Roll&Write games are all the rage at the moment. This isn't a Roll&Write: there's not a pen to be seen. Instead, Jacob Berg has given us a Roll&Build game where players are using ersatz-Lego bricks to build the shapes shown on the cards.
Temple Rush is an easy-to-play 2-4 player game that will appeal to children but which is equally playable as a light filler-length game for adults. Players each take their own board and a set of Lego-style bricks in their own colour. Each player has three 4-stud, three 3-stud, four 2-stud and three 1-stud bricks. At the start of each round, one player rolls all the custom six-sided dice (one for each player in their corresponding colours). The dice show which brick each player can take from their supply (there are two wild symbols on each die and these offer a free choice). Players' boards have three building areas on them and you decide which of the areas you will place your brick.
Your aim is to score points by completing the displayed patterns before the other players. The strategy is in deciding which bricks to allocate to which pool. It's not necessarily an obvious choice because there may be up to three prospective point-scoring designs available. You can weigh up the prospects of others completing a design ahead of you, taking account of what bricks they may already have allocated elsewhere. And players each have three special single-use powers that, when deployed effectively, can shift the game to your advantage. In our plays with other adults, we had particular fun with the power token that allowed a player to borrow bricks from another player to use immediately to complete a construction. Children especially enjoyed the 'lightning' rounds which dispensed with the dice in favour of a dexterity free-for-all race.
This is a game that Lego should've published, but their loss is Jacob's Brick's gain.