Pyramid Review
Coloretto
Published by Rio Grande Games
Designed by Michael Schacht
90 cards (five scoring reference, five brown row, three green row, one last round, 10 +2, three jokers, & 63 color -- nine cards in seven colors), & rules; full-color boxed set; $11.95
Rio Grande Games' new entry into trick-taking card games puts players in the role of someone sitting at a desk in the tropics collecting lizards. Okay, so Coloretto probably doesn't have the most compelling back story for a game, but that doesn't mean the game itself isn't an agreeable pastime. And who doesn't like a good lizard?
The object of Coloretto is to score the most points for a lizard collection.
In the regular game, three to five players place as many row cards on the table as there are participants. Everyone starts with a scoring reference card and one playing card of a different color and the rest are shuffled together. There are three kinds of card: those with a picture of a chameleon (these come in seven colors), those marked with a "+2," and the three wild "jokers" (the same as the lizard cards, but with a rainbow arrangement of the colors). Fifteen of these are placed facedown on the table, a "last round" card is set on top of that small portion, and the rest of the cards placed on top of that (all to keep anyone from counting cards).
Each turn a player either draws a card or takes a row. If he draws, he places the card by one of the row cards. There's a limit . . .
This article originally appeared in the second volume of Pyramid. See the current Pyramid website for more information.
Article publication date: August 24, 2007
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