De Stijl - Review

Does "De Stijl" create gaming art, or is it just wasted space?

We say...

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First of all,  in order to understand the card game,  "De Stijl", one needs to understand that De Stijl was a popular Dutch abstract art movement of the early 20th century where the art was broken down to its simplest form.   This included making art of simple geometric shapes of the three primary colors; blue,  red,  and yellow. 

In a nutshell, players take turns placing square cards into the middle to continue the artwork. When placing the cards, at least two of the new colored squares must cover over the old ones. This is a cruel tactic which can destroy the plans of a rival artist (player) who is trying to make the largest connected area of their selected color. You see, players get points for each section of the artwork with their color on it, but only the player with the largest continuous area with their color will get the bonus points. Therefore, players attempt to cover up the other player’s colors and show more of their own colors. This can make the game cut throat.

The game ends once all of the cards have been used, then each player counts up how many individual sections of the artwork show their color. Finally, the bonus points go to the longest continuous colored section and the player with the most points wins and is the most famous artist of the De Stijl art movement.

De Stijl was an interesting puzzle type of game, but in the end just didn’t have that certain something that leaves an impression. Even with it’s different game play, it was just not memorable. We’re not saying if was bad, because it wasn’t. It just wasn’t fun or memorable enough to be left on the table.