Roar and Write preview

Roar and Write Preview

Roar and Write preview

Roll and write games are probably one of the easiest type of games for our family to get to the table. These games usually keep players engaged as they look for the dice (or cards) they need. Holding a pencil and chucking dice keep our hands busy and away from our electronic devices. Most of all, you can usually experience the game in short time span.

Roar and Write is a new roll and write game from Carla Kopp and Galactic Raptor Games. The art and feel of the game comes from Animal Kingdoms, a game that Ric reviewed and successfully funded on Kickstarter in 2019.

Players will press their luck as they try to appease the 5 council members that come in the form of different wild life animals. Players can set the difficulty of the game based on these animal cards that they chose when setting up the game. Each animal will have different requirements to score the most points during the 5 ages.

Roar and Write dice

Each player is given a score sheet that has a personal agenda on the back of the page. These personal agendas will award points by focusing on specific dice numbers

Welcome to the New Age

During each age in Roar and Write, you want to gather 6 dice that give you the best score for 1 of the 5 available council members. You’ll have 6 dice to roll and you will get a total of 3 opportunities to get the numbers you need. The Frog council member wants you to record all 2’s while the Tiger is looking for 3 sets of numbers. The variety of these council cards has kept the game fresh and some definitely feel more difficult than others.

Roar and Write cards

During the age, bonus points are awarded for recording all 6 dice on the first or second roll. Some times the bonus points are just enough to make it worth taking a number that may not be a perfect fit. I really like how this mechanic presses the player to make these tough choices.

Roar and Write has a pentagon at the top of the player sheet with 5 different kingdoms. Each kingdom will give you a number of points for recording numbers in the open slots of that segment. Players get to choose an unrecorded die during each roll to add to this kingdom section. This means players can record 3 numbers without a penalty each age.

If you want to go all in on the kingdom strategy, players can allocate an additional dice by crossing out 1 of the 6 boxes for the age that you’re working on. For each extra die you assign to a kingdom, you’ll lose another box.

Roar and Write sheet

After 5 ages (15 rolls of the dice), players calculate their scores for each council member they targeted, their personal agenda, representative bonuses and their kingdom score. The player with the most points is crowned the new ruler of the kingdom.

A Roaring Good Time

The first time Roar and Write came to the table, I played with my twelve year old daughter. The game is light enough that we chatted about our day while still discussing which council member we were targeting. The decisions in the game will keep you weighing out whether or not you should wait to see that third roll of the dice during the age.

The kingdom tracker at the top of the sheet is really well balanced. While I always want to receive 9 bonus points from the “Big to Large” section, I’ve been burned by placing dice in this area too late in the game. Players can earn the most points by targeting each of the 5 council members during the game, but the dice may not make this an easy task. With up to 15 bonus points available, it’s definitely worth trying to appease each of the 5 council members.

Roar and Write Kingdom

Roar and Write is a small box that has lots of replayability. With beautiful illustrations and plenty of tough decisions, this is a great fit for both kids and adults. You can find Roar and Write on Kickstarter now through the end of July 2020.

Galactic Raptor Games provided us with a prototype copy of Roar and Write prior to their Kickstarter campaign. This in no way influenced our opinion of the game. Previews are a glimpse into an upcoming game with the pros and cons that we experienced prior to production of the game.

Ryan Gutowski

I'm a huge fan of strategy games and pretty much anything that involves "city building". My love of board games goes back to my childhood and passion for building relationships with others.

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[…] been very excited to watch the company turn the game into a nice little franchise, launching a Kickstarter for a roll-and-write title, as well as refitting another Kickstarter title with new artwork and thematic elements. When I […]

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