Illumination

In Illumination, two monks are trying to decorate monastic books according to their own plans, and the theme is good enough that you nearly forgive the game for tying your brain in knots. It is a very strange, very thinky little two-player affair with a real presence at the table.

You build illustrations through tile placement, but that is only the starting point. An entire structure of economy, cards and scoring sits around it, so every placement carries more baggage than it first appears to. It is not enough to make something lovely; you must make it in a way that stops the other player taking it away from you.

Once an illustration has been framed, the bounded battle begins: a small game of Reversi to decide who controls that enclosed space. This is where you get properly into each other’s work, and although the idea is clever, following it can become a headache; you inspect the piece, count the consequences, inspect it again, and suddenly two monks have turned a scriptorium into an arena.

I suspect Illumination would shine far more brightly in a scripted online version where the game would not let you make a mistake. As it stands, it is attractive and full of ideas, but tiring in the particular way Curious Cargo can be.