Rome & Roll

I opened Rome & Roll with expectations: it comes from a designer I had already noticed through a favourite influencer, and construction games that ask for a few good Tetris skills are a weakness of mine. On the table, it looks like a clever idea that wants to move briskly and cleanly, but its own physical materials hold it back a little.

At its core, it is a dice-drafting racing game. You choose dice and try to advance efficiently while building your own area in a way that makes the most of the space. The building puzzle is exactly the pleasant spatial challenge I expect from a game with a Tetris-like feel.

The race and the draft offer tactical choices and keep the flow lively without making it tiring. The importance of arranging things well becomes especially clear near the end, when you are trying to calculate adjacency bonuses and squeeze the best possible connection into the available boxes.

That is precisely where the writing side bothered me. The markers in the box are far too thick for the board's small boxes, so keeping a clear record becomes difficult, and the endgame can torment you a little. It is not a problem that ruins the game, but I would have preferred better markers or a larger board. Even so, Rome & Roll moves along pleasantly, has replayability and enough tactical depth; if you like this kind of game, it is worth a look.