Thanks to Maui, we can move to a sunny beach all year round and without buying air tickets, where we will take up space by matching the tiles of the towels. The essence of the game resembles dominoes. To add a towel tile to your beach, at least one towel on your beach must match horizontally with a towel on the previous tile.
One game, three versions!
The content of this quite large, colorful box is impressive, and the preparation for the game is very simple. We lay out the market and the scoring board. Each player chooses his color and lays out the beach boards in that color, also takes wooden shells, which we mark the points with. The game allows us to play in three different versions, which increases the replayability. We can choose either the standard mode with umbrellas where we collect pearls that add points, the variant with crabs where the points pick up and block the towels on the tiles, or extend the game and choose the standard mode with a variant with crabs where we first collect the pearls and then avoid the crabs . In addition, we also have tokens with scoring patterns and towel tokens, so there are a lot of possibilities in the game!
The game ends when one of the players reaches the end of his beach, then the points from the scoring board are counted, bonus points from pearls or negative points from crabs, and negative points if any tiles extend beyond the beach. The player with the most points wins.
If you miss summer…
The graphics are very nice. Both the towel tiles and the boards and tokens are very pleasing to the eye. Colors maintained in corals, blues and yellows introduce a holiday mood. An interesting accent is the bag from which we draw tiles. The color resembles sand or dry palm leaves. The whole game is maintained in this beach-summer-holiday style.
The boards are made of slightly thicker paper, which can be perceived both as a plus and a minus. You can’t stick to the chips or tiles, hard cardboard works great, and wooden shells are an additional advantage of the game and increase the quality of workmanship.
Not so terrible towels…
The game is really simple and even less strategic players will do great. The high randomness of the game and a small but significant amount of tactical decisions make the game very pleasant and stress-free. The lack of negative interaction also makes the game easier for less experienced players. You could say that Maui is perfect for evenings with the family and as an introduction to the world of board strategy.
Maui is a great game for the whole family thanks to its fast paced gameplay, fun theme and simple rules. A great board game for a laid-back evening with loved ones, without negative interaction. I highly recommend this game to seasoned players and novices.
