The board game 'Art Gallery', which launched earlier this year, lets you score points by picking a meaningful combination of famous works of art on a tour through a museum. Photo: AFP
This is your chance to get up close with the Mona Lisa. The world-famous art gallery is in need of someone to lead art lovers through the museum's halls and show them a curated combination of priceless artworks.
The board game Art Gallery, which launched earlier this year, lets you score points by picking a meaningful combination of famous works of art on a tour through a museum.
"The preparations for the new exhibition opening are underway and the gallery needs you," the manual tells you. "You roam through the museum rooms and study the paintings carefully in the role of tour guides."
The rules, as is often the case with new board games, appear a little overwhelming at first, but players should quickly catch on to the system of collecting paintings, as the game is designed for families with older chilren.
There are two spaces in the game: the gallery rooms with all the artworks and the shop where you try to get the right painting tiles.
The most valuable paintings in the world hang in this museum, and you're competing against other players to collect them. Photo: Piatnik/dpa
The game is played with action cards that have varying points. The player whose turn it is decides with their cards where on the gallery board they want to go. This card is laid out face up.
You then place one of your action cards face down and "bid" for an artwork without showing other players how much you are willing to pay. At the end of the round, these bids determine who gets the painting.
You score points by creating combinations of paintings that establish a theme. Pairing Schiele, Carravagio and Renoir's portraits might get you extra points, while the same goes for contrasting explorations of natural themes.
If all that doesn't make sense yet, it will once you start playing. Pretty soon you realise that if you want to win, you have to literally play your cards right, because only the player with the highest bid gets a work of art.
There are 48 different paintings by artists from Rembrandt to Monet up for grabs, although the Austrian manufacturer Piatnik appears to have only chosen works by white European men.
Easy to play in well under an hour, this is a fun family game for older children (10 and up) and is especially fun with three or more people. - dpa
