win the Spiel des Jahres. Its pedigree is excellent;
it comes from Zoch, the home of most of the
truly exceptional stacking or balancing games
of the last 30 years. Bausack, Hamsterrolle
and Ri Ra are the most obvious: games
that are aesthetically delightful, inventive and
demand both mental and physical skill. Zoch
is to stacking games what Veuve Cliquot is to
champagne, leaving the cheap prosecco of
Jenga knock-o s to lowlier publishers.
I love stacking games. e dynamic is so
simple – what goes up must come down – and
yet a good designer can coax
endless variations out of
them. Villa Paletti is big and
bold, visually stunning, easily
grasped, and guaranteed to
draw a crowd at events. It takes
the core concept of Jenga – take
from the bottom and add to the
top – but throws away its brown
rectangles and right angles
in favour of bright colours,
owing, organic shapes and
unpredictable centres of gravity.
at doesn’t make it a
good game. Nor a great
experience. Nice bits,
shame about the gameplay.
Designed by Canadian chef
Bill Payne, Villa Paletti was
apparently inspired by Jenga.
Jenga, incidentally, was not the
rst Jenga-style game. e year
before it came out, a stacking
game called Towerblox was
released to an uninterested
market by a young British
company called Games
Workshop. It’s so obscure that2
002 was the year of Puerto Rico.
Andreas Seyfarth’s colonial trading
masterpiece sailed into port to a
rapturous response, ushering in a new age
of worker-placement and trading games
with clean, clever mechanics. Back then
BoardGameGeek may have been in its
infancy, barely three years old, but Puerto Rico
shot to the top of its ratings and stayed there
for ve solid years until it was knocked o
by Agricola in 2008. (It regained the number
one slot for another six months in 2010.) Not
just the Game of the Year – it’s
arguably the game that de ned
much of the decade.
So why are you looking at
pictures of a wooden tower?
Villa Paletti is possibly the
most reviled Spiel des Jahres
winner of all – not because
it’s bad, but because it’s not
Puerto Rico. at doesn’t mean
it’s not bad, which it is, but
that’s not the primary reason
to dislike it. Everybody knew
Puerto Rico was going to win,
and the few that doubted
it had their money on the
excellent TransAmerica. ese
were proper games for people
who liked games. Carcassonne,
the 2001 winner, had been
a worthy victor but it was a
bit family-oriented, went the
arguments. Now it was time for
the jury to shift the award back
towards the real stu .
e jury went the other way.
Villa Paletti is the only
stacking and dexterity game to14 February 2019
Words and photographs by James WallisVILLA PALETTI
All the
Jahres
Replaying the winners of the Spiel des Jahres so you don’t have to
Year of win: 2002
Designer: Bill Payne
Number of players: 2-
Playing time: 20-30 minutes
Worthy winner? In no possible sense was
this the Game of the Year
Worth playing now? Not particularly
Availability: Still in print
Price: Around £win the Spiel des Jahres. Its pedigree is excellent;I love stacking games. e dynamic is so
simple – what goes up must come down – and
yet a good designer can coax
endless variations out of
is big and
bold, visually stunning, easily
grasped, and guaranteed to
draw a crowd at events. It takes
JengaJengaJenga – take – take
from the bottom and add to the
top – but throws away its brown
rectangles and right angles
in favour of bright colours,
owing, organic shapes and
unpredictable centres of gravity.Jenga
, incidentally, was not the