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Do
you know what I hate most about game stores?
It’s the little games that look cool and don’t cost a whole
lot. I know that sounds
funny. You would think that a
game that is cool and inexpensive would not incur my wrath.
But, if you think about it, it has just the opposite effect.
I mean there is only so much money you can spend before the wife
starts to get all riled up. Many little games are just as expensive as one big game.
A prime example of such a game is Proteus.
Proteus
is simple and inexpensive but it also fulfills the gamers’ need for a
strategy game. See, you take
Chess and then make it just a little bit feistier.
Oh yeah…and you play with dice, not chess pieces.
Intrigued yet? I was
when I first saw the package.
You play the game on a regular chess board with regular chess rules. Each player gets 8 dice, as opposed to 16 chess pieces. Each die is imprinted with 6 different symbols: a pawn, a bishop, a knight, a rook, a queen and a pyramid (I know…don’t say anything, I’ll get to it). You start the game on the first two rows of black squares and all of the dice are turned to pawns. Now is where the fun starts. During your turn, you move a piece. Remember that regular chess rules apply. Then, after you move, you rotate a different die to another symbol. You can only go up or down in rank by one, so a bishop can become a knight or a pawn. A rook can become a queen or a knight. A pawn can become a pyramid. OK. I’ll tell you. Pyramids are like a wall. They cannot be captured or moved through. They can still be moved over by a knight. Pretty tricky, huh? So you can have 8 queens on the board if you want. But you may not want that. Here’s why. You win by points, not a checkmate. Notice there is no King? No King - no checkmate.
The
point values are as follows:
Pyramid – cannot be captured
Pawn – 2 points
Bishop – 3 points
Knight – 4 points
Rook – 5 points
Queen – 6 points
The
game is over when one player is down to only one die left or if one player
cannot make a legal move. Count-up
your points, and you have your winner.
Now you see why you may not want 6 queens?
That is a lot of points!
Of
course, the cool thing about this game is the variants.
What did you expect? These
are dice. Some of the variants involve rolling the die instead of
rotating. So, you could have
a queen take someone’s knight and then that queen gets rolled back down
to a pawn. Did I mention this
game could get feisty?
This isn’t a long review because there really isn’t that much to the game. As I said before, it is easy to pick up but still provides some hard-core strategy planning to win. Do you rotate up or down? You know, that kind of stuff.
The price is only $9.95, so that makes it very accessible. The game gets a solid 3.75 on the NGG Scale. It loses some points because it may not be for everyone and you only get dice with the package. Die-hard chess purists may have a problem with this game, but chess enthusiasts might like the variety that this provides.
It also loses points because a chessboard is not supplied.
I know, every gamer should have one anyhow, but we try to rate on
completeness. All in all,
this is a good game and well worth ten bucks.
Written by
Bill Albanito
(Posted 9-27-2001)