Designed by Valery Novikov and Alexei Sarin, and published by Red Cat, Gem Forge is an easy-to-play game with immediately attractive table presence. Art is by Oleg Proshin. The premise is that you are jewellers, earning points by using the apparently limitless supply of jewels from a mountain to fashion jewellery.
The core component for Gem Forge is the fold-out 3D pop-up-book mountain down which all the gems are rolled. You create a visible queue of gems. The 2-4 players each have a mine cart with spaces for up to three gems and they all have at all times three cards representing items of jewellery into which the gems can be fitted. Some cards require gems of a specific colour; others will take any colour of gem. Correctly filled cards are cashed in for their points value and immediately replaced with another card from a market display but you can temporarily hold on to completed cards with the aim of cashing multiple cards in together to claim an additional set collection bonus.
Players get to take two actions on their turn, and that can be the same action taken twice:
you can take a gem and add it to your mine cart
you can take a gem from your mine cart and set it on one of your jewellery cards, cashing the card in for points if it's complete
you can discard a gem from your mine cart to free up a space
you can draw a 'special card'
you can play a 'special card'
Gem Forge is won by the first player to reach 20 on the victory point track so it feels very much like a race game. You can see the relative position of gems on the mountain slope so canny players can plan ahead, especially when making the choice over which jewellery cards to pick from the market display. You'll mostly be cashing in your cards as quickly as you can but you might also be tempted to chase a set collection bonus to boost your score.
The 'special cards' don't directly score players points but they give you extra gems, and in most cases at the expense of another player (ie: you get to nab them from another player's mine cart or incomplete jewellery cards). They add some 'take that' interaction and they also provide a catch up mechanism because when a player's scoring piece reaches 5, 10 and 15 on the score track, players who are behind them get to draw a 'special card'. In our plays at Board's Eye View we found this gave players another incentive to hold onto rather than immediately cash in completed jewellery cards.
Tho' Gem Forge is a light family-friendly game, there's enough opportunity for tactical play to hold the interest of more seasoned board gamers, and it's a game you can play in a filler-length 20 minutes. It could be a not-so-hidden gem.