The mole is a popular animal to include in a game concept, which is actually quite logical. The mole lives underground, digs complex passageways, builds molehills and can sometimes look a little alien. In Mountains Out Of Molehills (many kudos for the title, but I’ll come back to that later), a new game from The OP, players compete to build the highest mountains out of molehills. Will you lose ground or will you bury your opponents?
Making mountains out of molehills is an English saying which actually means ’to blow up a small molehill’. The Dutch version is ‘van een mug een olifant maken’ (perhaps also a nice subject for a game?). But turning something small into something big is exactly what players will do in the game Mountains Out Of Molehills. All kinds of different moles have been called together for a building competition. 2 to 4 players can participate in this tournament and take on the role of a sweet mole like the very characteristic Stermol (just look it up). At the beginning of the game the 3D game terrain is constructed (like a tower) with 4 plastic pillars, 2 game boards and the game box. Players place their moles (beautiful figures made of transparent acrylic) on the bottom layer of the playing field: the underground. On the top board, they place a single molehill in their colour. Ready to play?
Each round, a number of action cards are laid open on the table. Players take turns selecting and drawing cards until each player has four cards. After all players have four cards, they ‘program’ their actions. Players place the action cards they are playing this round closed in front of them in the order they want to play actions. The cards depict different actions, but mainly movements that a player’s mole makes. Players move the mole the number of steps to turn in the direction depicted on their card. Each time a mole enters a new square, a molehill is placed above it from below and this is where the fun of the game begins. Players start adding molehills to the board, but some mountains of molehills become too big and fall over and possibly onto other mountains, causing chain reactions. Slowly, small and bigger mountains appear all over the board. At the end of each round, players check which mountains they have control over; the bottom molehill must be of your colour. You then receive points equal to the number of molehills on the pile. The player who controls the most (and also the biggest) molehills after a number of rounds wins the tournament of tournaments!
Mountains Out Of Molehills is a simple and impressively designed family game. The game concept is simple and introduces younger players to various new game mechanics. The different game mechanics are not necessarily innovative in themselves, but together they form a nice combination of different elements. Especially the stacking of molehills and dropping them is very entertaining. As soon as large molehills appear, the game starts with life. It is recommended to play this with 3 or 4 players, because then the game comes into its own. An entertaining game for the entire family!
