Racing against the hourglasses

Do you like real-time games?⏳Quicksand is a brilliant little cooperative real-time game for 1-7 players. The game’s goal is simple: get all of the hourglasses to the end of a track, not letting the sand completely flow through them. It’s not that simple to achieve in reality of course! As most real-time board games tend to be, Quicksand is also stressful but in a fun and challenging way. A perfect mix of anxiety and entertainment I’d say. 😅

You can choose from 21 scenarios, which are all increasingly more difficult to accomplish. Basically you will lay out tiles randomly in a circle, that each have 1 of 3 colors and 1 of 4 symbols on them, then you will need a certain number of hourglasses. There are 3 hourglass types, some flow faster, some slower, which is an important detail to pay attention to. Then you just shuffle the deck of cards, give a few to each player and start playing. 😉

Players interact with the hourglasses through the use of cards. 🃏 Each card depicts either one of the colors or one of the symbols. If you play a card, every hourglass that is on a matching tile will be flipped and moved one tile forward. (Unless another hourglass blocks their progress, then you just flip them over in place.) The difficult thing is that you have to move every matching hourglass even if you don’t want to. Although it is a real-time game, playing fast is not always the key - 🧐 sometimes you have to wait out the flow of sand, so after flipping the hourglass won’t run out so fast.

If an hourglass runs out of sand you aren’t immediately out ☝️ - you can use one of the joker cards to bring it back. Joker cards can otherwise move any 1 hourglass of your choice, so they can come in handy in a pinch, but it’s also wise to save them as a last resort.

Some challenges bring in additional rules, like prohibiting communication 🙊 or introducing blockades 🚫, so you have a nice variety. I think this is one of the best real-time games with just the right amount of stress. 😄 I also enjoy the shifts in tempo, as sometimes you just wait or sometimes you have to quickly play something so the other gets to play sooner. Really fun! 😊