This lake is full of Block Ness Monsters … but it’s getting crowded pretty quickly! Try to plan ahead so you can maneuver your body around the lake and pop your head out of the water in just the right spot to block your opponents! Watch your fellow monsters closely, or you’ll wind up cornered off yourself!

What Is It?

An abstract game for 2-4 where players take turns placing one of their monster’s segments on the board to extend their body and move their head or tail. Players can cross over (but not under) each other, as long a their pieces allow, and as long as they don’t cross over a head or tail. Players have to be careful, or else risk getting completely blocked off from moving more. The game ends when everyone is blocked, or has used all their pieces. The player with the least pieces left wins!

Who Is It For?

  • Ages 8+
  • Families
  • Abstract fans
  • “Visual” gamers – i.e. can tell by looking at the pieces / board what will fit where

Components + Quality

Loch Board – The board is nice quality cardboard. Holes are the right size so pieces don’t fit too tightly or loosely. Sits in box perfect, doesn’t slide around or anything. Outlined to denote where you can play with different player counts.

Monster Pieces – Nice quality plastic,very sturdy. Fun colors, different types of scales on each player color (likely to help with colorblind players). The pegs fit into the holes on the board easily, as do the head and tail into the body segments, though those could get a bit tight sometimes if you pushed them in too hard.

Rules – Short, sweet, simple, and easy to learn from. Great picture examples throughout.

Box – A great size for what’s inside, and for what it is used for. I love that the whole game area is the box, very cool.

Variants

Expert – Usually, you place pieces one spot away from a previous piece. Expert makes it 2 spaces instead. It’s trickier, and can certainly make for a tighter board, but opens the game up to more varied strategies. A nice twist once you have the hang of the game.

PROS

  • Aesthetically pleasing
  • Plays quickly
  • Easy to learn and play, but still has room for strategy
  • Board size scales for number of players
  • Gameplay contained within box, so you don’t need much room
  • Each players’ pieces are different heights / lengths for a unique experience with every color

CONS

  • Can be hard to tell which pieces will fit where on the board, so you end up measuring them all to see which is the best fit; can cause some AP
  • Head / tail pieces can get a bit stuck in the body segments at times (don’t push too hard!)
  • Different body pieces for each player means not necessarily always knowing where an opponent can go, which can sometimes be frustrating

Final Thoughts

I love the look of this game and how tactile it is – the pieces are so fun to place into the board. For an abstract game, it honestly feels pretty thematic as you extend your monster with more and more pieces, weaving in and out of the water. Personally, it was frustrating having to measure pieces every turn to evaluate my options, because I couldn’t tell what would fit in certain areas on first glance. For me, it’s still an abstract game, which I tend to lose interest in after a few plays, but I could absolutely see this being wildly enjoyed by lots of families and various types of gamers with a wide range of tastes.

My Final Ratings:
Overall Game – 6/10
Aesthetics – 9/10
Replay Value – 7/10
Difficulty – 5/10

Additional Information:
Designer – Laurent Escoffier
Artists – Christine Alcouffe, Simon Douchy
Publisher – Blue Orange Games
MSRP – $27.99
Website

*I was provided a copy of this game to do this review*

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