Cubitos

Cubitos (2021) is a traversal game where you race an animal in the annual Cube Cup. You play by rolling dice and moving your animal around the track. It is a game of making your own luck by continually defying the odds and propelling yourself forward over the finish line.

---

You play as animals desperately pushing their luck to move around a chaotic course and over the finish line. During each go you roll nine dice from your pile, hoping to roll Feet for movement or Coins for money. Unfortunately, most of your dice only have actions on one or two sides of them. But, if you dare, you can re-roll in the hope of rolling more actions. Roll all blanks, however, and you are bust and cannot move that turn.

As you play, you collect money that you can spend on new dice that have more powerful actions and more useful sides. The more money you spend, the more powerful the action. These dice are added to your pile and become part of your arsenal of dice weaponry in the battle to move forwards fastest and over the finish line first. As you choose your path around the board, you can try to move on to bonus squares that give you the power to add dice or expand the number of dice you can roll. So you must be careful to plot the best course along the board.

Each turn carries that perfect mix of luck and skill. Sometimes, however hard you try the dice just aren't on your side. What's nice here though, is that you can buy your own luck, by cleverly choosing to swap the money you gained for more powerful dice. So what starts as a simple roll-and-hoping game, is quickly full of small strategic decisions that influence things to move ever more quickly to that glorious finishing line.

---

Our examiner, Rob Prior, first checked Cubitos 22 months ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 14 months ago.