Pen is mightier than the cord

Having taken tile-placement from ancient Viking shores to a calming walk in the woods, Uwe Rosenberg is exploring his love of slotting together polyominoes in a new tabletop realm: the roll-and-write.

Patchwork Doodle is the latest spin-off from Rosenberg’s beloved two-player quilt-a-thon, in which players weave together a nine-by-nine grid of awkward shapes to earn points.

In place of Patchwork’s offering of cardboard swatches this time around is a deck of cards displaying the polyomino arrangements, which are dealt out in a circle. Each turn, a die is rolled to move a rabbit around the track. Every player draws the same shape on their grid, hoping to score the highest score by the time the last card for that round is drawn. As in normal Patchwork, uncovered spaces lose points at the close of the game.

Although players are working with the same selection of shapes most of the time, they can choose when to use four single-use powers to cut a shape into pieces, fill a single square or draw the card before or after the rabbit’s latest landing during the game in order to out-stitch their opponents.

In other words, Patchwork Doodle sounds like it will be very familiar to those who’ve been smitten with the original’s knitting, with a few interesting gameplay tweaks to the well-worn formula that make it more than simply the same game with the need to draw the shapes yourself.

Up to eight people can play officially, though it seems like there’s little reason that – like many roll-and-writes – the player count could be expanded infinitely with enough sheets and drawing implements.

Patchwork Doodle will out in the first quarter of next year.