Dear Mice and Meeces of Tockton Clock – Wax your whiskers and straighten your tails, for you are hereby invited to the Royal Scavenger Hunt!
In Hickory Dickory – designed by Sawyer West, art by Sonja Müller, and published by Plaid Hat Games – players act as a team of mice searching for items on a cuckoo clock that they can turn in for points. The game plays 2-4 players, and it includes a solo variant.
Gameplay
Hickory Dickory is an action selection game with tile collection and spatial elements. The “hook” of Hickory Dickory is the clock face that serves as a rondel, making different actions available on each turn.
Several team members ride the clock’s minute hand around the clock, jumping off the clock’s hands to collect items, or onto the hands to move to another location around the board. The scamp, scurrier, spotter, and scavenger each have special abilities. Alongside all the activity on the clock face, the scaler climbs up the clock’s chain to earn points.
My primary plays of Hickory Dickory were solo and 2-player, and I can see how the game will shine even more at higher player counts and more interactions. Anticipating where different mice will be around he clock offers opportunities for long-term strategic decisions.
While solo is a pleasant variant, it’s not something I anticipate going back to often. For the most player interaction and fun, the more the merrier!
Accessibility
The team did an excellent job with visual accessibility; I experienced no unintentional barriers during gameplay. The graphic artists and publisher used a combination of color palette and double-coding to distinguish colors from one another.
Player Tokens
With up to 4 players, the player colors will be easy to distinguish for most gamers. Hickory Dickory uses white, khaki, blue-grey, and brown, which is a welcome change from more common player colors. Even in literal greyscale, these pieces are in four different tones ranging from light to dark, supporting colorblind and low-vision players.
Additionally, each of the four mice used on the primary game board has a uniquely shaped meeple to match its mouse card: scamp, scurrier, spotter, and scavenger.
Tiles
The item tile colors were problematic for me on their own, as shown here, but this was mitigated by double-coding with small icons in the bottom-right corner of each.
While this double-coding treatment served its purpose, I found that the colors I confused most (yellow-and-orange; purple-and-blue) also had similar-shaped icons. Someone with both color vision deficiency and low-vision (which I increasingly experience as I age), might need to lean across the table or ask another player for help.
Improvement ideas include using icons that are more clearly different from one another, putting icons in different locations on the tiles (corner, side), or adding differentiating background or frame patterns.
FAVOR AND QUEST Cards
Iconography was clear on all cards, and the Icon Summary on the back of the rulebook provided supportive information.
One minor exception is the “any color” designation on some cards. In this case, it would be useful to include another indicator than the rainbow-style design to improve accessibility.
Conclusion
Hickory Dickory is a delightful game for the whole family that includes strategic elements for seasoned gamers. While the color palette might be a barrier for some players, double-coding was used appropriately to mitigate color vision limitations. Hickory Dickory is available from Plaid Hat Games and wherever games are sold!
Disclaimer: Colorblind Games received a complimentary copy of the game for this review.
Photo Credits: Header image, cover art, and final image by Plaid Hat Games. All others by Brian Chandler.
Colorblind Games 