to guildmastergaming@gmail.com.

You can also join Guild Master Gaming on Google+, Facebook, and Twitter (@GuildMstrGmng).