Sorry Sliders is a great addition to the Family Game Night collection. It is the most fun game out of the all the games currently available for EA’s little family gaming portal. It takes the premise of Sorry and puts it on a roller ball. The objective is simple: score points and get all your pawns home. How this is done is what makes Sorry Sliders so much fun.
Just like in traditional Sorry, you have the four different colors: red, blue, yellow and green. Gone are the cards and in Sliders, your pawns have little roller balls on the bottom of them. During each players turn, you have to slide your pawn from the runway to the playing board to score points. The way the game is set up is the four different runways surround the circular game board. On the game board, there are points values that, starting from the outer-most section of the board and going towards the middle (like a dartboard) the points range from 1-5. On the player’s turn you slide the pawn and try to get as many points as possible. You have to be careful, though, as other players can knock your pawn of the board, which constitutes a Sorry and you lose the point value you were sitting on.
When the round is over, you are taken to a score card which shows your four pawns. The object is to score as many points as you can so you can move the pawns on the score card to the home position. Of course the first to get all four pawns home is the winner. A typical game of Sorry Sliders takes 10 minutes as there only six places that separates the pawns starting position to its home base. You move these pawns by using the points you ended up with at the end of the Slider round. So, for example, all the players are finished sliding the pawns and you landed on the 1 value, 3 value, 2 value and the 1 value. When the score card comes up, you can move all of your pawns the values you earned. It’s relatively simple.
Speaking of simple, the controls are a snap. There are only four buttons used to play this game: the left stick is used to slide your pawn during the sliding round (hold it back to pull the pawn back to initiate the slide then push the stick forward to actually slide the pawn) and is used to move the scorecard pawns up. And the A-button is used to confirm where you moved the pawns on the score card. You can use the Y-button to automatically move the pawns if you want to, and you use the bumpers to aim your pawn to the left or right.
To add some variety in the game there are a couple different game modes to make the game a little bit more fun. There is Instant Sorry which, in the middle of the game board, is a black hole that when your pawn lands on that hole, you lose that pawn. There are also some power-up blocks that can be turned on to give you an advantage over your opponents. When these are turned in conjunction with the spinning game board, it makes for a fun, and at times challenging game.
At times, though, the game can be a little wonky. Sometimes when I was sliding one of my pawns and was aiming to a side, my pawn ended up on the opposite side I was aiming. That made the game a little frustrating. Also adding to the frustration is the touchiness of the game. At times, I barely pushed the stick up so I could gently slide my pawn on the board, but when I released the stick my pawn went flying on the board and tipped over which resulted in me not getting any points.
In all, Sorry Sliders is a really fun game. It plays like Shuffle Board but uses the Sorry state of mind. Even with the minor flaws of the game, I could play Sorry Sliders for hours at a time. With a couple different gameplay modes and other options, Sorry Sliders is the game you have to buy for Family Game night.