I’m a gamer, always have been. Problem is for a large number of years that’s really just consisted of the video variety. That’s a huge mistake on my part, to not enjoy the video game’s analog brethren… the board game. There’s actually a vibrant and intense board game world out there that’s been pushed to the sidelines by game players such as ourselves for too long. In this column I’ll be diving into this world, looking at games that hopefully you’d like to try out for yourself.

The Climbers is a board game with no board. Players build a mountain out of blocks, and then move and manipulate pieces of that structure in order to move their piece as high as they can. The board becomes a living part of the game, changing shape and growing taller as the game progresses. It’s fascinating to watch it in action.

The ever-changing nature of the mountain means players will often find themselves circling the table in order to find the best place to work (unless you’re lazy then I suggest a large lazy susan). It feels incredibly interactive as the structure changes shape to allow the player pieces to move higher and higher.

There are a few different shaped pieces, both square and rectangle. Each block has a different color on each face, corresponding to a color on each of the player pieces. Your piece can only stand on it’s color (say, blue) or gray. So for your turn you’ll take a piece from somewhere and play it in front of your piece with that color side up, moving your piece hopefully a little bit higher up the mountain.

Your piece under normal circumstances can only move up a short distance at a time, so you can’t create some huge tower next to you and just jump up. The game does come with wooden ladders however that each player can use once a game to scale longer climbs than normal. The ladders look awesome and are so much cooler than just playing a card or something and moving your guy. It adds a lot to the game, even though it doesn’t sound like much… the ladders are just smile-inducing.

Players rotate and continue moving upwards until no player can make any more upward moves. At that point whoever is highest on the mountain is the winner. I prefer a more definitive end than just everyone running out of moves, but with the nature of this game I don’t think there’s really any other way to do it.

I can’t stress enough how incredibly high quality all these components are. Everything you get with the game is made of wood, even the player markers which would have been much cheaper to produce if they just did it in plastic. All the blocks that you use to create your tower are solid wood, so they’re nice and heavy and could withstand a TON of abuse. Top marks all around on the components, absolutely first rate.

The game offers a good amount of replayability since the mountain is totally random and is built out collectively by the players before the game starts. Sometimes it’s low and widespread other times it’s skyhigh.

A few columns ago we talked about the abstract game ZERTZ, which was unique in that as the game went on players removed pieces of the board to make it smaller. In The Climbers, players create a hill before the game starts, and then spend the rest of their turns moving it around trying to make it taller and taller. It’s an interesting concept to have a changing playfield, and one not tackled all that often in the game world.

The Climbers is unlike anything else I have in my game collection, and it’s a welcome departure of the norm. The easy rules explanation, coupled with the group activity of actually preparing the board make for a nice easy game for people to just “pick up and play.” The game handles between 2-5 players but I think the more you have the more fun it is, since everyone eventually is fighting over the same real estate. The quality of the components can’t be understated and the game is easily worth the asking price. Highly recommended.

The Climbers was designed by Holger Lanz and is published by Strategic Space. You can buy it from Funagaingames.com or your Friendly Local Game Store.