Ingenious: Travel Edition

A pocket-sized two-player hex-tile game where you score in colored symbol lines and your weakest color counts.

Designer: Reiner Knizia
Published by: Bard Centrum Gier
Editions by: Fantasy Flight Games, Devir, KOSMOS, Lautapelit.fi, Esdevium, Sophisticated Games, Green Board Game Co.

Ingenious: Travel Edition is the two-player pocket version of the hex-tile classic, called Einfach Genial in German. The board is a hexagon grid, and the 57 pieces each join two hexes, with a colored symbol on each half. You keep six pieces on a private rack and draw randomly after playing. The goal is clever placement: put a piece so its symbols sit next to matching symbols already on the board and you score points in that color, one for each matching symbol in an unbroken line. Your final result depends on your weakest color, so you cannot just farm one. It is compact, travel-friendly and quietly tricky, around thirty minutes, for exactly two.

57 two-hex pieces with colored symbolsScore by lines of matching symbolsTravel-size version for two players

Who it's for

You and a partner want a pure-skill abstract to take on trips that fits in a bag.

Not for you if…

You want more than two players or a theme. It is a clean abstract with colored symbols and no story.

Vibe's take

Calm and puzzly, with real tension in the scoring. You want big lines, but your lowest color holds you back, so you keep patching holes.