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Being the youngest of four by some 10 years or more, I ended up being subjected to a fair bit of winding up. Being told to look for elbow grease under the kitchen sink, or that the tall industrial chimneys I could see from our house were cloud factories, and lastly being made to believe I was actually bought from Charlie Browns garage (top shelf in between the tyres and the batteries if you’re interested!) Also much to my siblings amusement I apparently was also born with small (I prefer the word petit) features, my nose was ‘just two holes in my head’ and my mum feared for the tinyness of my hands and feet so she called upon a doctor to check them over. They were all fine, I’m just built weird different.
Fast forward to today and I have an average sized nose and feet but my hands are still quite dinky much to the mirth of my siblings! So why on earth I thought Dro Polter - a dexterity game where petit appendages are not beneficial - was a good idea!
Deft defying
Dro Polter is one of the newest offerings from oink, who’ve previously brought you other excellent games such as Scout, Mask Men and Startups. This game however is a lot less thinky and much more… do-ey?!
A game for up to 5 players, you will each have a set of the same five items or charms, all small enough to fit in your hand, all small enough to be dropped – whether on purpose of not! The idea in Dro Polter is to be the first to drop the required item or items from your hand and snatch up the ghost the quickest. Anyone doing so will be rewarded with a bell, the first to five bells wins the game. There's a set of 30 cards included that will tell you what the next charm(s) required are.
Now you know this game is bound to be more difficult because the premise is so simple. Remember those bells you win? well they have to go in your hand too and if you drop them, you lose them. Also if you drop an incorrect item along with the wanted ones, that doesn’t count and they all have to be picked up, oh and did I mention, this is all using one hand only!
Many hands make light work, but one hand – not so much
A little reminiscent of the sock game, Dro Polter has a great family vibe, super quick and easy to pick up and play, you simply need to drop the charms featured on the current card. You could easily play without even reading the instructions. I can also imagine it going down really well with my gaming friends as a nice little light-hearted filler, in fact I think it would probably draw out the competitive side in many of them.
Keeping the bells you’ve won in your hand is a devilish twist too, I seemed to peak at three bells then just couldn’t function quickly enough without losing them again to win any more! Watch out for those cheaters too, my daughter was sneaky and thought she’d get away with griping the bells in the nooks of her fingers, but not on my watch. This is probably why those winning charms are bells as all those charms need to be loose in the hand, and you can’t hear the bells if they’re not loose.
Having to grab the Dro Polter ghost from the table also rules out any ambiguity about who dropped what first, although it doesn’t rule out any (hopefully friendly) righteous indignation.
Try not to make a Spectre-cal of yourself
Once again, Oink have packed a lot into a little box, the quality of the components and cards is spot on and the charms have just the right balance of shapes, sizes and textures – enough so they can be distinguished by touch but so they also don’t feel uncomfortable in your hand. Although the age rating for Dro Polter does say from age 6, my 7 year old did struggle the most as he had the smallest hands – surprisingly even smaller than mine… for now!
There's even an advanced rule you can use if you wish, where you’re not allowed to look at the items in your hand. We seemed to play this rule pretty much anyway and didn’t look at where items were too often while playing, I think we were far too focused on speed and technique went out the window!
Dro Polter is great for gamers and non-gamers alike, but be warned if you too are like me and destined never to be blessed with hands big enough to play a piano, you may lose – a lot!
Great fun though.
