Publisher
Guf Studios
30-60
minutes
€15
cost
2-4
players
Game overview
Floating Floors is a tactical dexterity game in which you move over floating floors as a ninja. But beware, if you don't balance the floors well, you will fall!
You set up the game by placing a number of ground tiles, depending on the number of players, on the table. Each player gets a different color or shape ninja. Finally, you place the Bansen seals randomly on the outside edges that you can reach with your ninja. You have to start collecting these Bansen seals to get the win.
During a turn, you roll the 3 dice first. You pick up the jutsu tokens depicted on the dice and may then start placing them. You may place them on the ground tiles but not in the water. You may also place them on previously placed floor tiles to change the balance. While placing the jutsu tokens, you may also place floors, which must balance on the jutsu tokens and float above the ground. After you've done this you can move your ninja over these floors, but only over your color, otherwise you're not camouflaged well enough! To get around this, you can place a jutsu token in your color on top of another color, which will allow you to move over the other color, but this will of course unbalance the floor! If during movement or placement the floor falls over or your ninja falls off the floor, your turn ends and your opponent may arrange this floor according to his wishes.
The goal is to start collecting 4 Bansen seals from your ninja. These are on the outside of the playing field, so you have to move across the floors to these seals. If you are standing next to the seal you may turn it over and you must turn the floor 90 degrees to be able to claim the seal! Not so easy! The player who collects 4 Bansen seals first wins the game!
Our thoughts
We were curious about Floating Floors from the beginning because it was made by someone from the boardgame community! We also like the dexterity element more and more these days because it creates very funny situations. With Floating Floors we were laughing all the time. We could start the first game quite quickly because the rules are quite easy. We advise you to practice with laying down and balancing the floors the first time, this will make the concept clearer and your first game will go smoother.
You should definitely not underestimate the difficulty of this game. It's super hard to lay down the jutsu tokens in such a way that you don't fall off the floor. At the same time, you also have to see if you can possibly interfere with the plans of your opponents by unbalancing those floors. If you fall off a floor it becomes even more difficult because your opponent can set up the floor in any way they want. It's certainly not impossible because you get more and more jutsu tokens so you can balance the floors. When you have collected your first Bansen seal you will receive new tokens that allow you to turn a floor once. This makes the game go faster and faster and you won't get stuck. You can see that a lot has been thought of!
The only downside we find is the colors of the floors and ground tiles. The box looks super nice and the colors really stand out there. Unfortunately, the colors used in the ground and floor tiles are very dull, so it does not look very nice on the table. Of course, this doesn't detract from the gameplay itself at all. We have already spoken with the creator and the art seems to have been renewed! So don't be afraid of the colors you see in our pictures!
Because many things are still changing, like the art and the material of the floors, we are very curious to see what the Kickstarter will bring us! In any case, we think the game is already completely finished when the art is updated!
Pros and cons
+ Fast setup and play
+ Will make you laugh
+ Challenging
- Art is not very pretty yet
