Chromino - First Play!

31st July 2022

It's a Sunday night and we're logged into Board Game Arena for a evening of gaming entertainment.

Chrome: A reference to colour (Not the browser!).
Ino: The last syllable of 'domino'.
Chromino: Colour domino!

And that's exactly what Chromino is - dominos with colours instead of numbers.

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Caveat: We've only ever played Chromino digitally.

What's in the game?

• Tiles: These tiles are not the usual dominoes though. Instead of having 2 numbers, they have 3 colours. One colour on each end and one in the middle in any combination of 5 colours.
• Wild tiles: There are 5 wild tiles, these differ from the normal in that their centre spaces contain 'wild' colours which can be used as any colour.
• Bag: The physical version of the game also comes with a draw, that tiles are blindly drawn from.

There's very little to be said about the components here. No artwork is used, only 5 colours: blue, green, purple, red and yellow. These are bright plain colours too with no symbology to help colour blind players distinguish between them, which seems like a bit of a omission by today's standards.

Only 1 icon is used in Chrominos - which is the 'wild' symbol that always appears on a white background in the centre space.

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How's it play?
Setup

• Starting tile: Randomly draw one of the wild tiles and place it into the central playing area.
• Players: Each player should randomly draw 8 tiles from the remaining tiles, keeping them hidden from other players.
• First player: Determine a starting player.

On to play
In Chromino, players take turns playing tiles from their hand with the intention of emptying their hand first and thus winning.
On their turn, the active player will perform 1 of the following actions.

• Play tile: If the active player can play a tile, they must do so, however, there is a specific rule when doing so.
  2 contact rule: When a tile is played, it must be placed orthogonally adjacent to another tile already in play and at least 2 of its colours must orthogonally touch matching colours. Mismatched colours cannot touch. A wild symbol counts as any colour and this applies to a tile in play or about to be played.
• Draw tile: If the active player cannot play a tile they must draw a new one.
  If the tile they drew can be played, then it must be played.
  Otherwise the new tile is added to the player's hand.
• Next player: Once the active player has played or drawn a tile, play progresses to the player on their left.

Endgame
When a player has only 1 tile remaining in their hand, they must shout "Uno!", or more sensibly just announce this is their last tile to all other players and then turn that last tile face-up for all to see. Play then continues normally. 
A new rule is introduced when a player has a only 1 tile left; which is that the last tile a player puts down cannot be a wild tile. If this would be the case, they must draw a new one instead.

Then, when a player places their final tile, the current round is concluded and any players who have placed all their tiles are declared winners.

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Overall
From the brevity of the rules description, it's apparent that Chromino is a light game, which is no bad thing, it makes the game easy to learn and accessible to non gamers. It is after all, dominoes.

For me though, this level of simplicity makes the game unengaging.
I know there's a touch of strategy to be found from watching other players, possibly seeing which colours they're having trouble matching and trying to put those colours out to stymy them.
Also, when a player reveals their last tile, opponents will get an idea on how to block it but truth be told, it will also rely on luck to use these strategies.

This brings me to my main issue with the game: It's just very heavily dependent on luck more than anything else.
They'll be times when someone won't be able to play anything and will just have add a tile to their hand. This becomes even more frustrating when you watch an opponent then play a tile, this now means there's now a 2-tile difference between you and them - which in Chromino can be quite a lot.
And this seemed borne out in play. Often there would be a player - who through no fault of their own would have 2 or 3 more tiles than their opponents. Usually it meant they would never be in the running to win.

So unengaging and frustrating is how I would summarise Chromino.
​I'm not sure who would like it, fans of heavier games will shy away from this and more casual players will probably gravitate to more traditional games.
However, if you want a lightweight game a bit like dominoes... well you could just play dominoes.