SNAP Review – Tin Spin

You know, sometimes I really appreciate the ingenuity of board game designers who make a game about some aspect of the gaming hobby. Like My Shelfie, or even Roll Player.

It’s true – sometimes games just come out of what you’re doing between the games.

That’s true of the game we’re covering today.

This is a SNAP review for Tin Spin.

Game

It says here this is a dice spinning game?

Sure! I mean, who isn’t sitting there during an RPG session spinning their polyhedral dice while waiting for their turn? Surprisingly Fun Games takes that cure for boredom and makes a game out of it: Tin Spin.

2-6 players can play a game in less than ten minutes. Almost any age can play this one.

Art

So Elliot, let’s talk about the art in Tin Spin.

I mean, they’re dice. But there are some smart graphic design decisions, and these cubes are shiny!

There’s a D20, D12, D10, D8, D4, a rocket ship-looking D6, and the Switch die, which is a regular D6.

Mechanics

So let’s talk about what to do with all these dice – let’s cover the mechanics of Tin Spin.

Elliot mentioned there are some clever graphics. See this tornado here? Well, you spin the tin at the table, and whoever it’s pointing to, gets to go first. They take the Swap die and pick a die from the tin. Everyone else goes clockwise and picks a die of their own.

On your turn, you can choose to roll your die, or to spin your die.

If you choose to spin, count down from three and everyone spins. If the active player’s die spins the longest, they get two golden cubes.

Choose to roll, and you get a golden cube if you manage to roll a 1, a 2, or a 3.

If you try to roll and fail to get one of those numbers, you can go double or nothing. Bet one or two cubes from your supply and roll again. If you win, you double your bet! If you lose, well, you lose all those cubes.

The first player to get to five cubes wins!

And if you look through the rules, there are a couple of variants, too.

Expectations

So, Elliot, Tin Spin. What did you expect?

Well, I expected to do more with the tin. Like spin the die in the tin or something.

You do spin the tin at the beginning, but you’re right, other than that, the tin is just a container for all the dice and the cubes.

For me, I expected this to be a game that our kids thought was cute, or fine, but ultimately forgettable. And that’s OK, there’s certainly a place for games like that, especially when they’re really small – toss them in a drawer after you play them a few times. You find them when rummaging around for something a couple of months later, pull it out and then you enjoy it for a while again. So, that kind of thing is OK.

Surprises

But that leads directly into my surprises. Our kids had a blast with this game! The stuff you’re doing is so simple and loose you can do it literally anywhere.

And with it being a tiny little tin, you can put it in a pocket, shove it in a purse, or you could even just leave it in the car.

Elliot, what about you, did anything surprise you about this game?

Uh, not really? There are dice on the front, and it shows them spinning… And that’s what the game is.

That’s fair. This is, though, a great little game that is instantly understandable with very little rules scaffolding around it, but also that’s what makes it good. There’s not a lot to it, but there doesn’t need to be a lot to a game to make it fun.

Tin Spin works across all age ranges – some of our older family members might not have the dexterity to spin dice anymore, but they can always roll them instead.

You can get a copy of Tin Spin at surprisinglyfungames.com.

Elliot, what do you want to rate this game?

I think we’ll rate it 3.5 dice out of 5.

And that’s Tin Spin, in a SNAP!

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The Family Gamers received a copy of Tin Spin from Surprisingly Fun Games for this review.

SNAP review music is Avalanche, provided courtesy of You Bred Raptors?