Calling all inventors! It’s time to build the most magnificent machine to win top prize at the Great Science Fair! 

Gizmos will require you to sharpen your minds, plan ahead, and build an efficient engine. It’s no easy task, but it’s one families are bound to enjoy!

How Do You Play?

Gizmos is an engine building game where you are attempting to build the best machines to help you do things faster. At the beginning of the game you are limited as to what you are able to do. You are allowed to take one action on your turn, your goal is to use those actions to gather the energy you need (marbles) to build new attachments to your machine and make it more efficient. You build these attachments by paying their energy cost (marbles) back into the supply, taking the card, and adding it into your player area.

These new attachments allow you to take additional actions on your turn when various conditions are met. The more you build, the better your machine becomes so your one action on your turn will trigger chain reactions that let you do far more than you could in the beginning of the game. 

At the end of the game, the player who has collected the most victory points wins.

What Do We Think?

Gizmos is an impressive engine building game with really great table presence. The marble dispenser is a very unique element and so much more fun than if they would have used a simple bag. 

One of the things that really stuck out to me about Gizmos was the pacing felt in the game. Every game starts out slow, players only have one action and no one has built any attachments so nothing really sparks a chain reaction. Then, as more attachments are built, things really start to rev up and the tension between the players builds. The game culminates into what feels like a race as players work to finalize their engines before the end is triggered. This happens when someone has either built their 16th card or a player has built their fourth level 3 card.

I like that the end of the game is something that players can race towards or stall rather than having a set number of rounds. This provides an interesting strategy element for players to work through. You can rush the end of the game by building cheaper attachments onto your engine, but you might still lose if you don’t gather enough victory points.

Order Matters

One thing I absolutely love is that players have the ability to take their action bonuses that are triggered by their initial move in any order they wish. This is really where the brain starts burning because if you can build your machine just so, you can strategically trigger different parts of your engine so that you’re using multiple different cards to earn victory points, snag new attachments, and harvest energy on a single turn. 

It really starts to feel like you’ve invented a Rube Goldberg contraption. When it all comes together it is incredibly satisfying. 

Learning Curve

When it doesn’t come together though, it is quite frustrating. From our experience, Gizmos takes a few plays to really get the hang of it. There are quite a lot of cards out there and you surely won’t see them all on your first or even second plays, especially at lower player counts, (more on that below.) So don’t be surprised if on your first few plays you can’t seem to build anything that feels efficient. 

When you can’t seem to get the cards you need to make your engine work can be very frustrating. There is certainly an element of luck that can cut against players, be it the cards just aren’t in their favor or the energy marbles never seem to show up in the colors they need. 

Luckily with the former there is a nice mitigation element in the Research action which allows you to look at a number of cards from a deck to possibly build one that you need. With the energy marbles you’re also given multiple opportunities to build elements that allow you to pick a marble at random from the supply – this can help when the visible marbles just aren’t what you need. 

Knowing how to build the right attachments to your engine so you can combat some of this luck is just another element to the learning curve in the game. 

For some it’ll be addictingly fun, but others might find it frustrating if they can’t seem to figure it out.

How does it play with two?

Gizmos plays decent at two but really shines at the three and four player counts. The main reason for this is that you are able to see far more cards in a 3 and 4 player game than in the two player game. In the two player games we felt like we spent a lot of our time researching through the decks for cards we could use. 

You also are far less at the mercy of the marble dispenser in a full player count game than at two. With fewer people pulling from the dispenser, the available marbles can remain stagnant and unhelpful. This makes it difficult draft the colors you need to build or trigger your machines.

Is Gizmos a Good Game for Kids and Families? 

If you are wanting a fun engine building game the whole family can enjoy together, Gizmos is a great choice. The game is language independent and all of the iconography is easily understood or quickly referenced if clarification is needed. 

I love how simple and streamlined this designer makes his games. Paul Walker Harding has a gift for making games with interesting mechanics and clever puzzles that are quickly learned and playable by a wide range of audiences. (See Cloud City — another of his designs we reviewed and loved.) 

Because of this accessibility, Gizmos can be played by kids in the 8-10 age range. The strategy of the game might take a bit more time for them to catch on to, but our daughter (9) has been loving playing with us. This makes a great next step for kids who have mastered the “kid” games and are making their way through games like Ticket to Ride or Azul. 

In fact, if you are interested in checking out engine building games, Gizmos is a great place to start! I love engine builders (like Wingspan, one of my all time favorites) and think Gizmos delivers a wonderfully accessible gaming experience with straight forward rules to give the perfect introduction to this genre of gaming. 

Summary

Gizmos is a wonderfully streamlined game filled with satisfying engine building goodness. We love that the game is quickly learned and easily understood — able to be enjoyed by players young and old — while requiring players to make tough strategic decisions. The huge variety of cards players can build onto their machine offers high replayability. You’ll never be able to build the same engine twice! Though there is a learning curve to figuring out how to use each card, it’s a fun puzzle to solve and can be quite addicting. 

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A special thank you to our friends at Asmodee for sending us a copy of Gizmos for review. As always our thoughts and opinions are our own.

Game Info:
Title: Gizmos
2-4 players, ages 14+
Designer: Phil Walker-Harding
Artist: Hannah Cardoso, Julia Ferrari, Giovanna BC Guimaraes, Mathieu Harlaut, Saeed Jalabi
Publisher: CMON

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Cloud City Review
Wingspan Review
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