Fit To Print Board Game Review

Julie and I just finished playing a few games of "Fit To Print."

Fit To Print is a tile laying board game about creating a newspaper. The tiles represent news articles of different types and sizes. There are sports articles, business articles, and human interest articles. There are also tiles that have advertising and tiles that are photos that you can add  to your layout.

Articles can't be next to other articles of the same type. Two sports articles can't be placed adjacent to each other for example. Also, photos can't be next to other photos, and ads can't be next to other ads. Finally, articles can be happy or sad, and you want to balance these elements. The difference between them counts against you, as does your largest section of unused empty space.

All the articles, ads, and photos are placed face down in a big messy pile in the center of the table. Each player has a little desk that they can put articles on before going to layout. A five minute timer is started and players begin grabbing articles from the center of the table, everyone acting at the same time.

If you want an article, you put it on your desk. If you don't you put it back out in the center of the table, but this time, face up. When you think that you have enough material to fill your paper, you call, "layout." Now you must start moving tiles from your desk to your paper. You can't grab anything else from the middle. You can fiddle around with the layout of your paper with whatever is left of your five minutes, but when the buzzer sounds, it's time to score.

The game is played over three rounds, with the paper getting larger after every round. Unused articles left on your desk count against your score, and you still have them on your desk going into future rounds until you use them. It's an interesting and frantic puzzle. I generally don't like feeling rushed during games, and while it isn't my favorite thing here, I didn't mind it too much. Other real time games are far more stressful.

Fit To Print creates a really interesting tile laying puzzle where the scoring and objectives match up nicely with the theme. Even that pressure to hurry to get your paper "fit to print" is suitably thematic. I like the puzzle and I appreciate the game play for what it is. I think this game would be even more fun at higher player counts and since everyone plays at the same time and with a timer, player count shouldn't affect game length at all.

Fit To Print is a solid addition to our board game collection. We don't have any "real time" games. So, it occupies a unique space on our game shelf. I like the puzzle the game presents and can see pulling this one out to play with company. All in all a great game to have.

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