For the experienced board gamer, travelling is an opportunity to play games. Not big-box games with lots of pieces, but smaller ones without a bunch of components. I spent most of October on the road for various work functions, and in the evenings there were several opportunities to play some great games. There are plenty of great card games that work well with large groups, but as we played one of them, Incan Gold, it was a reminder that while games don’t change much, gamers are always changing. Ten years ago I would have flat out refused to play. Now it’s one of my favorite games to trot out when there’s a big group, and not much time.
(Someday I might write a piece about when it’s important to give unloved games another chance and when you can leave well enough alone. The only problem is that I haven’t ever figured out which is which.)
My original disdain for Incan Gold (which was originally published as Diamant, and has recently been republished that way again) revolved around its simplicity. Incan Gold is one of those games that revolves around a simple binary choice every turn. Well, not a turn exactly. Following in the tradition of games like Hoity Toity, Incan Gold doesn’t actually have turns. The players all decide simultaneously whether they will continue their journey into a ruined temple, or leave. Leaving becomes tempting as the game goes on, because it’s the only way to carry all of your treasure out with you. But staying allows you the opportunity to gain even more treasure, though the odds go up that you won’t get anything at all.
As push-your-luck games go, Incan Gold is pretty bare-bones. In each round another card is revealed, representing a new room in the temple. Those rooms might contain treasure, which is divided as evenly as possible between all the players still in, or some kind of hazard. You can survive several hazards, but if two of the same type are flipped everyone is forced to leave without any treasure at all. My original issue with the game was that there really isn’t any good way to gauge the likelihood of success here. You can figure the odds broadly, but there are lots of times when the hazards chase off the players before anything interesting can happen, or when the least likely card somehow comes up and makes you lose everything. It makes no attempt to soften its luck, and something about the offended me when I was starting out in the hobby. These days I am much more inclined to play a simple game, because I’m closer to 40 than I am 30, and life is too short to keep playing long complicated games all the time.
But some other mechanical elements have become evident to me over the years. Although the decision to leave is a binary decision, it’s not always a simple one. Aside from push-your-luck mechanics, Incan Gold also forces you to outguess your opponents. Anyone who leaves has access to leftover treasure that hasn’t yet been divided, but if too many people leave at once your share is smaller. Depending on the version you’re playing, there might also be special treasures that go to people who leave the temple alone. The game rewards reading the other players and figuring out of they are the risk-taking types. The nexus of the push-your-luck and double-guessing mechanics is where Incan Gold dwells, and anyone who knows me knows that those are two of my favorite mechanics in any game.
There are a lot of practical elements that have changed my opinion on the game. Most notably, I have two kids now who are old enough to play games. Incan Gold is the rare game they can both enjoy with a table full of adults. This is partly because of the game’s structure. Since everything happens simultaneously, and in the open, the game moves quickly and provides lots of ups and downs in a short amount of time. Played over five hands, even big groups can go through a whole game in 30 minutes without breaking a sweat. Because the decision is a simple stay-or-go, the game can be played by a wide variety of ages at once. This particular quality has become important to me, because my older son especially wants to play games with adults. Incan Gold is a great candidate for that kind of job. And because the game has a fairly high level of randomness, there’s a decent chance that a young player can win, just because they were bold or cautious at the right time.
But the real secret sauce comes in the way the game does everything in the open. Because each decision is made in the open, and because everyone sees the results of every progressive step into the ancient ruins, and interesting communal atmosphere develops around the table. People who leave are cheered when they get a windfall, and people who risk it all to stay in provoke a nice “ooooo” from everyone. There are cheers and groans when every card is flipped. Even though this is a very light design, it has the ability to thrill a full table of eight players. Even those who aren’t really into this sort of game might find themselves swept up in the highs and lows of treasure-hunting, because everyone gets to experience them together. This is high-player-count gaming at its best, stripped-down, immediate, and communal.
Not that there aren’t some complaints here and there. A round can sometimes end prematurely if two of the same hazard comes out early. If this happens in the last round it can have a sharp sense of anti-climax. It’s not a problem to shuffle up the cards and replay the hand if that happens, but the rules themselves don’t sanction that. It’s also a hard game to win on purpose. I’m not sure I’ve figured out a good strategy, other than just making a moment-to-moment decision about what must be done. Some games will reward conservative play, while others will give someone a huge pile of treasure while they ride close to danger. There’s no way to tell what kind of game you’re playing, and that can make the end result a little unsatisfying. Winning is hollow when you don’t really know how you did it.
For those reasons, Incan Gold is a game best enjoyed in the moment, not after the fact. The communal experience of seeing whether someone will get more treasure or lose it all is why you play, and the victory is more of a way to crown a winner than a reward for good play. Designers Bruno Faidutti (Mascarade) and Alan Moon (Ticket to Ride) had the good sense to not overthink this one. There aren’t a lot of corrections to keep those little imperfections away, because every extra rule is one more sentence that needs to be added to an explanation. Incan Gold draws its power from its ability to make the experience exciting. To me that will always be worth a little bit of leaky design.
Games Are For Everyone 