Spots Review

I'm reaching the point where I'm over dice-rolling games, and Spots was instrumental in helping me realize that. Once again I was sucked in by cute aesthetics and simple gameplay mechanisms, and once again I'm left wanting by a crucial flaw that kills my overall enjoyment.

Lots of people love Spots and I can see why. But fun for many doesn't always mean fun for me—something I'm always forgetting. I wanted to love Spots because it looks right up my alley on paper. Sadly, I don't.

Here's how my experiences with Spot have gone, what I like and dislike about it, how well it plays, and everything else you'd need to know to decide whether or not Spots is a good game to add to your own collection.

This review is based on my own personal copy of Spots, which I bought new from Cardhaus. Not a free review copy.

Overview

The gist of Spots is that you roll dice and assign them to your Dog cards, all in a race to complete six Dog cards before anyone else can. You have to be careful, though, because if you can't assign a die, it gets added to your Yard—and if your Yard fills up, you bust and reset your progress.

The game centers around Dog cards, with each Dog card having a unique combination of dice spots to fill, which are filled using the dice you roll on your turn. Every player has their own Dog cards to fill. You start with 2 Dog cards, and there are ways to draw more, but you can never exceed 6 Dog cards.

The game also centers around Action tiles, which allow you to perform various actions like rolling and placing dice on Dog cards, reusing dice from your Yard to escape busting, acquiring more Treats, and more. If none of that makes sense to you yet, don't worry. It'll be explained below.

All of the Action tiles are unique, and the game comes with 26 that you can mix and match per game. Two of them are always used in every game—Howl and Roll Over—and then you pick one each from four colored categories, for a total of six Action tiles per game. (Changing up the combination of Action tiles has a small but real effect on the overall tempo and feel of the game.)

On your turn, you can do one of two things:

1. Take an Action: You can choose from one of the available Action tiles and perform its actions, then flip it over so it's no longer available. If there's only one available Action, place a Treat on it and then flip all of the Action tiles back up so they're all available. (More on Treats below.)
2. Score your Dogs: Flip over all unscored Dog cards with all dice spots filled, marking them as completed. Return all dice from scored Dogs back to the supply, then draw another Dog card for each one you just scored.

When you roll dice, each die is assigned to an available matching die spot on one of your Dog cards. Any die that can't be assigned anywhere—no matching spots available—goes to your Yard. As soon as the total value of dice in your Yard exceeds 7, you bust and your turn immediately ends.

When you bust, you lose ALL of the dice on your Dog cards, resetting your progress and forcing you to start over. However, any already-scored Dog cards (i.e., ones you've flipped over) are safe and stay scored.

When you fill the last remaining die spot on a Dog card, it doesn't automatically score. You have to use up a turn to "score your Dogs" if you want to flip over completed Dog cards. However, if you fill every die spot on all Dog cards, then they automatically score without you having to waste a turn!

Treats allow you to reroll all the dice you just rolled for an Action. Unlike in many dice-rolling games, you can't pick and choose which results to keep and which to reroll in Spots. If you choose to reroll, you must reroll ALL of the dice for your current Action. You can spend a Treat immediately after any roll, and you can spend multiple Treats if you'd like.

And that's it! You roll, place, reroll, and try to avoid busting as you fill your Dog cards. In the end, Spots is a race to complete 6 Dog cards—as soon as someone does, the game ends and they're the winner!

Setup and Table Footprint

The setup for Spots is pretty quick. The dice and Treats come in their own little baggies, which you can pull out and dump with ease. Then, the Dog cards need to be taken out and shuffled up. Then, you spend a minute or two picking which Action tiles you want to play with. Each player takes a Yard tile, 2 Dog cards, 1 Treat, and 1 die to start with. Overall, you can set up in 3 to 4 minutes.

Spots takes up a reasonable amount of table space—not so much that it's an absolute hog, not so compact that you could play it anywhere. Between the Action tiles and the supply of dice and Treats, the central area needs some space. Each player also needs a bit of personal space to fit their Yard tile and tableau of Dog cards. Again, it's an okay footprint, but larger than you might expect for such a simple game.

Learning Curve

Spots is darn easy to play. Once you learn the flow of the game—roll to place dice, leftovers go to the Yard, too many in the Yard causes you to bust—then the rest is all about those Actions, and it's nice that you don't have to memorize any of them because everything is written out for you on the Action tiles.

As long as there's one person who knows the rules and can guide everyone else, then anyone can play Spots. It's simple enough for kids, engaging enough for adults, with enough luck to equalize the experience for all.

Game Experience

Decision Space

On most of your turns, you have one real decision to make: which Action tile do I want to use? Howl and Roll Over are always included in every game, and these allow you to roll your Yard dice and draw a new Dog card, respectively. The rest of the Action tiles are different every time you play.

Most of the Action tiles give you different ways to roll dice and push your luck, but there are also a few that let you do auxiliary things like gain more Treats or change existing dice values. The Actions play off each other in subtle ways, so part of the game is figuring out how they work together and executing a strategy that lets you progress faster than everyone else.

It's not that easy, though, because an Action becomes unavailable once it's used. Not all Actions are available on your turn, so you have to play around that. If someone else plays the Action you needed, what do you do? How do you pivot? Spots is about constantly shifting on your feet and discerning the best Action to take on any given turn.

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When rolling dice, you usually have another big decision to make: how far do I want to push my luck? Some Actions provide an opportunity to roll multiple times, like Run which lets you repeatedly roll 1 die as many times as you want. That's great for making lots of progress on your Dog cards, but also risky because each roll brings you a step closer to busting.

And of course you want to push your luck because Spots is a race. The faster you complete your Dog cards, the more likely you'll win. But there's also the fact that if you can fill every open dice spot on your Dog cards, they automatically score without you having to waste a turn. Knowing when to push and when to hold back is a key skill. A bad bust can completely ruin you.

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Which brings us to another decision you'll have to make from time to time: should I score my Dogs right now? Even if you play it safe and never aim for the automatic score, you still have to decide when to score completed Dogs.

Would you rather score them as they're completed, wasting lots of turns just to flip cards one by one? Do you go for two cards at a time? Or maybe draw up to six Dog cards early and score them three at a time? You can play it safe at the cost of action efficiency, or play it risky for faster progress.

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The last decision you make involves when to spend your Treats for rerolls. Smart timing of Treats can swing the game in your favor, and it also helps to amass Treats to be used as a safeguard against busting. For example, with 10 Treats, you can burn through them to avoid busting with three completed-but-unscored Dogs. Whatever you do, you want each Treat to be as meaningful as possible.

Luck Factor

The luck factor in Spots is significant. The two biggest reasons for this? First, the unevenness of Dog cards. Second, and more importantly, the lack of dice mitigation. Much of this game feels like a crapshoot.

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Every Dog card is different. Some only have two dice spots while most have three (so they're easier and faster to complete), with a four-dice-spot card somewhere in the mix as well. Among the cards with three dice spots, some are weighted more towards high pips while others have much fewer pips. Plainly put, some Dog cards are strictly better.

And that's a problem because you don't have any control over which Dog cards you end up getting. At best, you can see the next Dog card on the draw deck—but if you don't want it, your only option is to wait for someone else to take it. If you end up scoring a Dog card, you're forced to draw that next card. And if you score multiple Dog cards, you draw Dogs blind.

It's not like there's a pool to draft from, nor can you draw multiple and choose which ones to keep, nor can you discard or swap out unwanted Dogs. You get what you get and that's that.

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The dice mitigation is barely there. There's a whole lot of rerolling in Spots, but there's very little actual control over your dice values.

What I mean is, once you roll dice for an Action, you're stuck with the results unless you spend Treats to reroll—and even then, you don't get to pick and choose which dice to reroll, which would at least offer some semblance of control. You have to reroll ALL or NOTHING. That isn't true mitigation; that's just kicking the can down the road. You're just taking another stab at chance.

Because of this, Spots is really just a game of playing the odds, and you can't do much to shape those odds one way or another. I know this is a push-your-luck game, but the luck factor is pretty darn high even for this genre.

Some Actions provide more mitigation opportunities than others. For example, when using the "Track" action, spending a Treat lets you pick and choose which dice to reroll; or the "Hunt" action, which lets you roll several dice and discard all but two of the results. But on the whole, mitigation options are few.

Fun Factor

I normally love the uncertainty of dice and the thrill of faux gambling, but it doesn't work for me here. It's not just that Spots has a lot of luck, but that it's so random with so little control that it feels kind of pointless.

For me, high-luck games are fun when you "roll and see what happens," or in other words, the randomness happens and then you get to make decisions based on the outcome. But Spots is the opposite. The dice assignments aren't real decisions—the dice basically assign themselves. And so Spots is more of a "roll for a certain result" game. You have certain dice values you want to fill, and you hope that your roll gives you those values.

But due to the lack of dice mitigation, rolls are rarely perfect and you're constantly adding leftover dice to your Yard. That means even when you aren't pushing your luck, you can (and will) end up busting. That alone wouldn't be a big deal, except busting is quite punishing. The threshold is so low that a single bad roll can bust you even when you start with an empty Yard, wiping out your progress and forcing you to start again. It sucks.

If there's a silver lining here, it's that Spots does at least bring out some table talk. You might goad others to push their luck and root for bad rolls. When they inevitably bust, you can laugh at their misery—and they'll laugh right back at you when it happens to you. But in my experience, Spots is more of a groanfest than anything. It's frustrating and soulless to play.

Pacing

Spots moves along at an okay pace for the most part, but there will be times when players are stuck on which Action tile to choose or whether to keep pushing their luck. You don't have anything to do or think about when it isn't your turn, so expect pockets of downtime (especially at max player count).

As for the overall game arc, it feels like a rubber band. You throw dice for a few turns, then lose it all when you bust. Throw, bust, throw, bust. You aren't always able to complete Dogs before busting, so even when you play it safe, you're still caught in the forward-then-backward progression. For that reason it's frustrating to play, not just because you're periodically losing progress but because the game drags out further every time you bust. It's not a long game, yet it still somehow manages to outstay its welcome.

Spots also has an unsatisfying ending problem. You'd expect the final rolls to be dripping with tension, capped off with an explosive hurrah when someone finally scores their last Dog with a victorious chuck of the dice. But Spots ends with a whimper, not a bang. It's a slog getting to the end, and when someone finally gets the roll they need to finish their final Dog, it's a sigh of relief rather than a cheerful, fist-pumping climax. Not a good look for a high-luck game.

Player Interaction

There's one Action tile ("Dig") that lets you directly change the dice values in someone else's Yard, so you could force them to bust when it isn't even their turn. It feels pretty mean since busting is so punishing, so I'll never play with that one in the mix ever again.

Otherwise, most of the player interaction happens indirectly in the fight over Action tiles. Since using an Action tile makes it unavailable until it refreshes, you could potentially "waste" your turn with an Action tile that someone else really wants, just to deny them the option.

But you probably won't be doing that too often. Spots is mainly a focus-on-your-own-Dogs game, and you're better off choosing Actions that most benefit you. It has that multiplayer solitaire essence. If someone kills the Action tile you wanted to use, it's more likely to be coincidental than intentional.

Player Counts

I don't like Spots at 4 players. With so much luckiness already built into the core gameplay, it sucks to then deal with a constantly shifting pool of Actions. Too much changes between turns, so you can't plan ahead and you can rarely ever do the Action you actually want to do. Chaos mixes with luck and strips you of most of your agency. It's the worst way to play.

At 2 players, Spots is more of a tactical back-and-forth and less of a total crapshoot. You can somewhat foresee how the next turn or two might play out, so the game feels more intentional overall. You still have to deal with all the other inherent gameplay flaws, of course, but at least it's tolerable. As for the 3-player experience, it's... similarly tolerable.

Replayability

I don't feel compelled to play Spots again. It's not a deep game by any stretch of the imagination, and I'm probably not going to keep it in my collection. The high luck factor, drawn-out game arc, and unsatisfying climax bring down the whole experience for me. But there's enough here to keep me engaged, and it's an okay way to kill 30 to 60 minutes. If someone wanted to play it, I'd probably join in (after thinking on it for a bit).

And that's solely due to the variety of Action tiles. You can mix and match your own combinations, and each combination imparts its own unique fingerprint on the game. Don't like certain Actions? Leave them out. Prefer the more strategic Actions? Throw them in every game!

Even swapping out one Action for another can twist the gameplay just enough to keep it fresh. That bit of customizability means I can make Spots what I want it to be, at least to some degree. It's imperfect, but at least it isn't stale.

Solo Mode

Even though I came into it with no expectations, I was still disappointed by the solo mode in Spots. The single-player design is basically the same as the regular game, except you're playing against a basic automa that acts via die roll. If you thought the core game was lucky, this only kicks it up another notch.

To sum it up, you take your turn as normal, then the automa rolls a die—and based on that die roll, it activates the corresponding Action tile. If the Action tile is face-up, it flips it face-down; otherwise, if the Action tile is already face-down, then it automatically scores the next Dog on the draw pile. Meanwhile, it collects any Treats on its selected Action tiles, and whenever it has two or more Treats, they're turned in to score the next Dog on the draw pile.

To be fair, the automa in Spots is extremely simple to run. You literally just roll and resolve a die, and you get a lot of mileage out of it. I can run the automa's turn in five seconds sometimes, which is really nice for pacing.

But for me, the lightning-fast pacing only highlights the game's flaws. You're constantly flipping and unflipping Action tiles, which quickly gets old and fiddly. There isn't an AI to outsmart, so there's no real strategy or interaction. You're aimlessly rolling dice and hoping the automa doesn't lock you out of whatever Action you want next. Sometimes the automa gets a lucky string of rolls and scores a Dog every single turn, and sometimes it never scores a single Dog because the rolls just happen to go that way.

Ultimately, the solo mode makes it apparent that most (or perhaps all) of the fun in Spots comes from having other players at the table with you, from the table talk and banter as you root for each other to bust. Without that, Spots really is at its worst: soulless and boring.

Production Quality

The production for Spots is lovely. No surprise given that it's by CMYK, the wonderful company who gave us hits like Wavelength, Monikers, and the reprinted Quacks of Quedlinburg. They know how to make tangibly satisfying games and Spots is another example.

The artwork is adorable, with a welcoming vibe. Who doesn't love dogs? Especially cutely drawn dogs in charming positions doing funny and lovely things? Spots has a theme and aesthetic that's so widely appealing, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who'd say no to trying this game.

The dice are unique and thematic. Whoever thought of using dice to represent the spots on Dalmatian-style hounds was inspired. But it's more than that. The dice in Spots are specially designed with imperfect pips of varying sizes, matching the pup designs on the Dog cards. It's a small and subtle detail, but one that's easy to appreciate when you see it. Unnecessary touches like this show how much care and attention CMYK puts into their games.

The Action and Yard tiles are satisfyingly chunky. Thick cardboard tiles are among my favorite tactile experiences in board games, so I appreciate that CMYK didn't cheap out here. With how often you end up flipping Action tiles, their thickness makes them easy to grab and handle. Could they have gone with simple cards instead? Yeah. Would the game be noticeably less of an experience if they did? Also yeah.

The card quality is a little rough and flimsy. As much as I love the artwork on the cards, I'm not so hot on the quality. The cards are thin and they started warping not long after unwrapping them from their plastic. They also only have the faintest trace of a linen finish, so they're a bit rough to the touch. Not a huge deal, of course. If they had to cut a corner, I'm glad it was this one.

The rulebook is straightforward and well-designed. A great rulebook goes a long way, and that's the case with Spots. The first few pages have a children's book feel as they introduce you to the high-level idea of the game, then the rest of the pages are concise and organized. The headings and illustrations break up all the walls of text and the whole thing flows well.

The box size is perfectly compact. I was surprised when I first tore off the plastic shrink wrap and opened the box to reveal that everything was pre-punched and bagged up. Everything fit neatly into the box, which could be as small and tight as possible with no wasted space. It doesn't feel claustrophobic or overpacked. It's exactly the size it needs to be.

The Bottom Line

Spots commits several sins of push-your-luck design: too little control, too much luck, and too punishing when you inevitably bust. It's a frustrating slog that fizzles to an anticlimax. You think you're making meaningful decisions, but it plays itself and luck wins in the end. Perhaps you could overlook its flaws if you're taken by its charming, gussied-up production... but for me, Spots is mediocre at best and a poor example of the genre.

Buy it from:
Amazon • Miniature Market • Noble Knight Games

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