I've never played the original game from which Twice As Clever sprang, but I'd be willing to guess it's "twice as complicated." It's not easy to explain what's going on in the game. At its core, its "roll and write," a cousin of Yahtzee in which you get to roll dice up to three times, making marks on a personal score sheet.
The dice you roll are a spectrum of colors, each one tied to a different area of your score sheet. On each roll, you get to choose one die to mark in its corresponding area, but then you have to exclude from your next roll any other dice with a value lower than the one you took. You have to try to squeeze out three valuable rolls/choices with an ever dwindling number of dice. Once a player has had three rolls (or finished in just one or two), each of their opponents gets to take one of their unused (set aside) dice and mark that on their own score sheets -- so there's another angle to what you're passing up as you take your three rolls.
The sections of the score sheet are so intertwined, so loaded up with special things you can "unlock," the game just has a zany atmosphere. One area is a 4 x 6 grid where, when picking a die of one color, you mark off each of the other dice it forced you to set aside. Another area is a peculiarly arrayed set of uneven rows in columns where marking enough squares once will unlock bonuses powers... but you have to mark each space twice to score points. Another area scores two particular dice in tandem, and the total each time you write there must be equal to or less than your previous total. All the while, there are numerous ways to unlock the option to reroll your dice, pull back a die you had to set aside earlier, or claim an extra die from a roll (yours or an opponents).
It's all quite difficult to explain clearly even when the components are all in front of you; I doubt I'm making much sense at all here, without visual aids. Suffice it to say that, in the way of so many games, it gets much easier after you've done it a few turns. And it does hit the target in terms of giving you some measure of control over the chaos of the dice. Yes, anyone can run hot and win the game, but you are making important choices every step of the way. Each decision point tends to be meaningful, and you can definitely look back at the end and tell where you might have gone wrong or right.
Once everyone playing has all the rules down, it's a brisk game that plays in 30 minutes or less with up to four players. And surprisingly, it's had a little more staying power in my group than many new games have had in a while. More than I'd have ever guessed a "random dice game" could have.
That said, the fact we've played it a few times has highlighted for us that not all areas of the score sheet are created equal -- one in particular seems vital to go in on heavily if you're going to have a winning score. I'm not sure what we make of that. If everyone knows that one area of the strategy is crucial, and everyone has equal access (which they do), then it's hard to say the game isn't "fair" or "balanced." On the other hand, if the strategy is limited -- if you must always pursue X even as your secondary focus could be A, B, or C -- then does the game have enough variety in it? It's hard to say. Plus, of course, we could just be "those gamers" right now, certain that a particular strategy is the best for a game when the designer, who has surely played dozens if not hundreds of times more than us, is quite sure it's all even. (That designer, by the way, is Wolfgang Warsch -- who has strong hits not only with this, but with The Taverns of Tiefenthal and The Quacks of Quedlinburg as well. The man knows his stuff.)
I can at least say this: I expect Twice As Clever to stay in the mix a while longer. I'd call it a solid B. Maybe we'll find out just what the balance is like. Or at least figure out if it can be explained more coherently to a first-time player.
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