Please Join Me In Understanding The Rules Of This Game I Got for Christmas | Defector

"My mother sent memany beautiful gifts for Christmas, including lovely ones that she made herself. I will cherish them. However, she also sent one utterly confounding gift, which overshadows the others by sheer force of its strangeness. It's a game, which is generally a good gift because I like games. I especially like ones that are easy to understand and do not have whole booklets of rules and requirements. When I first unwrapped this game, I figured it couldn't possibly be complicated because it was so small."

"Here is what was in the box: one set of instructions, printed on adouble-sided piece of paper one kind of long yellow string 20 shiny black oblong magnets one terrible small plastic bag First, we should go through the instructions and see if we can learn to play. We shall start with side one of the piece of paper which has two sections "Game Ready" and "Game Play." I have retained the original spelling and spacing so we can get the full experience. Here is what it says under "Game Ready": Lay the game rope flat on the table or level, and divide the magnet pieces evenly among the players. Okay. Easy enough. I throw the game rope (piece of string) onto the ground. I divide the magnets in half: some for me, some for you."

"Let's move on. Under "Game Play" it says: Each player places one piece in the game rope in turn. If a player places a piece and two or more pieces are sucked, the player must remove all the pieces that are sucked together. Finally which player will be in the hands of all the piece placed in the game rope, the player wins!"

A mother gave many handmade Christmas gifts and one perplexing boxed game called "Magnetic." The box holds a double-sided instruction sheet, a long yellow string, twenty shiny black oblong magnets, and a tiny plastic bag. The small size suggested simplicity, but the printed directions are grammatically odd and unclear. Setup instructs players to lay the rope flat and divide magnets evenly. Gameplay directs placing pieces into the rope, removing groups if two or more are "sucked," and declares a winner as the player holding all pieces placed in the rope. Key actions remain undefined and confusing.

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