Saw that weird box cover art and want to know more about Cubitos? Or maybe you’re interested in getting another racing game. Whatever your reason, welcome to my Cubitos review!
Cubitos is a dice-rolling, racing game that starts slow but builds up fast. There is some push your luck to the game as you might bust if you roll more than once, but that’s also part of the fun. It’s a game worth buying if you want a fun, fast, colorful racing game.
Table of Contents
Cubitos Overview
So, let’s take a look at Cubitos and how it plays. Keep in mind that I won’t be covering everything about Cubitos here. I’ll be covering just enough to give you a good idea of what it’s like and how it plays.
If you’re interested in a deeper dive into gameplay, please check out my article on how to play Cubitos. With that said, let’s get to it!
Back-Of-The-Box Facts About Cubitos
- Player Count: 2-4
- Time To Play: 30-60 minutes
- Age Range: 14 and up
- Difficulty: Beginner/Easy
- Price Range: ~$50-$60
- Release Year: 2020
- Publisher(s): Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG)
- Designer(s): John D. Clair
- Artist(s): Jacqui Davis, Philip Glofcheskie, and Ryan Iler
- Where to buy: Amazon
What Comes In The Cubitos Box?
Cubitos comes with a rule book, 2 double-sided racetracks, over 100 dice, 56 ability cards, some player boards, tokens, and some dice boxes (we will get to these later).
All of it is beautiful, vibrant, and colorful.
Theme
I don’t mind saying this right away, but Cubitos has a weird theme. In a charming way though.
Basically, this all takes place in a cube world with cube people. Every year the cube people get together to hold the Cube Cup so they can determine the Cubitos Champion. You are a cube runner, and all the dice you’ll be rolling are your support team, which can grow as the race continues.
How To Play Cubitos
Let’s start with a quick turn overview.
Cubitos Turn Overview
Everybody takes their turn at the same time in Cubitos. There are two parts: rolling the dice and racing. You’ll be using your player board (pictured above) to draw, roll, use, and discard your dice, and you’ll be using the map (also pictured above) to race.
You’ll be using your phase tile (pictured next to the player board) to indicate when you’re rolling or ready to race. When you’re finished rolling dice, you flip it over to the side that says Race Phase. When the race phase is over, you flip it back to the side that says Roll Phase.
Your Draw zone is where dice sit until you choose them to roll. You can only ever roll 9 dice at a time (you also start the game with 9 dice). After you’ve chosen what dice you want to use, they go into your Roll zone. When you finish rolling the dice, move them to your Active zone. If you bust or buy dice, they go into your Discard zone instead.
Racing is when you get to put your dice to use. Your dice will allow you to move along the track, buy more dice, and use special abilities unique to the dice you can buy. This is assuming you didn’t bust, which I’ll discuss more below.
So, with all that said, let’s dive into more detail with rolling the dice.
Rolling The Dice
So, you start by moving dice from the Draw zone on your player board (pictured above) to your Roll zone. You have to do this until you have 9 dice in your Roll zone each turn or at least as many as you can move over up to 9. If you don’t have enough dice to make 9, you move over all dice from your Discard zone and add whichever ones you want to the Active zone to get up to 9.
Then you roll all the dice. If a die comes up with a blank, then it’s a miss. If it shows anything other than a blank, then it’s a hit. You want as many hits as you can get.
Hits can either be a foot that allows you to move one space in the Racing phase. They can also be a number with a circle around it that give you one coin to use when buying more dice. These coins will go away at the end of that Racing round.
Hits can also be a number with a square around it. These are credits that also let you buy more dice, but they stay with you until you use them. Hits can also be icons unique to a die you bought. These give you special abilities when rolled such as being able to roll more dice that turn, get more coins, or move more spaces when racing.
You move any hits over to your Active zone and then you have a choice to make. Do you roll again or do you stop there? If you stop, you flip over the phase tile to show that you’re done rolling.
Busting
If you choose to keep rolling, you run the risk of busting. Busting can only happen if you’ve ever had 3 or more dice in your Active zone on that turn. Busting happens when you roll all misses.
If you roll all misses you bust and your turn is over. You have to move all your dice in your Active zone to the Discard zone, but, as a bonus, you can move dice from your Roll zone to your Discard zone too. That way, you don’t have to use those dice next turn if you don’t want to. You will also move your runner pawn 1 space on the fan track and gain any rewards associated with that space.
Racing
After everyone’s done passing or busting, it’s time to continue the race. You’ll first use any abilities gained from rolling those hits on the unique dice, then figure out how many coins and movement you get that round. Then people will move their runners that many spaces, keeping in mind they don’t have to move the full amount if they don’t want to. Ending your movement on a reward spot gives you a reward.
Afterward, people will buy more dice. Anyone can do this, including people who busted.
You can only buy two dice, and they have to be different dice. You add them to your Discard zone. Once this is done, everyone who hasn’t done so already moves their dice from their Active zone to their Discard zone. Pass the start player die and start a new round!
How To Win
Someone crossing the finish line triggers the last round. However, they may not end up winning. If multiple people cross the finish line in that round, then it’s whoever goes the farthest past it that wins.
Cubitos Review
Alright, it’s time for the review. Let’s get started!
Art
As I continue to play board games, I’m increasingly drawn to vibrant, colorful art. Cubitos is no exception to this. It’s bursting with beautiful, wonderful colors and a fun, cartoony art style that makes this a game I want to dive into again and again.
Components
The components are good with one exception: the dice boxes. Yes, these things. So, the dice boxes are a neat idea and great in theory, but in execution, they’re lacking.
The first problem with the dice boxes is that you have to fold them, and I personally found the way you had to fold them a bit weird. In the end, I was able to, but it was just an odd process.
The second problem is that they take up a ton of space in the board game box, and I constantly feel like no matter where I put them, they’re going to get crushed by something. They’re made from thin cardboard, which also makes them feel cheap unlike everything else in the game.
Function-wise, they do a great job of holding the dice and displaying information about them, but I think there was a better way to do this.
Theme
The theme is a weird one, but it’s also enjoyable. Everything is cube-shaped including the characters on the ability cards. So, they look a little off and you never really feel like you’re a cube-shaped person, but you do feel like you’re in a race (albeit a bit of a slow one at times), so on that level, it definitely succeeds.
Gameplay
This is where Cubitos really shines. Because everyone gets to take their turns at the same time, because players can occupy the same spaces, because the information is so easy to follow, the game goes by really fast. Well, eventually it does.
In the beginning, it’s a bit slow, but once you start buying more dice and getting rid of worse ones, the game really starts to move along at a nice pace. It helps that you’re not doing anything complicated either. You’re just picking dice to use, rolling them, pushing your luck and seeing what happens, using those dice, buying some more, then starting over.
One thing you will have to get used to though is disappointment. The game itself is quite fun, but you will be rolling a ton of misses. Most of the dice in the game have between two and three faces that aren’t blank, so you’ll be missing a lot.
That’s also what makes it so awesome when you don’t miss, when you roll many hits, or when you push your luck that one last time and manage to roll one more hit.
In that regard, Cubitos is a blast.
Cubitos Review: My Rating
When I rate games, I do so on a Don’t Buy, Wait For A Sale, or Buy This scale. So, what do I rate Cubitos?
For me, Cubitos is a Buy. It is somewhat expensive, but there’s a lot of replayability in the game from the different ability cards each game and the four included tracks. I think this could be a good game for families, and I do think kids under 14 could play it as well, 10 and up should be fine.
There’s a lot of fun to be had when rolling the dice, pushing your luck, and seeing what happens when you race around the track. If you’re looking for a fun racing game, this is a good pick.
Where To Buy Cubitos After The Review
You can buy Cubitos at the following places:
There are more places you can get Cubitos too, but this is a good start.
Did You Know?
(Each time you refresh the page you will get a new “Did You Know” fact!)
Did you know that there’s such a thing called a pop-o-matic bubble? I looked it up and discuss which board game features the Pop-O-Matic Bubble!
Conclusion: Cubitos Review
So, there you have it, my Cubitos review. Overall, it’s a good time, and I find myself hoping for expansions. I think some more racing boards would be good. Even if that doesn’t happen, there’s still a lot of content in the box as is.
So, what do you think? Ready to buy Cubitos or want to hold off? Let us know your thoughts and why in the comments below!
And, as always, keep on gaming, you maniacs.
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