Designed by Marke Levene.
Published by Y & B Associates.
2-6 players
ages 8 and up
Illusions holds the distinction of being the very first game that my little test gaming group refused to finish. Which is unfortunate because at first glance it looked like the game might work or, at least, be interesting.
As it turns out, Illusions is just a simple track game with lots of whistles and bells (largely disfunctional) thrown in for good measure. Players race to collect prizes that rest on the central square of the oddly shaped pieces that make up the polymorphic board. When a player collects a prize they get to move that piece of the board to a new position. This holds out the promise of a wildly shifting board layout with players hanging on for dear life. In practice, no one is interested in that chunk of the board once its prize is missing and its doubtful that anyone else is actually on the chunk when it moves since, at least early on, there are enough chunks to go around and a race is counterproductive. I suspect this would true all the way to the finish since the winner only has to collect three out of nine prizes. Perhaps the end game is more exciting.
But I think not. The movement is totally random. Roll a die, move along the track, if you land on a special square draw a card and hand it to either the person on your left or right (this changes randomly, as well). The cards should be interesting. They contain small images of, unfortunately, very familiar optical illusions. The moving player glances at the image and decides which of two possible things they see. The player holding the card has to guess what they saw. In practice you might as well have flipped a coin. Especially since the same illusions pop up over and over, again.
The bits are interesting, particularly the board. It is made up of nine polygons that can fit together in a number of interesting ways. The track wanders over these 'worlds' meandering over and under itself as it wends its way to the center.
But, like I say, we bailed. Unless you are a massive optical illusions fan or want to figure out a new game to play with the bits, I'd give this one a miss.