Sonic Roll does a great job capturing the spirit of Sonic. It’s fun, fast, and falling apart at the seams. For every string of exciting action and quick decisions, there are minutes spent flipping through a messy rule book. I’m coming across as harsh, but at it’s heart, I think the game is still much more than licensed slop, and is something I welcome getting to the table. Most of the time at least.

Ana and I had finished our playthrough of Sonic Spinball, and I was looking for more multiplayer Sonic adventures. Most of our gaming time together is over board games, so I was happy to find this game had recently released. Normally I would overlook most licensed games, but this game popped up at an opportune time. Unlike most of my board game purchases, I picked this one up mostly blind. What sort of experience was I in for?

The box is a well packed array of tokens, cards, and most importantly, three colors of six-sided dice. Gameplay is a cooperative affair; You’ll select a move for the round, generate a dice pool according to the move, and progress through the stage by placing dice. Having no valid dice placements, or running into badniks result in you losing rings, and eventually a life. A single player running out of lives, or the entire team running out of time tokens results in a game over, and victory is obtained when the stage boss is defeated. It’s all right out of the classic Sonic trilogy. There are three lanes of the stage to work with, so making decisions is pretty snappy: Do I place in the 3 space, or the 5 space? Little wrinkles like badniks, powerups, and your own character’s rule text add some much needed spice. Sometimes you’ll want to check the rulebook for some guidance on that spice. Then you slow down.

Sonic Roll has a messy rulebook. As an aspiring board game designer myself, I have often thought about running through the rulebook with a fine comb to get a more polished, coherent ordering. When do these powerups get used? What is the definition of defeating an enemy? Exactly when does this boss text kick in? You can gain some clarity by looking up posts by the designer on boardgamegeek, but that brings Sonic to a screeching halt. You want to keep this game rolling fast, but it keeps throwing up road blocks that force you to slow down.

With this pace of starting and stopping, Sonic Roll has truly captured some of the most frustrating attributes of the original games. You’ll be zooming around, until you crash into an enemy that just became visible. Only in this game, said enemy is an oddball rules interaction that doesn’t get immediate clarification. When the game is working, it captures the spirit of the game in a more positive light. It’s a lot of dice chucking, and is very light on strategy, but I can’t deny that it’s still a fun time. I keep wanting to get this to the table, despite the fact that this is probably one of the messiest board games I own. What’s the special sauce of this game?

It’s easy to point at the theming and slick component design, but I honestly think there’s something here even if you stripped away all of the Sonic. I’d love to make something in the vein of this game with a little more polish. Throwing dice and making quick decisions is just fun.

I only have my own board game collection to refer to, but this game gives off some echoes of 2011’s Elder Sign. You’re cooperatively selecting what challenges to tackle with a diminishing supply of dice, all leading up to a final confrontation. It’s not one to one, but it’s definitely Sonic Roll’s closest relative in my collection. Elder Sign is a much better game, but the unique dice pool generation on display here is what I think elevates this to a unique experience.

The game also comes with a threadbare campaign mode, which Ana and I are almost wrapped up with. This box has spoilers in it! There are more components hidden under the insert! While I won’t divulge the contents completely, they certainly are an encapsulation of the experience as a whole. Two new additions that contribute to the speed, excitement and variety of the game, and one new mode that needed a lot more time in the playtesting oven. Sonic Roll is a hot mess, but I’m happy to have it as part of my collection.