Hermit

Board Game Circus · 2023

Translation, German to English

A cosy solitaire game about helping a hermit crab navigate a treacherous beach on its way back to the sea. The game uses cards with beach-themed images like seashells, starfish or naughty plastic bottle caps and the player needs to put together matching image patterns to move the crab along. The short rules leaflet crams a lot of text into not too much space. It’s a classic example of how challenging it can be to describe actions and patterns of placement in words that you can show in a matter of seconds just by going through the motions. Nonetheless, players need to ‘grasp’ the rules right off the page.