Tuesday 29 January 2013

You Put The What In The Where Now?

Did you ever see a game that you just had to have? Not because it was the creme dela creme or, a shining example of games design... But because it was the odd one out.

There's been a game sitting on the shelf of a local thrift store for a while now that I have been drawn to for this very reason. On the face of things, Black Box looks like a fairly simple game. That is until you actually get to the rules that is, which are in German.

Ah..

Now as much as this might settle many rules arguments (if you can't understand the rules, you can't exactly argue over the "right" way of  doing something), actually playing the game might also present, shall we say a "challenge".

Not to worry though, once I cracked open the box, I was happy to find that the rules where short enough to fit on the inside of the lid (something that's unlikely to happen with a modern game), so typing them by hand into a translation engine wouldn't be too much of a problem and, there was another rulebook inside.. In French.

Now whilst my German is limited, my French is virtually non-existent. Which means that the French rules may as well have been in double-dutch. For some reason they also stretched to several A4 pages to boot and, they were not quite the end of the languages saga.

The previous owner had obviously found themselves in a similar situation to me and, painstakingly had sat there and translated the rules into English, by hand!

However..

As much as I appreciate the effort that the previous owner went to, their handwriting is pretty much illegible. Time to Google this one I think.

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