Broken and Beautiful Review

Broken and Beautiful is a light card drafting game where players are drafting in tact pottery with the hopes of breaking them and repairing them with the Japanese technique of kintsugi. Kintsugi is the art of repairing broken pottery with gold lacquer. Each round, players will select cards from the middle of the table and add them in front of them or sell them for gold. Once there is only one card left, the draft phase ends and the breaking phase begins. Depending on the types of pottery on the final card of the draft and the top of the deck will determine what breaks. Anything that players have that matches that is considered broken and will be turned sideways. Then players will be able to spend their gold to repair them by flipping them to their repaired side. This continues until there is no cards left. Each type of card will score differently and broken ones won't score at all. Repaired cards score more points. The winner is whoever has the most points at the end.

The Good: For a game that's about broken dishes, it's really beautiful (funny how that worked out). It's also really quick to play and teach and there's a lot of strategy involved. You need to watch what other players have in front of them to make sure you're not helping them out too much by letting them break things they need to be broken and repaired. Especially since some types can be better than others or will score based on the amount of something they have.

The Okay: Some of the symbolism was a little tough to follow along with. The rules have a pretty comprehensive table but in the thick of things you don't want to grab the rulebook to make sure you're making a smart move.

The Not So Good: The theme itself isn't the most gripping but it was interesting to learn about the art of kintsugi. I never knew it was even a thing before this game but it's still a game about dishes at the end of the day.

Final Thoughts: Overall, I really enjoyed Broken and Beautiful. It's an excellent filler type game or one you can travel with due to it's small box. It's one of the smallest box games I own with essentially a deck of cards and some wooden bits. You can teach this to almost anyone and they should be able to pick it up pretty quickly. This is definitely a game I can recommend if you're looking for something quick and easy or if you're just interested in the theme. Thanks to Left Justified Studios for providing a review copy.