Disclaimer: This preview is from a copy of the game that was provided by Gravitation Games to Open Seat Gaming, but opinions are our own based on several plays of the game.

Game: Please Fix the Teleporter
Publisher: Gravitation Games
Design: Ian Zang
Art: Nick Nazzaro, Aaron Andrew Wilson
Mechanisms: Dexterity, Pattern recognition, Race, Real-time
Number of Players: 1 – 4
Game Time: 5 – 15 minutes

Description: In Please Fix the Teleporter, players race to align their tiles to match the scrambled image on cards. Each player is given a set of 4 tiles and the cards are shuffled. One is flipped face up, and the first person to rotate, slide, and align their tiles to match the image on the card slaps it to end the round. If their tiles match the image on the card, they receive it; if not, it’s discarded and they are prevented from competing in the following round. First player to acquire 5 cards wins!

Review: The first time that we connected with Ian was with his game Constellations, which is a clever game about, you guessed it, Constellations. We met him at Unpub the following year (even though I was a doofus and my brain didn’t recognize who it was at first), and he has been a friend ever since. We’ve always liked his games, so we were excited to try the first one he’s brought into the world with his new company. 

Let me come at you with this first – this game is light. Don’t expect it to have any sort of complex strategy involved with it – it’s a hilarious game where you have to rearrange the pieces and match the little dude that is on the revealed card. It’s cut and dry, so it’s going to be really easy for anyone to play – even if they aren’t a gamer! 

The art is adorable. It’s filled with these images that are cute and, honestly, hilarious. You have to rearrange them in all sorts of ways, and the results look ridiculous as well! Could you imagine bodies getting scrambled like that when they go into a teleporter and get transported to a new place? It’s horrifying, but when they’re aliens, it’s hilarious. They’ll survive, right? 

It’s really easy to look at the cards and see what it is that you need to do. The art makes it clear as to what position everything needs to be in so that it’s “correct,” and there are only 8 “pieces” to the puzzle (4 pieces front and back). On top of that, the cards that show the patterns you need to make are HUGE. They are only a little smaller than the four player tiles put together, so everyone is able to actually SEE them, from wherever they are sitting. 

But, don’t think that makes being successful a simple task – on the contrary, haha. Since it’s a speed game, it can be hard for you to look at what you need to do and get all of it in the correct orientation within a couple of seconds – which makes it quite hilarious. Some people may be a lot better at it than others, so be sure that you read your audience! If someone seems frustrated with it, you can always cut the game short (3 cards wins instead of 5, etc).  

Let’s talk about the components for a minute, too. Typically, when you see speed games that have pattern recognition, you’re dealing with chunky bits of some sort. Ghost Blitz and Speed Cups are two of the games that come to mind for me, mainly because they were the first in our collection. 

The team at Gravitation Games could have done this completely with cards – but they didn’t. Instead, the player pieces are these thick, glossy, cardboard-esque tiles that are about the same density as Carcassonne tiles. This helps to prevent damage over time – cards typically get a lot of wear and tear in speed games like this, so it was absolutely genius to use tiles instead.

I do hope they do a spin-off or expansion that you can play alone or mix in together at some point. A couple more tiles would definitely up the complexity, and I’d love to see some more of this adorable art style.  

If you want a game that the entire family can enjoy and (potentially) be good at, with low overhead, easy to learn rules, and lots of laughs, then you’ve got to get your hands on Please Fix the Teleporter! 

Try, Buy, Deny: If you like speed games that have fun art and goofy themes, then you want to be sure to buy Please Fix the Teleporter. Period. It’s a must have for anyone that likes real time pattern recognition stuff like Ghost Blitz. It’s simple and fun for any age, too.  

If you aren’t into speed games, I don’t think that this one is going to change your mind. We really like them around these parts, so this fits really well into our collection. Give it a try first! 

This is the first title that Gravitation Games is publishing, and I’m excited to see the sorts of things that they bring to the table in the future – it’s just the beginning! 

Game On!
Marti