Shaky Manor, from Blue Orange Games, is a game unlike any I have ever played before. I got my hands on it at a demo table at New York Toy Fair this past weekend and enjoyed it a lot.
Shaky Manor is a game where each player is given a tray containing eight square rooms each connected by doorways. Players place an meeple, an ghost, and three treasure chest cubes into the tray. They then shake the tray to try and get the meeple and the cubes into an designated room without the ghost. The first player to do it five times is the winner.
There is an petty neat catch-up mechanic as well. The game comes with an number of other interesting game bits. They ranged from eyeballs and snakes spiders. Whenever someone wins an round their opponents can place another piece into their tray. This makes successive rounds extremely difficult. It definitely evens the game out if someone gets out to an early lead thanks to some dumb luck.
My demo was brief but I enjoyed it a lot. Shaky Manor is an interesting game experience that will be immediately accessible to anyone who has played with a marble maze or something like that in the past.
People familiar with me will know that I regularly say that anytime you buy a board game you are buying the components to do with what you wish. This is a prime example of that theory. They provide a number of interesting game rules and game modes, but I can imagine all manner of interesting challenges coming out of this kind of dexterity challenge. It is intended to be an race, but it could be anything that you want. I could even imagine some youngsters,including my youngest daughter, using these like a temporary doll house while other people are playing.
Shaky Manor will be released this year so keep your eyes on EFG for more updates. What do you think? Sound off in the comments and let us know your thoughts!
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Guest Writer 
Linda Wrobel