Big G Creative WW1004 Bob Ross: Art of Chill Game, Mixed Colours

Product Information

The components are wonderful and there are several excellent touches even to the packaging design – with paints and tools shown on the inside of the box lid. In this fun game, each player must turn whimsical squiggles and doodles into their very own creative drawing - share your art and award points to other players for their inspired creations.

Players won’t just win by chance – you need to have a solid strategy to ensure that you’re gathering the right colors and brushes to paint each section.When time is up, players take turns sharing and explaining what they’ve drawn (usually followed by oohs, aahs, or laughter), and then everyone grabs another paper from the middle and does it all again. If I have a complaint, it’s that the various decks of cards – while they have a lovely finish – are a little thin, and their non standard, varied sizes mean that it’s difficult to get sleeve protectors for them. Given that there’s actual artwork involved, I feel like Happy Little Accidents better encapsulates the Bob Ross theme than the first game did. There is a scoreboard in the middle of the table which has the score track on it as well as room for the Chill cards. Don’t make the happy little accident of missing out on Bob Ross: Art of Chill though; it’s a game I can highly – perhaps surprisingly – recommend.

It wasn’t that long ago that a game being based on a familiar media property – whether that be a book, film, comic or video game – would simply be lazily layered onto a roll-and-move style design.You also get a teeny pad of paper (I’ve played the game about eight total times and it’s already run out) along with a deck of cards with the topic suggestions. For a Eurogamer, it’s pretty easy to remember this… but, when I’ve played with non-gamers, the scoring requires constant re-teaching.

You even score bonus points if you have a technique card used in the feature or if you happen to paint faster than the master, Bob Ross, himself. These are then randomly assigned to another player, with everyone then drawing a picture based on a word chosen from a card.

Just by using your imagination and the right card combinations on your palette you can paint two or even three paintings and maybe even win the game in about 30 minutes. The artwork in the game appears to all be paintings from the show – they have Bob’s signature on them. In the game, each player starts with three art supplies cards, with each card showing one of seven paints and one of four tools.

On a turn, the active player rolls the die and either draws an art supplies card, plays a paint to their palette, receives an extra action for the turn (four total), or both draws a "Chill" card and advances Bob on the painting track. They don’t impact game play at all, but they sure add to the theme of the game and relaxed atmosphere while playing.If you’ve obtained a Technique Card, then you score an addition point every time you use that color or brush when painting a feature. Sure, that first game had quotes and painting and “happy trees”, but this feels like a game Bob would’ve actually wanted to have his fuzzy face on (and his face is actually fuzzy on the box). A painting is finished when either Bob moves onto the last space on the track OR a player completes all three of the features on the painting – the game pauses briefly. One of the biggest differences is that players must first put their paint cards onto their Palette and commit them to one of the two areas where they get mixed. Of course, there is more to do than just painting – and it is a fairly viable strategy to race to pick up the Technique cards.